Exhaustion and the aftereffects of terror hit Teldin like a blow. His belly cramped, and it was all he could do to stop himself from retching. His sword arm hung limply by his side. If another enemy came upon him like this, he realized, he wouldn't even be able to move while the other struck him dead.

But there were no other enemies on the forecastle. Vallus stood by the starboard rail, as unruffled as always. He gave Teldin a reassuring smile. Teldin crossed the deck to join him. As he did, the Probe lurched slightly beneath his feet. The helm is operating. Estriss's "voice" was crystal-clear in his mind.

"Vallus, do it!" Aelfred ordered.

The elf mage hadn't waited for the instruction. Once more his hands wove the threads of magic. His voice echoed across the deck. Again the blinding lance of green light shot from his fingertip, this time striking the root of the remaining grappling leg beneath the Probe. Black crystal exploded into dust, and the slender leg sheared off cleanly at its base. The hammership lurched again.

"Get us out of here!" Aelfred bellowed.

Slowly at first, but with ever-increasing speed, the Probe dropped away from the deathspider. With both lower legs gone, there was nothing to hold it from beneath, nothing to prevent its escape. As the hammership drew away, Vallus delivered one final stroke. Multicolored beams of light slashed through the void once more, this time striking directly through the spidership's bow port that had been shattered by an earlier spell.

"I take it the helm is on the bridge?" the elf said dryly. Aelfred smiled broadly. "You take it right." He patted Vallus on the shoulder. "That should slow them down, maybe permanently. Good move."

The hammership accelerated away from the deathspider. It changed course rapidly, just once, to avoid the severed leg that was wheeling slowly through space, then it poured on the speed. The distance between the ships grew rapidly. As if to bear out Aelfred's words, the hideous ship remained stationary, presumably unable to pursue. It would only be minutes before the Probe could accelerate to its full spelljamming speed, then there would be little chance that the neogi could catch them.

Teldin watched the receding spidership. The space around it was littered with debris-fragments from the shattered leg, small chunks of hull, and the small shapes that were the dead and dying. He was glad when the distance was so great that he could no longer see those figures.

When the hammership pulled away from the deathspider, the situation on deck changed drastically. There were half a dozen human attackers and one umber hulk still alive. As soon as it was obvious that the Probe had escaped, most of the humans immediately threw down their weapons and surrendered, begging the hammership's crew for mercy. The others turned on the single remaining hulk, attacking it ferociously. With the full surviving complement of the Probe plus the erstwhile slaves attacking it, the monster didn't last long. Teldin heard its barking shrieks getting fainter and fainter, then the monster was silent.

Teldin looked around the ship. Casualties had been horrendous. Most of the dead were the unarmored and lightly armed slaves from the deathspider, but many of the Probe's crew had fallen as well. Sweor Tobregdan lay on the main deck, coughing out his last breaths in bright blood. Teldin spotted Miggins crumpled against the port rail. The young gnome was still alive-barely-but he clutched the torn ruin of what had been his left arm. Liono, the spear still transfixing his chest, lay on the starboard side of the forecastle. The cloying smell of blood was thick in the air, and Teldin's ears were filled with the moans of the injured and dying. The Probe was like a charnel house.

Teldin slumped down against the forward turret and let the sword slip from his cramped hand. His stomach knotted with nausea. So many dead. He remembered the other battlefields he'd seen and recalled Aelfred's words: To the Nine Hells with the fools who think it's glorious. The big warrior was right. There was no glory in battle, just horror, pain, and death.

Dully he looked up to see Aelfred standing at the forecastle's aft rail, surveying the carnage below. The big man had bound a cloth around his brow to staunch the bleeding of his head wound. Small wounds showed almost everywhere on the warrior's body, but he seemed unaware of them. He shook his head and bent down to clean his blade on the shirt of someone who had no further use for it.

A junior officer-Julia, Teldin thought her name was-climbed the ladder from the main deck to the forecastle Teldin had always thought she looked pert and attractive with her short-cropped red hair and petite figure. Now she was covered in blood, and she looked utterly exhausted.

Aelfred looked up as he heard her approach. "Report," he said quietly.

The woman's voice was dull, as though she were tired unto death. "Limited structural damage," she responded, "nothing serious. We're spaceworthy."

"Casualties?"

"Fourteen dead, to my knowledge. Four missing that I know about: Shandess, Morla, Zeb, and Kevan. Probably overboard and dead-" she paused "-maybe captured."

Aelfred shook his head. "Let's hope dead," he said flatly.

Teldin recognized one of the names. Shandess was the old man who'd spoken to him on the foredeck immediately after they'd passed into the flow. He looked back at the receding deathspider and remembered the tattoo on the shoulder of one of his attackers, the wild, soul-destroyed look in his eyes.

He nodded to himself. Let's hope dead.

"Can we run the ship?" Aelfred continued.

Julia nodded. "Just. If we use the slaves to help, we should be all right. In no shape for another battle, but all right."

Estriss joined the two at the rail. There was blood on the tips of his facial tentacles: red blood, human blood. Teldin tried to blot the significance of that from his mind. Do we trust them, the illithid asked.

"We have to," Aelfred said flatly, then amended, "to some extent, at least. I've seen this before. They'll work for us-we saved them from the neogi, remember?-and they'll follow orders. It's the slave mentality." He swore viciously, then forced himself to be calm. "They'll follow orders," he repeated, "but that's all they'll be good for. Don't expect any initiative, any motivation. Sometimes they can come back, learn to think for themselves. Sometimes. It all depends on how long they were on the deathspider, what happened to them there." Teldin looked away. His fear was draining from him, but horror and disgust still remained.

"Teldin."

He turned at the sound of his own name. An exhausted-looking Horvath was approaching across the forecastle. He was carrying something, a bundle not much smaller than the gnome himself. "Teldin," he said again.

Teldin struggled to his feet. He read in the gnome's expression, in the dullness of his voice, what the burden must be, but knowing and seeing were two different things. He didn't want to look at the bundle that the gnome had set gently down on the deck, but he had to. He stood beside his friend and looked down.

It was Dana, as he knew it had to be. Her face was peaceful, at rest, for the first time in his experience. Her eyes were closed, and her lips were curved in a faint smile. She could have been asleep, if it hadn't been for the great wound in her chest.

"She wanted to see you," Horvath said, his voice cracking with emotion. "She wanted me to take her to you, but she went before I could reach you."

Teldin's heart was cold in his chest, and tears that he couldn't let himself shed stung behind his eyes. If he let himself cry, he thought, he'd never be able to stop. Hers was another death, another innocent laid at his feet, this time quite literally. The responsibility was his. He and his burden had brought death to another friend. He knelt beside the still shape and laid a hand tenderly against her cheek.