Planeswalker (13 page)

If she set the sphere down, the storm might keep them
down until tomorrow. If she kept the sphere scudding,
they'd cut a half-day or more off the journey. And by the
amount of smoke rising from the village, the inhabitants
were burning their fields-hardly a good time for strangers
to show up asking favors. Xantcha swiveled her hand south
of southwest, and the sphere bounced onto the new tack.

"Wait!" Rat shook Xantcha's ankle. "Wait! That village.
Can't you see? It's on fire."

She looked again. Rat was right, fields weren't
burning, roofs were. All the more reason to stay on the
south by southwest course away from trouble.

"Xantcha! It's the Shratta. It's got to be. Red-Stripes
come looking for bribes but don't destroy the villages. We
can't just leave-You can't! People are dying down there!"

"I'm not a sorcerer, Rat. I'm not Urza. There's nothing
I can do except get myself-and you-killed."

"We can't turn our backs. We're no better than the
Shratta, no better than the Phyrexians, if we do that."

Rat had a real knack for getting under Xantcha's skin,
a dangerous mixture of arrogance and charm, just like the
real Mishra. Xantcha was about to disillusion her companion
with the revelation that she was Phyrexian when he heaved
himself toward the burning village. The sphere wasn't Rat's
to command. It held to Xantcha's chosen course-as he must
have known it would. Rat didn't seem the sort who'd
sacrifice himself to prove a point, but he set the sphere
tumbling. Everything was knees, elbows, food, and a sword
before Xantcha got them sorted out.

"Don't you ever do that again!"

Rat accepted the challenge. This time Xantcha split his
upper lip and planted her knee in his groin before she
steadied the sphere.

"We're going home ... to Urza. He's got the power to
settle this."

"Too damn late! People are dying down there!"

Rat flung himself, but Xantcha was ready this time and
the sphere scarcely bounced.

"I'll drop you if you don't settle yourself."

"Then drop me."

"You'll die."

"I'd rather be dead on the ground than alive up here."

Rat grabbed the scabbarded sword and, with his full
weight behind the hilt, plunged it through the sphere.
Xantcha reeled from the impact. She hadn't known damage to
the sphere meant sharp pain radiating from the cyst in her
gut. She could have lived another three thousand years
without that particular bit of knowledge. She cocked her
fist for a punch that would shatter Rat's jaw.

"Go ahead," he snarled defiantly. "Tell your precious
Urza that you killed his brother a second time."

Xantcha lowered her hand. Maybe she was wrong about his
willingness to sacrifice himself. By then they were
drifting away from the village and nothing but Xantcha's
will put them on a course for the flames. The closer they
got, the clearer it was that Rat had been right. The north
wind brought screams of pain and terror. Born-folk were
dying.

When they were still several hundred paces from the
wooden palisade, a young woman ran through the broken gate,
her hair and hems billowing behind her, a sword-wielding
thug in pursuit. Woman and thug both stopped short when
they saw two strangers hovering in midair.

"Waste not, want not!" Xantcha muttered. She thought
Collision and Now! The cyst in her stomach grew fiery
spikes, but the sphere plunged like a stooping hawk. It
collapsed the instant it touched the gape-mouthed thug,
leaving Xantcha to strike with sufficient force to knock
him unconscious. She bounded to her feet and crushed the
now-defenseless man's skull with her boot heel,
deliberately splattering Rat with gore. If he wanted death;
she'd show him death. The village woman screamed and kept
running. Xantcha seized the sword from the tangle of bodies
and spilled baskets. "All right!" She thrust the hilt
toward Rat. When he didn't take it up, she poked him hard.
"This is what you wanted! Go ahead. Go in there. Save
them!"

"I-I can't use a sword. I don't know how. ... I
thought-"

"You thought!" Xantcha angled the sword, prepared to
clout him with the hilt. "You think too much!"

Rat got to his feet, stumbling over his chain. He
stared at the iron links as if he hadn't seen them before.
Whatever nonsense he'd been thinking, he hadn't remembered
his fetters.

"I can't... You'll have to-"

She shook her head slowly. "I told you, I'm no damn
sorcerer, no damn warrior. This is your idiot's idea, your
fight. So, you choose: them or me."

