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.
Nimble Reiver had already jumped clear and wrenched his bloodied chain from the ogre's neck. Scampering like a monkey up crumbling hummocks of sand, the thief circled wide, flopped on his belly rather than sink, then hooked Amber's armpits and yanked her from the earth like a carrot.
'Let's get!' the thief advised.
'No!' Rising, shedding sand, the daughter of pirates surprised the thief by snagging his wrist. She pointed to the tiara encircling the dead ogre's arm and said, 'I need that!'
'You can't-whoal'
Reiver dodged as the ogre mage flailed his sword backward. A chunk of flesh had been sliced from a ravenous borer, so it curled and rolled in agony, but another herder burst up behind the giant, struck dagger teeth at its back, failed to grab on, recoiled, and slammed again into the giant's spine. This time teeth found flesh, and the giant howled.
Sand scoured Amber's burns like acid as she tried to rub her eyes clear. Reiver tugged and urged her to come. She flung his hand off.
'No!' she insisted. 'I need that damned tiara. We can't go on without it. Help me-'
Reiver was gone. He'd catapulted away into the curtain of sand. Amber saw why. Behind, a brown-spotted sword-hacke,d borer, dripping white gore, had uncoiled and stabbed at him with multiple teeth wiggling. Now the thunderherder snapped in a circle and aimed for her. Amber shrieked so hard her throat cracked.
A spear long as a ship's spar stabbed down, punctured the writhing herder just behind its chittering teeth, and rammed home into sand beneath. The thick haft hummed inches from Amber's nose. Craning, she saw her rescuer was-
'Hakiim!'
'Hurry!' he called.
Slipping down the rim of the pit, the dark man struggled to keep the pinned borer from biting Amber. The beast's strength lifted him off his feet, so he squatted and clawed with his toes. The borer bucked, writhed, and- Amber heard flesh tear, a sickening sound-ripped itself backward off the spear haft. A gaping gash oozed white fluid as the herder curled its stinger tail and sank into its burrow, out of sight.
'Where's the sister ogre?' Amber asked as she grabbed the spear haft and was hauled from the ever- collapsing pit.
'I don't know,' Hakiim said, and cast about at blowing sand as if the she-monster would swoop upon them.
In the pit, still sinking, the trapped ogre mage howled as a herder gnashed and chewed his back. Another herder bit the giant's side and hung on. Unable to strike hard with the sword, for his arm was crowded by one hulking body, the ogre pushed at the thing's jaws until jagged teeth spiked through his calloused palm. Giants and herders thrashed, spraying Amber with sand as she scuttled around the patchy pit.
