* * * * *
The thing about vows is this: Honest men don't need to swear them, and dishonest men don't hesitate to swear them. Of course, Tahngarth would not have realized this. A dishonest minotaur was an oxymoron-or at least a moronic ox. It understandably surprised Tahngarth when the first five hundred prisoners liberated by Gerrard rebelled against him.
The crew were crossing the main yard when the liberated prisoners mobbed them. Though Gerrard and his command crew had been a match for twenty guards, they were not a match for five hundred warriors. These particular warriors gave a new definition to the term "irregulars." Many were inhuman-hulking things that looked like animate rocks, half-lizard men armored in the bones of victims, minotaurs with shorn horns and peg legs. Human, elf, dwarf… prison had molded them all into a single species-killers. In moments, the crew was overwhelmed, their weapons stripped. No one was injured in the brief struggle- Tahngarth was too stunned to fight, and Gerrard was too accustomed to ironic reversal.
With rough chants, the liberated prisoners escorted their liberators to the central guard tower in the yard. They drove them up the stairs that ascended the tall framework of beams. The nearest prisoners used the crewmembers' own weapons against them. Those farther out wielded whatever came to hand-chains, pipes, broken bottles, splintered boards… Disarmed and shackled, Gerrard and his crew climbed the switchback stairway. Defeat replaced victory on their faces.
They staggered, one by one, through the hatchway at the top of the stairs and onto a ten-by-ten-foot covered platform above. No sooner was Gerrard through the hatch than it slammed shut, and a bar slid into place.
Though Gerrard had gotten a bloody lip for his attempts to explain, he staggered to the guard tower window for another try.
"Listen to me! Listen!" he shouted to the chanting prisoners. "We have freed you! Why do you fight us? We are the same. It doesn't matter what you once did. Even treason! Even murder! Whatever wrong landed you here, it is nothing compared to the wrongs of our true foes. I revoke your sentences! You must revoke ours! I return your freedom! Return ours! Together we will fight the true enemy. Together we will fight Phyrexia!"
As Gerrard spoke, the chanting ceased, and the crowd grew slowly quiet. By the time his last words rolled out, a fearful hush filled the courtyard.
It was so quiet, the crew could hear a single man among the prisoners when he said, "Let them out of there."
Wide-eyed nods came from the prisoners, gaping upward. One man hurried up the switchback stairs to unbar the hatch.
Gerrard smiled incredulously and turned to his comrades. "I'd never really thought of myself as an orator, but this time I… I guess I got their attention."
Sisay shook her head gravely. "You didn't," she said, pointing skyward. "Someone else did."
There, in the black belly of night, the lights of hundreds of Phyrexian ships made ghastly new constellations.
Chapter 11
Allies from Old Foes
The Battle of the Mori Tumulus would decide the fate of Yavimaya. Multani fought beside his people- displaced elf kings, pods of angry sprites, clans of great apes, clutches of giant spiders, and a handful of fire-eyed druids. These last ascended from the volcanic caverns that riddled the rocks beneath the vast tumulus.
Of course the Phyrexians chose to land their invasion fleet along the Mori Tumulus. It was the highest point of Yavimaya.
Its trees rose five hundred feet above their neighbors. The extensive boughs provided landing platforms for Phyrexian cruisers. From those crowns, the Phyrexians could command the canopy and seep downward to dominate the land. It was more than that, though. The Phyrexians were drawn to the Mori Tumulus because it was a scar they themselves had left on the world.
The Mori Tumulus was a break in Yavimaya's millennial bones-a wound struck by the Argoth event. The world-shattering blast Urza had unleashed to destroy the Phyrexians four millennia ago had cracked the continental shelf beneath Yavimaya. It thrust the broken halves against each other. They ground together and rose. The Mori Tumulus mounded up. It formed a threehundred' mile ridge, five hundred feet high. Magnigoths struggled to clutch the rift closed. They straddled it like massive stitches. Still, the rent widened. Once in a while the world poured forth its blood and lymph in lava and steam. Even the green might of Yavimaya could not heal it. Something seethed below.
Of course it drew Phyrexians, as an open sore draws maggots. That's why Multani feared this battle. Here Gaea was weakest of all.
