Planeshift

by J. Robert King

  Once again facing the city, Agnate strode with Dralnu inward.

  Great gates stood ahead, massive in stone. Perfectly balanced, they pivoted easily aside, pushed by a ghastly pair of gate guards. Though dressed in fine livery, the men were gray skinned and mottled in rot. Rips in their flesh emitted light. The ravages of time had brought one guard’s cheekbones through his skin. The other left oozy hand prints on the door.

  Agnate’s natural response would have been revulsion, but the way those men snapped to attention at their posts and stood in earnest solemnity made him feel only sorrow.

  These were only the first such creatures Agnate encountered. In the arched passageways beyond, soldiers stood or bowed according to the customs of their lands. They saluted if they had arms to do so. They averted their gaze if they had eyes. In every way possible, they honored their living guests. Human, minotaur, dwarf, elf, Viashino, goblin…the undead minions of Dralnu bowed before Agnate and his troops.

  It was a gauntlet to walk between the lines of pathetic creatures. Agnate did not fear physical injury, but each new horror wounded his soul. These could be his comrades, his foes. Here was the undeniable end for all warriors.

  At last, the procession reached a great hall. It was a glorious space, carved out of jet-black stone. A vaulted ceiling above hung with the banners of hundreds of nations. The polished floor below held table after well-set table. All about stood Dralnu’s finest warriors. They bowed as Agnate appeared at the door.

  “Enter please, my lord. My folk have prepared a feast of real food for you and yours.”

  “You do us honor,” Agnate said, bowing low.

  Dralnu led him to a lofty table at the far end of the chamber. He showed Agnate his seat and directed his troops to theirs.

  Dralnu approached, bearing a basin filled with black waters. He bowed deeply to the Metathran commander and set the basin at his feet.

  “Allow me to do you one more honor. This is an ancient rite, from commander to commander, that will make us allies forever.”

  Agnate nodded, uncertain.

  Kneeling, Dralnu deftly removed Agnate’s boots and dipped his feet in the black tide. He washed the commander’s feet, from toes to knees.

  “I am your servant, Agnate of the Metathran.”

  “And I am your servant, Dralnu of the undead.”

  Revenants arrived, carrying between them a roast boar, steaming and succulent on a giant platter. Another servant emerged, wine flagons in his skeletal hands. He filled the goblets set there with a libation as red and thick as blood. Baskets of bread, trenchers of stew, bowls of fruit—the foods could have been acquired through only the most extreme efforts. Still, the banquet was plentiful and fragrant.

  Such foods would have been poison to the undead warriors. Creatures such as they subsisted on worse fare—rotting flesh, organ meats, brains, pitchers of blood, and mounds of filth. Even as they sank their desiccated fingers into the horrid food, they glanced up with apologetic eyes.

  It was more than Agnate’s troops could take. They did not touch their food, instead sitting solemn and still at their places. Only Agnate ate, not wishing to offend.

  Dralnu seemed to appreciate his efforts. Having completed the foot-washing ceremony, he had taken his place beside the Metathran commander.

  He raised his goblet and said, “I drink to you, Commander Agnate.”

  Lifting his own goblet, Agnate replied, “And I to you.”

  Their goblets met. The allies drank, one of wine and the other of blood.

  CHAPTER 14

  The Battle on the Ice

  The charge across the ice was a thing of glory.

  Eladamri rode his colos at full gallop. The horned beast pounded across the glacier and leaped fissures with the ease of a child jumping puddles. To one side of Eladamri rode Liin Sivi. She held on with her legs while her toten-vec whirled overhead. To Eladamri’s other side rode Warlord Astor. Eladamri was glad for his presence. The young warlord had an uncommon knack for word and sword and for finding his own path. Farther out along the line of charge rode Doyen Olvresk and Doyenne Tajamin. Their troops swarmed behind them, just able to keep pace.

  Eladamri’s own nations could not have run so far so fast. Instead, they crowded the decks of the Keldon long ships. Ice crackled beneath the surging blades. Longbows fought for space under full-bellied sails. Wind barked in canvas. Catapults strained against mountings.

