He discovered that he was heading into a gully where the ripping winds had scooped sand from between ridges of dark rocks. Yorgh was not sure whether it offered shelter or the chance to be buried alive, but he plunged ahead to investigate. Within fifty paces, the howl at his back diminished.
"Not the rocks; it's a lull," he exclaimed, peering upward.
The sky was an ugly reddish brown, dark and menacing. He wondered how soon more tons of sand would sweep down to refill the gully. As he gazed upward, a round stone rolled under his foot and he sprawled forward. Even as he dropped, it seemed that he was falling further than he should be.
He brushed sand from his eyes and looked up. From the edge of a hollow whirled from the floor of the gully by opposing winds, the wolly stared down at him with an expression of scared idiocy. The ends of his horn bow and copper-tipped lance thrust up beside the saddle.
As Yorgh scrambled up and his head came above ground level, he saw that the hollow was at the junction of his gully with another. Sand was already beginning to collect again as the wind shifted. Behind a worn rock at his side, Yorgh glimpsed a glint of metal.
Copper? he wondered, stepping forward.
It was not copper, nor any other metal he had ever seen.
To judge from what protruded above the sand, the thing was shaped slightly like the wagons the people of the Hunter tribe used in their migrations. Every part of it was smoothly rounded, even the skeleton sitting in the front seat.
Yorgh stared, feeling the prickle of rising hairs on his neck.
The moan of rising wind made him shiver. At least, he told himself it was the wind. It sounded uncomfortably like a wailing spirit.