Already Phyrexians had corrupted the crowns. The wound in the world below was mirrored in the treetops three thousand feet above. Here Phyrexian ships clustered, pouring spores down out of the stormy night. Leaf molds and cellulose macrophages turned once-proud heads of green into black rot. Minute mechanical caterpillars ravaged leaves. Metal bugs sank shiny feet into stalks and extracted magnesium, iron, and zinc to use in growing their razor wings. Flocks of battleflies rose to flay armor and skin and muscle from bone. Other machines-spiked treadmills fronted with bear-trap mouths-devoured whatever flesh they found, storing it away for testing inside the cruisers. Phyrexians had a damnable interest in the physiology of their foes.
Pestilence and machines and monsters drove elves from their kingdoms. They fled downward into murky, wet hollows and shelves. One part refugee camp, one part military staging grounds, the camps bustled day and night. Other sentient defenders came here too-sprites, druids, great apes, and of course giant spiders. These nimble beasts, onetime foes of their elf neighbors, allied with them now. They even offered themselves as mounts to carry elf mages into combat.
It was in a war council of such mages, held in a wide and lofty crotch of a magnigoth, that Multani took form. He assembled his body from a termite colony and the desiccated wood that made it up. His flesh literally crawled with large white bugs. He rose, twelve feet tall and ominous, in the midst of the murky circle.
The folk in the crotch of the tree startled momentarily, but they had been waiting for the forest spirit. They welcomed him, bowing. Foxfire lanterns dangled from the sleeves of the elf sorcerers, sending a green glow inward. The light shone across the swords and arrows of elf warriors and oval wings of swarming sprites. The great apes crouched beyond, blinking intelligently in the darkness. Behind it all lurked giant spiders-their multiple eyes like grapes dangling in an arbor.
"Our forces are gathered, Master Multani. We are ready," said the eldest mage, eyes glinting beneath a mantle of white hair. "What is our objective?"
Multani's voice came in the barbed whisper of thousands of termites. "The Phyrexian off-load sites. We'll slay the guards and take back the boughs."
Brow furrowing, the mage said, "It is a thing of black corruption, now. How can it be taken back?"
"Leave that to me," Multani said ominously. He melted down into the tree bough.
It was a brief council-there was no time for words.
Mages mounted their spider steeds and set off through the foliage. Their sleeve-lights slid away in the leaves. The elf archers-young folk with eyes sharp in the night-did not need them. They split up, some trooping up the boughs, others swinging from vines to adjacent trunks. The druids left with the same arcane silence as Multani himself-there one moment and gone the next. The apes outdid them all for silent grace, though. They swung through the boughs, their arms kin to the branches that carried them.
The defenders of Yavimaya rose toward its corrupt canopy. The tangle of roots below and the tangle of boughs above joined each tree to its neighbors, making Yavimaya one great organism. The forest was a thinking thing, and Multani was its conscious' ness. Rising through branches, splitting and reassembling himself, he knew the will of Yavimaya: Drive the Phyrexians back onto undead boughs, and destroy them and their ships.
Multani ascended. He felt the tickling feet of giant spiders across his back. Down their barbed legs dribbled armor spells, sent from the hands of elf mages. They gathered massive magics from the green darkness all around. Elf archers se
ated themselves in nearby crotches, nocking arrows and testing their aim. Great apes clambered into lofts where they could hurl themselves down on Phyrexian heads. Clouds of shimmering sprites darted through the air. They bore spears, swords, and daggers and had adopted the tactics of battleflies. They could strip a Phyrexian in moments.
The forces converged on a huge bough that teemed with Phyrexians. It was a staging ground beneath a landed cruiser. The ship was as huge and black as a thunderhead. It hung in branches that had been corrupted by Phyrexian contagions and resurrected as undead wood. A huge ramp lay open. Monsters in their hundreds coursed down. There would be no attacking them at the ship. The wood had become monstrous itself. This staging ground, though-it was living wood. The Phyrexians had not had time to corrupt it, but already they prepared contagions to pour into crevices and crotches.
Multani seeped into the vast bough. He slipped up just beneath the bark. There, in the quick of the tree, knotholes were plentiful. They were his first weapons- mines beneath monstrous feet.
