"How will I fight unless you are with me?" he whispered, kissing her lightly. Her lips were as dry as paper. "What will I fight for?"
Hanna was more than his beloved. She was his heart, his courage. He fought for her. Before she entered his life, Gerrard had been a bitter young man. If he lost her now, what was he? There would be nothing left but fury. There would be no difference between Gerrard and the Phyrexians.
"Oh how I will slay them," Gerrard said bitterly as he clutched Hanna's skeletal hand. "I will be my own plague. I will rot them away. I've had enough of portal wars and serums. I want a fight, a real fight. I want teeth against knuckles and broken noses and knives in the eyes."
"I have a fight for you," came an elderly voice at the sick bay door. The blind seer hobbled slowly into the chamber. "Not I, but Dominaria. You have lost Benalia, and saved Llanowar. Now there is Koilos."
"Koilos? A hole in the desert," Gerrard hissed.
The old man shrugged. "More than that. At Koilos the Phyrexians were first driven from the world. At Koilos they first returned in the time of Urza. Now, it is their only land portal. If that hole in the desert is lost, all is lost."
Gerrard shook his head bleakly, gazing at Hanna. "All is lost."
"Grief can wait," the old man replied. "Koilos cannot. The Metathran have been beaten back. One of their commanders is captured and near death. They need you and your ship. They need the Benalish air fleet, the prison brigade, elf shock troops, and their leader Eladamri."
"Eladamri?" Gerrard blurted. "He has a nation to rebuild. He won't go."
The blind seer sighed. He eased himself to sit on a bunk. "He will go. Saviors are not builders. The heir to Staprion wishes that he go. No, Eladamri's work is done here but not so at Koilos. He and his elite warriors will go. Multani, too, will go.
"Multani!"
"He was present for the birth of this living ship. He provided her hull from the Heart of Yavimaya. He goes with us, in the very wood of Weatherlight. He will heal her every wound. In some senses, this is his ship." The old sage lifted an eyebrow. "In some senses, you are his as well. Multani trained you. He wants to see how his old student does. You cannot blame your masters for taking an interest in your doings."
"My doings?" Gerrard echoed.
"Yes. Your doings. Koilos is your fight, Gerrard."
Gerrard stared down at the dying form of his beloved. "Of course. It's a fight Hanna would approve." His mouth flattened into a bitter line. "And, besides, at Koilos there are plenty of Phyrexians to kill."
Chapter 29
Weatherlight topped a ridge of sand above the plains of Koilos and soared down the far slope. Gerrard's gunnery harness held him in place as the deck dropped out beneath him. "There are the buggers," he growled. Ahead and for miles to the horizon camped Phyrexian troops.
"Attack formation!" Gerrard shouted into the speaking tube. "Signal the fleet. Strafe the troops. Ray cannons, plasma jets, goblin bombs. Kill 'em with whatever you've got. Let's let them know Benalia's revenge has arrived."
A cheer rose from the prison brigade. They crowded the decks, elven bows clutched in their eager hands. Among them were Steal Leaf troops. Their leader, Eladamri, stood at the prow. He lifted high his longbow, nocked a flaming arrow, and sent the shaft streaking away. It raced ahead of Weatherlight and sank among the Phyrexian troops. The shaft cracked through black scale. It punched into oilblood. The creature ignited, blazing blue. Elves and prisoners whooped excitedly.
"Fire!" Gerrard shouted. "Fire!"
All along the decks, elves and men drew arrows from pots of burning pitch. They set notch to string and loosed. From Weather-light, rings of fire spread. Where those flaming waves touched ground, Phyrexians blazed and flared and exploded.
Gerrard unleashed his own fire. Red-hot bursts of energy leaped from the barrel of his ray cannon. They stabbed faster than arrows. The bolts ripped through monsters and their sleeping sties, tore apart trench worms, blasted through pens of live food. From Tahngarth's gun, another bolt roared. It cut a parallel trough to Gerrard's attack. Each line of energy felled hundreds of Phyrexians, but there were hundreds of thousands.
Benalish assault ships dropped down to Weatherlight's beam. They loosed their own arsenals, not as flashy, but in their own way deadly enough. From the stem hatches of round-bellied bombers, gray goblin bombs rolled. They dropped in twisted lines. Smoke barked up where they struck. Chunks of scale and bone tumbled through the mounded smoke. Hoppers jagged like serpents' teeth above the armies. Their quarrels pelted down in a deadly hail.
Gerrard loosed another volley of ray cannon fire. He gazed appreciatively at the broad line of destruction that his armada cut through the Phyrexian hordes.
"They've got no airships. It's like shooting fish in a barrel!"
He spoke too soon. The beasts might not have airships, but they had brought cannons. Fire spat from entrenched batteries. Crimson and black, rays roared skyward.
One bolt struck a falling stream of goblin bombs. It ignited them. In midair, they detonated. Each new explosion triggered a second and third. Like a fuse, the line of bombs carried their explosions up toward the stem of the bomber. Shrapnel tore into the fuselage. The detonations went to completion. A white blaze erupted around the ship. A thousand explosions roared out. Hunks of ship cascaded down.
Another beam rippled through a line of fighters. One after another, they flew into the radiance and were cloven in two. Halves spiraled down in fiery wreckage.
A third bolt-this placed best of all-smashed into Weatherlight's port airfoil. The spars lit with fire. The canvas flashed away to nothing. Weatherlight listed hard to port and began to roll over.
"Take her up!" Gerrard cried even as his latest shot raked the enemy lines.
"I know! I know!" Sisay shouted back through the speaking tube.
The starboard airfoil slapped closed, and the ship's engines roared. Weatherlight lolled upright and rocketed heavenward.
"Signal the fleet! Break off the assault!" Gerrard ordered. He braced himself against the hot casing of the gun. Weatherlight jigged up through a rack of clouds. "Rendezvous at the Metathran camp. Land and repair!"
He had breath for little more. The ship ascended like a comet. Gerrard and his crew and their fugitive armies held tight to the meteoric craft. It vaulted just ahead of the cannon fire, outpacing killing heads of flame. The Benalish armada straggled upward in the great ship's wake.
In canyons of concealing cloud, Weatherlight leveled out. Gerrard gave a gusty sigh.
"Let's hope for a better reception from the Metathran."
Within his tent, Commander Agnate stared bleakly at the tactical maps of Koilos. They lay in a sloppy stack across his field table. Once, they had been neatly stored, each in its own tube. Once, Thaddeus and Agnate had strolled their compasses easily across lines of topography. Now, the maps bore the fretful, fruitless scribbles of a commander in a hopeless engagement.
Agnate was trapped. His forces had been winnowed horribly by the last, disastrous assault. Fifty thousand Metathran had marched into battle behind him, and twenty thousand had fled. They had made camp here, twenty miles beyond the caves-out of reach of the monsters. Members of Thaddeus's army slowly joined them. The field was lost. The Metathran were in full rout. Thaddeus's force was equally reduced. Thirty thousand of them remained, but they had lost their commander.