  Emerging from the wind-shadow of the mountains, the armada caught a gale. Warships rushed forward. They overtook infantry and cavalry both. Breasting through waves of charging muscle, the ships took the fore. Once ahead of their own lines, prow lances splayed. Archers nocked pitch-soaked arrows. Grenadiers lit oil bombards. Catapult captains called out launch signals. Rams drove eagerly toward the Phyrexian hordes.

  “Keld!” It was the word for fuel and flame, for the people and their courage. This time, though, the word came from the mouths of catapult captains. It meant, “Fire!”

  With a series of shuddering thumps, catapults hurled their pay-loads. From a hundred warships, black bombs rushed skyward. They trailed fire like awful wings. They arced down toward the Phyrexians. Bombs staved skulls and crushed thoraxes and ripped muscles. Fires ignited oil-blood, and Phyrexians exploded. Hunks of scale and claw bounded out to slay more monsters.

  Another onslaught came from the ships. Torches ignited pitch-soaked arrowheads. Elf archers lifted their bows skyward. Strings grew taut.

  “Keld!”

  A thousand arrows flocked from the war vessels. Fire rattled as it tore through the air. Shafts reached the peak of their flight and dived downward. The ships’ momentum carried the quarrels deep into the charging line of monsters. Arrowheads cracked off armor. They plunged into throats. They pierced eyes and the fiend brains beneath.

  Even as catapults thudded with new loads and archers nocked new salvos, the lines closed. Long ships plunged through the burning remains of the Phyrexian front lines. Living beasts converged from ahead. All along the rails of the warships, infantry prepared pikes and swords.

  With an inhuman roar, the main Phyrexian line crashed into the long ships. Prow pikes impaled many monsters. Great swords decapitated others. Grenadiers hurled bombs into the pelting mob. Archers turned their longbows from the skies to slay at point-blank range.

  Still, Phyrexians clawed their way up the gunwales of the ships. They did not seem individual monsters but one monster with countless fangs and endless horns.

  The ships with Keldon crews fared best. Their cudgels and axes pulped the beasts that tried to climb aboard.

  The elven ships were worse beset. One was already overwhelmed. Its crew had come to pieces in Phyrexian claws. What remained of them fell in red tatters from the rails. The victors took what spoils they could use—grenades and weapons—and abandoned the ship to wind and ice. It veered, rattling along emptily before tipping into a broad crevasse.

  “That was one of ours!” Eladamri shouted above the hoofbeats of his mount. His sword clove a Phyrexian trooper that had won past the line of long ships.

  “They’re all ours,” replied Warlord Astor. His sword struck a scuta and cracked its shield like an eggshell. The colos bounded over the burning dead of Phyrexia. “They’ve paved our way. The true fight is ahead.”

  Liin Sivi yanked her toten-vec from the chest of a bloodstock and deftly caught the oily blade. “Let’s get up there.”

  Bending toward the necks of their colos, the three warriors drove onward. Phyrexians loped toward them across the corpse-strewn ice. The three killed all those in reach and let the others go. They would be nothing against the Keldon hordes coming behind. Astor was right about the battle. A dense wave of scale and claw broke just ahead.

  The great mountain yaks slew first. Their hooves were hardened and sharpened on ice itself, and they fell with a half-ton of weight atop them
. Carapace cracked. Organs oozed. Phyrexians died. Colos bounded on, trampling the beasts beyond.

  Their riders did killing work above. Eladamri’s sword chopped through a powerful arm that clutched his neck. He kicked the huge monster back and peeled dead claws from his throat.

  The monster lunged. It opened its mouth, intending to take with fangs what it couldn’t with claws.

  Eladamri gave the thing its arm back. He rammed the grisly end down its throat. It tried to swallow, but Eladamri twisted the limb. Bone caught in the beast’s windpipe. Gurgling, it fell.

  Another menace approached. Green and huge, the mogg goblin hurled itself onto the colos’s back.

  Eladamri’s sword was too slow. It sliced the goblin shallowly across its belly, but the creature pounded down on him. Scaly fists smashed the elf’s armor.

