Invasion

Chapter 10

Gerrard had deep misgivings about this plot. His Benalish commander's uniform fit poorly. He'd not donned the garb since leaving his division half a year ago. The quilted sleeves constricted his biceps. The maroon waistcoat and bandoleers bulged across his pectorals. The linchpin in this contraption of doom was the official orders being forged even then by a blind man.

The blind seer sat at Hanna's navigation desk. He pinned a hunk of parchment beneath one hand. His other clutched a quill.

With strong, jagged strokes, he wrote: By this writ, command of the Benalish Military Penal Colony shall be surrendered to Commander Gerrard Capashen.

"This isn't going to work," Gerrard groused, flinging his hands out. He turned to Sisay. "We'd better abort, Captain."

"Too late, Commander," Sisay replied placidly from the helm. "They've already seen us." She gestured beyond the bridge.

Silhouetted against the sunset, the Benalish Penal Colony seemed a dark diadem topping the Atrivak Hills. Tall walls of stone hemmed in the inner wards. Guard towers stood at the many corners. Crossbow nests bristled beneath the descending night. In the center of the yard, a gaunt wooden tower presided over it all, and from there an alarm bell sounded.

"We won't get a second chance at this," Gerrard muttered. He reached down, snatching up the parchment. His eyes widened in amazement. The document looked convincing, well ordered and with an impressively embossed seal. Gerrard read aloud:

To: Captain Benbow, Warden of the Brig at Atrivak

From: Capashen Chief Raddeus

Greetings,

In the sudden peril that has swept across our nation, I require the fighting might of every warrior under my command. I have sent my ward, Commander Gerrard Capashen, recently returned from epic battles against our foes, to gather the prisoners in your charge and lead them into combat. Please provide him every assistance to liberate, arm, and provision the troops previously imprisoned in your facilities.

Blessings, Chief Raddeus

Gerrard nodded, mollified. "Perhaps we do have a chance." He peered down at the mysterious old man. "There's more to you than meets the eye."

"Yes," the blind seer said smoothly, "since nothing meets my eye." "Hand me that map tube," Gerrard said, reaching toward the desk.

From the map rack, Hanna snatched the tube. Gerrard pulled its cap and upended it. Out slid a detailed map of Benalia City. Not a single structure, so carefully rendered on the map, remained in reality.

Gritting his teeth grimly, Gerrard rolled the forged document, set a daub of candle wax on it, and printed the wax with his own Capashen ring. He slid the roll into the map tube and lifted his eyes toward the fore window of the bridge.

The sun seemed to blaze within the prison. Guard towers and needlelike palisades reached their clawing shadows up the deck of Weatherlight. Soon, the ship was swallowed in darkness. The silhouetted brig hovered spectrally above. Just beneath it lay a natural shelf of stone, covered by the western overlook of the mounds.

"We land there, where Weatherlight will be shielded from Phyrexian eyes and bombs. We don't want to be pinned down."

"Aye, Commander," replied Sisay. She eased the ship up toward the shelf.

"So far so good. Let's just hope Benbow falls for the forgery."

"Guards!" Captain Benbow shouted. The warden's voice echoed through the block-walled station house. He glowered at Gerrard and his command crew. Benbow's meaty hands clutched the forged letter, and his red brows bristled. "Guards!"

They flooded in. Guards were common enough in the Benalish Military Brig. In field plate with yellow tabards, the warriors surrounded Gerrard and his crew.

"Wait!" Gerrard objected. "You must believe us. Benalia needs every fighting arm! An invasion is underway!"

"Clap them in irons!" Benbow bellowed. The guards converged.

Gerrard had surrendered to Benalish forces once-and Benalia City was destroyed while he sat in the brig.

"Attack!" he shouted.

Tahngarth snorted his approval. He flung a wooden chair beneath the chin of the nearest guard. The man barked once and fell forward, landing atop the chair that had knocked him out.

Hanna was not as fortunate. A guard grabbed her from behind in a headlock. He breathed angrily in her ear. More a lover than a fighter, Hanna turned her head and intercepted his lips with hers. The warm contact produced a sudden weakness in the man's grip. Hanna pulled forward and lifted her heel in the angle often induced by a kiss. The guard went down, clutching himself.

Sisay hurled her opponent's tabard up about his face and spun him to attack one of his comrades. While he fought, she casually tripped a warrior who was about to grab Squee.