The rest of his forces were ready. The battle would begin with Multani.
Spreading himself through the vast bough, he triggered the dilation of thousands of knotholes. They yawned wide. Claws and talons dropped into those knotholes. Wood closed to trap the legs.
Suddenly caught, thousands of Phyrexians thrashed.
A heavy rain began. It was not water that fell but arrows. Their stony heads smashed through carapace and rammed into chests and throats and guts. The juices there sank into the arrowheads and the magnigoth down packed within. It swelled massively. In popping succession, Phyrexians exploded. They burst like bugs. Plates gave way. Gray organelles spewed outward. Heads vacated shoulders. Legs separated from torsos. Scales ripped back, and skin sloughed off.
Where monsters slumped, Multani released them. The shattered bodies tumbled away. More beasts staggered into the open holes and were caught. Multani sent sucker stalks up through the bark. They wrapped legs in tenacious tendrils, which widened into inescapable branches. Up torsos they went and then squeezed. Like pinched sausages, Phyrexians burst.
The last of the exploding bolts found their marks. Phyrexians slumped and slid from the killing bough.
Out of the black night, shadows took substance. On giant legs they came. Globular eyes gleamed. Mandibles dripped venom. These were giant spiders. Aback them rode sorcerers-thin, elven, their fingers dancing with power. Spells roared out. Incantations lit rodlike legs before vaulting through the emptiness. Green light painted boughs and broke over Phyrexians. Green spores clung to every tissue.
Plants rooted themselves. Lichens ate away armor. Weeds sank their taproots into blood streams. Saplings split muscle and bone. Blossoms packed air holes. The invaders of the forest were in turn invaded by the forest. In mounds of leaf and vine, more monsters died.
A new rain began-muscle instead of shafts. From their lofted perches, great apes dropped in their hundreds. They hurled living Phyrexians after dead ones. They ripped limbs from Phyrexian troopers and bit chunks from Phyrexian heads.
This was all in the first moments, before there was a foe to fight. These were holes underfoot, arrows and spells out of darkness. With the arrival of the apes and the spidermounted mages, though, the battle had changed. Phyrexians knew how to fight such creatures. With howls of fury and hunger, monsters attacked.
Yavimaya's horrors were nothing compared to the terrors of Phyrexia-elongated skulls, fang-choked gobs, horn-tipped joints, clawed arms, leg pods, tentacles, talons, stingers. The black tide crashed against the spider mages. It was all bug flesh in those first moments. Then the spiders were shredded, and it was elf flesh and ape flesh flung on dark winds. Spells misfired. Wild magic jagged through treetops. It hurled up the hackled shadows of Phyrexians.
Multani entered vines, lashing them across the monsters. He plucked them up in ones and twos and threes and threw them from the bough. It was not enough. He could not open knotholes-not with elves and apes among the monsters. He could not grow suckers to grab whatever fought above. Behind the slain mages were ragtag armies of elf infantry. They died as quickly and surely as the mages had. There was simply no stopping these beasts.
Even as he fought onward, Multani sent his mind out to Gaea. Massacre. They cannot be stopped. We must withdraw.
Gaea did not speak to him. He knew what she would say. If you withdraw now, they will never be stopped.
Help us. Help your children. Bring the others. Bring every child beneath your canopy. Else, we are lost.
Why do mortals ever pray? Multani wondered to himself. Why do gods never answer?
The elves were dying like elves. Unflinching, they sacrificed centuries of life.
Phyrexian corpse crews followed in the wake of the advancing lines. They dragged fat chains tipped with long hooks. Wherever the monsters found a body, dead or alive, they would thrust the barb through the soft flesh of the ankle. Four or five elves would fit on a single hook before the corpse crew would swing it away to dangle beneath the cruiser. The chains cranked upward. The specimens were loaded on the ship for study.
Gods might never answer, but Multani would.
He emerged from the tree. He took his form from the quick of the bough. A huge hillside of living wood, Multani flung his fingers out in wooden spikes. They pierced Phyrexians in their scores.
