Free Spawn of the Winds by Brian Lumley

frames; the ram was directed straight at that fragile bubble.
    â€œWhitey,” I said, knowing that the battle must break at any moment, “whatever else you do, try to bring down those wolves pulling the totem. Same goes for you, Jimmy. Tracy, you give Jimmy cover: I’ll cover Whitey from the door. Make all your shots count.”
    Now, as the circle of wolf-warriors tightened and beasts and riders drew closer to the plane, a contingent of them gathered around the totem-bearing sledge, making the animals that pulled it much more difficult targets. Closer the sea of faces came—flat faces and copper faces, slant-eyed and straight, Eskimo, Indian and white—faces and pointed muzzles.
    â€œIf we don’t cut loose soon,” Whitey breathed, “we’ll never thin them down.”
    Even as he spoke the closing ranks began to move faster, human heels digging into animal flanks in a concerted spurring. From behind the wolf-warriors an eerie cry rang out in the frozen air: the wailing of the Priests of Ithaqua, begging the Wind-Walker to look favorably upon his warriors in battle.
    â€œHere they come,” I yelled. “Now … let them have it! ”
    The words were hardly out of my mouth before they were drowned by the stuttering rattle of the machine gun and the rapidly repeating crack of the rifle. Down went a dozen of the warriors escorting the battering-ram, one of them vanishing with a scream beneath the runners of the great sledge, and Whitey’s roaring battle cry rang out triumphant—only to turn to a yelp of surprise as the first of the mounted Eskimos and Indians reached the plane.
    A mass of white fur flashed by the jammed door; simultaneously a
squat figure hurtled into the plane over the top of Whitey’s deadly arc of fire. My single shot, striking the Eskimo in the chest, threw him sideways, dead before he hit the floor. Down he crashed, his fur-clad feet flopping across the barrel of the machine gun. The gun’s chattering stilled at once and shapes swiftly gathered at the door. I fired point-blank into dark and light faces and slavering, snarling muzzles alike until my pistol was empty—but by that time Whitey had freed the gun.
    Now he traversed the weapon, triggering it back into deadly life. But though the gun was alive its harshly uttered message was death. Death flew out through the open door in an arc, slicing into the wolf-warriors milling on the bloody snow. Whitey’s attention, however, had been successfully drawn from the battering-ram; in the next instant we knew that the first stroke of that wolf-drawn totem was a telling one.
    Still firing rapidly, Jimmy Franklin gave a sudden yell of warning as there came a tremendous crash from the nose of the plane. In the same second, caught unawares and in the act of reloading, I was thrown off my feet as the entire aircraft jerked violently. Whitey, firing the machine gun with one hand, somehow managed to hang on until the rocking of the plane subsided. Then the firing-pin of the machine gun fell on an empty chamber; the ammunition belt was exhausted.
    I grabbed up another belt and threw it toward Whitey, kicking as I did so at a flat, oval-eyed face that appeared suddenly over the lower sill of the door. Then I was sent hurtling backward, knocked off my feet by a huge furry shape that shot in through the door with outstretched paws and bared fangs. Sprawling on my back I threw up my pistol against the pony-sized wolf crouching over me. I looked straight into the eyes of death as the beast’s hideous muzzle descended. Then my bullet went in through his dripping jaws to blow out the back of his skull, lifting him from me with the shock of its impact. I rolled out of the way as the toppling, shuddering carcass collapsed with a crash where I had lain.
    Through all of this it dawned on me that I had not heard the crack of Jimmy Franklin’s rifle since the jarring crash when the totem struck the