Free The Quest of Kadji by Lin Carter

to pin their blankets together into a crude tent, and thus wait out the storm in relative comfort, when his black Feddoon pony lifted its head alertly, sniffing the freezing air, and gave voice to a harsh neigh of danger.
    In a moment, Kadji, too, had heard the distant sounds that had aroused his pony to a sense of peril.
    Wolves!
    The eerie chorus of their distant howling came faintly to his ears, as if the blanket of snow muffled their hunting cry. But he knew the sound for what it was: Somewhere out there on the snowy plains, a pack of gigantic wolves were circling their helpless quarry, narrowing in for the kill.
    It was a vagrant wisp of thought that made him ground out a bitter curse and seize up the reins, pulling his pony about and heading his nose into the wind. His booted feet thumpe4 the pony’s ribs, and without a word of explanation to his companion, the boy warrior was off and had vanished into the flurry of snow. Like an avenging demon the Red Hawk hurtled through the whiteness, praying to his grim Nomad Gods that he not be late . . . for it had occurred to him that the quarry the hunting wolves sought might well be his enemy, Shamad! And it was before the sacred Axe of Thom-Ra that the cunning and traitorous Impostor must fall, not to the glistening fangs and hungry jaws of a pack of plains-wolves. . . .
    Within moments he saw them. Their grey hides made them all but invisible in the snowy murk, but their eyes of flaming green were visible, like a host of goblin moons, burning weirdly through the snow-streaked gloom.
    He burst among them like a thunderbolt, and the great Axe was in his hands, flying through the air in terrible whistling curves like a live thing, shearing its irresistible way through the thick fur at throat and flank, hacking a gory way through tough muscle and heavy flesh of shoulder and neck.
    The wolves broke into a vengeful howling chorus at the sudden appearance of this new and unexpected adversary. One sprang snarling for his face, but the heavy Axe caught it in mid-leap and flung it back to the snowy earth, maimed and broken. A second wolf leaped upon him and clung for a second, claws buried in saddle-leather, foaming jaws snapping at his breast, lambent eyes of emerald flame burning like mad moons into his own. The Axe came whistling down and clove its head to a flying splatter of crimson and broken bone, and it fell and was lost behind.
    Then he was through the circling wolves and rode up to where their quarry sat astride a great grey mare, muffled in furry robes. There was no time for words—no time for anything but fighting, for the wolves were upon them now and Kadji was very busy for the next few minutes, wielding the flying Axe. But he did not fight alone: the fur-clad one was fighting, too, with a flashing rapier that drifted as lightly as a ray of light, drinking deep of wolf-gore as it ripped like a steely needle through throat and side. Haral fought, too. The brave little pony was shod with steel, and as the steed reared back on its hind legs, it churned the air with fore-hooves that struck like meteors amid the mass of ravening wolves. More than one went down to death with the hoofmark of the black Feridoon pony stamped deep in broken skull and splattered brains.
    In a moment or two more it was over, for the wolves had lost heavily, and turned from their quarry to tear asunder their own fallen, to snarl and snap and quarrel over their own dead.
    And then a weird shape loomed out of the murk and came flying toward them, and it was Akthoob. The little Easterling wizard was pale and chattering with terror as he rode through the wolfpack, but he was fighting nonetheless, in his own way, with flashes of violet flame that spurted from his trembling fingertips with an audible crack, like a whip, though muffled and dulled by the blanketing snow. In a moment he was through the raging wolves and reined up with a palsied hand beside the boy warrior.
    The plains-wolves were in the