"How 'bout dis?" interposed Squee, suddenly at her side. He clutched a white, pointed object.
"That might be just the thing," Hanna replied, taking hold of it before she realized it was the tip of Tahngarth's horn. The kneeling minotaur cocked an eyebrow at her, and she let go, smiling in apology.
"Those horns have bashed down plenty of doors, but never lock-picked them," Tahngarth snorted.
Another explosion shook the brig. More rocks fell from the ceiling.
Gerrard patted the minotaur's back. "I hate to ask it of you, but they took anything else we could have used to pick the lock. They even took my belt, as if I'd use it to throttle a guard. They left it with our weapons-with your striva."
"All right! All right!" the minotaur growled. "Use my horn! It'll just make me more deadly when I get out."
Hanna gingerly took the tip of it and directed it toward the keyhole. "Forgive me, Tahngarth. I'm not exactly an expert at this."
"Squee's good! Squee know how to do dat!" the goblin said emphatically. He clambered up Tahngarth's stooped back and leaped to the bars, where he clung like a monkey. He brushed Hanna aside, peered into the keyhole, and said, "Aw, yeah. Easy tumbler. One strike. I do dis easy." He grabbed Tahngarth's horn and shoved it into the keyhole. The minotaur overbalanced, his head ramming against the bars.
Hanna and Gerrard wisely retreated.
Tahngarth steadied himself and was about to protest when a cascade of fist-sized stones fell from the ceiling, pummeling his shoulder blades. He was going to be very deadly when he got out of this.
Squee twisted the minotaur's horn. It shrieked pitiably in the metal encasement. The goblin switched his handhold. His wrist twisted.
"No good. Angle all wrong. Maybe we break off dis horn!"
"Maybe we break off dis goblin!" Tahngarth roared.
Squee was too busy clinging to the bars and rattling the horn in the keyhole to notice he was in mortal peril. Exasperated, he squeezed his way through the bars.
"Squee try this from outside."
He braced his feet on the outside of the cell door and yanked on Tahngarth's horns, ramming the bull-man's head again into the bars.
"Squee! Squee! Stop!" Tahngarth bellowed.
"Squee almost got it!" shouted back the goblin.
"You've got it already, you imbecile! You're outside the cell! Grab the keys!"
"Wuh-?"
"From the dead guard! Grab the keys!"
Releasing the minotaur's horn, Squee dropped his webby feet to the cold stone floor. He brushed off his hands, frowned, and shrugged.
"Well, if you think it'll be quicker-"
"Get the keys!" the Weatherlight crew shouted in unison.
Squee cringed beneath the auditory assault and retreated to the body sprawled beyond. Deft hands won the key ring free of tangled clothes. Squee brought them back to the door. Griping under his breath, he fitted key after key into the slot.
"Dis just cuts it. Squee save your butts in Mercadia ten hundred times, and now he save your butts here, and all you say is 'Get dose keys, Squee! Get dose keys!' "
A loud boom sounded above, and a small landslide swept down the stairway, burying the guard.
Gerrard watched feverishly from the other side of the cell door. Quietly, he advised, "You'd better hurry, Squee."
" 'Hurry up, Squee! Hurry up, Squee!' " the goblin groused.
Down that landslide ambled inhuman creatures. They had claws the size of butcher knives and serpent-slitted eyes. They climbed over the body of the dead guardsman and charged the cell door.
"Hurry up, Squee!" the goblin told himself. "Hurry up, Squee!"
The lock clicked. Squee hauled on the door, yanking it open. He rode the swinging bars back, keeping the door between him and the charging Phyrexians.
Tahngarth followed the door out. He burst from the cell with a full-fledged roar. It echoed through the trembling chamber as though the brig itself screamed.
At that sound, even the Phyrexians faltered. They paused in their charge, glimpsing a great mass of muscle headed their way.
Tahngarth barreled into the front two Phyrexians. Horns that had been twisted in a Rathi torture chamber caught and gored their first monstrous victims. Golden oilblood rained from the beasts as Tahngarth lifted them to the ceiling. He shook his head. The horns eviscerated the monsters. Guts tumbled out on either side of the minotaur. Like impaled bugs, the Phyrexians writhed on his horns. A brace of their comrades charged Tahngarth. He hurled the dying beasts from his horns, toppling the others.
Gerrard and Sisay rushed from the cell to the minotaur's side. Sisay clenched her teeth in fury.
"What do we use for weapons?"
Gerrard demonstrated with a roundhouse. Knuckles impacted a Phyrexian jaw, just between a pair of venomous horns. The bone beneath cracked. The beast reeled and dropped like a plank. Grinning, Gerrard blew across his knuckles.
"These, I guess."
Nodding philosophically, Sisay ducked the swiping claws of another beast. She kicked out, breaking its leg at the knee. Four Phyrexians were down, but dozens more flooded down the stairwell.
"We're done for, you know?" she said blandly as she stomped the head of the creature she had just felled.
Before he could respond, Gerrard drove the nose of one beast into its brain. He peeled the thing's claws from his own bleeding throat.
"I know."
Tsabo Tavoc trembled in delight as she strode through the shattered outer wall of Benalia City. Dead citizens lay everywhere. Only a few had been fed on yet. Most lay with wide-open eyes and mouths frozen in final screams. Tsabo Tavoc had heard those screams through the ears of her children. She had tasted the blood of this one, and that. It was as though she herself had killed them all. Even now, more murderous moments flowed over her, as bracing as the waters of a cool stream. Tsabo Tavoc trembled. There was such an ecstasy in the harvest.
A herd of bloodstocks bounded eagerly through the breach in the wall. They passed among her legs. Tsabo Tavoc was delighted at the touch of her children. She watched the bloodstocks converge on Benalish soldiers. The humans set their pikes for the charge, but these were not horses with hollow chests. The blood-stocks ran full speed onto the pikes. Metal heads struck wedge-shaped stemums, cut along broad ribs, and slid ineffectually out the severed pectoral muscles. Such injuries maimed one arm, but bloodstocks had three others. With them they ripped apart the pike men. It was a glorious sight-a red fountain bursting into being in the cobbled square.
Ah, what ecstasy there was in the harvest! Tsabo Tavoc drew a deep breath.
Perhaps the sweetest triumph of the day had been capturing the flying ship Weatherlight. Any Phyrexian would have recognized that queer little war machine. It had caused havoc on Rath. It had destroyed the Phyrexian fleet on Mercadia. All Phyrexians recognized the ship if only as the laughably puny creation of Urza Planeswalker. It was merely a wasp-small and ludicrously vicious but capable of delivering a painful sting.
Not today. The ship's crew was gone. It had been guarded only by Benalish soldiers. They were dead now, replaced by Phyrexians. Every chamber of the ship had been searched. Where was the crew?
Something sad touched her: the piquancy of loss. It came from there, from the ruined infirmary. It seemed a place of victory. A ray cannon had ripped the roof off. One brick wall was blown out. Bunks lay overturned. Between them were red fragments of bone where the inhabitants had fed scuta. Even Capashen Chief Rad-deus and his wife Leda had been surprised there, visiting the ill. They were gibbeted high enough that the bloodstocks could bite off only a toe or two. Above ground was victory.