There was only one hope-to sink to the bottom and walk themselves out.
"Submerge," Agnate commanded, "and stride for shore!"
For some, it was too late. Their heads were covered.
Agnate drew his last breath, closed his eyes, and drove himself into the sucking ground. Hands sculled against the thick grains. His feet plunged deeper. Cold and slick, the sands closed over him. Black ground gripped him and pulled him down.
Any moment now there would be solid rock, or mud thick enough to shove against, or something other than this cold, entombing stuff.
Any moment.
Agnate sank in silence and chill. He wondered if this was what it felt like to die. Most mortals believed their souls rose to some airy otherworld, but Metathran had no souls. Their bodies were their all, and their bodies sank. Perhaps this was what Thaddeus had felt in the moment of death. Perhaps Agnate even now was dying.
The air in his chest was hot. It swelled in his lungs as though they would burst.
Agnate's foot caught on something hard. It seemed a stick, or club-long and slippery. Kicking, Agnate felt more of them- not sticks but bones.
This quicksand had eaten armies before, countless times. Agnate and his troops were only the latest additions to a warrior's graveyard.
Agnate caught a foothold and pushed. The bones shifted. He slipped. His other boot drove against a skull. It was no good. The sand was too thick, the current too strong.
Agnate felt shame for having led his people here to die. Shame meant he had given up.
A hand grasped his leg. There was no flesh on that grip, only bone-powerful, implacable bone.
This was some lich lord's bone yard, his recruiting ground for an undead army. Agnate had not only slain his fellow warriors but had enlisted them to fight for evil.
Another hand grasped his leg, and another. They were all around him, these skeletal creatures. He struggled to break free, but bone and sand were allied. They clutched his arms, his sides, his neck, his skull. Agnate was dead. There was no point struggling. Death had won. Its literal hands would drag him down.
Agnate released the hot breath he had held. It slid away in blind bubbles through the thick sand. Yes. He was dead.
Except that the skeletal hands lifted him through the flood. They bore him upward in the wake of his own fleeing breath. Sand streamed away. In moments, he broke the boiling surface.
Through lips limned in his own blood, Agnate raked in a grateful breath.
Everywhere his army emerged, lifted on undead hands. Some Metathran were borne aloft by skeletal warriors. Others were clutched in the grip of ghouls. Still more were lifted by empty-eyed zombies, or insubstantial specters, or shambling mounds of rotting flesh. These strange benefactors shoved Metathran heads above the sand and bore blue warriors toward the far shore.
Agnate was numb. He had already given up life. He should have been dead. Normally a Metathran would shrink from the corrupting touch of these monsters, but who shrinks from the touch of salvation?
Metathran and undead, the army surged toward shore. There, the Phyrexians waited.
"Prepare for battle!" Agnate croaked hoarsely.
He had lost his powerstone pike in the struggle, but he still carried his battle-axe. Lifting it from the quicksand, he hefted it overhead. His command had been purposely ambiguous. Agnate himself was uncertain whether to use his axe on undead or Phyrexians.
Sand fell in wet clumps from Agnate. It clung a moment longer within the ribs and pelvises of the skeletons. Bony feet splashed through ankle-deep quicksand.
With a roar, Agnate twisted out of their grip. Cold bones slid from hot flesh. Landing on his feet, the Metathran commander flung a pair of skeletons away. They lost hold of his sodden armor and fell sideways. He swung his axe high to drive them back.
He needn't have. The skeletons had not paused in their clattering march. They ran out of the quicksand and leaped with savage fury on the Phyrexians. Finger bones gouged out compound eyes. Rusted swords cracked against sagittal crests. The warriors of old fought fiercely in defense of their island, of their world.
Agnate could only stare after them in stupefied amazement. All around, his soldiers stood in the shallows and watched as zombies ripped apart Phyrexians. Blinking sand from his eyes, Agnate swallowed hard.
This strange circumstance smelled of Urza. Who else would ally the living with the dead?
Lifting his battle-axe, Agnate shouted, "Charge!" On leaden legs, he drove himself forward, to the defense of his undead saviors.
Metathran warriors were nothing if not obedient. They joined the charge.
Straight before Agnate, a zombie clambered atop a Phyrexian trooper, lashing it with powerful but sloppy blows of putrid flesh. The Phyrexian's horns pierced rotting muscle. Chunks of meat hung on the spikes. Keeping its head down, the Phyrexian ripped the gut out of its attacker.
Agnate's axe sang in the air. Steel chopped through the Phyrexian's subcutaneous armor, through its chest, through its heart. Sliced nearly in two, the monster went down. It dragged the zombie with it. Side by side, they struck the sand.
A zombie can fight without its viscera. It pulled itself from the impaling horns and greedily dragged the severed corpse back toward the quicksand. It hurled the body into the deeps. The current dragged it down. In days, perhaps hours, the dead Phyrexian would rise from the sand too, a new member of the shambling army.
Agnate laughed. It was not the victorious laugh that he had voiced so often in battle. It was a more human sound- a recognition of absurdity.
An angry grin spread across his face. He whirled to slay another Phyrexian. His axe hewed as if through firewood. It was fascinating to watch the way they came to pieces. Each chop sent power up the haft of his axe and into his arms. It was as though he harvested the souls of his victims.
Suddenly, there were no more Phyrexians to kill. In a fever fight, Agnate, his troops, and their undead allies had slain them all. Even now, ghouls dutifully dragged dead Phyrexians into the sandy slough.
Setting the head of his axe on the oily ground, Agnate leaned on it and laughed. He could feel the eyes of his warriors on him, but he didn't care. Their shock made it only funnier. Agnate wiped gritty tears from his eyes.
Shaking his head, he muttered, "What has happened to me?"
"You have gained a new ally," answered an ancient and craggy voice.
Agnate raised his eyes to see a tall, strong figure in ornate robes. Within sleeves of embroidered silk, the man's powerful arms spread in a regal, welcoming gesture. Above an upturned collar rose a stout neck and a rugged face. The smile on the man's lips seemed almost boyish, and a fragile light shone in his deep-set eyes. Gray hair stood in an unkempt halo around his temples. So friendly, so familiar was that visage that Agnate at first did not realize the man's flesh was mummified.
"I am Lord Dralnu," he said, bowing deeply. "I command these folk who have saved you. I invite you and your men to celebrate our new alliance in the halls of my palace."
In stunned respect, Agnate bowing his head. A lich lord? He was allied now to a lich lord?
Worst of all, Lord Dralnu looked like Thaddeus, back from the dead.
Chapter 10
Eladamri and Liin Sivi rode great mountain yaks up a long, rocky ascent. Colos, these beasts were called- huge, shaggy rams. They were powerful mounts and utterly surefooted. Eladamri was glad. He and his Skyshroud commanders climbed a cliff face beside a gigantic glacier.
They did not ride alone. The leaders of Keld rode with them. As strange as the colos were, the Keldons were even stranger. Massive and gray skinned, the average warlord towered an easy foot above Eladamri. Savage helms and breastplates in rust red covered tattooed flesh that was tougher still. Scars crisscrossed their flesh. Among the Keldons, a missing ear and a split lip were beauty marks.