Planeshift

Chapter 17

His own warriors had thought him insane. They had wondered how Agnate could ally himself with a lich lord and march a division down into the world of the dead. They hadn't seen the virtue in Dralnu's vile breast, hadn't heard the words of life in a mouth that smelled of death.

The doubters were proven wrong. In sunlight and cypress break, they saw the truth. The five hundred troops Agnate had led down among the dead had emerged again, accompanied by a hundredfold allies. Agnate's forces now marched with an undead army of fifty thousand. Dralnu had taken Thaddeus's portion. His ghouls and skeletons and zombies and revenants had replaced Thaddeus's warriors. At last, Agnate had a counterpart toward whom to drive in the deadly Metathran pincer. How right he had been. How perfect this felt, to fight so.

Reaping Phyrexians like grass, Agnate and his vanguard topped a low ridge. Beyond it opened a wide mudflat beside the sea. Phyrexians in their multitude crowded the spot. They had nowhere left to flee. Voda warriors tore apart any who sought escape in the water. It was a fitting trap for the arrogant beasts.

Agnate peered down the ridge. It swept in a long curve around the flat. On the opposite side, a mere mile distant, appeared Lich Lord Dralnu with his contingent. The timing could not have been more precise if it had been Thaddeus who stood there. It was time for the pincers to close. Agnate gave a sharp hand signal. As one his Metathran and the armies of the dead descended the ridge at a charge. They crashed into the mud-caked Phyrexians.

There was pure joy in this. Agnate's battle-axe batted away a bloodstock's raking claw. The Phyrexian centaur reeled back. Following through, Agnate brought the axe downward to sever the beast's forelimbs. The bloodstock fell before him but still clawed. Agnate's axe ended its struggles.

Agnate stared down at the split head of the thing. He had delivered Thaddeus's mercy blow the same way and for the same reason. The work of vat priests was irreversible and unbearable. Agnate's axe was not a destroyer but a liberator.

That was the joy of this battle. It was not war but salvation. He was not slaying souls but freeing them. When he and Dralnu were done this day, even the mud would be clean.

Such are the fleeting fancies of warriors between axe blows.

Agnate's weapon swung toward a Phyrexian crab. On a tripod of bladelike legs, the mechanism had only one vulnerable spot- a trio of fleshy heads grafted to its back. The heads were fused in back, three sets of eyes staring in three separate directions. Agnate's axe fell. It bisected two of the heads, but the third lived. One of the thing's claws flung back the axe. Another grabbed Agnate's free hand. The last gripped his weapon arm, dragging him toward pelvic scythes.

Agnate had one option. Instead of struggling to break free, he hurled himself inward and head-butted the remaining face. It collapsed like an egg. Agnate reared, his head flinging glistening-oil, but he could not break free. He butted the creature again. This time, something gray mixed with the gold, and the creature slumped.

Agnate escaped. He wiped oil back along his pate.

To either side, Metathran troops formed a blue wave across the mudflats. Where their tide rolled, monsters fell. In muddy graves and thrashing seas, Phyrexians lay dead.

Agnate's axe sang above the heads of his foes. Here it clove the skull-shield of a scuta. There it chopped through the waist of a Phyrexian trooper. It bashed back claws and bashed in teeth. It liberated scores of souls from the Phyrexian prisons they called their bodies.

Then blade met blade. Agnate's axe rebounded. A Phyrexian slasher advanced to kill him. He couldn't do likewise. There were no soft spots on the artifact engine. It was all razor edges. Three knifelike legs supported a body that bristled with whirling steel.

Agnate backed away, swinging. His weapon only clanged on the foremost scythe. The machine scuttled toward him. Agnate swept his axe downward but nearly tripped over a dead body. The axe bit deep in the mud and was mired. He yanked on it. The machine leaped at him. Agnate released the weapon and retreated beyond the corpse.

Reaching down, he lifted the body he had stumbled over-a Phyrexian trooper. Hoisting it overhead, Agnate hurled it down on the slasher. Its main blade impaled the corpse, while side blades shredded the body. The Phyrexian's weight shoved the slasher's legs into the mud. Hefting another corpse, Agnate flung it down atop the machine. Deeper the thing went. Two more bodies, and the slasher was hopelessly stuck.

He had to laugh.

Striding past the machine, Agnate worked his axe free from the mud. The battle raged ahead of him. Only a narrow wedge of monsters remained between the closing halves of the army. Eager to deal the final blows, the Metathran commander leaped back into battle.

He reached the front lines at a run, axe lifted high. It came down with a profound stroke that entered the crown of a bloodstock's head and exited its belly. The cloven monster fell before him as if in a deep bow. Agnate's axe decapitated a monster beyond-a ghoul with dripping sores across its flesh. Like a man hewing wood, Agnate swung again, slaying a zombie in rotten rags. He raised his blade and began another attack, but something stayed his hand.

Thaddeus. No, not Thaddeus-Lich Lord Dralnu. The necromancer gripped Agnate's forearm in an implacably powerful claw. His mouth opened, and words that smelled faintly of rot emerged.

"Hold, Agnate. You do not slay Phyrexians but your own troops. The foes are gone. The day is won."

Beneath a brow that streamed sweat, Agnate blinked. "What?" "The day is won," said the lich lord simply. Agnate lowered his axe and took a deep breath. He looked at the zombie and ghoul he had destroyed. "I did not realize-"

"War has its casualties. I have lost ten thousand in this fight, and you perhaps five thousand."