For his part, the goblin detained guard after guard by surrendering to them, allowing them to fit shackles to his too-slim arms, and then sliding out of them.

Gerrard was most pressed of all. He had drawn a sword and dagger from his belt. With the smaller blade, he caught and flung back shackles heading for his wrists. The chain bloodied the guard's nose.

The man reeled, sitting down beneath a canopy of clattering blades.

Gerrard's sword lashed out in a strike meant to intimidate. The blade sliced through the false writ and threatened the shaggy pate of Warden Benbow.

Benbow was a seasoned fighter, and his sword hung on the wall behind him. Dodging Gerrard's lunge, Benbow rolled rapidly out of his seat. He got his feet beneath him and, with a grace that belied his girth, snatched his sword from the wall.

Gerrard leaped up to the desktop. He brought the flat down in a braining blow.

Benbow blocked the strike. Metal clanged. He flung his foe's sword aside and spun. The warden's blade swept the desktop in a stroke that could have cut Gerrard's feet from beneath him. Gerrard jumped amid a flurry of prison records. He hurled his sword in a second flat attack. This one won through but weakly. It whapped Benbow's sunburned head. The warden reeled back, giving Gerrard a second chance to plead.

"You must believe me. They'll be here in hours-in moments."

"Who? Your next of kin?" Benbow growled, swinging his sword higher.

Gerrard hopped again, evading the knee-capping blow. "No, the Phyrexians!"

"Phyrexians?" Benbow shouted back incredulously, "Bogey men? Fairy-tale monsters?" His third swipe was aimed at cutting short a dearer appendage.

Gerrard blocked the attack, meanwhile kicking open the desk drawer.

It soared out on hidden bearings, as fast as a ramrod. The heavy drawer struck the warden. Benbow yelped in pain and doubled over.

Just before the man's bulk obscured the desk drawer, Gerrard spotted a large key ring lying within. His hand darted down.

Benbow guessed his foe's intention. Despite his agony, Benbow lunged forward to slam the drawer with his hips. Hidden bearings bore it inward. Just before wood closed on wood, Gerrard snatched the keys out.

Benbow was not as quick. He bellowed in agony.

Gerrard turned, spotting Tahngarth in the melee, and shouted, "Tahngarth, take these keys. Release the prisoners!" He flung the ring out over darting blades.

Swords jabbed up to intercept the keys. One blade flung them sideways. A second caught them, spinning, for a moment. The third was no blade at all, but a crook-ended cane. The ring of keys jangled down around the gnarled wood to clack in place in the blind seer's hand.

"I'll let them out," the old man vowed.

"Tahngarth, go with him!" Gerrard shouted.

The minotaur nodded. Decisively, he kicked aside a pair of blades and brought his fists down on the heads of the adjacent warriors.

"Me, too," Squee volunteered. He'd managed to get three guards chained together and bolted to the bars on one window. They cursed as he trooped happily to the minotaur and the blind man.

"I'm free," Sisay offered, glancing down at a warrior who lay prone at her feet. His legs were pinned beneath a chopped corner of the desk.

Hanna still battled. She was a fair enough fighter when roused to anger but typically had no stomach for it. Just now she wielded a tall brass coatrack against a single swordsman.

"Looks like I'll stay… unless-"

She charged the man suddenly, catching his armored collar in one hook of the rack. With an almighty heave, she set the stand upright. The soldier riled impotently, unable to bring his sword to bear.

Brushing her hands, Hanna retrieved her fallen blade and said, "I'm in."

"Excellent," Gerrard replied. The twenty-some guards had all been felled one way or another, none having suffered a worse setback than a concussion. Warden Benbow still lay on the desk top, struggling to free himself.

"I do hope you recover quickly, Warden. We could use you out there," Gerrard said, leaping down from the desk. He smiled, gesturing to his crew. "Let's go. We have an army to liberate."

Through the door they filed. Tahngarth led, a naked blade before him. He'd not used it in the battle so far and had no intention of killing with it, but a minotaur with a sword does wonders for inspiring the human sense of selfpreservation. Next in line was Squee, whose own sense of self-preservation attracted him to such a defender. Hanna was third, guiding the blind seer. Hanna's other hand twitched as though she wished she still had the coatrack. Gerrard brought up the rear. He dragged a chair after him, closed the door to the stationhouse, and propped the chair beneath the doorknob.

