Grizzlegom's hackles rose. "It sounds as though you have found your assassins."
"Two of them, but the axe that slew Agnate was nowhere to be found. There must have been a third."
The Metathran gazed at the axe.
Grizzlegom gritted his teeth. "You mean an axe like this?" He drew the weapon with a sudden, angry movement. "A minotaur's axe, with a broad enough curve to cleave a man from pate to throat?"
The lich lord warily watched the blade. "Yes. That sort of blade exactly."
Grizzlegom continued. "Good. Means and opportunity link me to the death of Commander Agnate. Perhaps even witnesses, for you have the power to question the dead."
"I am questioning you, Commander Grizzlegom."
"All that remains is motive, yes? Motive is what makes a killing an assassination or a murder or the normal course of war-or perhaps even a matter of honor."
"There was no honor in this killing. You slew him in order to take command of his troops," the lich lord hissed.
"Are those my motives or yours?" Grizzlegom asked, studying the notched blade. "Your gangrene slew him, not my axe." "You have as much as admitted your guilt." "As have you!" the minotaur retorted. "But we argue because we each need these men-Agnate's men. They are our judges. Let them judge. Let them strip away our arms. Let them shackle us in iron-for even a lich lord cannot escape iron. Let them hood our heads, and once we are incapable of striking back, let them choose which they believe and which they kill."
Through rictus lips, the lich lord said, "Why should I submit to such a disgraceful act?"
"If you speak the truth, you have nothing to fear." "I speak the truth. It was your axe that slew the commander." Grizzlegom dropped his axe. It clattered to the ground beside General Rilgesh's own weapons. He drew his arms behind him, presenting them for the shackles.
Simultaneously, Dralnu drew the gauntlets from his emaciated hands and positioned them at his back.
The iron bands locked simultaneously in place. The two commanders were turned to face one another. Hatred sparked between them.
"These warriors are honorable," Dralnu said. "They will not believe the murderer of Agnate." "That is my hope."
Thick woven silk descended over their heads. It wrapped them tightly in blackness. Though he could see nothing, Grizzlegom could hear the guard captain's sword grate from its sheath. Metal clanged as the general retrieved his blade from the floor. One of the Metathran positioned himself behind Dralnu, and the other behind Grizzlegom.
The lich lord whispered, "Fool, they will kill us both, but I am lord of the dead."
Steel whirled. It sliced through silk and skin and skull and brain. A second blade crashed down atop an armored breastplate, shattering the stones inset there. Lich Lord Dralnu had not even struck the ground before his black heart was impaled.
Shaking the wrap from his head, Grizzlegom joined his horns to the gruesome work. Each shattered crystal blazed with searing fire. The lich's sacklike belly held a score of them. They spilled out on the ground like obscene eggs. Dralnu had hoped to hatch himself again and again and again.
When the first rays of sunlight raked across the undead that morning, they knew their master was gone. Without Dralnu, sunlight was a searing thing. In camp, a trump heralded the dawn.
Like minions of that hated morn, Metathran and minotaurs charged suddenly from their tents, their eyes ablaze.
The undead fled. They wished for pits and grottoes and sloughs, but here on the volcano there were none. There was only the beaming sun and the cold blue of Metathran steel and the hot red of minotaur eyes. Commander Grizzlegom led the charge.
The living betrayed the dead. They fought with vicious fury. They sent their onetime colleagues down to the second death.
Chapter 30
The Steam Beast was a crude nightmare, ten times the size of a titan engine. Driven by coal and oil, it streamed soot from a thousand knobby joints. Pistons shot explosively from pressure chambers. Drive shafts propelled the monster on six enormous legs. Its central body was a framework packed with hissing boilers. Foot-thick armor guarded the power plants from attack. The beast had no head but shoulders that sported hundreds of reaching arms. Each was tipped in huge titanium shears. Each could dart from the beast to rip apart whatever challenged it.
Urza and his five remaining titans-Taysir, Freyalise, Bo Levar, Windgrace, and Guff-challenged it. They seemed badgers before a bear, except that this bear had hundreds of arms.
Rockets blazed from Urza's wrists. They shot toward the beast, cracked off its armor, and spiraled away. Trailing gray smoke, the rockets rose into the murk of Phyrexia's fourth sphere. One by one, they impacted the pipe-lined ceiling and exploded. Oil and fire rained down.
The Steam Beast's shears lashed out. Blades gnawed one leg of Urza's titan engine and cut through its power conduit.
Growling, Urza invoked a distortion field. Blue magic crackled from his fingertips to trace along the nearest shears. Energy mapped them, lines on a schematic. Urza twisted the lines. Metal shrieked and bent. Blades ground against each other. Joints failed. Bolts popped. A dozen metal arms clattered to the ground.
Still, there were hundreds more. Shears etched scars on Commodore Guff's piloting bulb. They worried Taysir's powerstones. They gripped Lord Windgrace's foreleg.
Urza planeswalked from the battleground and instantly reappeared. His titan feet came down on the back of the Steam Beast.
The iron armor was soot black and slick with oil. Urza's engine lost its footing. He slipped and fell to one knee. The fall saved him, for scores of scissor-tipped arms snapped overhead.
Urza rammed one fist down into the superstructure. Boilers crowded below, organs in the monster's torso. Blistering heat peeled from them. Urza spread his mechanical fingers. Sorceries sprang from the ends of them and fanned out through the beast. The spells struck adjacent boilers and bored through their thick metal. Steam shot angrily from each hole, and then fire. Metal bounded out, swelling before breaking.
Urza yanked his arm back as shrapnel flew. He crouched upon the greasy back plate, saved a second time. Hurtling hunks of boiler rang the armor like a gong. Anything within the beast's torso was doomed.
Shrapnel penetrated adjacent boilers, setting off a chain reaction. The beast rattled and boomed. Its arms trembled and went slack. Creaking, it tipped forward and collapsed to the ground. Steam poured in a storm cloud from it.
Urza rode the beast to ground. Once it was still, he caught his breath and stood, wreathed in mist. It parted, showing him to the other five titans. They stared in amazement.
There will be more, Urza told them. His mind worked to fuse the severed conduits in his leg. Make what repairs you
can immediately, and then fan out around the vat yards. Watch for dragon engines. I will meanwhile plant the last soul bomb in the reactor at its center.
Bo Levar snorted, flinging away the arm that had almost shattered his helm, Great. I'm sick of this place. What's the fifth sphere like?
Huffing in his pilot bulb, Commodore Guff paged through a book. A nasty sphere, by all accounts.
Shocking! replied Bo Levar in imitation of the commodore.
Ignoring him, Guff said, A great sea of boiling oil, thickening below to sludge and then to rock. The firmament is more pipe work, with large ports that suck.
The sky sucks, the ground sucks… sounds like all the other spheres, Bo Levar griped.