Invasion

Chapter 12

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!"

Ship! That single word ignited the yard. There was hope for escape.

Phyrexians claimed their first victims even before setting claw to ground. Talons clamped on heads and crushed them like eggs. Spiked tails gored and lifted gapmouthed prisoners. Stingers sank into eyes and pumped blackness. Hundreds of prisoners died in that first moment.

Hundreds more fought back. From the guard armory rose crossbow bolts, piercing the black hordes that dropped from the skies. Those prisoners who had swords used them, chopping legs out from under monsters. Others used the shackles or iron bars that had formerly held them captive. Even the bricks of the prison turned deadly. Torches rammed in Phyrexian mouths. Hunks of glass slit throats. Whatever came to hand became a weapon-even the dead claws of the killers, even the sand of the yard.

Some prisoners fought bare-handed. Knuckles cracked chitinous temples. Fingers jabbed segmented eyes. Teeth bit through strangling claws. Feet smashed thoraxes. Phyrexians were flipped and thrown, knee-capped and bludgeoned, throttled and eviscerated. In the horrid spray of oil and blood, prisoners and Phyrexians were almost indistinguishable.

Gerrard and his comrades had their own troubles. The man ascending to release them had been slain on his way up. Monsters landed atop the tower roof. It buckled beneath their weight. Two had crashed through the windows to fight the shackled crew.

Gerrard ducked the scything claws of the first. He somersaulted across the floor of the tower and rose behind the second beast. It was a lumbering monster-a oncehuman head atop a lupine body fitted out with steel attachments. Luckily, the thing's neck was no canine thing. Gerrard wrapped his shackles around its throat. The chains bit in. The beast thrashed. Gerrard rammed it up against its comrade. The strangling Phyrexian tore the back out of its compatriot. Gerrard tightened his hold. His shackles ground against vertebrae, and the lupine beast fell dead.

Tahngarth quickly finished off the other monster. Hands cuffed behind him, Tahngarth kicked once to spin his foe around, and a second time to bury his hoof in its shredded back.

The Phyrexian convulsed and bucked, falling to the floor.

Tahngarth drew forth his hoof. Acid hissed on his leg and poured out across the planks.

The minotaur spat angrily. "That one burned."

"You must have punctured the spleen," Gerrard said, pointing at the corpse. White smoke rose around the body. "At least spleen is what I would call it."

Sisay knelt beside the fallen Phyrexian, draping her chains in the sizzling stuff. "You don't suppose-" She pulled her hands away, and the links shattered like glass. "I'll be damned."

"Let's hope you won't," Gerrard replied. He used his own shackles to scrape acid from Tahngarth's now-raw leg. His chains also grew brittle. He shattered them. "I've got a gruesome hunch…" Scooping up some Phyrexian oilblood, he laved Tahngarth's legs with it. The sizzling smoke ceased.

Hanna watched intently. "Their blood-it neutralizes the acid?"

Gerrard shrugged. "If I had this stuff in me, I'd want something that could neutralize it."

The minotaur broke his own chains. "Now, as long as the floor doesn't give way-"

Phyrexians suddenly crashed through the rafters. They fell in a frenzied black storm, striking the floor where the corpses lay. The weakened wood held for only a moment. It broke open and hurled the beasts down through the core of the tower.

Clinging to the windowsills, the crew watched as a score of Phyrexians fell to a twisted death on the collapsing stairs below.

"That was miraculous," Gerrard panted.

Sisay stared down grimly. "We'll need a couple dozen more miracles if we're going to get to the ship."

Holding herself up with one hand and clutching her bleeding side with the other, Hanna said, "And a couple more when we're back on board."

Gerrard's eyes were intent. "Orim's got miracles." He edged toward Hanna.

That movement was ill-advised. The stairway within the tower had provided not only access but stability. With the steps gutted, the tower twisted on its four posts. It seemed there was only one way down-one very fast, very horrible way.

"Hold still!" Sisay shouted.

Gerrard lurched to a stop. The platform lurched as well. Nails whined in warning. Joints slowly pulled open.

"We're going to fall, aren't we?"

