Greven swung his polearm. Its head was a pair of crab-claw blades set among spikes. Its butt was a mace that sprouted curved horns. Just now, those horns cracked Tahngarth’s own.
The minotaur snorted. He bulled forward and rammed the polearm back toward Greven’s face. Tangling his horns with the man’s weapon, Tahngarth brought his striva in a two-hand slash across Greven’s waist. Well-tempered metal cut through the thick leather straps that corseted the mimetic spine. The striva laid open muscle, stopping only when Greven hurled himself back.
“Your transformations have made you powerful,” Greven said through teeth locked in a grin. “Let me finish what I began, and you will be a creature to be feared.”
Tahngarth’s eyes flared. “I already am.”
He charged. His striva swept downward in a brutal blow.
Greven backed up. He lifted his polearm to block the stroke. Hands clenched and teeth gritted.
There was too much rage in Tahngarth’s attack. The striva sparked as it struck the haft of the weapon. It sheared right through. The cleft ends of the polearm dropped away. The striva continued on, striking Greven’s rib guard. It cut through that as well and severed the flaps of muscle laced through his sternum.
Tahngarth continued forward, shoving the blade into Greven’s chest. “I want your heart, if you still have one.”
Braced against the stern rail, Greven brought the two ends of his polearm around before him. The mace dug its curved horns into the minotaur’s chest. The crab-claw blades sliced across his shoulder.
Tahngarth backed up. The striva came away from Greven, trailing blood.
“I will trade you wound for wound, Tahngarth, and you will die. I am a Phyrexian. You are a half-thing, a nothing. Surrender, and you yet might serve me.”
Bloodied but unbowed, Tahngarth snorted. “Serve you? You don’t even serve yourself. You are a man with someone else’s spine.”
Tahngarth attacked again. His striva sang as it sliced the air. It struck the crab-claw blades and bashed them back. In the same motion, it blocked the horned mace. Tahngarth drove onward. His blade sank into Greven’s jaw. It clove skin and muscle to bone, cutting away the lower quarter of his face. “Not so cocky now, are you?”
The mace and the claw blades converged on Tahngarth. One would spike his head and the other sever it.
Tahngarth ducked beneath the blow. The weapons crossed above him. The spikes impaled one of Greven’s shoulders, and the claw blades chunked into the other. Tahngarth butted the beast with his horns. One point gouged through the torn leather corset.
Gored, Greven vomited blood on the minotaur’s back.
Ignoring it, Tahngarth lifted his foe across his horns and hurled him down.
Greven struck the deck with a boom. His armor dug into the planks beneath him. He bled profusely at shoulders, face, and gut.
“I will never serve you, Greven,” Tahngarth said, pointing his striva at the creature. “It is you who must surrender.”
Laughing through bloody teeth, Greven barked, “Surrender?” Despite his wounds, he struggled to his feet. “You still don’t understand. You do not speak to Greven. You speak to Crovax. You could never best me, Tahngarth, not when we were shipmates and certainly not now. No, you will serve.” Greven launched himself at Tahngarth.
It was a suicidal attack. Whether Crovax tossed a useless weapon at his foe or Greven took the final moment of control from his master, Tahngarth would never know.
The striva fell. It clove Greven’s head down the middle. The blade did not even cease until it struck Greven’s mimetic spine. The captain of Predator fell, his split face striking the stern castle of Weatherlight.
Panting, bloodied, still full of battle fury, Tahngarth stared down at the riven form. He had his revenge on the man who had so tormented him.
Obscene sucking sounds came from Greven. Something moved within the split brain case. It nosed forward from the cleft. Its head was a collection of bulbous nodules. Its body was a long centipede of armored cords. Metallic cilia undulated along its length, dragging it forward.
Tahngarth took a step back. “Spinal centipede.”
Lifting its pointed tail, the thing bounded toward him.
With one smooth stroke of his striva, Tahngarth bisected the mimetic spine down its middle. Sparking from severed conduits, the two halves fell away from each other. They landed on the planks, snapping and convulsing beside the corpse of Greven. Tahngarth chopped them up as if they were snakes.
