Sea of Death (29 page)

"Who knows how to employ a missile-shooting wand?" he whispered loudly.

Shade suddenly appeared, swiping away his hair as usual as he said, "I do. What's up?"

Gord pressed the device he had just acquired into the half-elf's hand. "Use this on those little bastards, and don't spare a single opportunity, either." Shade took off without a word, and in a few moments Gord saw little darts of violet striking the attackers on his left. At that, Gord began firing his wand toward the other flank to give the pygmies something to think about. With every shot, he felt better about his ability to use the wand – and more often than not, one of the albino scum screamed and fell.

After Gord had gotten off five or six blasts with the wand, his mind had had enough time to figure out what to do next. "Post!" he cried out. "Where the hell are you, man?"

"Here," a voice said from just behind him.

Gord whirled, and there was Post all right – with an arbalest pointed at the young man's chest. Gord didn't react at all, giving the surly man the benefit of the doubt.

"Go find Smoker," he ordered, "and tell him that he should have most of the men concentrate their shots ahead. I want all the pygmies directly in our path dead. We'll move up that way, bit by bit, until we're sure that only a few of the little bastards are alive. Then we'll charge the survivors on my signal, cut 'em down, and get the hell out of here. Can you remember all that?"

"Sure, I'm not stupid," Post muttered in reply. "But what if I can't find Smoker?"

"Tell Edge, then – and don't ask the same question about finding him. I'll cut your godsdamned head off if you screw this up, Post!"

The man turned and headed off resolutely, apparently believing what Gord had said. Within a couple of minutes, Gord saw motion among the company, men working their way up, running in a crouch or crawling on their bellies, moving toward the blocking force of pygmies ahead. The movement was slow at first, then gathered speed. Gord went forward too, using the wand more selectively now, sending glowing missiles at any of the albinos who acted like he might be a spell-caster. A voice, it sounded like that of Edge, shouted, and a score of men leaped up and ran toward a central position where the pygmies still fought from. The little albinos ran away, hid inside the buildings, or died where they stood.

"Run up the street like blazes, boys!" Gord called as loudly as he could, then stepped aside to allow the company to do just that. Near the tail end of the column were the gnomes and the dwarf, all huffing and puffing to keep up with the faster walking pace of the longer-legged humans. As the dwarf noticed Gord standing off to one side, he grinned and held up the bundle he had been given to show that his duty as light-bearer in the rear was still being carried out.

After the troop had passed him by, Gord turned and waited for a few seconds, serving as a one-man rear guard. A lone pygmy appeared, and Gord sent a missile of burning energy into him. Then the young adventurer turned back again and ran to catch up with the company. As he came up with the tail of the advancing column, he took the bundle from the dwarf and carried it himself. A bowshot's distance from where they had been ambushed, he unwrapped the bright globe and trotted on, leaving it resting in their rear. "Let's see what those little farts do about that!" he muttered. As he intended, the light served as a barrier to pursuit by the few pygmies that still remained in the area, and the group's passage back along the rest of the dark elves' trail was swift and devoid of any more major incidents.

Gord worked his way briskly back toward the head of the group, taking time along the way to congratulate and encourage his charges. After less than an hour of steady trekking, the group arrived at the place where Gord was sure the drow had fought their way into the underground city. There were many dead, including a dark elf, in front of the entrance to a fortresslike structure, and the building's iron door had been blown off its hinges from the inside.

"Everyone, take shelter in here," Gord commanded, stepping past the crumpled door and into the lowest level of the place. "Lieutenants, post men at doors and windows – those who can see in the dark. Make sure they have plenty of bolts. Shade, back them up with your wand."

After making sure that this was being done properly, Gord then took Post and three other men upstairs to scout for the existence of enemies. The place was obviously a pygmy barracks or stronghold, and one that was used frequently from the look of things. There were dead albinos all over on the second and third levels of the building, many of them felled in their cots, throats slit. These floors also had partially stocked pantries containing sacks of edible fiingi, plants that somehow must have been brought down from the surface, and skins of water. If nothing else, thought Gord, this place would serve as a means for all of the escapees, numbering about a hundred, to lay their hands and mouths on an ample supply of provisions.

By the time they had investigated the third floor and found no evidence of activity, Gord became quite convinced that the rest of the place would be free of albinos, except perhaps for dead ones. "Go back and tell Smoker to have some of the boys get that door back up and barricade it. Then move everyone up here, and show them where the food and water are. I'm going to see what's above," he told Post and the others. "If you don't see me again in half an hour, send a small squad up to investigate," he shouted after the retreating men.

