"No, no, no," Gerrard replied, backing away from the cannon. "I was just standing here."
Squee advanced a step. "Maybe he think Squee not well enough to shoot. Maybe he afraid more bad guys sneak up his butt."
"Look! Look! They're all gone. There's nobody here. I was just standing near the gun. It's yours. Fine. Take it back. I don't need it."
"Yes, you do," came a voice out of nowhere. "Greven left one soldier behind."
Invisible arms clamped tightly around Gerrard, and then turned visible-Phyrexian arms. Their grip was implacable.
They pinned his weapon in place. Gerrard thrashed his head to see who had grabbed him, but he could not even turn.
Squee lunged toward them. "Ertai!"
With a thought, the wizard who had once served on Weatherlight disappeared from the stern castle, taking Gerrard and Squee with him.
Chapter 28
Never before had the armies of Keld retreated. When overmatched, Keldon warlords descended bravely into death, grinding away at their foes all the while. Any adversary who would dominate the Keldons would pay for victory in blood, oceans of it. Superior forces often surrendered to Keld for this very reason. The wisest enemies avoided war altogether, knowing they would face an all-out and endless battle. This adversary was no rival nation. Who can battle a glacier? Who can war with a volcano? Who can stand against the coming of Twilight, the night of wrath?
The Keldons had stood as long as they could. Here was the culmination of history. Millennia of battles since the descent from Parma had led to this moment, this blasphemous moment. Twilight had come. The honored dead of Keld had returned to life. They had emerged from the Necropolis only to join armies of Phyrexians. Dead Keldons had slaughtered live ones. Keldon history had bowed in service to a foreign god. Still, living Keldons had battled bravely on.
Then the very world turned on them.
Beneath the army's feet, ice turned to water. Around their shoulders, water turned to steam. The Keldons in their hundreds of thousands descended through ice and fire into the heart of the world.
Only a single scant legion escaped. They had been farthest out from the fighting-young camp runners and old warriors cursed to survive their battle careers. All of them fled. There was no honor in this retreat, but there was less honor in letting the flood claim them. Keld needed warriors, even if they be only whelps and curs.
Across disintegrating ice, the army retreated. Their colos leaped over widening crevasses. Infantry splashed through new warm streams. Warriors struggled to navigate the calving ice cliffs. They rushed toward the black basalt mountain on one side of the terminal glacier. Even when they reached that rock-solid ground, it too shuddered under them. It was as if the fire gods below pounded the over world with massive hammers.
Now the survivors of the Battle of Twilight camped on a chill ridge of black stone. It was a defensible spot-no Keldon would camp anywhere else-though no Phyrexian foe remained. Alt had died in the world conflagration. The only foe was the flood itself.
At first, the towering terminus had sprouted countless jets across its surface. Water that had fought through twisted passages shot in straight lines from the glacier. Pressurized streams widened and joined. Centuries of centuries of water burst out into a gray river. Enormous hunks of ice bounded free. They bobbed through deeper stretches and rolled among rapids. The serpent of Twilight muscled its way toward the sea.
The flesh of that serpent was filled with bodies. Keldon, Phyrexian, elf, colos all tumbled in a confused mass. The wurm had swallowed them. A Phyrexian's spikes impaled a Keldon's back, and the two bodies formed a new creature. An elf was tangled in the reins of his colos, and with six legs and two arms and two heads, they floated together.
Dead fingers clung to shattered rams and hunks of mast. In places, the bodies had gathered in a ghastly Sargasso.
The Keldon survivors looked down with solemn despair. These dead were the finest warriors in the land, slain not by swords but by fire and ice. Every camp runner and warlord felt instinctually that he should have tumbled in that flood with them.
They did their best to make amends. Warriors stood at the edge of the flood and reached in with polearms to snag whatever soldiers they could. They lifted Keldons and elves out and laid them in orderly rows below the camp. They dragged Phyrexians free and tossed them into bonfires. Even so, most of the corpses were out of reach, even out of sight, schooling along beneath the waves. For every body they hauled from the river, fifty others bobbed past. Even so, the dead below the camp outnumbered the living in it.
"There will have to be a new Necropolis," said camp runner Stokken to himself.
Doyen Lairsen stood nearby, watching the awful tide. His plaited hair and beard were pitted with soot where smoke sticks had burned to their nubs. ' "Why? What is the point?"
The young man was startled by his doyen's jaded assessment. "To honor the dead, of course. To renew our hopes for Twilight-"
"Twilight has come and gone," snapped Doyen Lairsen. His hands gripped the hilts of his brutal swords. "It has turned daylight to darkness. What is the point in hoping for another Twilight?"
Blinking incredulously, Stokken said, "The fire of Keld has burned brightly throughout the day. How much more must we stoke it to make it last the night?"
"Youth!" Lairsen spat angrily. The word was a curse. "Hope is the delusion of the young."
In a low voice, Stokken murmured, "And despair is the delusion of the old."
"What was that!" Lairsen barked, drawing steel. A moment later, the sword was returned to its sheath, and blood wept from a long gash on Stokken's face. The slash was so quick, the sword so sharp, that Stokken did not even feel the attack until his neck grew warm. Doyen Lairsen repeated, "What was that?"
Stokken bowed deeply, dropping to one knee. "I have spoken out of turn, Doyen. Forgive me. I was not responsible for my words, deluded, as I was, by hope."
Lairsen's brow furrowed. The implication was clear- the doyen had done himself a dishonor by striking a deluded man. Still, if he admitted Stokken was not deluded, the doyen would have lost the previous argument. This young man bore watching.
"A delusional man should not bear a sword. Surrender yours to me." Doyen Lairsen smiled, knowing he had won.
Stokken was wise enough not to resist. Even a word at this juncture could be construed as a refusal, as grounds for summary execution. He slowly slid his sword from his shoulder harness.
Receiving the blade, Doyen Lairsen gritted his teeth viciously. "Next you will be seeing visions-the army resurrected beneath a midnight sun-" The grin melted from his face, replaced by a strange golden glow.
Stokken studied his doyen's scarred face some moments before turning to gaze where he did. Forgetting his penance, Stokken rose to stare.
Aback the gray serpent of Twilight rode a dreaming thing. Its hull gleamed golden. Its masts were full-rigged in white-bellied sails. It was queer and glorious and unbelievable, the Golden Argosy from the Necropolis.
Could it be that the ship had tumbled with the rest of the destroyed citadel? Could it be that like its people, the ship had been dragged into the boiling maelstrom? It seemed impossible that the Golden Argosy could ride now, whole and beaming upon the serpentine tides. And who did she bear upon her crowded decks?
"What is this delusion?" Doyen Lairsen wondered aloud before he could stop himself.
"Hope," breathed camp runner Stokken, taking back his sword. "That delusion is hope."
Eladamri had never seen so beautiful a sky. After three days in the bowels of a glacier, any sky would have been splendid. But this boreal blue, with its ranges of cloud above a tossing sea, this was magnificent. Its glory was second only to that of the Golden Argosy herself.