The monsters writhed like spitted roaches. Multani gripped them, splitting them open. This was vengeance pure and simple. While he slew scores in his fists, hundreds flooded past him.
He was losing the Battle of Mori Tumulus. He was losing the Yavimaya war.
Then new allies came. From the volcanic caves beneath Yavimaya, they galloped upward. Never before had Multani's mind laid hold of such creatures. They lurked forever in the twilight world beneath the forest-half green and half red. Their skin was part scale, part rock, their bodies part saurian, part ground sloth. They had tigers' teeth and bulldog faces and feet that were claw and hoof both. The smallest were the size of a man, and the largest the size of two elephants. Most amazing of all were their tongues-longer, more powerful, more dexterous than elephants' trunks. They galloped up the tree boles as if charging across flat ground.
The druids had summoned them. Their enchantments had awakened the slumbering lizards. Kavu. These things were called Kavu-an ancient druid word meaning "ever watchful" and "carved from stone."
Up every bole, Kavu swarmed. In a heartbeat, they fountained out of the darkness and crashed into the Phyrexian lines. Lizard tongues lashed out, snatched up carapaced monsters, and drew them into fangy mouths. They crunched them. No sooner was one Phyrexian swallowed than a second was caught and a third…
Phyrexians withdrew up the bough. The hundreds that had flooded past Multani now fled the other way. He snatched up handfuls of them and crushed them. Kavu got the rest. Soon it was a full-scale retreat.
Forgive my mortal terrors, Gaea, Multani thought. I should have known you had defenders other than me. You are the world mother, not the forest mother.
Gaea did not respond. She never spoke to Multani, but he sensed what she would say. You have other defenders as well- allies from old foes.
Yes, Multani said in realization, allies from old foes.
Most of the Phyrexians had flooded back onto the black bough where their cruiser waited. It was their beachhead, their haven from which they could launch new attacks-or so they believed.
Multani reached wooden hands into the heavens. A throat opened in him. Out rolled incantations as ancient and dark as those that had summoned the lizards. Words vaulted into the black heavens and called down an even more powerful, even more venerable foe.
Lightning leaped from the black sky. It cracked through a hovering plague ship, transfixing it. Energy poured through its top and out its keel. It leaped onward, through two more ships before its killing hand reached down to the pitching treetops. The bolt scintillated through a cloud of battleflies. They dropped, red-hot, from the air. With clear intentiona
lity, the lightning strike slammed into the beached cruiser. Smoke rose from every seam. Flame burst from rotten wood.
Trapped in flames, Phyrexians oozed glistening-oil from countless cuts. Their blood caught fire. They thrashed.
The lightning gripped the black bough like a hand. It did not let go, did not descend through the tree as natural lightning would. Instead, it held on and shook the bough. Burning Phyrexians fell. Desiccated wood flamed. The cruiser caved and cracked.
Welcome to Yavimaya, my old foes, Multani thought. Welcome fire and lightning!
The rot-riddled bough exploded. Hunks of wood and metal and Phyrexian flesh shot into the night.
Chapter 12
In Tsabo Tavoc's Web
Phyrexian cruisers filled the night sky above the prison yard. Ships hovered scarcely a hundred feet above the walls. They hung so low that Gerrard could see the flush ports where Phyrexian waste spattered down.
He reached a shackled hand out of the guard tower window, grabbed the lantern that burned there, and cracked it from its casing. He hurled the flaming thing at the belly of a ship. It struck the lip of a sewage port and smashed against the dripping edge. Lamp oil splashed across the black base of the ship. A crimson jet of fire roared up through the waste dump, ignited methane, and set off an explosion that bulged the undercarriage of the ship. Fiery hunks of bug-flesh dribbled from the spot.
The brigands in the yard cheered, united by Gerrard's defiance. Their hope was short-lived.
Hundreds of black cords uncoiled from the rails of the cruisers. They seemed the deadly tentacles of enormous black jellyfish. The cables unrolled to dangle just above the upturned faces of the prison throng. Down those threads slid Phyrexians. Hackled and homed, avatars of death, they plunged toward their prey.
"Free the others!" Gerrard shouted even as the beasts dropped among the prisoners. "Fight for your lives! Fight toward the ship!"
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