The fourth floor level was all but empty; the windows were blocked with stone and mortar, and the floor had a thin layer of dust and ash on it. The next floor was just as dusty, but the room was littered with crates and boxes containing large, strange-looking saddles, harnesses, and other leather gear, and a strange smell pervaded the air. The young thief went higher, and the odor grew stronger with each step he took up the stairway. By the time he was halfway up the stairs to the sixth floor, he could clearly hear hisses and snapping sounds. He proceeded slowly, but need not have been so careful.

He discovered that the whole of the sixth story was given over to cagelike stalls, and each of these pens held a giant lizard – obviously the beasts for which the saddles and other gear were used. At the far end of the room was a pair of large double doors. By peering through the crack between the portals, Gord saw a sight that relieved him and excited him at the same time. He never thought he would be happy to see it, but there it was – the surface of the Ashen Desert, with ash blowing gently along the ground and sunlight, real sunlight, bathing the gently rolling terrain. Gord had all he needed to know, and he ran back down to tell the others the good news.

"Everybody follow me!" he shouted from the top of the steps on the third floor. "We are leaving the albinos to their city!"

WIND WHISTLED AND MOANED through the old stones, roofs and towers, domes and turrets that stuck up from the ashes and dust like broken teeth and bones. It was not a strong wind, nor was it cruel. It sprayed only fine powder in its gusts, and the dust devils it sent among the deserted structures were small and playful. The movement of air was actually kind, for it cooled the dark stuff of this waste, material that baked under the merciless sun every day to become as hot as a griddle.

It had been three hours since sunset, and roughly the same length of time since the last of the escaped slaves stepped tentatively through the doorway out onto the Ashen Desert. The heat of the air and ground was below human body temperature, barely. It would drop much faster soon, and then the heat of the day might be longed for… almost.

"It is so bright here!" said a woman standing near Gord as she shielded her eyes from the full moons of Midsummer. She was a human, and thus should not have had light-sensitive eyes, but her long captivity underground had changed that.

"Remember the sun, Falina?" said the man next to her. "In a few hours it will soar in the sky above, and then we will know real brightness. I only hope that we can again become accustomed to normal light before too long, for we have a long way to travel."

Gord watched the man lead the woman away, heading for a cluster of other humans who all meant to take a northwesterly route away from this place. When everyone reached the surface, they celebrated, but only briefly. They had escaped their subterranean prison, but there was still the desert to contend with, and none of them could claim to be truly free until they had reached their homelands again, or at least made it to a place where they could resume normal lives.

How many former slaves had died? Gord could only guess, but the toll was certainly in the hundreds. This estimation saddened him. but then he recalled the essence of the words of one of the slaves he had personally helped to free: Better a death killing the pygmies than enslavement and eventual slaughter as a source of food for the little cannibals. The inhabitants of the underground cyst beneath the City Out of Mind would long remember this incident, he thought with a smile of grim satisfaction. He figured that the slaves, the drow, and the rest must have done for around a thousand of them – and at least as many more of their degenerate hounds, the mute baboons that must once have been the soldiers and slaves of the shrunken descendants of Suel.

Gord saw Dohojar moving toward him from the side, and turned to face the smiling, brown-skinned man just as he spoke. The gwahasti are ready to set out, Gord Zehaab." The man referred to the lizards by the name they were known by among his people, the tribesmen of Changar.

"I guess I'm ready, too, Donojar. How are the others doing?"

"Some have already set off, heading for the north and west. I think the rest will be going their own ways soon."

"Aren't you going west yourself? You said that's where your home lies."

"How can I see the wonders of the unknown east, Zehaab, if I run for my village like a peasant?"

Dohojar replied, his smile widening. "If you do not mind, I will make the long journey eastward with you."

Gord shrugged. "As you wish, Dohojar. I warn you, though – to accompany me could mean your death. Probably will, in fact."

Now it was Dohojar's turn to shrug. "Who can dispute with fate, Gord Zehaab? What is written will be. Poor Dohojar merely follows the course laid down for him."

"Liar! You steer your own way, and that's a fact," Gord said to him with a clasp of the man's shoulder to accent the statement. "You owe me nothing! Don't risk your newly won chance for liberty and life by coming with me because you feel obligated, Dohojar. I got here fine, and I'll leave and get where I'm heading the same way."

"I do not question that, Zehaab. I have as much faith in you as you have in yourself, and I wish to accompany you for my sake, not for yours." Dohojar finished this statement with another grin. Gord couldn't tell if he was speaking the whole truth or not – but after all, he thought, it doesn't really matter either way.

