Brushing her hands, Hanna retrieved her fallen blade and said, "I'm in."
"Excellent," Gerrard replied. The twenty-some guards had all been felled one way or another, none having suffered a worse setback than a concussion. Warden Benbow still lay on the desk top, struggling to free himself.
"I do hope you recover quickly, Warden. We could use you out there," Gerrard said, leaping down from the desk. He smiled, gesturing to his crew. "Let's go. We have an army to liberate."
Through the door they filed. Tahngarth led, a naked blade before him. He'd not used it in the battle so far and had no intention of killing with it, but a minotaur with a sword does wonders for inspiring the human sense of selfpreservation. Next in line was Squee, whose own sense of self-preservation attracted him to such a defender. Hanna was third, guiding the blind seer. Hanna's other hand twitched as though she wished she still had the coatrack. Gerrard brought up the rear. He dragged a chair after him, closed the door to the stationhouse, and propped the chair beneath the doorknob.
"That ought to keep them."
"Gerrard," came Hanna's tremulous voice ahead. "Gerrard!"
He glanced up, seeing her pull a bloody hand away from her side. Gerrard rushed to her.
"One of those bastards get you?"
Turning toward him, she said, "No." She dragged the crimson tunic up from her side. "This is that wound. That one from the shrapnel in Rath."
Gerrard knelt beside her. "You said it was only a scratch!" Hanna blushed. "It was a little more. Orim cleaned it and dressed it on the way here. Healing magic didn't work…" She glanced beneath the blood-soaked bandage. The wound beneath was necrotic. Blood flowed from its center, but the skin and muscle around it were turning black. Fingers of corruption reached out from the spot.
"It is the Phyrexian plague," said the blind seer bleakly. "There is no cure."
Hanna's eyes darkened. She looked from the old man to Gerrard.
Giving a smile he did not feel, Gerrard said, "You may know a lot, old man, but you don't know Orim. She'll find a cure. In the meantime, let's stanch that blood flow." He knelt, ripping the sleeve from his commander's jacket. "Damned thing was too small anyway."
While he tended Hanna's wound, Tahngarth continued down the corridor to the first cell.
The inmate there had heard his approach and was cursing at what he expected to be another guard. When he caught sight of the massive bull-man and his keen sword, the inmate scrambled back from the bars.
He gabbled, "What in the Nine Spheres are you-?"
"Shut up," Tahngarth advised. The man complied. "If you vow to fight for us, we will release you from your cell."
"Wh-what if I want to stay here?" the man asked.
"You'll probably be killed when the prison is overrun."
"Overrun? By whom?"
"By Phyrexia."
The thing about vows is this: Honest men don't need to swear them, and dishonest men don't hesitate to swear them. Of course, Tahngarth would not have realized this. A dishonest minotaur was an oxymoron-or at least a moronic ox. It understandably surprised Tahngarth when the first five hundred prisoners liberated by Gerrard rebelled against him.
The crew were crossing the main yard when the liberated prisoners mobbed them. Though Gerrard and his command crew had been a match for twenty guards, they were not a match for five hundred warriors. These particular warriors gave a new definition to the term "irregulars." Many were inhuman-hulking things that looked like animate rocks, half-lizard men armored in the bones of victims, minotaurs with shorn horns and peg legs. Human, elf, dwarf… prison had molded them all into a single species-killers. In moments, the crew was overwhelmed, their weapons stripped. No one was injured in the brief struggle- Tahngarth was too stunned to fight, and Gerrard was too accustomed to ironic reversal.
With rough chants, the liberated prisoners escorted their liberators to the central guard tower in the yard. They drove them up the stairs that ascended the tall framework of beams. The nearest prisoners used the crewmembers' own weapons against them. Those farther out wielded whatever came to hand-chains, pipes, broken bottles, splintered boards… Disarmed and shackled, Gerrard and his crew climbed the switchback stairway. Defeat replaced victory on their faces.
They staggered, one by one, through the hatchway at the top of the stairs and onto a ten-by-ten-foot covered platform above. No sooner was Gerrard through the hatch than it slammed shut, and a bar slid into place.
Though Gerrard had gotten a bloody lip for his attempts to explain, he staggered to the guard tower window for another try.
"Listen to me! Listen!" he shouted to the chanting prisoners. "We have freed you! Why do you fight us? We are the same. It doesn't matter what you once did. Even treason! Even murder! Whatever wrong landed you here, it is nothing compared to the wrongs of our true foes. I revoke your sentences! You must revoke ours! I return your freedom! Return ours! Together we will fight the true enemy. Together we will fight Phyrexia!"
As Gerrard spoke, the chanting ceased, and the crowd grew slowly quiet. By the time his last words rolled out, a fearful hush filled the courtyard.
It was so quiet, the crew could hear a single man among the prisoners when he said, "Let them out of there."
Wide-eyed nods came from the prisoners, gaping upward. One man hurried up the switchback stairs to unbar the hatch.
Gerrard smiled incredulously and turned to his comrades. "I'd never really thought of myself as an orator, but this time I… I guess I got their attention."
Sisay shook her head gravely. "You didn't," she said, pointing skyward. "Someone else did."
There, in the black belly of night, the lights of hundreds of Phyrexian ships made ghastly new constellations.
Chapter 11
The Battle of the Mori Tumulus would decide the fate of Yavimaya. Multani fought beside his people- displaced elf kings, pods of angry sprites, clans of great apes, clutches of giant spiders, and a handful of fire-eyed druids. These last ascended from the volcanic caverns that riddled the rocks beneath the vast tumulus.
Of course the Phyrexians chose to land their invasion fleet along the Mori Tumulus. It was the highest point of Yavimaya.
Its trees rose five hundred feet above their neighbors. The extensive boughs provided landing platforms for Phyrexian cruisers. From those crowns, the Phyrexians could command the canopy and seep downward to dominate the land. It was more than that, though. The Phyrexians were drawn to the Mori Tumulus because it was a scar they themselves had left on the world.
The Mori Tumulus was a break in Yavimaya's millennial bones-a wound struck by the Argoth event. The world-shattering blast Urza had unleashed to destroy the Phyrexians four millennia ago had cracked the continental shelf beneath Yavimaya. It thrust the broken halves against each other. They ground together and rose. The Mori Tumulus mounded up. It formed a threehundred' mile ridge, five hundred feet high. Magnigoths struggled to clutch the rift closed. They straddled it like massive stitches. Still, the rent widened. Once in a while the world poured forth its blood and lymph in lava and steam. Even the green might of Yavimaya could not heal it. Something seethed below.
Of course it drew Phyrexians, as an open sore draws maggots. That's why Multani feared this battle. Here Gaea was weakest of all.
Already Phyrexians had corrupted the crowns. The wound in the world below was mirrored in the treetops three thousand feet above. Here Phyrexian ships clustered, pouring spores down out of the stormy night. Leaf molds and cellulose macrophages turned once-proud heads of green into black rot. Minute mechanical caterpillars ravaged leaves. Metal bugs sank shiny feet into stalks and extracted magnesium, iron, and zinc to use in growing their razor wings. Flocks of battleflies rose to flay armor and skin and muscle from bone. Other machines-spiked treadmills fronted with bear-trap mouths-devoured whatever flesh they found, storing it away for testing inside the cruisers. Phyrexians had a damnable interest in the physiology of their foes.