either.
“How long until he can walk?” Venser said. On that note, he wondered how long he himself would be able to walk. One thing was for certain, if he sat down again he would fall asleep.
“A bit longer,” Elspeth said.
“We do not seem to have that,” Venser said. He waited for a Phyrexian call but there was, of course, none when he needed it to prove a point.
“We have to make that time for Koth,” Elspeth said, standing with a groan. “Vital parts of him are knitting themselves together as I say this. We cannot move him.”
A Phyrexian bawled somewhere far off. Sure, Venser thought. Now you make some noise.
Elspeth drew her sword. Venser had seen her sword look better. Its blade was chipped, and unless Venser was mistaken, it was slightly bent. It’s no wonder with all the Phyrexians that had met its keen edge.
Elspeth lowered the blade and faced the pile of Phyrexians. “We’ll know when Koth is ready to travel. He will awake and stand, if he survives.”
“If he survives?”
“The potion I gave him can sometimes affect individuals adversely.”
“Yet you…”
“His kidney was pierced,” Elspeth said in a lower tone. “He would have perished without the elixir.”
The guide slipped away into the passage ahead, to scout, Venser assumed.
“How did the Phyrexian force know where we were in the first place?” Venser asked.
“An interesting question,” Elspeth said. “And one I have been pondering.”
“What has your pondering led you to?”
“Nothing,” Elspeth admitted.
More Phyrexians called from various parts of the passage, drawing toward them. Soon Venser could hear them clicking and gagging just on the other side of the slag pile of the dead. He could tell by the creaking that there was at least one very large Phyrexian. But there was something else too. Something with a voice. He could hear its smooth-toned orders.
“What do they wait for?” Venser said.
“There numbers are not great,” the guide said, suddenly behind them again.
Venser waited. He slipped down into a cross-legged position and sat back against the wall. He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again Koth was sitting up. He did not look perfect, the potion’s effect was not complete, clearly, but he was able to blink and look around.
And there was plenty to look and listen to. Whatever the Phyrexians’ numbers when Koth was wounded, they had grown to much more. They were creaking on the other side of the pile in numbers sufficient to vibrate the walls and floor.
“They are just on the other side of the pile,” Venser said.
“Yes,” Elspeth said. “Nothing has changed.”
“Except it seems there are about five hundred of them now.”
“Their numbers have increased,” Elspeth said.
A figure climbed the pile. A female Phyrexian who had clearly once been an elf. Her hair had twisted into thick cables, some of which were long and moved independently like snakes around her head. Her eyes were black with oil, and some of the oil dripped out of her sockets and down her cheeks. Her left hand was an immense scythe and the other was a claw most terrible in size and aspect. She held up the scythe and all noise from the Phyrexians ceased at once. “Give us the creature who is all flesh.”
“Deal,” Venser said.
Elspeth turned to glare at him.
“Only jesting,” Venser said. “How could we give her to you? Maybe ask her opinion. Perhaps she’ll be agreeable to your proposal. You can never tell.”
“What do you want with her?” Elspeth said.
“Only that she is our property and you stole our property.”
“Springheads have property?” Koth said.
Venser had not heard the phrase springheads used to refer to Phyrexians before. He liked it. But the female Phyrexian bristled at the words. She frowned and disappeared down the side of the pile. When she appeared again, it was with many Phyrexians in tow.
“Now,” she said. “Say that again so they know who to slay first.”
But Koth had closed his eyes.
“Who are you,” Venser said suddenly.
“I am Glissa, the bringer of your death.”
She lowered her scythe hand and the Phyrexians began moving forward.
Koth did not open his eyes. Elspeth looked uneasily back at Venser. The guide was unarmed, as far as Venser had ever seen, and sure enough, when Venser looked, the guide was gone. The fleshling was standing back between Venser and Koth. She had no weapon.
Venser looked around him for something to swing. As depleted of mana as he was, there was nothing more he could do but fight hand-to-hand. A twisted piece from a Phyrexian skeleton would work. He was lucky enough to find one lying within reach, and he picked it up and turned back to Glissa. The Phyrexians at her control were almost at the bottom of the pile of dead Phyrexians. Venser counted thirty-four of various shapes and sizes. One had the metal legs of a spider, but with a tremendous thorax that glowed bright blue. Elspeth moved her sword from left to right hand.
Venser had seen her slay countless Phyrexians in a battle, but never when she was so tired and never in one fight, at one time. Plus, any single one of those Phyrexians seemed keen enough to bare them away. They gnashed their teeth and popped their limbs in and out of their sockets as they approached slowly, fanning out to the sides to prevent retreat.
As Venser watched, he knew in his heart that Elspeth would be unable to prevail. It seemed the same thought had just occurred to Elspeth, for she looked down at her battle-scarred sword and then back at Venser.
The Phyrexians were very close, and Venser remembered suddenly when he was a child and he went walking under the linnean trees near his home on Dominaria. He saw the dogs too late. There were sometimes packs of wild dogs in the forests, yet he went there anyway because there were also to be found the ruins of airships and other wrecks of wars long finished. He would collect wreckage and tinker with it. But the wild dogs were hungry and they were especially hungry that day. They stalked him for the better part of an hour. There was no way to know how long they had been watching him with their red eyes. Venser had many times thought that the wild dogs that lived near his house had been some of the bravest creatures that he had ever encountered. Men and women would have their sport killing them, and still the dogs did not flee or shy away. They remained a threat. Find me a beast half as brave here, Venser thought.
He had escaped the dogs by jumping away. It was one of the first times he had ever teleported, which was why he was remembering it. He suddenly yearned to jump away once again.
And so the dogs would have him, it seemed.
The Phyrexians were formed into a crescent around Elspeth, with the left flank facing Venser. Atop the pile Glissa stood watching.
Tezzeret stepped out of the shadows, to the right of the Phyrexians’ left flank. When the nearest Phyrexian saw him, it shied back. “This was not the plan,” Tezzeret said.
Glissa looked surprised to see him. The Phyrexian advancing on Elspeth stopped.
Behind Tezzeret a cadre of blue-glowing Phyrexians looked on. Tezzeret’s Phyrexians were fewer in number, but they looked to Venser even crueler in aspect.
“Plan?” Glissa said.
“Yes,” Tezzeret said. “You have your plan. I have my plan. You sent me to get the flesh creature. I had no intention of doing that. Why would I do that when it was I who gave them the creature in the first place?”
The expression on Glissa’s face did not change perceptibly at the news. But when she spoke, there was a hitch in her voice that betrayed her unease. “Why would you give them such a creature?”
Tezzeret waved his glowing metal hand dismissively. “The creature is no concern of mine, neither is her
