Pipe Bomb

"They're not watching their backs. If we're lucky, we can set up the firepots, then you keep dropping Urza's toys into them, one after another."

Ratepe nodded, and Xantcha curled her fingers, raising the sphere slightly, then backing off to the far edge of the orchard, out of sight of the six men, but well within the firepots' range. She brought it down carefully. The thump of their supplies hitting the ground as the sphere collapsed wasn't loud enough to disturb the birds in the nearest trees.

***

The firepots were tubes shaped roughly like men's boots, with the important difference that when Xantcha unlaced them, their phloton linings glowed. She aimed them from memory. Close would be good enough with the canisters they'd be using. After she'd piled the fist-sized canisters at Ratepe's feet and dumped a pair-one filled with compressed naphtha, the other with glass shards-into the rapidly heating firepots, she handed Ratepe her smaller coin pouch.

***

The firepots, whose trajectory was more height than distance, delivered both of Urza's exploding artifacts within twenty paces of the ambulator. They'd spooked the horses; all six had torn free and bolted, but the naphtha had fallen beyond the black pool, and the glass hadn't disabled any of the four men-two still at work anchoring the ambulator, two with their swords drawn and coming after her-that Xantcha could see.

Two more canisters came hissing out of the morning sunlight. One fell on the rippling pool and vanished before it exploded. No time to imagine where it might have gone or what it might accomplish when it arrived. The second spread more glass shards near the two men working on the portal's rim. If she survived, Xantcha planned to tell Urza that glass shards weren't effective against Efuands. Though bloodied and clearly in pain, the pair stayed put.

***

Planeswalker, Chapter 13