It was the same ominous, otherworldly tone Xantcha had

used with Garve and Tucktah. She cocked the sword a second
time, and Rat grabbed the hilt. He couldn't run, so he
skipped and hopped toward the gate.

"Lose the scabbard!" Xantcha shouted after him then
muttered Phyrexian curses as Rat stumbled through the gate
brandishing a scabbarded sword.

Rat was a fool, and fools deserved whatever harm befell
them, but Xantcha's anger faded as soon as her nemesis was
out of sight. She reached into her belt-pouch and finger-
sorted a few of the smallest, blackest coins.Then, with
them clutched loosely in her hand, she yawned out Urza's
armor and followed Rat into the besieged village. Not being
a sorcerer wasn't quite the same as not having any
sorcerous tricks in her arsenal, and not being a warrior
was a statement of preference, not experience. There
weren't many weapons Xantcha didn't know how to use or
evade. On other worlds she'd routinely carried several of
them.

But not on Dominaria. She'd given her word.

"I know your temper," Urza had said after they arrived.
"But this is home-my home. My traveling years are over. I'm
never leaving Dominaria, and I don't want you starting
brawls and drawing attention to yourself ... or me. Promise
me you'll stay out of trouble. Promise me that you'll walk
away rather than start a fight."

"Waste not, want not-I did not start this, Urza. Truly,
I did not."

A gutted corpse lay one step within the gate, but it
wasn't Rat's. Xantcha leapt over it. A man bearing a bloody
knife ran out of a burning cottage on her left. She slipped
a coin into her throwing hand, then stayed her arm as a
second, similarly armed, man burst out of the cottage.

Villagers or Shratta thugs? Was one chasing the other?
Were they both fleeing? Or looking for more victims?

Xantcha couldn't tell by their clothes or manner. Few
things were more frustrating or dangerous than barging into
a brawl among strangers. After cursing Rat to the Seventh
Sphere of Phyrexia, she entered the cottage the men had
abandoned.

The one-room dwelling was filled with smoke. Xantcha
called Rat's name and got no answer. Back on the village's
single street, she headed for the largest building she
could see and had taken about ten strides when an arrow
struck her shoulder. Urza's armor was as good as granite
when it came to arrows. The shaft splintered, and the
arrowhead slid harmlessly down her back.

In one smooth movement, Xantcha spun around and hurled
a small, black coin at a fleeing archer. The coin began to
glow as soon as it left her hand. It was white-hot by the
time it struck the archer's neck. He was dead before he hit
the ground, with thick, greenish-black fumes rising from
the fatal wound.

A swordsman attacked Xantcha next. He knocked her down
with his first attack but was unnerved when she sprang up,
unbloodied. Xantcha parried his next strike with her
forearm as she closed in to kick him once in the stomach
and a second time, as he crumbled, to the jaw. She paused
to pick up the sword, then continued down the street
shouting Rat's name, attracting attention.

Two more men appeared in front of her. They knew each

other and the warrior's trade, giving each other room,
exchanging gestures and cryptic commands as they
approached. The strategy might have worked if Xantcha had
been unarmored or if the sword had been her only weapon.
Her aim with the coins wasn't as good with her off-weapon
hand. Only one struck its target, but that was enough. The
other two exploded when they hit the ground, leaving goat-
sized craters in the packed dirt.

Her surviving enemy rushed forward, more intent on
getting out of the village than fighting. Xantcha swung,
but he parried well and had momentum on his side. Xantcha
slammed backward into the nearest wall when he shoved her
aside. Elsewhere in the village, someone blew three rapid
notes on a horn, and a weaponed quartet at the other end of
the village street dashed for the gate. For religious
fanatics, the Shratta were better disciplined than most
armies. Dark suspicion led Xantcha to inhale deeply, but
beyond the smoke and the blood, there was nothing Phyrexian
in the air.

A straggler ran past. Xantcha let him go. This was
Rat's fight, not hers, and she didn't yet know if he'd
survived.

"Ra-te-pe!" She used all three syllables of his name.
"Ra-te-pe, son of Mideah, get yourself out here!"

A face appeared in the darkened doorway of the barn
that had been her destination. It belonged to an older man,
armed with a pitchfork. He stepped unsteadily over the
doorsill.