"That many?" Agnate wondered aloud. He glanced back at the battlefield. Most of the corpses there were Phyrexian, but there were many Metathran among them. The thought grieved Agnate. The bloodlust of battle was draining from him. "We've slain many Phyrexians today. I would guess thirty to forty thousand. The five and ten thousand that we lost died valiantly."

"Oh, your troops are not lost, my friend," Lich Lord Dralnu said. A strange smile showed on his face. "Not while we are allies. I will merely raise them to fight again.

They are perhaps lost to you, but they are gained by me. That way, each of us has lost only five thousand."

Agnate nodded, feeling vaguely unsettled. "Will you raise also these?" He pointed to the zombie and ghoul. "And your other slain troops?"

"No. The twice dead can never rise again."

Bone fires burned high along the mudflats that night.

Fatigued Metathran and indefatigable undead had worked side by side to drag the corpses into funereal pyres-nine for the Phyrexians and five for undead. The latter had been laid out ceremonially on wood soaked in glistening-oil. The former had been tossed in heaps on the mud. Even now, the monsters' bodies burned with alacrity. Fires melted the metals within them. Hearts sizzled and burst in sudden gushes of oil that made flames leap and pop. The undead gave their bodies to the wind more gradually. Lying decorously on their pyres, they surrendered to flame. It licked away their hair and skin and muscle down to bone.

Not so the Metathran dead. On litters fashioned from nearby trees, they rode toward Vhelnish. Lich Lord Dralnu went with them, eager to restore them to life.

Agnate wished the lich lord had remained. He peered out the flap of his command tent.

The ocean was steel-blue beneath a sky veiled in sunset. The tide had crept slowly in across the mudflats. It had slid a mirror of water beneath the burning pyres. Pillars of fire stood on the waters and sent their reflected blaze down in them. It was a beautiful, feral scene, the dead giving light and heat to the living.

Agnate peered out along the ridge where his troops camped. Their fires were pale imitations of the pyres, flickering like lightning bugs. In the woods beyond, undead stood guard. Ever vigilant, ever faithful, those ancient warriors would keep Agnate's troops safe tonight.

Still, he felt uneasy. Withdrawing from the tent flaps, he sat on a camp chair. It was time to shuck the weary armor of the day. Agnate drew the boots from his feet and the shin guards from his legs. He removed his breastplate and the sweat-soaked tunic beneath. Everything itched. That was the cost of hard-fought battle in good armor. The salt water would cleanse his skin. It would sterilize his wounds.

Stripping bare, Agnate emerged from his tent. He strode down the embankment and onto the mudflats. Water splashed about his ankles. It stung his feet, but the sensation was warm and good. He strode out among the still-burning pyres. Their radiance bathed his skin in heat and light. Through the flames, he glimpsed Phyrexian skulls. Eyes of fire flickered in their sockets. Agnate nodded to them. He'd grown comfortable among the dead.

Always before, death had been inviolable. Lich Lord Dralnu had changed all that. Warriors brought death, and lich lords brought new life. The walls of eternity were breached, and Agnate and Dralnu marched through.

The Metathran commander strode out beyond the pillars of fire, toward the dark and deep waters beyond. No longer did the water sting. Now it welcomed him. Sand replaced mud beneath Agnate's feet. It sloped quickly away. He descended the bank. Water rose to his shoulders. It slid up his neck, across his bald scalp, into his pores. It closed over him.

The roar of fire was gone, the camp sounds, the night noises of the jungle… A numb silence settled over Agnate. He felt only the nudge of waves as they dragged over him.

This must be what it is like to be dead, truly dead- dead for the second time, as Dralnu had said. Numb silence. Darkness. Nothing. It would be welcome after all the striving. It was a mercy that even Dralnu could not reach past the second death.

All too soon, the breath in Agnate's chest grew hot. It ached to be expelled. His lungs pleaded to breathe in. Life was insistent, impatient. Agnate turned reluctantly back toward the shore. He walked upward. His head broke the surface. He breathed. Water rolled from his ears, taking the placid silence with it. Angry flames and muttering men and nocturnal cries intruded on his reverie. It was not his time to die. Not yet.

The steps were few between total immersion and ankledeep water. The dead blazed to every side. Fire dried Agnate's skin. Salt left fine lines of grit across his muscles. Every cell seemed to ache. It felt like Agnate's own flesh burned. Had he been stung by jellyfish while he waded?

Spreading his arms out, Agnate peered down at his body. Only then did he see the dark spots on his legs. They began at his knees and thickened as they descended his calves. Lifting one foot from the water, he saw that the blemishes covered his feet. Mud?

Agnate reached down with his thumb and rubbed a large black spot on his ankle. The darkness bunched up before his thumbnail and tumbled away, as if it had been mud, but it left a deep divot in his flesh.

It was his flesh, turning to rot.

Agnate knew every ailment that could afflict a soldier. This was different. This was no simple gangrene, eating away dead flesh. This was a disease that ate away healthy tissue.

Amputation. It was the only solution. He could do without his lower legs. He could even rig stilts to let him run and fight. It would save the rest of his body.

Except that, when he looked closer in the firelight, he saw smaller spots had spread up his thighs, and pinpoints of corruption rose even to his ribs.

The walls of death were not meant to keep the living out but to keep the dead in. Soon, all too soon, Agnate would be among the dead.