"Lift the bow!" Karn called.

At the head of Weatherlight, Gaea soared skyward. The mirror armor of the ship's keel breasted across a sea of fire. Red deadliness splashed away to either side. Plasmatic air curled off the ship's outflung wings. She neared Predator.

Suddenly, Karn folded the ship's wings and cut her engines. Only the song of the spikes sounded. Weatherlight struck Predator like a cleaver chopping a crab. Metal shrieked on metal. Supports moaned and failed. The sawtoothed keel cleft the upper forecastle. Carapace slumped and plunged, taking two guns with it. Weatherlight cut through the second forecastle. Her spikes ripped another gun from its moorings. Karn engaged the engines. The ship shot forward. Her blazing exhaust burned wood and cracked metal. At last beyond the ship, Weatherlight leaped away. She spread her wings and climbed skyward. Angry beams chased her.

"Covering fire, Squee!" Karn said.

The goblin's voice was barely audible above the clamor of his gun. "You gots nerve, tellin' Squee what's what, Mister Commander Man!" His wild shots dragged flack from the air. "You gettin' us into messes and Squee gettin' us out. Squee gots half a mind-" His rant was momentarily preempted when a ray from Predator slipped his guard. It struck the larboard wing. The shot bounced from its mirror edge and passed over Squee's head. His ear hair curled acridly. The shot struck the opposite wing and bouncing back. Squee ducked again. The blast rebounded five times over the squealing goblin, lower with each pass.

"Dive, Karn! What you tryin' to do? Kill Squee! Kill de hero of Mercadia?"

The ship dived, slipping from beneath the ricocheting beam.

"Well, now, dat's more like it!" Squee said gladly.

Weatherlight changed course, and Predator slid from sight behind the starboard wing. "What you doin' now, eh?"

"She's pursuing," Sisay warned.

"Bring us about," Gerrard said, "and keep us high. Their cannons can't do anything against our hull. And Karn's got the right of it. We drop on her from the sky and cut her in half."

"What about Greven?" growled Tahngarth.

"Sorry, pal. See if you can shoot him before we split his ship."

Weatherlight's engines shouted angry approval of the plan. She banked hard to port and rose.

Predator was a distant knot, abeam and below. Though her hull streamed sparks and fire, she still made quick time across the sky. In mere moments, she crossed the wide crater.

Weatherlight was quicker still. She was not the same ship as when first they had met-magnitudes more powerful, with greater armaments. Nor had she the same crew-these handful were a perfectly tuned machine, utterly committed to battle. Weatherlight climbed the sky as if it belonged to her.

Predator struggled to rise. She bled beams up across Weatherlight's bow, which only hurled them back. Predator slid to keel.

Weatherlight's engines cut. Her wings folded. She plunged. The gunners floated up in their traces. Air spilled up both sides of her hull. It rose in twin walls and curled above.

Then the keel sliced more than sky. Weatherlight cracked into the upper hull of Predator, shattering the mainmast. It drooped and fell away. Deeper plunged Weatherlight. Her gleaming keel cut through the center of the ship. Planks splintered. Beams broke. Deeper, and the saw teeth of the keel scraped across Predator's engine core.

A series of muffled booms came from the stricken ship. Predator lurched. Smoke flooded from her lower decks.

Weatherlight's engines spouted fire. She ground forward through Predator's hull. Her keel ripped the power core. More explosions rocked the ruined ship.

Tahngarth, Gerrard, and the other gunners poured cannon fire on the superstructure, hoping to break free.

Weatherlight edged from the blazing gap. Her wings spread happily, and she leaped away.

Except that something dragged at her. Harpoons shot from the ruined deck of Predator. They thudded-three, five, eight- into the deck of Weatherlight. After them came grapple after grapple. They clasped her rails Cables snapped taut. They dragged Weatherlight back toward the listing ship.

Gerrard struggled to swing the ray cannon about, but he could not draw a bead.

"Cut those cables!" he shouted into the speaking tube even as he fought free of the gunnery traces. He turned, drawing his sword, and stepped to a harpoon imbedded in the forecastle. He sliced down. Steel met steel. The cable snapped away. It whipped back and lashed the deck of Predator.

Gerrard bellowed into the speaking tube, "Squee! What the hell are you doing back there? You're so proud of saving our butts. How about blasting that ship to nothing!"

The response that came was not Squee's. It was an angry, brutal voice, inflected with the iron edge of the il-Vec.

"Squee cannot save you this time, Gerrard. Squee cannot do much of anything. As soon as I get to the fore, you'll be in the same condition."

Gerrard stared back over the bridge to see where a company of il-Vec soldiers boarded Weatherlight's stern. There, in their midst, towered Greven il-Vec.

Chapter 24

A maelstrom engulfed the world. The whirlpool drew everything down into its black heart. Ice chunks, war engines, long ships, colos, Phyrexians, Keldons, elves-all bobbed together on the icy current.

Eladamri could not reach solid ice. There was no solid ice to reach. The glacial cliffs forever calved, hurling huge columns into the flood. The impacts made waves that shoved everything toward the whirling center. Whole platoons of elves had been crushed beneath plunging ice or ground to nothing between icebergs.

"We can't get out that way," Liin Sivi shouted as her mount desperately trod water.

"Drive for the shallows," Eladamri replied, guiding his colos toward a long shelf of ice. "When the waters recede, we should be able to stand."

"It's our best hope," Liin Sivi agreed.

The others followed. They were wild eyed. Their mounts were mantled in foam. Bloodshot eyes rolled in sweating hair. The beasts trembled from exertion and cold. The waters froze one moment and boiled the next. Through the depths below came flashes of fire. The liquid was a torrid purple, a bruise on the world.

Eladamri's steed stroked against the current. Clods of ice drifted toward him. A berg shoved up against the colos. It cracked its hooves on a lower ledge of the thing and drove on. These big hunks of ice couldn't float across the shallows, either. They would get stranded. Among them, the elves could shelter, perhaps even climb out of the flood.

The shallows lay just ahead, a streaming shelf. The current dragged against them. Colos paddled hard just to maintain their position. Even if they could reach the flat ice, the beasts would be spent.

Leaning in the saddle, Eladamri whispered into the yak's ears. He spoke the elven language of animals, a combination of sound and emotion.

"Swim, great beast. Swim with all your might. Rest and peace await us there. Rest and peace and solid ground."

The colos leaned toward the cluttered shallows. Its neck bent against steaming water. Hooves churned. Inch by inch, it approached the shelf. Current dragged its matted fur. Liin Sivi's mount swam beside his own. Other beasts crowded up in a long line.

Eladamri's steed caught a hoof on the ice. It cracked away, a fragile edge. A second try gave solid footing. The beast dragged itself forward through a chest-high tide. It kicked its hind legs and leaped. The colos bounded up above the icy waves. It hung for a moment in glittering air before splashing down again in the flood. Another surge of its hooves, and the beast was driving up, clear of the ice pit.