Hauling the gory tip out, the minotaur staggered back. A gargantua loomed before him. The thing stood on a pair of huge, clawed legs. Massive arms reached for Grizzlegom. An enormous claw knocked his striva away. The other closed over him and lifted him toward a wide mouth lined with curving teeth.
Grizzlegom kicked. His hooves struck nothing. He pitched his horned head. The points flailed in air.
Like a man tossing nuts into his mouth, the gargantua hurled Grizzlegom inward. He landed atop a tongue coated in thick goo. Teeth closed in a cage around him. The tongue convulsed. The gullet opened wide. Grizzlegom slid down into a sac of hot acid. Powerful muscles clenched him. Stones battered him-a gizzard that could grind a man to meal.
Grizzlegom was no mere man. Arching his neck, he drove his horns through the stomach wall. The points shot through muscle and fat, skin and scale to jut from the thing's belly. The stomach clenched tight. With a roar, Grizzlegom twisted his head. The horns ripped a wide hole in the thing's gut.
He lunged toward the light. Bloody and streaming acid, his head jutted free. He drew a deep breath and fought his shoulders out. The stomach contractions only aided him. Amid a grisly cascade of gastroliths, Grizzlegom spilled upon the ground.
Breath burst from his lungs as he landed. He hadn't the luxury of lying stunned. The gargantua tipped toward him.
Grizzlegom clambered aside. His legs barely dragged free of the gargantua's shadow before it struck ground. The beast hit the hillside, which bounded beneath it.
Grizzlegom's momentary triumph ended when a pair of Phyrexian troopers leaped on him. The minotaur gripped one in either hand and cracked their skulls together. Their heads shattered. Glistening-oil poured down on him. It soothed the anguish of the acid. Grizzlegom rubbed the stuff all over himself. Gripping a body in either hand, he pummeled his way to Agnate.
"Push them back!" Grizzlegom ordered. "Secure this spot!"
Minotaur troops rallied to their battle-mad commander. One returned his fallen striva.
Grizzlegom dropped one corpse and took the striva. He held the other body as a shield. "Form a wedge around me and fight forward!"
The minotaurs complied but at a distance.
Grizzlegom glanced down at himself and knew why. Mantled in Phyrexian blood and gastric acids, he was a horrid sight. His once-fine hide was now a mottled white and brown. His tremendous rack of horns had been bent downward. He had been transformed by his passage through the monster, made into a twisted thing.
Grizzlegom reached Agnate. He chopped a charging bloodstock in half and knelt.
"Drive on!" Grizzlegom shouted to his troops. "Drive on!"
They fought forward, moving the battle away from the commanders.
Grizzlegom sheathed his striva and turned Agnate over.
The Metathran's eyes were haunted. "Tahngarth! What are you doing here?"
A sudden flush of pride moved through Grizzlegom. "I am not Tahngarth. I am Commander Grizzlegom."
"Forgive me." Agnate shook his head blearily. "I cannot walk. I cannot even rise."
"Where are you wounded?"
"It is no wound, but the plague."
"You should not have fought on, in your condition." He took a ragged breath and was suddenly weak. His limbs convulsed, and he lost his balance. Grizzlegom slumped beside his Metathran counterpart.
"You should not have fought on in your condition, either."
Commander Agnate awoke in a much different place. A tent roof swayed in dark breezes. From outside came the murmur of conversations and campfires. A soft cot held him.
A minotaur healer moved through the tent. Lantern light cast his horned shadow across the ceiling. He cleaned savage implements-even his healing methods were warlike. He had fire rods for cauterizing wounds, poison vials for killing unnatural growths, spores for inducing fever,… Minotaur healers were renown for their effective but none-too-gentle methods.
"Where are we?" Agnate asked quietly. "Who won the battle?"
The healer arched an eyebrow and approached the pallet. "The stimulant has worked. I am glad you are awake, Commander."
"I too am awake," growled a figure on an adjacent cot. Commander Grizzlegom. "I too must know the battle's outcome."
"We are victorious. We have taken the first mountain of the range. Even now, we camp near its summit." His next words told the true story, "Our forces have been met by an army equally large, led by Lich Lord Dralnu. He has taken the farther flank of the mountain, scouring it of Phyrexians."
"Excellent," said Agnate. "From this outpost, we can secure the rest of the range."
"I fear you will be doing no such thing, Commander," the healer said quietly. "You cannot go to battle. You will never walk again. Perhaps you will not even last the week." His bedside manner was as brutal as his methods. The healer drew back the white linen that lay across him. Though Agnate's chest remained broad and muscular, from the base of his ribs downward, his body was gangrenous.
"Were I to amputate, not enough of you would remain to stay alive."
Agnate's mind returned to a former time, when another harsh healer worked over another patient… Thaddeus lay strapped to a gleaming table… His body was gone from the ribs down…
"I want to finish this campaign. I want victory at Urborg."
The healer stared in bald dread at the ruined man. "There is something you must know about this plague. It is not Phyrexian in origin. Orim's elixir would have prevented its spread. This is a different disease altogether, a ravenous gangrene. Its origins do not lie with Phyrexia but with Lich Lord Dralnu."
Agnate remembered the feast in Vhelnish. He remembered the brackish basin and the lich lord laving his feet in the filthy water. He had called it an ancient rite, honoring a new ally. An ancient rite indeed-a necromantic rite.
"He is bringing you over, Agnate, making you into one of his minions," Grizzlegom said. "Don't you see? He has literally corrupted you. The reason your legs no longer work is that they belong to him. When at last this corruption reaches your heart, you will be his entirely. Then he will raise you, and you will dance to his bidding. Through you, he will gain your army."
Agnate shook his head. "No. You don't know Dralnu- "
"He is a lich lord! What is there to know?"
"He does what he does for noble warriors," Agnate insisted. "In the absence of a deity, Lord Dralnu has become a deity-"
"Better no god than a false god."
"And he has made an eternity for us, a heaven-"
"He has made a hell for you. He has made you his devils. Don't you see?" Grizzlegom asked, sitting up on his cot. "You have bargained with death, but death wins every deal."
"If you could only meet him, only speak to him, you would see his sincerity," Agnate said.
"A man can be sincere and still be wrong, Commander. What Dralnu has done is wrong. Life and death cannot be allies. They must forever be at war. You must break this alliance, before you are destroyed."
Agnate's eyes traced out the seams in the canvas above. "I am already destroyed."
The minotaur commander swung his legs from the pallet. He had been badly burned by the gargantua's stomach acid, but minotaur healers knew much about treating burns. Grizzlegom leveled his gaze.
"Only one question remains, Commander Agnate-to whom will you grant your army?"
"Yes," Agnate mused. "To whom?"
"If you grant Dralnu your troops, you have given him everything. He will corrupt them as he has corrupted you. He will scour the land of Phyrexians only to claim it all as his own."