"Big herders," warned a nomad. "Where sand traps a boot, herders of thunder may rise."
"The Jhannivars rule this land," stated the Flame archly, "and I must see this city. My enemies grow stronger day by day. I shall brave any terror to see their guts exposed to the wind."
Nomads exchanged glances, but none objected as the leader struck out. Along the western side of the dunes, the sand indeed pulled at their boots. Amber found the footing harder than ever, but for the first time she took heart, hoping against reason that this storm had been crafted by a genie bound in the sky. Glancing behind, Amber saw Reiver's eye glinted with malice as he bided his time. Even Hakiim, sensing his friends' excitement, pricked up his ears. Amber waited for an opportunity as the striding ogres left the other bandits floundering behind a curtain of sand.
Leaning against the sandfall, descending a soft slope, Amber wondered too whether thunderherders might suddenly bore up from the ground. Before, in good health and unfettered, the adventurers had barely escaped the monsters. This time…
"Amber!" screeched Hakiim.
The daughter of pirates was yanked brutally around, rawhide chafing her wrists. The ogre roared, and Amber was towed as if by a galloping horse through swirling sand.
Reiver had made his move, though Amber couldn't tell how. The skinny thief hung high in the air, back to the biggest ogre's back and the adventurers' pilfered packs. Reiver's fists were jammed at his chin, still bound by rawhide to the giant. The creature's fists were also wedged at its throat. Suspended, mashed against the packs, Reiver kicked his legs furiously. The huge ogre thrashed side ^ to side like a colicky horse, purple tongue protruding and quickly coating with sand. Desperately the monster yanked at Reiver's bonds, jerking the thief up like a fish on a line. Amber could make no sense of the attack as she lurched and stumbled headlong toward them.
The ogre mage had dropped its huge spear and drawn its tiny human sword. Roaring, the giant raised a knotty arm like an oak branch to chop Reiver in half. Towed along, Amber shouted as they closed to striking distance-then scooted on her rump and stabbed her heels against the sand. The sudden anchor stalled the ogre mage, even threatened to topple him backward. Grabbing a handful of its desert robes, more rags than cloth, Amber pulled with fettered hands to tangle its legs. A monstrous hand like a granite block swung to snap Amber's neck. The woman ducked, then scissored her legs around the giant's filthy, bare ankle. If they were to die, she thought wildly, best to die fighting.
Between the giant's legs, Amber saw Hakiim and the she-ogre tumble across the sand and down a slope, first one and then the other atop. The she-ogre was the smallest of the three beasts, and Hakiim burly if short, yet he was still outweighed by a hundred pounds. The downward slope discommoded both, and Hakiim kicked with one foot to keep them spinning.
Reiver still hung behind the giant, somehow. Through swirling sand, Amber saw that a glint of silver ran in a straight line from the thief's hands to the giant's throat. Finally, she understood. Despite being searched, Reiver had retained his garrote chain. Hooking it on each thumb, the wiry thief must have leaped up behind the ogre, whipped the chain around its neck, and crossed his wrists to sink the chain deep into the monster's flesh. Reiver hung with his back to the giant's back, grimly and efficiently strangling the brute, waiting patiently for it to collapse. A wonderful plan, Amber thought, except the ogre had siblings.
Lashed by the wrists, Amber still clung tightly to the lead ogre's robes. The monster stamped a clumsy half circle and slashed at her with the sword. Plying strength and speed she couldn't believe, Amber dodged the awkward blade nimbly while shoving her aching hands high. Rusted steel parted rotten rawhide, and Amber was free.
She hoped to stay alive long enough to enjoy it. Amber kicked against the slippery dune slope but only sank in sand. Raging, forgetting the sword, the lead ogre slapped at Amber's head. Fingertips like sling balls smacked her crown, and Amber dropped as if stunned, feigning unconsciousness, for she couldn't run. Leaving Amber, the ogre spun to save its brother.
Amber croaked, "Reiver, he's coming-" and choked on sand.
Plucking free of sand, she scrambled behind the lead ogre, out of eyesight, to help the thief. Fretting, she wondered when the White Flame and her escort would walk into their midst.
Staggering, the biggest ogre stamped and thrashed to shake the human off, then crashed to its knees, face a ghastly purple, tongue sticking out half a yard. Even on its knees, the ogre was as tall as the thief, whose bare toes only tipped the sandy slope. Reiver clung grimly to his chain, drawing it so tight veins bulged in his tanned forehead. Only a thief s instinct for danger made him turn and see the ogre mage rushing with a sword poised to stab.
Amber gasped as Reiver bounced off the sand with his toes, jumped, and vaulted a backward somersault over the strangling giant's head. With his arms still crossed behind the ogre's neck, Reiver hung face-to-face with the stinking brute, the purple tongue almost jammed in his eye, but the giant's eyes were closing. As the ogre mage roared and Amber screamed, the strangled brute toppled at Reiver, who skipped nimbly aside without loosing the chain.
Amber howled, a cry lost in the wind, as the ogre mage swung high, one-handed, to cleave Reiver in twain. The earth split underfoot. For a second, Amber feared an earthquake, then yards-long thunderherders burst through the sand like whales breaching the ocean surface. The giant's stamping feet must have attracted the monsters, Amber realized, promising a huge, meaty, juicy target.
Very much a target, for thunderherders four feet thick and sixteen feet long churned and undercut the earth so no one could keep their feet. Amber felt the dune's crust crumble, and she plunged into a waist-deep hole.
Attacked from his left, the ogre mage had to desert his brother to slash at a borer slithering across the sand at him. Striking at an angle, powered by a massive arm, the sword chopped off half the creature's wriggling teeth, so a half moon of writhing, mottled flesh flopped and gnashed at the ogre's feet. Heedless, the butchered borer humped its great bulk and slammed into the ogre's leg, shearing off skin and bowling the giant over.
Amber struggled to wriggle and lever free of her hole, but the sandy crust collapsed again and again. Terrified a herder might rocket along and nip off her legs, Amber punched frantically, grabbed, and clawed. Finally she grappled the distracted ogre's robe and tugged herself free of the suffocating sand. Not trusting the ground, Amber crawled away on all fours, then scampered around in a big circle toward Reiver and the strangling ogre.
Sand blew in all directions; up, down, and sideways. Calim's Breath had become Calim's Whirlwinds. A screen good as night, Amber thought wildly, but it had disadvantages, if thunderherders plowed furrows right before her, or even holes, she'd never see them.
"Reiver," she called. "Is he dead? We need-"
She should have known better. Ten feet from Reiver, the earth dropped from under Amber's feet. Sand boiled as she fell seemingly forever, then thumped hard four feet down. Of course, she thought in disgust, the borers would crisscross under the stamping giant first. A fractured pit sagged all around the two. In the pit floundered Reiver, the biggest ogre, Amber, and now the charging ogre mage. Amber was trapped to the waist by spilling sand and hurtling bodies.
Reiver, always keeping his head in a fight, had skipped onto the dying ogre's back as it sank face first without struggling. The outraged brother roared and slashed off-balance at Reiver. Amber craned to grab his mighty flailing arm, but bogged by sand, she missed.
Another borer arrived from underground. Rearing, the tubular monster popped from the sand, arched, and drove jagged teeth into the dying ogre. Amber winced at the crunch and smack of toothy jaws boring into flesh. The ogre mage turned, leaped half out of the sand, and hacked at the monster.