Even when Greven was dead, Crovax still lashed out. He still hoped to make Tahngarth his own.
* * *
—
While Tahngarth dispatched the captain of Predator, Gerrard did the same to the crew.
He bashed a battle axe aside, deflecting it to the head of an il-Dal warrior. While the owner of the axe struggled to haul the thing free, Gerrard felled him with a thrust. He climbed over that warrior to the next and the next. He had one goal in mind—Squee.
The goblin lay beneath his gun. He bore a horrid wound down his back, from shoulder to hip. Muscle and bone were laid bare. The fact that it still bled meant Squee still lived. The fact that it bled so profusely meant he would not live much longer.
Gerrard blocked another il-Vec axe and shoved its wielder over the rail. A severed grapple line told that Karn had been along here. Soon he would snap the last lines, and the ship could pull free of Predator. The final few cables whined with tension. As long as they held, more invaders could cross over.
Gerrard’s sword made quick work of the il-Vec. Two more toppled, and he reached Squee.
Gerrard knelt beside the goblin and stared in uncertainty at the long gash. How could he bind it? Reaching to his shoulder, he ripped the sleeve from his shift and dragged it off his hand.
“Here, let me,” came the voice of Orim. Word of Squee’s injury had reached her, and she had fought through the gauntlet. “Cleaner this way,” she said, pressing her hands to the wound. Silvery magic glowed beneath her fingers.
“Thanks!” Gerrard said heavily. He stood in time to stab another il-Vec who had clambered over the stern. He fell sloppily beside them, almost landing on Orim.
“See if you can’t keep the air clear,” she suggested.
“Oh, I’ll clear the air!” Gerrard growled, gripping the fire controls of Squee’s ray cannon. A few pumps of the foot treadle, and the gun hummed with life. “How about some of this?”
The cannon blazed. Crimson destruction belched from its muzzle. Rays ignited the foundering Predator. Sections of the vessel exploded. Crew disappeared in the blasts or tumbled in flames toward the volcano’s crater. A second barrage ripped the lower forecastle clean away from Predator. With it went the grapple mounts. Weatherlight ground free of the disintegrating ship.
Gerrard smiled viciously, leaning toward Orim. “See? We were doing it the hard way. Don’t snap the grapples. Destroy the ship.”
Sisay retreated to the helm, and Karn to the engine room. The last of the il-Vec had been dispatched. They covered the stern castle. Crew members busily dumped bodies over the rail.
Tahngarth loomed up suddenly beside Gerrard. He held overhead a massive corpse—the horn-studded figure of Greven il-Vec. With a look of triumph, he hurled the body overboard. It arced from Weatherlight’s stern to the gunwales of Predator.
“Fitting,” Gerrard shouted, “that the captain go down with his ship.”
“That’s a calling card,” Tahngarth said, his voice deeply brooding. He watched the fiery vessel plunge away. It spiraled in air, trailing a cyclone of smoke above it. Predator plummeted toward the deep pit at the volcano’s center. “A calling card for Crovax.”
Gerrard nodded solemnly, watching the ship fall. It seemed a blazing comet as it entered the pit. A ring of fire descended around it and lit the walls. Weatherlight would follow down that dark passage soon
enough.
Breathing deeply, Gerrard released the fire controls of Squee’s cannon and peered at the fallen gunner.
“How’s he doing?”
Orim’s eyes were weary as she looked up. She stroked coin-coifed hair from her face. “That wound would have killed me or you, but somehow, he’s survived.”
A muffled voice volunteered, “You need Squee to fight Crovax.”
Gerrard laughed. “You used to think everybody wanted you dead, Squee. Now it seems everybody wants you alive.”
“Everybody’s got smart all of a sudden,” Squee groaned. He stood up, stretching his back. “Whatcha do, Orim, give Squee a Greven spine? You probly want Squee as servant! Everybody want Squee as servant!”
Orim smiled. “He’ll be just fine.” She spotted two more crew members in need of healing. “Tahngarth, give me a hand getting those two down to sickbay.”
Nodding, the minotaur followed her.