"That ought to keep them."

"Gerrard," came Hanna's tremulous voice ahead. "Gerrard!"

He glanced up, seeing her pull a bloody hand away from her side. Gerrard rushed to her.

"One of those bastards get you?"

Turning toward him, she said, "No." She dragged the crimson tunic up from her side. "This is that wound. That one from the shrapnel in Rath."

Gerrard knelt beside her. "You said it was only a scratch!" Hanna blushed. "It was a little more. Orim cleaned it and dressed it on the way here. Healing magic didn't work…" She glanced beneath the blood-soaked bandage. The wound beneath was necrotic. Blood flowed from its center, but the skin and muscle around it were turning black. Fingers of corruption reached out from the spot.

"It is the Phyrexian plague," said the blind seer bleakly. "There is no cure."

Hanna's eyes darkened. She looked from the old man to Gerrard.

Giving a smile he did not feel, Gerrard said, "You may know a lot, old man, but you don't know Orim. She'll find a cure. In the meantime, let's stanch that blood flow." He knelt, ripping the sleeve from his commander's jacket. "Damned thing was too small anyway."

While he tended Hanna's wound, Tahngarth continued down the corridor to the first cell.

The inmate there had heard his approach and was cursing at what he expected to be another guard. When he caught sight of the massive bull-man and his keen sword, the inmate scrambled back from the bars.

He gabbled, "What in the Nine Spheres are you-?"

"Shut up," Tahngarth advised. The man complied. "If you vow to fight for us, we will release you from your cell."

"Wh-what if I want to stay here?" the man asked.

"You'll probably be killed when the prison is overrun."

"Overrun? By whom?"

"By Phyrexia."

The thing about vows is this: Honest men don't need to swear them, and dishonest men don't hesitate to swear them. Of course, Tahngarth would not have realized this. A dishonest minotaur was an oxymoron-or at least a moronic ox. It understandably surprised Tahngarth when the first five hundred prisoners liberated by Gerrard rebelled against him.

The crew were crossing the main yard when the liberated prisoners mobbed them. Though Gerrard and his command crew had been a match for twenty guards, they were not a match for five hundred warriors. These particular warriors gave a new definition to the term "irregulars." Many were inhuman-hulking things that looked like animate rocks, half-lizard men armored in the bones of victims, minotaurs with shorn horns and peg legs. Human, elf, dwarf… prison had molded them all into a single species-killers. In moments, the crew was overwhelmed, their weapons stripped. No one was injured in the brief struggle- Tahngarth was too stunned to fight, and Gerrard was too accustomed to ironic reversal.

With rough chants, the liberated prisoners escorted their liberators to the central guard tower in the yard. They drove them up the stairs that ascended the tall framework of beams. The nearest prisoners used the crewmembers' own weapons against them. Those farther out wielded whatever came to hand-chains, pipes, broken bottles, splintered boards… Disarmed and shackled, Gerrard and his crew climbed the switchback stairway. Defeat replaced victory on their faces.

They staggered, one by one, through the hatchway at the top of the stairs and onto a ten-by-ten-foot covered platform above. No sooner was Gerrard through the hatch than it slammed shut, and a bar slid into place.

Though Gerrard had gotten a bloody lip for his attempts to explain, he staggered to the guard tower window for another try.

"Listen to me! Listen!" he shouted to the chanting prisoners. "We have freed you! Why do you fight us? We are the same. It doesn't matter what you once did. Even treason! Even murder! Whatever wrong landed you here, it is nothing compared to the wrongs of our true foes. I revoke your sentences! You must revoke ours! I return your freedom! Return ours! Together we will fight the true enemy. Together we will fight Phyrexia!"

As Gerrard spoke, the chanting ceased, and the crowd grew slowly quiet. By the time his last words rolled out, a fearful hush filled the courtyard.

It was so quiet, the crew could hear a single man among the prisoners when he said, "Let them out of there."

Wide-eyed nods came from the prisoners, gaping upward. One man hurried up the switchback stairs to unbar the hatch.

Gerrard smiled incredulously and turned to his comrades. "I'd never really thought of myself as an orator, but this time I… I guess I got their attention."

Sisay shook her head gravely. "You didn't," she said, pointing skyward. "Someone else did."

There, in the black belly of night, the lights of hundreds of Phyrexian ships made ghastly new constellations.