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