Gerrard watched his two friends carry the wounded away. His reverie was broken by the sound of goblin feet tapping the planks. He looked down to see Squee, arms crossed, staring at him accusingly. Gerrard spread his hands in question.
The goblin scowled. “Maybe commander think he keep gun. Maybe he think he not give Squee back Squee’s gun.”
“No, no, no,” Gerrard replied, backing away from the cannon. “I was just standing here.”
Squee advanced a step. “Maybe he think Squee not well enough to shoot. Maybe he afraid more bad guys sneak up his butt.”
“Look! Look! They’re all gone. There’s nobody here. I was just standing near the gun. It’s yours. Fine. Take it back. I don’t need it.”
“Yes, you do,” came a voice out of nowhere. “Greven left one soldier behind.”
Invisible arms clamped tightly around Gerrard, and then turned visible—Phyrexian arms. Their grip was implacable. They pinned his weapon in place. Gerrard thrashed his head to see who had grabbed him, but he could not even turn.
Squee lunged toward them. “Ertai!”
With a thought, the wizard who had once served on Weatherlight disappeared from the stern castle, taking Gerrard and Squee with him.
CHAPTER 28
The True Warriors of Keld
Never before had the armies of Keld retreated. When overmatched, Keldon warlords descended bravely into death, grinding away at their foes all the while. Any adversary who would dominate the Keldons would pay for victory in blood, oceans of it. Superior forces often surrendered to Keld for this very reason. The wisest enemies avoided war altogether, knowing they would face an all-out and endless battle.
This adversary was no rival nation. Who can battle a glacier? Who can war with a volcano? Who can stand against the coming of Twilight, the night of wrath?
The Keldons had stood as long as they could. Here was the culmination of history. Millennia of battles since the descent from Parma had led to this moment, this blasphemous moment. Twilight had come. The honored dead of Keld had returned to life. They had emerged from the Necropolis only to join armies of Phyrexians. Dead Keldons had slaughtered live ones. Keldon history had bowed in service to a foreign god. Still, living Keldons had battled bravely on.
Then the very world turned on them.
Beneath the army’s feet, ice turned to water. Around their shoulders, water turned to steam. The Keldons in their hundreds of thousands descended through ice and fire into the heart of the world.
Only a single scant legion escaped. They had been farthest out from the fighting—young camp runners and old warriors cursed to survive their battle careers. All of them fled. There was no honor in this retreat, but there was less honor in letting the flood claim them. Keld needed warriors, even if they be only whelps and curs.
Across disintegrating ice, the army retreated. Their colos leaped over widening crevasses. Infantry splashed through new warm streams. Warriors struggled to navigate the calving ice cliffs. They rushed toward the black basalt mountain on one side of the terminal glacier. Even when they reached that rock-solid ground, it too shuddered under them. It was as if the fire gods below pounded the over world with massive hammers.
Now the survivors of the Battle of Twilight camped on a chill ridge of black stone. It was a defensible spot—no Keldon would camp anywhere else—though no Phyrexian foe remained. All had died in the world conflagration. The only foe was the flood itself.
At first, the towering terminus had sprouted countless jets across its surface. Water that had fought through twisted passages shot in straight lines from the glacier. Pressurized streams widened and joined. Centuries of centuries of water burst out into a gray river. Enormous hunks of ice bounded free. They bobbed through deeper stretches and rolled among rapids. The serpent of Twilight muscled its way toward the sea.
The flesh of that serpent was filled with bodies. Keldon, Phyrexian, elf, colos all tumbled in a confused mass. The wurm had swallowed them. A Phyrexian’s spikes impaled a Keldon’s back, and the two bodies formed a new creature. An elf was tangled in the reins of his colos, and with six legs and two arms and two heads, they floated together. Dead fingers clung to shattered rams and hunks of mast. In places, the bodies had gathered in a ghastly Sargasso.
The Keldon survivors looked down with solemn despair. These dead were the finest warriors in the land, slain not by swords but by fire and ice. Every camp runner and warlord felt instinctually that he should have tumbled in that flood with them.
