Churning huge hooves, the beasts drove themselves toward a surface crowded with ice shards. They butted the stuff aside and lifted their heads above the flood.
Shaking water from his hair, Eladamri saw there would be no escape.
The churning sea was surrounded by sheer ice walls. Huge chunks of glacier calved off, crashing into the flood. The dead and the dying were shoved among icebergs in a current that spiraled inward. No longer was there a mound of water at the center of the sea but only a great, sucking blackness. It drew everything down-siege engines and ruined ships and hunks of the shattered Necropolis. It drew everyone. Phyrexian and Keldon and elf…
"Sivi!" Eladamri yelled. Once again, she was right beside him, her mount treading water. He pointed to the whirlpool. "Any ideas?"
"Drive these beasts toward shore."
With a nod, he indicated the ice cliffs. "That's shore, and they'd never make it against this current."
"We've got to try. We've got to stay together."
"Yes," Eladamri said, reaching across to grip her hand. "We've got to stay together."
Chapter 19
Smoke rolled into the black sky over Kaldroom. Even the burning Phyrexian laboratory did not light the darkness. Its glow was sucked away into soot.
Only Weatherlight's ray cannons lit the scene. Docked on the garrison grounds, she hurled fire to the distant hills. The blasts cooked Phyrexians wherever they gathered. Between ship and Phyrexians lay a minotaur army. They were not dead nor truly alive. Their wide-open eyes glowed with cannon fire. The crew of Weatherlight rushed among them like ants. Pairs of workers rolled minotaurs onto litters and carried them up the ship's gangplank. Everyone except the gunners worked-even Multani and Karn and Tahngarth. Multani configured his body into a kind of ambling stretcher. Karn carried a minotaur slung over either shoulder.
Most effective of all was Tahngarth. The minotaur could not be kept in gun traces while his people lay below. He carried a compatriot over either of his massive shoulders and a third draped in his arms. It was a feat made possible only by his Phyrexian physique- a feat performed as penance. Each time Tahngarth approached a warrior, he bowed to the perfect form of his people. Each time he lifted one, he put himself beneath. Each time he laid one on the deck, he rescued a minotaur from Phyrexian transformation.
Sweat matted his forelocks, stung his eyes, and flowed like tears.
Minotaurs filled every space on Weatherlight. They lay like fish spilled from a bursting net.
It was unwise. Weatherlight was torn from stem to stern. Breaches riddled her hull. Her airfoils hung in tatters from folded spars. Heat stresses formed a fine network of cracks along engine manifolds. She was not battle worthy, perhaps not even sky worthy, but even so, she was overloaded with a thousand comatose minotaurs.
Gerrard and Sisay had tried to broach the subject with Tahngarth, but the minotaur wouldn't listen. Tahngarth wasn't just saving his people. He was saving himself.
At last, he hauled the final three minotaurs on board.
"All right, that's it!" Gerrard punctuated the words with a pair of blasts from his ray cannon. Monsters advanced across the garrison grounds. Into his speaking tube, he shouted, "Posts, everyone. Ignite the engines. Prepare for liftoff."
"I'm not sure we can lift off," Sisay said from the helm. "Not this heavy. Not without airfoils. Not without Hanna."
"Yeah," Gerrard responded grimly. He felt the absence of the ship's navigator every day, every moment. "Well, we can't do anything about Hanna or the airfoils. The only other option is-" Gerrard glanced over his shoulder at Tahngarth, who gingerly stepped among his country folk. The look in the minotaur's eyes was both intent and fragile. "The only other option is to planeshift without taking off."
"What?" Sisay asked.
"How far do you need to reach planeshift velocity?" Gerrard asked.
"How far?"
"Yes, how far-skating across the ground on our landing spines-do you need to reach planeshift velocity?"
"I don't know," Sisay replied. "A thousand yards."
From the speaking tube came Karn's voice, metallic and dour, "We have five hundred yards to the garrison wall and three hundred more to the hills beyond."
Gerrard nodded. "We can blast through walls but not hills. You'll have to do it in eight hundred."
"There are Phyrexians in the hills," Sisay pointed out.
"We can blast through them as well," Gerrard said, proving the point by unleashing a barrage that vaporized a charging contingent. "But whatever we do, we've got to do it soon."
"Planeshift where?" Sisay asked. "We'll be destroyed if we return to Urborg."
"Lay in a course for Yavimaya," Multani suggested. "It's the only place where I can heal the ship's hull."
"That'd be a great idea except that we'd be smashed to pieces against the trees. We can't steer the ship."
"No, but I can steer the forest," Multani responded. "Just lay in a planeshift along the Mori Tumulus in the center of Yavimaya. I'll do the rest."
Gerrard smiled grimly. "Now I remember the lesson you taught me, Master Multani."
"And what was that?"
"How to be damned reckless," Gerrard said. "You heard the man, Sisay. Lay in the course."
"It's already done," she replied.
"Karn, full power to the-"
The command was cut off by a massive surge of the engines. Weatherlight grated forward on her landing spines. Metal shrieked across flagstones. The hull shuddered angrily, but Multani surged within every remaining fiber of wood. In moments, Weatherlight ground forward at a horse's gallop. The Phyrexian armies ahead closed in at redoubled speed.
"Tahngarth, clear the way."
Radiance rolled out from Tahngarth's gun and smashed into the black-scaled figures. The front ranks dissolved altogether. Those behind exploded as their oil-blood boiled.
"Guess I should just shut up and fight," Gerrard mused, firing his own cannon.
Together, Gerrard and Tahngarth laved the ground in fire. Still, their incinerating rays could not blast Phyrexians quickly enough. Burning hunks of monster cracked against the landing spines. More bodies struck the keel.
The gunners had more to worry about than bodies. A solid wall approached. The cannons fired a synchronized blast. Red energy smashed into the wall. It cracked outward. Stones crumbled to rock fragments. A second salvo punched a hole through the wall. A third turned the stones molten.
It was enough. It would have to be. Weatherlight rocketed through the gap. Lava splashed before the ship. Her landing spines tore out across grassy ground. Another wall approached ahead- a hillside. There was no blasting it away. Nor could Weatherlight be stopped now. She shot forward like a crossbow quarrel.
"We're not going to make-" Gerrard stopped himself this time as the stony cliff vanished, replaced by the Blind Eternities.
The shrieking was done. The splash of molten rock, the thud of bodies-it all was gone. Weatherlight was bathed in the humming crackle of the world between worlds. She glided in a placid envelope amid spinning energies. Gray light spilled over the strange cargo of warriors.
Gerrard breathed. The whole crew breathed. Never before had they planeshifted without flying. It was a miracle they had survived. It would be a miracle if they survived their landing.
Like a silk veil ripping away, the Blind Eternities crumpled and withdrew. Heat and green replaced it. Trees as tall as mountains and as wide as cities flashed past the ship. The sky was an uneven blue ribbon threaded among treetops. The ground was a rumpled scar-a steaming fault in the world. Enormous roots sought to straddle that broken line, but even magnigoth trees were impotent to close the wound. Weatherlight flew along the fault.