"I'll be fried!" Gord muttered as he helped to load one of the pack beasts.
"What is it. Gord Zehaab?" Dohojar asked in a concerned tone.
"I just realized that the wind has been blowing from the west since we set out!"
All of them were surprised at that, especially Barrel. "Will you ram me if that ain't so, cap'n," the burly fellow exclaimed. "I been a seafarer a bit in my time, I'll tell you, and I should have noticed that for sure. The wind most always comes easterly in this forsaken waste, don't it?"
Gord nodded, puzzled. "You know it. Besides its direction, the force of it is pretty strange, too. It's been nothing more than a gentle breeze, with nary a gust above that. I wonder what caused the shift."
The dwarf spoke up at that. "It's a gift, whatever the reason. Having the damned dust at our backs is a whole lot better man th' other way round."
The group mounted and moved on again. Shade brought up the rear, with Post seeing to the three pack lizards that bore the two tents, food, and extra water on their backs. All except Gord were armed with the pygmy arbalests and a miscellany of other weapons. Of course, each one also held one of the sharp prods used to control the gwahasti. Dohojar mentioned to Gord that he was a terrible shot with the little crossbow and suggested that 'Gord Zehaab' might wish to take his, for the Changa felt he could never hit anything with it anyway. That gave the young thief an idea.
"You say you studied magic once, Dohojar?"
"Very true, Zehaab, very true. For many years I was the apprentice of a wise and powerful worker of Illusions and spells. But that was a time ago, Gord Zehaab. I have forgotten much, and I have no books or the stuff with which to try even a simple cantrip – if that is what the Zehaab was suggesting…"
Gord shook his head. "No, that isn't what I was thinking, Dohojar. But I do have an idea. I'll take the arbalest. Even though I'm not much with such a weapon myself, I have used crossbows a few times in my days sailing with the Rhennee on the Nyr Dyv."
"I've used this thing with fair success," he continued, drawing forth his wand from beneath his robe, "but I'm not as comfortable with it in hand as I am with a normal weapon. You take it in place of the arbalest. Perhaps you'll be able to employ it better than I."
"You are most gracious and generous, Zehaab! Use this I can! Now I begin to feel much, much more better."
Smiling at the small fellow from behind his mask, Gord managed to keep his tone neutral. "I expect you to be ready for action with it from now on then, Dohojar. You're hereby appointed to remain in the lead – except after dark, when Shade or I will have to take the point."
Thank you, captain. It is honorable duty I will not fail in," the fellow replied with obvious pride.
By a couple of hours after sunset the lizards had slowed to walking speed again. Then they slowed even more. It was time for another of their sleep periods. The party got about six hours of rest this time, arising about two hours before sunrise to begin their journey once again. The reptiles would have preferred to sleep until the sun came up, but Dohojar got them awake and moving, despite their dreadful hissing and snapping at the prospect of having to work again. He explained that by pushing the gwahasti they could travel twenty leagues or more a day, while if they allowed the lizards to go at their own pace, fifteen or so would be the best distance they would make.
Whatever had caused the wind to blow from the west hadn't kept it there today. Around sunup the breeze shifted to a northerly one, sending the powdery stuff of the Ashen Desert dancing and swirling off to their right, still a little ahead. Barrel said he reckoned this to be a slow shift from west-northwest to north-northwest by sunset, and he thought perhaps a storm was brewing. Dohojar didn't agree with this, for the lizards weren't behaving strangely. Just before the usual hunting time, however, the lizards did begin to act up. The party was near the place where the high plateaus of the central portion of the Ashen Desert plunged down in a stark line. The Changa managed to get the reptiles in line sufficiently for them to make the descent, but thereafter the beasts would not move. Instead of hunting, the gwahasti found shelter and buried themselves as if for sleep. That was sufficient warning – time enough for the seven travelers to also dig in and wait.
The storm came less than an hour later and struck from almost due north. What it would have been like to be exposed to its full fury was unthinkable. The force of the winds was terrible, and visibility was no more than a foot or two. But the whole group was at the base of the cliff where the plateau rose suddenly from the wastes, and with an arm of that high table of land sheltering them from the north, men and lizards suffered little – except perhaps mentally, as the humans, the half-elf, and the dwarf reflected on what would have happened to them had they not chanced to be here at the time the storm brought its fury upon the dusty wastes around, them.
"I think it is weather magic, Zehaab," Dohojar shouted to Gord between howling blasts of wind.
"If so, Dohojar, I don't want to confront the one who worked it up!" Gord called back.
At one point, a drift avalanched down the cliff, entirely burying the dwarf and the young thief. Post pulled Gord free from the suffocating stuff, for the young adventurer had been stunned by a rock that fell amid the dust and was unable to save himself. Delver, calling upon his dwarvish talents, managed to burrow out single-handedly. The others were more fortunate, happening to be in places where their heads and faces did not get covered by the whirling, falling dust and ash.
Within minutes after this near-calamity, the wind began to die, and the seven dug out their equipment and took stock of things. One of the lizards had been killed, its head crushed by a large boulder that accompanied the dust slide, but the nine remaining reptiles were unharmed and in good shape. Gord thought it disgusting, but the creatures devoured their dead comrade without hesitation, using their saw-edged teeth to bite through its tough hide and get at the pale flesh beneath.
"It is cannibalism, Gord Zehaab, I know," Doho-jar said to the young man as he stood watching the fight between the lizards for the next mouthful of their dead kin. "Still, we are very, very fortunate because of it, too. The beasts are now rested, you know, and with this feeding they will not need to hunt. In an hour we can be riding again!"
Because there were still occasional blasts of wind from the north, the travelers headed southwest, keeping the plateau between themselves and the dying storm. Near sundown they discovered a partially buried oasis. Its spring still sent water forth, and the clean liquid was cutting a new channel to the half-filled pool. They all took time to bathe, even the lizards. After being unloaded of their gear, the gwahasti went into the ashy places to soak in the near-mud, while men, half-elf, and dwarf rinsed themselves off in the clear jet and got rid of the fine dust that covered every portion of their bodies. Waterskins were emptied, rinsed, and refilled with much splashing and squirting of one another. Everyone drank until they could hold no more. While the gwahasti browsed on knife cacti and bed-of-nails plants, with an occasional nip from a young rolling-spikes bush still too immature to tumble freely, Dohojar caught snake weeds for the party to eat.
The Changa held up one of the thin, writhing plants proudly. They were a vegetable imitation of a worm more than a snake, although their mottled skin and their tapered shape suggested the latter. The plants moved quite quickly, slithering along beneath the top few inches of dust and ash to feed on other vegetation, ash worms, and anything else small enough for them to ingest. Dohojar told Gord that they were found near moisture only, and were always around an oasis. They were poisonous, and the rootlets near the mouthlike openings on their front ends oozed the nasty stuff heavily. The Changa had simply caught them, shaved the rootlets off with his dagger, and then showed the others how the remainder of the thing could be cleaned and eaten without fear of harm. The flesh, which Gord eventually consented to try, was firm and rich, and tasted a little like crabmeat. Somehow he managed to eat quite a bit of the stuff thereafter. Full and refreshed, the party mounted up and headed eastward again into a desert of ash that was, for the moment, absolutely calm.