They did their best to make amends. Warriors stood at the edge of the flood and reached in with polearms to snag whatever soldiers they could. They lifted Keldons and elves out and laid them in orderly rows below the camp. They dragged Phyrexians free and tossed them into bonfires. Even so, most of the corpses were out of reach, even out of sight, schooling along beneath the waves. For every body they hauled from the river, fifty others bobbed past. Even so, the dead below the camp outnumbered the living in it.
“There will have to be a new Necropolis,” said camp runner Stokken to himself.
Doyen Lairsen stood nearby, watching the awful tide. His plaited hair and beard were pitted with soot where smoke sticks had burned to their nubs.
“Why? What is the point?”
The young man was startled by his doyen’s jaded assessment. “To honor the dead, of course. To renew our hopes for Twilight—”
“Twilight has come and gone,” snapped Doyen Lairsen. His hands gripped the hilts of his brutal swords. “It has turned daylight to darkness. What is the point in hoping for another Twilight?”
Blinking incredulously, Stokken said, “The fire of Keld has burned brightly throughout the day. How much more must we stoke it to make it last the night?”
“Youth!” Lairsen spat angrily. The word was a curse. “Hope is the delusion of the young.”
In a low voice, Stokken murmured, “And despair is the delusion of the old.”
“What was that!” Lairsen barked, drawing steel. A moment later, the sword was returned to its sheath, and blood wept from a long gash on Stokken’s face. The slash was so quick, the sword so sharp, that Stokken did not even feel the attack until his neck grew warm. Doyen Lairsen repeated, “What was that?”
Stokken bowed deeply, dropping to one knee. “I have spoken out of turn, Doyen. Forgive me. I was not responsible for my words, deluded, as I was, by hope.”
Lairsen’s brow furrowed. The implication was clear—the doyen had done himself a dishonor by striking a deluded man. Still, if he admitted Stokken was not deluded, the doyen would have lost the previous argument. This young man bore watching.
“A delusional man should not bear a sword. Surrender yours to me.” Doyen Lairsen smiled, knowing he had won.
Stokken was wise enough not to resist. Even a word at this juncture could be construed as a refusal, as grounds for summary execution. He slowly slid his sword from his shoulder harness.
Re
ceiving the blade, Doyen Lairsen gritted his teeth viciously. “Next you will be seeing visions—the army resurrected beneath a midnight sun—” The grin melted from his face, replaced by a strange golden glow.
Stokken studied his doyen’s scarred face some moments before turning to gaze where he did. Forgetting his penance, Stokken rose to stare.
Aback the gray serpent of Twilight rode a dreaming thing. Its hull gleamed golden. Its masts were full-rigged in white-bellied sails. It was queer and glorious and unbelievable, the Golden Argosy from the Necropolis.
Could it be that the ship had tumbled with the rest of the destroyed citadel? Could it be that like its people, the ship had been dragged into the boiling maelstrom? It seemed impossible that the Golden Argosy could ride now, whole and beaming upon the serpentine tides. And who did she bear upon her crowded decks?
“What is this delusion?” Doyen Lairsen wondered aloud before he could stop himself.
“Hope,” breathed camp runner Stokken, taking back his sword. “That delusion is hope.”
* * *
—
Eladamri had never seen so beautiful a sky. After three days in the bowels of a glacier, any sky would have been splendid. But this boreal blue, with its ranges of cloud above a tossing sea, this was magnificent. Its glory was second only to that of the Golden Argosy herself.
She was a strange ship, stranger even than Weatherlight. There was not a stick of furniture in her, no stores, no ballast, no heads, no crew. There was not even a helm. The ship sailed according to her own will. Indeed, she had a will. She had navigated the tight confines of the glacier with an expert rudder, sliding through impossible spaces. Her masts never ground upon the ceiling, her gunwales never scraped the walls. She made sail and reefed sail not according to the torrents of wind beneath the ice but according to the winds of another world. Always, she found the fastest path. Always, she drew up the thousands upon thousands of Keldons and elves who survived beneath the ice. Though her hull was commodious, it could not truly have held this many, and yet each new arrival found room among his or her fellows. Within her hull, they were warm and dry, neither hungering nor thirsting—healed of all they lacked, clothed and rested, even given to understand the speech of each other.
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