"Bah! You're hopeless," Gord said to the smiling fellow. "But if you are determined to follow me, you might as well make yourself useful. Bring the lizards – the gwahasti, I mean. We should be on our way quickly." One of the last decisions that Gord made as leader of the group concerned the animals he had found caged inside the tower. He decreed that the surviving officers should get first choice in the disposition of the lizards, and most of the lieutenants and Serjeants had eagerly staked their claims. Many others in the group actually preferred to set out on foot, mostly because they were afraid of the animals, or unfamiliar with them, and did not want to have to use some of their food and water to keep a lizard alive. As a result, there were more than enough of the creatures to go around.

"On our way, Gord Zehaab, yes. I hurry now to bring our mounts," the mahogany-hued man said with a little bow.

Left to his own thoughts again, Gord had one last chance to survey the area and reflect upon where he had just been. What a place, he thought to himself. As it turned out, the City Out of Mind was only half buried by dust and ash. Its bones thrust up stark and weathered from the desert around, a reminder that glory is fleeting indeed. Judging from the extent of the ruins and the size of the structures, the metropolis must have been the largest ever known. The young adventurer supposed that it must have housed a million people once. Now it sheltered a fraction of that number – degenerate pygmy descendants of its builders – in a subterranean portion of itself. "And they exist in that darkness and disgusting condition by choice…" he mused aloud.

"Who do, cap'n?"

"Oy! Barrel, you gave me a start. What are you doing sneaking around like that?"

The ugly man smiled good-naturedly. "Guess I just move sort of quietly, sir," he replied with ill-concealed pride at not having been heard by the redoubtable Gord, even though the burly fellow knew his captain had been lost in thought. "The others will be here in a jigger."

"Jigger? What do you mean? What others?"

"Oh, Dohojar, Shade, Delver the dwarf, and a couple of the others."

"Just a damned minute now," Gord said with some heat. "I didn't invite a party to come along with me, and I'm not going to play nursemaid to a bunch of… of… you know what I mean!"

Dohojar had approached Gord again during this brief conversation and overheard his last remark. The small Changa smiled, bowed, and hastened to reassure the young thief. "Oh, no, Zehaab. We are only going along in your direction. You need not fear, for soon we will undoubtedly veer off on another course. And meanwhile, you must not concern yourself with such insignificant ones as we."

Gord could not help but be impressed with the desire of these men to travel with him, regardless of what their true motivation might be. "Stop chattering," he said to hide his appreciation and embarrassment, "and bring me my liz- gwahasti. You'll have me out here talking all night at this rate."

Barrel nodded to Dohojar. "You heard the cap'n! I thought you were bringing them lizards a long time ago!" The ugly fellow winked at Gord as he emphasized the word, inferring that Gord had no need to use the Changar term for such beasts if he didn't like, or couldn't remember, such a strange and foreign term.

Within the next couple of minutes, a small group of men gathered around Gord, all of them familiar faces. They were six in number, but were leading a group of ten of the strange, paddle-footed lizards. Gord frowned and was about to demand an explanation for the excess of mounts when Post and Smoker stepped up and coughed to get the young thief s attention. It was Post who spoke.

"No sense in mincing words. Captain Gord. You don't like me much, and I had no love for you. That's changed – on my part, anyway. You brought us out of that mess below in a way I never would have expected, and risked yourself plenty in the process. You are all right, and I was wrong. That said, I decided that I'd like to throw in with you a bit more, and I talked Smoker into joining me. We'll pull our own weight and get out when you say so." The others all nodded and voiced their assent to this last statement. Gord looked into their eyes, one after the other beginning with Post, and saw nothing but sincerity in each return gaze.

"No harm in us setting out together," he said solemnly, "but if you stay with me I hope you realize what you may be getting yourselves into. And now, will someone explain to me why we need these extra lizards?"

Smoker replied. "We have a long way to go, and though we don't know much about what you must do, we know that your mission is important and dangerous. The extra beasts are carrying all the food and water we could heap upon them, and they will serve as mounts in case we lose a creature or two in the wastes."

Obviously, these men had thought things out well, and had prepared for a large expedition even before they knew for sure that Gord wanted company. He didn't want to get close to them, but Gord could not entirely suppress the affinity he was beginning to feel for this ragtag bunch.

"I give up," he said warmly. "It seems that the lot of you are determined to lead your leader no matter what he may want to do. Dohojar, show me how the dancing devils these beasts are controlled, and then I'm riding. The rest of you can come if you can keep up with me!"