"No one here owns that name."

"There'd better be. He's meat if he ran."

Two more villagers emerged from the barn: a woman
clutching her bloody arm against her side and a stone-faced
toddler who clung to her skirt.

"Who are you?" the elder asked, giving the pitchfork a
shake, reminding Xantcha that she held a bare and bloody
sword.

"Xantcha. Rat and I were ... nearby." She threw the
sword into the dirt beside the last man she'd killed. "He
saw the roofs burning."

They still were. The survivors made no effort to
extinguish the blazes. A village like this probably had one
well and only a handful of buckets. The cottages were
partly stone; they could be rebuilt after the fires burnt
out.

The elder shook his head. Plainly he didn't believe
that anyone had simply been nearby. But Xantcha had laid
down her weapon. He shouted an all's well that lured a few
more mute survivors from their hiding places.

Still no Rat.

Xantcha turned, intending to investigate the other end
of the village. The woman who'd fled-the one who'd seen
them descend in the sphere-was on the street behind her.
Her reappearance, alive and unharmed, broke the villagers'
shock. Another woman let out a cry that could have been
either joy or grief.

The returning woman replied, "Mother," but her eyes
were locked on Xantcha and her hands were knotted in ward-
signs against evil.

Time to find Rat and get moving. Xantcha walked quickly
to the other end of the village where a whitewashed temple

held the place of honor. The door was held open by a
corpse.

Given who was fighting in Efuan Pincar, Xantcha
supposed she shouldn't have been surprised that the temple
had become a char-nel house. She counted ten men, each with
his hands bound and his throat slit, lying in a common,
bloody pool. There were more corpses, similarly bound,
sprawled closer to the altar, but she'd spotted Rat staring
at a wall before she'd counted them. "We've got to leave."

He didn't twitch. The scabbard was gone; the sword
blade was dark and glistening in the temple's gloomy light.
Rat had probably never held a sword before Xantcha made him
more afraid of her than death. Odds were he'd become a
killer, if not a fighter, in the past hour. A man could
crack under that kind of strain. Xantcha approached him
cautiously. "Rat? Ratepe?"

The wall was covered with bloody words. Xantcha could
read a score of Dominarian languages, most of them long-
extinct, none of them Efuand. "What does it say?"

"Those who defile the Shratta will be cleansed in their
own blood. Blessed be Avohir, in whose name this has been
done."'

Xantcha placed her hand over his sword-gripping hand.
Without a word, Rat released the hilt.

"If there are gods," she said softly, "then thugs like
the Shratta don't speak for them."

She tried to guide Rat toward the door; he resisted,
quietly but completely. Mortals, men who were born and who
grew old, saw death in ways no Phyrexian newt could
imagine, in ways Urza had forgotten. Xantcha had exhausted
her meager store of platitudes.

"You knew the Shratta were here, Rat. You must have
known what you'd find."

"No."

"I stopped at other villages before I got to Medran.
You weren't the first to tell me about the Shratta. This is
their handiwork."

"It's not!" Rat shrugged free.

"It's time to leave." Xantcha grasped his arm again.

Rat struck like a serpent but did no harm only because
Xantcha was a hair's breath faster in jumping away. She
recognized madness on his tear-streaked face.

"All right. Tell me. Talk to me. Why isn't this Shratta
handiwork?"

"Him."

Rat pointed at an isolated corpse slumped in the corner
between the written-on wall and the wall behind the altar.
The man had died because his gut had been slashed open, but
he had other wounds, many other wounds, none of which had
bled appreciably. Xantcha, who'd fought and sometimes
succumbed to her own blind rages, knew at once that this
was the man-probably the only man-that Rat had killed.

"All right, what about him?"

"Look at him! He's not Shratta!"

"How do you know?" Xantcha asked, willing to believe
him, if he had a good answer.

"Look at his hands!"

She nudged them with her foot. The light was bad, but
they seemed ordinary enough to her. "What? I see nothing
unordinary."

"The Hands of God. The Shratta are Avohir's Avengers.
They tattoo their hands with Shratta-verses from Avohir's
holy book."

"Maybe he was a new recruit?"