Welcome to Yavimaya, my old foes, Multani thought. Welcome fire and lightning!

The rot-riddled bough exploded. Hunks of wood and metal and Phyrexian flesh shot into the night.

Chapter 12

Phyrexian cruisers filled the night sky above the prison yard. Ships hovered scarcely a hundred feet above the walls. They hung so low that Gerrard could see the flush ports where Phyrexian waste spattered down.

He reached a shackled hand out of the guard tower window, grabbed the lantern that burned there, and cracked it from its casing. He hurled the flaming thing at the belly of a ship. It struck the lip of a sewage port and smashed against the dripping edge. Lamp oil splashed across the black base of the ship. A crimson jet of fire roared up through the waste dump, ignited methane, and set off an explosion that bulged the undercarriage of the ship. Fiery hunks of bug-flesh dribbled from the spot.

The brigands in the yard cheered, united by Gerrard's defiance. Their hope was short-lived.

Hundreds of black cords uncoiled from the rails of the cruisers. They seemed the deadly tentacles of enormous black jellyfish. The cables unrolled to dangle just above the upturned faces of the prison throng. Down those threads slid Phyrexians. Hackled and homed, avatars of death, they plunged toward their prey.

"Free the others!" Gerrard shouted even as the beasts dropped among the prisoners. "Fight for your lives! Fight toward the ship!"

Ship! That single word ignited the yard. There was hope for escape.

Phyrexians claimed their first victims even before setting claw to ground. Talons clamped on heads and crushed them like eggs. Spiked tails gored and lifted gapmouthed prisoners. Stingers sank into eyes and pumped blackness. Hundreds of prisoners died in that first moment.

Hundreds more fought back. From the guard armory rose crossbow bolts, piercing the black hordes that dropped from the skies. Those prisoners who had swords used them, chopping legs out from under monsters. Others used the shackles or iron bars that had formerly held them captive. Even the bricks of the prison turned deadly. Torches rammed in Phyrexian mouths. Hunks of glass slit throats. Whatever came to hand became a weapon-even the dead claws of the killers, even the sand of the yard.

Some prisoners fought bare-handed. Knuckles cracked chitinous temples. Fingers jabbed segmented eyes. Teeth bit through strangling claws. Feet smashed thoraxes. Phyrexians were flipped and thrown, knee-capped and bludgeoned, throttled and eviscerated. In the horrid spray of oil and blood, prisoners and Phyrexians were almost indistinguishable.

Gerrard and his comrades had their own troubles. The man ascending to release them had been slain on his way up. Monsters landed atop the tower roof. It buckled beneath their weight. Two had crashed through the windows to fight the shackled crew.

Gerrard ducked the scything claws of the first. He somersaulted across the floor of the tower and rose behind the second beast. It was a lumbering monster-a oncehuman head atop a lupine body fitted out with steel attachments. Luckily, the thing's neck was no canine thing. Gerrard wrapped his shackles around its throat. The chains bit in. The beast thrashed. Gerrard rammed it up against its comrade. The strangling Phyrexian tore the back out of its compatriot. Gerrard tightened his hold. His shackles ground against vertebrae, and the lupine beast fell dead.

Tahngarth quickly finished off the other monster. Hands cuffed behind him, Tahngarth kicked once to spin his foe around, and a second time to bury his hoof in its shredded back.

The Phyrexian convulsed and bucked, falling to the floor.

Tahngarth drew forth his hoof. Acid hissed on his leg and poured out across the planks.

The minotaur spat angrily. "That one burned."

"You must have punctured the spleen," Gerrard said, pointing at the corpse. White smoke rose around the body. "At least spleen is what I would call it."

Sisay knelt beside the fallen Phyrexian, draping her chains in the sizzling stuff. "You don't suppose-" She pulled her hands away, and the links shattered like glass. "I'll be damned."

"Let's hope you won't," Gerrard replied. He used his own shackles to scrape acid from Tahngarth's now-raw leg. His chains also grew brittle. He shattered them. "I've got a gruesome hunch…" Scooping up some Phyrexian oilblood, he laved Tahngarth's legs with it. The sizzling smoke ceased.

Hanna watched intently. "Their blood-it neutralizes the acid?"

Gerrard shrugged. "If I had this stuff in me, I'd want something that could neutralize it."

The minotaur broke his own chains. "Now, as long as the floor doesn't give way-"

Phyrexians suddenly crashed through the rafters. They fell in a frenzied black storm, striking the floor where the corpses lay. The weakened wood held for only a moment. It broke open and hurled the beasts down through the core of the tower.

Clinging to the windowsills, the crew watched as a score of Phyrexians fell to a twisted death on the collapsing stairs below.

"That was miraculous," Gerrard panted.

Sisay stared down grimly. "We'll need a couple dozen more miracles if we're going to get to the ship."

Holding herself up with one hand and clutching her bleeding side with the other, Hanna said, "And a couple more when we're back on board."

Gerrard's eyes were intent. "Orim's got miracles." He edged toward Hanna.

That movement was ill-advised. The stairway within the tower had provided not only access but stability. With the steps gutted, the tower twisted on its four posts. It seemed there was only one way down-one very fast, very horrible way.

"Hold still!" Sisay shouted.

Gerrard lurched to a stop. The platform lurched as well. Nails whined in warning. Joints slowly pulled open.

"We're going to fall, aren't we?"

All around, heads nodded ominously.

Sisay said, "The question is whether we can survive."

"The question is whether we can land on Phyrexians," Tahngarth interrupted.

Glancing toward the ruined roof, Gerrard smiled. "The question is whether we can do both."

He gingerly climbed the inner wall of the listing tower until he could stick his head through the ragged hole in the roof. Lunging, he yanked something down-a tangle of black cords left by the Phyrexians that had landed on the roof. Gerrard hung from the mass of them, his feet swinging free in the center of the wreckage.

Through gritted teeth, he said, "Thought we could… take advantage of… a few loose ends." He managed to free one of the ropes. Bumping into the far wall, he flung a rope to Tahngarth. "This is your old trick… hanging below Weatherlight in Rath."

Wrapping the cord around his arm, the minotaur swung free. "Let's hope the Phyrexians are safer pilots."

"Hey!" Gerrard protested. He flung a rope to Sisay. "I saved you, didn't I? Saved us all, and flew out-"

"To crash on Mercadia," Sisay reminded as she let go of the collapsing frame.

"I got us out of there too," Gerrard defended as he bounced against the wall beside Squee.

The goblin clambered onto Gerrard's shoulders. "Squee killed Volrath."

A shrieking moan came as the tower failed. Gerrard hurled himself across the folding space. He snatched up Hanna in his arms and took two running steps up the slanting wall. Squee clung miserably to his shoulders and let out a shriek of his own. Gerrard flung himself and his passengers out the shattered rooftop, now pointing sideways, and into the fiend-charged air. Sisay came just behind him, and Tahngarth brought up the rear.

They swung out beneath one of the great black cruisers that eclipsed the heavens. Below them, thick mobs of Phyrexians swarmed the yard. It was onto their heads that the guard tower fell.