"Yes, Gord Zehaab. First you must put on your leggings and robe – they are of gwahasti hide, you know, very useful, like the hood and mask you must also wear. The storms are terrible out there, you can be assured." Despite Gord's protests and fidgeting, the Changa helped him to don the leather garb, complete with strange face mask. Dohojar was smiling as usual as he did this, but Gord thought he detected a trace of slyness in this grin, as though the dark-skinned man knew some things he wasn't talking about.

"Now you look a proper gwahastoo!" Dohojar said after Gord was fully outfitted. The young thief sprang up and landed on the back of his mount, and at this the others in the group did the same. "Nothing to the rest, Zehaab, nothing at all," continued the Changa. "See how the hooks on the reins fit into the holes on either side of this big beast's jaw? Tug, and it turns one way or the other – or it stops if you pull on both reins at once.

"This is your angwas," said Dohojar, indicating a wooden pole with a thorn lashed to its end that was stored in a sleeve on the side of the saddle. "To make a gwahasti run fast, you just poke it with this thing at the dark place you see behind its skull. Don't bother to try anyplace else, I tell you now, for the thick scales of these brutes allow the gwahasti to laugh at such pinpricks."

"I know all I need to know," said Gord. "Let's be off, so we can cover some ground before the sun comes up and cooks us inside these leather prisons!" Dohojar had more he wanted to say, but happily deferred to his leader's desires, and the group headed east.

The lizards traveled slowly at night, no faster than a man might trot, and a slow trot at that. Still, Gord thought, it was faster than walking. The reptiles' feet weren't webbed, as was the case with others of their ilk that Gord had seen. Instead, their feet looked as if what once had been normal extremities had been thickened and cooked in the desert, so that now these members were hard, spongy-looking, and platterlike – much like dust-walkers, in the way they allowed the beasts to traverse the dust and ash without sinking in too far.

Sunrise, from their vantage point on the high plateau they rode across, was a spectacular sight – especially to the six of them who had not viewed such a scene for a long, long time. Even more fascinating to Gord was what happened to the dark, sooty hide of the creature he rode as the sun's rays struck it. As he watched, the reptile's scales gradually turned from black to dark gray. Then they seemed to stand up slightly from its skin, and as this occurred the dark gray turned to a dull metallic color.

This was unusual enough, but then Gord happened to glance down at his own arm, and found that the garment he wore was also of the same metallic luster! Last night when he put it on, it had been as dark as the lizards around him. He understood that the lighter color reflected heat more readily, so that this characteristic of gwahasti hide offered some protection for him and his mount from the ravages of the desert sun.

"Now I can see why the pygmy folk cultivate these beasts for riding and dress," he remarked to Dohojar, who was traveling alongside him.

"No, no, Gord Zehaab," Dohojar said politely. "The little white cannibals got the idea from Changar – even though the Jahindi claim they were the first to use gwahasti. In fact, these beasts were those maintained by the pygmies for use by traders from both Changar and Jahind. You see, Zehaab-"

Gord interrupted him with a smile and a wave. "Enough said, little man." Dohojar fell silent, wearing his everpresent smile, and Gord concentrated on riding. The saddle strapped to the lizard was small for him and not too comfortable. It made him feel insecure, especially now that the creature was picking up its pace. The sun felt hot, even inside the leather robe that reflected most of its rays. Yet the warmer it grew, the faster the gwahasti ran. By mid-morning the beast was speeding along like the wind, seemingly tireless and willing to run forever.

Of course, the huge reptiles had no such ability – as Gord abruptly found out some time later. He was actually beginning to feel relaxed atop the beast, despite its speed, when all of a sudden the lizard stopped dead in its tracks. Gord went sailing over his mount's saurian snout and sprawled ungracefully in the dust. As the young adventurer floundered around in the powder, sending a billowing cloud of it into the breeze, and tried to wade back to where the big lizard stood like a statue, peals of laughter resounded from the others, who were all still astride their stationary mounts.

"What's so friggin' funny?" he demanded from behind his mask. Even to Gord the angry statement sounded muffled and ridiculous. He jerked the leather face covering off, and another little cloud of the powdery stuff floated away in the wind. Spitting and wiping dust from himself, Gord looked around at all the others. All were dismounting now, and Post was assiduously concentrating on unloading one of the lizards carrying their extra gear and provisions. Smoker was there too, his back to Gord. Both men's shoulders were moving as if they were laughing. Delver Oldcavern was doing his best to help Barrel unload another of the pack reptiles.