  It had been a while since Eladamri had fought one of these natives of Rath, but the smell brought back memories. Eladamri swung his elbow up to crack the goblin’s jaw. That gave him enough space to draw a dagger with his off hand. He rammed it into the cut his sword had started.

  Cursing, the mogg leaped away from the stinging blow.

  At last, Eladamri’s sword had room. He slashed. The goblin came to ground in two pieces. It joined two more of its folk, slain by Eladamri’s colos.

  Beside him, a clutch of Keldons fought a gaunt creature that reared on a serpentine tail. White armor turned Keldon axes. Six long, barbed arms plucked up the fighters. A mouth of shifting plates bit away heads.

  Eladamri drove his colos toward the brutal fight.

  Something flashed out before him, and he reined in. Liin Sivi’s toten-vec whirled toward the beast. Her blade reached where axes could not. The head soared perfectly into the monster’s mouth. Metal bit into flesh. The chain went taut. With a roar, Liin Sivi yanked. The weapon came free, dragging mouth parts and membranes with it.

  Unable to bite its foes, the Phyrexian began a retreat. It was too late. Keldons climbed it like ants devouring a worm. Their blades at last found chinks in the thing’s armor. It fell to chunks beneath them.

  Nearby, Astor fought aback his stamping steed. His eyes shone with the battle gleam of true Keldon warriors. A ring of bodies and oil surrounded him. Any creature that ventured into it ended up among the dead. Just now, a Phyrexian trooper charged him. Astor’s axe chopped down between shoulder spikes and clove deep into the thing’s ribcage. There, the blade jammed. Astor seemed not to notice. He hauled hard on the haft, lifting the trooper from the ground. The wriggling creature struggled to claw him, but he flung it off.

  “They’re breaking through!” Astor shouted, leveling his axe toward a spot on the distant battlefield.

  Eladamri and Liin Sivi turned to see.

  A Keldon long ship that had cruised deep into the Phyrexian lines had been captured. The beasts had turned the vessel, harnessing the winds and loading the catapults. With their own dead draping from the prow pikes, Phyrexians sailed the ship back toward the front lines. A monstrous infantry formed up on the ship. Already they reclaimed ice where their own troops had burned away. The vessel beat toward the heart of the Keldon army.

  Oil bombs vaulted from its decks. Shrieking through the air, they dropped in a brimstone rain on the allies. A bomb that could kill a single Phyrexian could annihilate a whole elven squad. Even Keldons fell in the holocaustal onslaught. Those who fought on did so with their skin hanging in rags from their shoulders. They folded like paper before the Phyrexian charge.

  “That’s where the battle is!” shouted Warlord Astor.

  He sent his colos bounding out across the ice, toward the skating ship. Astor’s axe whirled in fury. He left behind a trail of twitching beasts. Liin Sivi widened that trail with the spinning reach of her toten-vec. Eladamri brought up the rear. He stood in the saddle and peered out across the glaring field.

  As that black warship had drawn Phyrexians into a charge, it also drew Keldons into a countercharge. All across the battlefield, mounted warriors converged on the vessel. Eladamri glimpsed, in varied livery, the colors of Doyen Olvresk and Doyenne Tajamin. They came not only because the ship was breaking through their lines, but also because it was their ship, turned against them.

  “Form up!” Warlord Astor called over his shoulder. “We’ll go in tight! We’ll take it back!”

  Tucking her toten-vec, Liin Sivi drove her colos up beside Astor’s. Eladamri came up the other side. More mounted warriors joined them, fanning out in a wide wedge.

  The colos lowered their curled horns. They smashed into the Phyrexians before them. What monsters were not unmade by the horns were destroyed by blades. The colos cut through the flank of the Phyrexian charge and drove on toward the captured ship.

  Astor bore down on the bloody gunwales. He did not slow. The ship loomed up. His mount’s hooves bounded twice more before it launched from the ground. The mountain yak soared through the air. Wind ripped at its white fur. The colos cleared the rail. It came down atop an unwary Phyrexian. Hooves hammered the thing to the deck. Astor stood in the saddle and chopped another beast through the middle.