All around, heads nodded ominously.

Sisay said, "The question is whether we can survive."

"The question is whether we can land on Phyrexians," Tahngarth interrupted.

Glancing toward the ruined roof, Gerrard smiled. "The question is whether we can do both."

He gingerly climbed the inner wall of the listing tower until he could stick his head through the ragged hole in the roof. Lunging, he yanked something down-a tangle of black cords left by the Phyrexians that had landed on the roof. Gerrard hung from the mass of them, his feet swinging free in the center of the wreckage.

Through gritted teeth, he said, "Thought we could… take advantage of… a few loose ends." He managed to free one of the ropes. Bumping into the far wall, he flung a rope to Tahngarth. "This is your old trick… hanging below Weatherlight in Rath."

Wrapping the cord around his arm, the minotaur swung free. "Let's hope the Phyrexians are safer pilots."

"Hey!" Gerrard protested. He flung a rope to Sisay. "I saved you, didn't I? Saved us all, and flew out-"

"To crash on Mercadia," Sisay reminded as she let go of the collapsing frame.

"I got us out of there too," Gerrard defended as he bounced against the wall beside Squee.

The goblin clambered onto Gerrard's shoulders. "Squee killed Volrath."

A shrieking moan came as the tower failed. Gerrard hurled himself across the folding space. He snatched up Hanna in his arms and took two running steps up the slanting wall. Squee clung miserably to his shoulders and let out a shriek of his own. Gerrard flung himself and his passengers out the shattered rooftop, now pointing sideways, and into the fiend-charged air. Sisay came just behind him, and Tahngarth brought up the rear.

They swung out beneath one of the great black cruisers that eclipsed the heavens. Below them, thick mobs of Phyrexians swarmed the yard. It was onto their heads that the guard tower fell.

It rushed down like a gigantic club. Monsters looked up and cringed. The tower smashed them to the ground. Wood splintered. The framework cracked. Beams bounded out in a killing storm.

"I was always good at crashing things," Gerrard said as they swooped above the yard. He lifted his gaze from the wreckage below. "Speaking of crashes-"

With a violent crunch, Gerrard, Hanna, and Squee smashed into a descending Phyrexian. The superior mass of the three heroes knocked the monster loose. It fell, legs kicking crablike until it struck ground. Its shell split wide.

Tahngarth executed a similar attack, though on purpose. His four knuckles had never packed such a punch. The minotaur's first roundhouse staved a monster's skull. It died on the vine. Tahngarth set his hooves on the beast and flung himself onward, knocking another beast free. By releasing the first strand and transferring his weight to others, he made a quick circuit of the lines, moving toward the prison walls. Each blow counted for two, fist followed up by shackle. Each kill slew another as the massive creatures crashed to ground atop their comrades.

Sisay attained the same effect with a bit more finesse. She used an acid-dripping shard of her shackles to burn through adjacent cords. Monster after monster plunged beneath her. The next few

Phyrexians down the line slid into sudden emptiness. She swung past Gerrard, Hanna, and Squee.

Gripping a new cord, she shouted "To the ship, then?"

"To the ship. Hang on," Gerrard told his riders.

He too switched his handhold. To drop down into that yard would be certain death. The only hope was to swing line to line until they reached the brig wall and could climb down to where

Weatherlight was docked below.

First, I fought you in a hole in the ground, Tsabo Tavoc thought gladly, and there you escaped me. I am not a creature for holes in the ground. Then I fought you aboard your own ship, and you drove me off. I should have known not to attack the heir of the Legacy ensconced in his Legacy. But now, she clicked her new legs on the rocky cliff where she stood-stronger legs, fitted with blades in their joints-Now you hang in my web, Gerrard.

Tsabo Tavoc waded through fleeing brigands. They seemed to think there was salvation for them beyond the cliff-or at least there was damnation in the brig. It did not matter to Tsabo Tavoc. On another battlefield, in another time, she would have allowed herself to float in the tide of agony that her troops created. Such was her right. This battle was different though. Benalia had been granted her, but one Benalish warrior thought to stop her. She cared nothing for the shouldering sheep. She cared only for that single strange man built out of all time to serve Urza in his war. Tsabo Tavoc had been similarly built-fearfully and wonderfully made.

