Dead ahead, a cruiser labored into the air. It was a mountainous ship. Tangled grass and clods of dirt rained beneath it.

"Take us below," Hanna called.

With a gut-wrenching drop, Weatherlight plummeted. Her own keel sliced grasses. She left a wide-boiling wake of stalks behind her. A surge from her engines sent the ship screaming beneath the enormous cruiser.

Dust pelted down from convoluted pipework. It stung the gunners and anyone else on deck. Weatherlight arrowed beneath the huge black shelf and above the trammeled ground. Her spars cracked occasionally against the cruiser's belly. Her keel gouged lines in the dirt.

"Where's this exposed engine you promised?" Gerrard shouted through the tube.

"You'll feel it," Hanna said.

They did. Sudden, incredible heat tore across the deck. It radiated from a network of huge black cylinders, each bristling with thermal fins.

"Fire!" Gerrard ordered even as he squeezed off a few blasts.

The rays looked vermilion against the ship's dark underbelly. They tore outward, striking column after column. The huge cylinders cracked open, their hulls seeming as brittle as eggshells. Pure energy oozed from the engine cores. Tahngarth's own blasts mixed red power with black, blood and rot commingled.

"Cease fire," Gerrard called. "All power to the engines!"

Weatherlight leaped. Even her running lanterns dimmed.

The Phyrexian cruiser jolted, descending in a great rush. It fell like a mountain from the sky. The air trapped beneath it fled in roaring waves out of the way. Weatherlight was caught up on the currents.

Gerrard and Tahngarth clung for dear life to the hot chassis of their guns. The leather straps strained to hold them in place.

Weatherlight's masts scraped the cruiser's underside. The keel plowed through the ground. With a last shriek, Weatherlight vaulted from the collapsing space. She shot into clear air. The ruined cruiser smashed to ground.

The air was clear no longer. Pulverized ground rushed out. After it came shards of shattered metal. The cruiser exploded. Wild energy cratered the plains down a hundred feet. The fireball lashed out, toppling two adjacent ships. It flung them onto another. The blaze was so bright, it cast Weatherlight's streaking shadow before the cruiser.

"That'll keep them out of the sky for a bit!" Gerrard crowed. "Let's give the ground troops some help."

"I think we're a little late," Sisay reported grimly.

Gerrard's breath caught in his throat as he looked out beyond the rail. "Take us in slow, Sisay!"

The city was destroyed. While Weatherlight had slain ten thousand Phyrexians in their warships, a hundred thousand had overrun the city. Every house poured black smoke into the air. Every threshold was strewn with bodies. Some had been eaten half-away-the sweetmeats first. Others had been too badly burned to be consumed. They were little more than tarry skin stretched over black bones.

It wasn't just the homes that were destroyed. Ram-ships had felled every tower and turret along the outer wall. Some guards had been chewed to pulp by falling stones. Their comrades decorated the remains of the walls. Soldiers were piked on their own weapons.

Phyrexians loped like wild dogs through the city. The garrisons were decimated, the manor houses, the infirmary…

"Slow down. Come in lower," Gerrard said, glimpsing a pair of gibbets beside the infirmary's ruins. Gerrard stood behind his ray cannon, straining against the straps to see.

There, nailed to a pair of tall posts, were Capashen Clan Chief Raddeus and his wife Leda. The spikes driven through them were twelve inches long. Something had climbed the poles, making a feast of the bodies-empty eye sockets, teeth showing past missing lips, a purple cavity beneath the ribs…

Gerrard turned away, closing his eyes. I'd rather die than lose anything more to them.

Sisay's voice was gentle in the speaking tube. "There is nothing more we can do here. There is no one left to defend."

"There are Phyrexians left to kill," Gerrard hissed bitterly. "Turn us about. Take us back over the cruisers."

"There will be other battles, more important battles, elsewhere. Benalia is overrun. A single ship cannot stop it. The Capashens are gone."

"I am a Capashen!" Gerrard growled. "Bring us about!"

"Aye, Commander," Sisay replied.

Weatherlight banked, pulling swiftly away from the devastation. She cut through a column of black smoke. It dragged covetously across the ship. The ravaged city shrank below. The Phyrexian fleet-a range of mountains on the horizon-swelled outward.

Gerrard felt a heavy hand on his shoulder.

"We did all we could," Tahngarth rumbled.

The commander's eyes were bitter as he watched the demonic skyline. "You're the one who always talks of those I have lost. Now I have lost a whole nation."

"You can't save everyone, Gerrard."

"What are you doing away from your gun? We're coming up on a strafing run. With the starboard gun amidships unmanned-"

Tahngarth let out a sudden roar and vaulted down the forecastle ladder. He rushed toward the port gun amidships. There, Gunner Dabis thrashed beneath a gigantic spider.

Tsabo Tavoc! She must have clambered onto one of the airfoils when the ship hovered above the infirmary. Despite a missing leg and the oozy flesh where it had torn loose, the Phyrexian commander was still fast and powerful.

Clutching Gunner Dabis, she jabbed a long metallic stinger into his belly. Her abdomen pumped venom. The gunner convulsed, falling to the deck. Tsabo Tavoc pivoted toward Tahngarth. Her stinger reluctantly withdrew from the black wound in the man's side. He was a dead man now, and Tahngarth could be next.

In midstride, the minotaur reached up over his shoulder for his striva. His hand fastened on empty air. His weapon lay in the rubble of the infirmary.

It was too late to stop the charge. Tahngarth bulled forward, ramming his horns deep into the seven-legged thorax of the spider woman. Ivory sank into spider muscle. Golden oil-blood poured down. Tahngarth thrashed his head, ripping the monster's flesh.

She shouted in fury and drew herself upward.

Tahngarth hung from his horns. He growled, kicking. Hooves struck to either side of the spider's darting abdomen. Her venomous stinger jutted between his knees. The barb was crazed in Dabis's blood. An inch-wide hole in the end gushed poison.

Tahngarth twisted his head. Horns broke free of the monster's thorax. He hurled himself in a back flip, away from that stinger. The world tumbled once magnificently. His hooves struck the deck, slick with poison. He slipped and fell backward.

Tsabo Tavoc was quick. She lunged. Three of her seven legs slid about Tahngarth, clutching him tightly. They constricted. His arms were trapped at his sides. Metallic limbs closed implacably. Tahngarth couldn't move, could little breathe. Tsabo Tavoc squeezed him beneath her thorax. Her wounds seeped over him. Above a massive torso and mantled shoulders, Tsabo Tavoc's queerly beautiful face stared down in cruel satisfaction.

Her look suddenly darkened. In compound eyes, a rushing figure reflected.

Gerrard.

His sword, too, was missing. He had snatched up what he could-a short-handled gaff hook-and leaped to the charge. The hook arced overhead and sank into Tsabo Tavoc's belly.

She reared back, clutching Tahngarth all the harder. Her four remaining legs scratched back to the rail.

Gerrard would not let her go. Hanging onto the hook, he climbed. He braced a foot on Tahngarth's bloody horn and swung his free hand toward her face. The roundhouse cracked her jaw. Knuckles left a gray print beside her segmented mouth.

Hissing, Tsabo Tavoc slid one of the three legs free of Tahngarth and reached up around Gerrard.