"My doings?" Gerrard echoed.

"Yes. Your doings. Koilos is your fight, Gerrard."

Gerrard stared down at the dying form of his beloved. "Of course. It's a fight Hanna would approve." His mouth flattened into a bitter line. "And, besides, at Koilos there are plenty of Phyrexians to kill."

Chapter 29

Weatherlight topped a ridge of sand above the plains of Koilos and soared down the far slope. Gerrard's gunnery harness held him in place as the deck dropped out beneath him. "There are the buggers," he growled. Ahead and for miles to the horizon camped Phyrexian troops.

"Attack formation!" Gerrard shouted into the speaking tube. "Signal the fleet. Strafe the troops. Ray cannons, plasma jets, goblin bombs. Kill 'em with whatever you've got. Let's let them know Benalia's revenge has arrived."

A cheer rose from the prison brigade. They crowded the decks, elven bows clutched in their eager hands. Among them were Steal Leaf troops. Their leader, Eladamri, stood at the prow. He lifted high his longbow, nocked a flaming arrow, and sent the shaft streaking away. It raced ahead of Weatherlight and sank among the Phyrexian troops. The shaft cracked through black scale. It punched into oilblood. The creature ignited, blazing blue. Elves and prisoners whooped excitedly.

"Fire!" Gerrard shouted. "Fire!"

All along the decks, elves and men drew arrows from pots of burning pitch. They set notch to string and loosed. From Weather-light, rings of fire spread. Where those flaming waves touched ground, Phyrexians blazed and flared and exploded.

Gerrard unleashed his own fire. Red-hot bursts of energy leaped from the barrel of his ray cannon. They stabbed faster than arrows. The bolts ripped through monsters and their sleeping sties, tore apart trench worms, blasted through pens of live food. From Tahngarth's gun, another bolt roared. It cut a parallel trough to Gerrard's attack. Each line of energy felled hundreds of Phyrexians, but there were hundreds of thousands.

Benalish assault ships dropped down to Weatherlight's beam. They loosed their own arsenals, not as flashy, but in their own way deadly enough. From the stem hatches of round-bellied bombers, gray goblin bombs rolled. They dropped in twisted lines. Smoke barked up where they struck. Chunks of scale and bone tumbled through the mounded smoke. Hoppers jagged like serpents' teeth above the armies. Their quarrels pelted down in a deadly hail.

Gerrard loosed another volley of ray cannon fire. He gazed appreciatively at the broad line of destruction that his armada cut through the Phyrexian hordes.

"They've got no airships. It's like shooting fish in a barrel!"

He spoke too soon. The beasts might not have airships, but they had brought cannons. Fire spat from entrenched batteries. Crimson and black, rays roared skyward.

One bolt struck a falling stream of goblin bombs. It ignited them. In midair, they detonated. Each new explosion triggered a second and third. Like a fuse, the line of bombs carried their explosions up toward the stem of the bomber. Shrapnel tore into the fuselage. The detonations went to completion. A white blaze erupted around the ship. A thousand explosions roared out. Hunks of ship cascaded down.

Another beam rippled through a line of fighters. One after another, they flew into the radiance and were cloven in two. Halves spiraled down in fiery wreckage.

A third bolt-this placed best of all-smashed into Weatherlight's port airfoil. The spars lit with fire. The canvas flashed away to nothing. Weatherlight listed hard to port and began to roll over.

"Take her up!" Gerrard cried even as his latest shot raked the enemy lines.

"I know! I know!" Sisay shouted back through the speaking tube.

The starboard airfoil slapped closed, and the ship's engines roared. Weatherlight lolled upright and rocketed heavenward.

"Signal the fleet! Break off the assault!" Gerrard ordered. He braced himself against the hot casing of the gun. Weatherlight jigged up through a rack of clouds. "Rendezvous at the Metathran camp. Land and repair!"

He had breath for little more. The ship ascended like a comet. Gerrard and his crew and their fugitive armies held tight to the meteoric craft. It vaulted just ahead of the cannon fire, outpacing killing heads of flame. The Benalish armada straggled upward in the great ship's wake.

In canyons of concealing cloud, Weatherlight leveled out. Gerrard gave a gusty sigh.

"Let's hope for a better reception from the Metathran."

Within his tent, Commander Agnate stared bleakly at the tactical maps of Koilos. They lay in a sloppy stack across his field table. Once, they had been neatly stored, each in its own tube. Once, Thaddeus and Agnate had strolled their compasses easily across lines of topography. Now, the maps bore the fretful, fruitless scribbles of a commander in a hopeless engagement.

Agnate was trapped. His forces had been winnowed horribly by the last, disastrous assault. Fifty thousand Metathran had marched into battle behind him, and twenty thousand had fled. They had made camp here, twenty miles beyond the caves-out of reach of the monsters. Members of Thaddeus's army slowly joined them. The field was lost. The Metathran were in full rout. Thaddeus's force was equally reduced. Thirty thousand of them remained, but they had lost their commander.

Thaddeus was easily worth ten thousand troops.

He is worth more than that, Agnate mused bitterly. Thaddeus was the other half of his mind. Even distance could not block their shared thoughts-until Tsabo Tavoc. She knew of their bond and targeted it. She tore the point from the compass, leaving only a lead nib to turn, hopelessly alone.

Agnate could not think without Thaddeus. Together, they had planned an assault of a hundred thousand Metathran on a hundred thousand Phyrexians. The Metathran ranks had been halved, and the Phyrexian ranks had doubled. Agnate had positioned paper troops in various arrangements throughout the broad plain. Even with a four-to-one kill ratio, no Metathran would remain to possess the field. It would be suicide to attack now and swifter and surer suicide with every passing hour.

A sound intruded on Agnate's bleak reverie. He had blocked out camp sounds-crackling fires, conversation, strummed lyres- and so the slow-mounting roar startled him alert. Lurching up from his camp stool, Agnate caught his head in the peak of the man-sized tent. With a growl, he ducked and emerged. The flaps slapped angrily together behind him.

Mounting thunder filled the dusty sky. It was unmistakable- the approach of airships. The Phyrexians were bringing sky machines to destroy them.

Agnate shook his head grimly. I couldn't make a damned decision myself, and now they have decided for me.

All around, Agnate's troops stood stunned, staring upward. His indecision had infected even them.

"To arms! To arms!" Agnate bellowed. "Train the guns! Wake! It's time to die."

Soldiers snatched up their swords and pikes. They cranked crossbows. They scrambled to rip covers from cannons and wheel them about. Blocks of powder slid down the barrels of bombards. Powerstone charges mounted within ray cannons. Shouts filled the air. It was a sound that heartened Agnate after days of silent fear and indecision.

"You might not want to fire on these," came a voice abruptly at his side. "These are your reinforcements."

Agnate whirled, sword raking out, and found himself staring at the grim visage of Urza Planeswalker. The man's face was battle weary. His ash-blond hair was disheveled and singed-though only a moment's attention would make it perfect. Urza had not had a moment to spare.