She picked her way toward the prison. Some of the prisoners were so blind with panic, they fled into her legs, cracking their brains. Tsabo Tavoc dismembered a few, not intending to but not avoiding it. She must be careful. The blood would make her grip less sure, and in any web-even one's own-grip was life.

Reaching the base of the prison wall, she ambled up the sheer face of cut stones and hurled herself into the air. She caught one of the lines hanging above the bloody yard and climbed toward those pathetic little creatures. She climbed toward Gerrard.

Orim stood at the ship's gangplank. She had been the one who lowered it-after the first fifty prisoners had bloodied their fingers clawing to get aboard. They fought each other. One climber's back was sliced through with a broken bottle. Another had suffered a spontaneous amputation of his left leg beneath the knee. Countless legs had been torn bloody by hands below. Orim had tried to stanch all that blood. When she could not, she let the deck run red, lowering the gangplank lest there be more.

Now there would be more blood. Already Weatherlight had taken on six hundred prisoners. They would fill every hold and crouch in the bilge as she raced away. Gerrard had come to gather an army. Instead, he gathered refugees. Weatherlight could not safely hold many more. The others would fight. There would be blood.

Worst of all, Gerrard was nowhere to be seen.

"Cast off the plank," came a voice at Orim's shoulder. It was an ancient, wise voice. It brooked no disagreement.

Orim spun, looking at the blind seer. "I cannot sentence them to death."

"You do not sentence them," he said. "You grant reprieve to these others. But if you do not cast off that plank now, even those you have spared will die."

She was pale. "What about Gerrard, Sisay, Hanna, Tahngarth-?"

"That is why you must cast off," the seer said. "If you do not, they will die. Gerrard has saved all those he can. He has his army. Elsewhere, battles scream for that army. Let's save your friends and the world."

Orim drew a deep breath. She closed her eyes, sending her inner self down into that place of peace she had discovered in the forest of the Cho-Arrim. With bliss suffusing her, she reached down and flung away the plank.

Amid the angry shouts and screams, she calmly walked to a speaking tube, flipped it open, and said, "Karn, take us up."

Gerrard hung above the yard. He had nearly reached the wall- it lay fifty feet below and fifty feet ahead.

Suddenly, a huge, agile thing rose up before him. He knew her immediately.

"Tsabo Tavoc," he hissed.

The spider woman was a gigantic bundle of legs and poison. Her beautiful face made a wan smudge on the nighttime.

"I am glad you remember."

Gerrard shifted, pulling Hanna tighter against him. She was growing weak from blood loss and was slipping. "You cannot win."

"I already have. Benalia is mine."

"You cannot defeat all of Dominaria."

"I cannot, but my master can, and he will."

"You cannot defeat me," Gerrard responded, anger in his eyes.

"I already have."

Tsabo Tavoc lunged. Her barbed legs struck Hanna, hurling her away. Without a sound, Hanna fell. Gerrard struggled to grasp her. The spider woman intervened. She gripped the cord with four legs and flung Squee off with three more. With the last, she wrapped Gerrard as she had wrapped Tahngarth. This time, the joints of her legs bristled with blades.

"I don't know which to do, to take you back to my master, or to… enjoy you myself."

Gerrard canted his head. "I'll decide for you." He jammed his shackled wrist into her leg joint. The band forced the leg open. Gerrard yanked his arm free and dropped from her.

Tsabo Tavoc's limbs raked out to grab him from the air, but she was too slow. It little mattered. He would die in the fall…

Except that Weatherlight hovered below, catching them all. Soundless, the refugee vessel had nosed up under them. Now, with its crew safely aboard, Weatherlight streaked away.

Tsabo Tavoc glared after the ship. There would be no catching them.

Still, Gerrard was defeated, fleeing with his tail between his legs. Benalia was hers. Her objective was accomplished. Her master would reward her with the greatest command of the war- Koilos.

If Gerrard dared show himself there, he would be hers.