  Two more Phyrexians died before the monsters recognized they had been boarded. By then, Liin Sivi’s mount was landing and Eladamri’s as well. The three warriors drove across the deck, hewing as they went. More yaks pounded onto the ship, bringing more Keldon warriors. The planks ran with glistening-oil. Shattered corpses fell from the rails. In moments, Astor and his warriors had taken back the deck.

  “Get below! Cleanse the hold!” Astor shouted to Liin Sivi and Eladamri. They dismounted and went.

  Astor meanwhile rode his mount up to the stern castle. He leaped from the saddle. Grabbing the ship’s wheel, he turning it hard to windward. The ship lurched upwind, cutting into a bare section of ice.

  “Back the main!” he ordered. Below, warriors hauled on the mainsail lines, cleating them off. The face of the sail caught wind and the ship slid backward. Spinning the wheel, Astor brought the long ship about. “Trim the main for a westward run! Load the catapults! Man the bows!”

  Even as the sail caught wind again, the catapults were hurling fire back into the heart of the Phyrexian forces.

  Eladamri and Liin Sivi returned from the hold. Their eyes glowed.

  The elf commander said, “Not a beast remains below.”

  “Excellent,” said Astor through clenched teeth. It wasn’t clear whether he smiled or grimaced.

  “Yes, excellent,” came a new voice. Doyenne Tajamin rode her colos onto the stern castle and dismounted. Despite her words, her face was grim. “We need this ship. We need every ship, every grenade, every oil bomb.”

  The meaning of her words was plain. The allies were losing. Though Keldons and elves fought with furious valor, the Phyrexians were simply too many. Their lines stretched back across the glacier to the distant peaks. They flung themselves into the front with no regard for survival. Keldons could stand against almost every kind of warrior, but not this kind—not warriors without honor, without end.

  In a voice of command, Doyenne Tajamin shouted, “Set a course for the Necropolis!”

  Even as Astor turned the ship, the comrades saw the reason: the prize for which they fought was already in Phyrexian hands. Monstrous troops fortified their positions around the base of Necropolis Peak. The long ships that had driven toward that spot were mired at best and burning at worst. Colos riders could not smash through. Infantry could not slay them fast enough. All the while, out of reach of sword and catapult and spell, Phyrexians swarmed up the black cliffs beneath the Necropolis.

  The monsters climbed with preternatural speed. They surrounded the peak. They poured into the halls of the guardians.

  “Atrocity!” spat Doyenne Tajamin. “Before this battle is done, we will all lie in ice graves.” Her hand tightened on the grip of her cudgel. Something changed on her face. She lifted the ancestral weapon bef
ore her.

  Blood—Phyrexian and Keldon and elf—draped the ancient runes. The tales of Twilight were obscured beneath the gore of battle. Indeed, the glistening-oil even seemed caustic to the symbols. It hissed. Tendrils of white steam crazed the air. Heat trembled through the weapon.

  “What’s this?” Doyenne Tajamin wondered aloud.

  “Look!” said Eladamri, pointing.

  Sudden light flared from the Necropolis. Fires blazed. They roared out of every window and door. The very mountain shook with that initial blast. Then came a second. A ring of force spread from the summit across the sky. The third blast was the most powerful yet. Blinding light beamed from the dead city. It swallowed fire, so intense it was, and swallowed the disk of cloud. All dissolved before its brilliance.

  Doyenne Tajamin watched a moment more before she fell to her knees. She clutched the sizzling cudgel to her breast. Breathless, she recited the words of the Book of Keld:

  And there shall come, in the darkest corner of Twilight, a light that will scour away the shadows. A new sun will dawn over Keld and draw into its compass all the clans and nations. As the warriors of Keld were firstborn from the hearth fire, so the new and true warriors of Keld will be secondborn from the burning sun. They will ride her golden bow from the world before to the world thereafter, and they will fight the final battle of Twilight.

  As if in answer, dark figures emerged from the beaming windows and doors of the Necropolis. They were almost unseeable in that ferocious glare.

  “The honored dead of Keld,” Tajamin murmured worshipfully.

  More plentiful than the monsters that had swarmed the peak, the ancient warriors of Keld emerged. They descended to do battle.