The Forest of Peldain

Chapter Three

Vorduthe ignored the heat that struck through the thick bark of his sandals as he waded through the glowing ashes. All the expedition’s equipment was coming on to the beach-head amid a cacophony of shouting and a groaning of timber, carried in narrow, broad-wheeled wagons designed to file through the thickness of the forest.

The task completed, the noise lessened. The ramps were withdrawn, dragging through the water. There came a call from the fleet captain: the ships pulled away, sent into reverse by the plying of oars until they lay in deep water where they would wait a day or two and then, if all went well, sail for the Hundred Islands. They would return in half a year’s time.

And on this smoking beach were eighteen hundred men, a more than sufficient force, Octrago claimed—even allowing for the quite heavy casualties they would inevitably suffer in passing through the forest—to conquer the interior. In the wagons were supplies, building materials, but, most of all, fuel for the fire engines, the weapons on which they mainly depended to get them through.

Everyone was staring at the charred fringe of the forest: at the burnt boles, the criss-cross tangle of stems, the singed but still green canopy that seemed to tremble and reach out….

Octrago was probing at the ash with the sword, frowning. Suddenly there came a cry from not far away. A serpent harrier (the formal rank of the ordinary seaborne warrior) was trying to lift his foot from the ground. He grimaced with pain.

Darting to him, Octrago slashed downward with his sword, slicing through ash. Suddenly released, the serpent harrier hopped away. Some kind of root was wrapped around his ankle.

“Trip-root,” Octrago explained briefly as Vorduthe came close. “I thought there would still be some about. It would have amputated his foot, in the space of about a minute.”

He looked up at Vorduthe, his straw-colored hair shining through the metal strips of his helmet. “Are we ready to move, Commander?”

Vorduthe nodded. “Pick the spot.”

By his own account, Octrago had passed this way before. He smiled faintly as he inspected the edge of the forest, then pointed. “There is a suitable point for entry. Send a firewagon first, as planned.”

On the cindery shore, amid the rubble of tree stumps, the expedition was forming itself into a column. Vorduthe had appointed three squadron commanders to officer his force: Mendayo Korbar, Kirileo Orthane, and Beass Axthall. Under them, two score of troop leaders were busy putting the men in order. Between the wagons, each hauled and shoved by up to thirty warriors, the troops were to march two abreast—a formation made necessary by the denseness of the forest perimeter. Octrago had declared that a deft use of fire would see them through this outer, particularly hazardous fringe. About half a mile in, the forest would become less close-packed, and the procession could re-form itself into something less vulnerable.

Men at fore and aft shafts trundled a firewagon into forward position, the muzzle of its fire spout poking and waving at the forest like an admonishing finger. A serpent harrier squatted over its fuel tank. In one hand he clutched the swivel lever. The other held the string of the matchcord. His face was grim with anticipation.

Ahead of the wagon two testers walked, carrying poles to prod the ground for fallpits. Vorduthe issued the order to proceed, then took his place behind the leading firewagon, Askon Octrago by his side.

The wagon eased itself into the narrow gap between two blackened boles. The shadow of the overreaching branches fell on them.

And then the world he had always known, the world of sapphire sky and dazzling white cloud, of sparkling azure sea and wine-like air, was gone. The forest floor knew only a kind of green twilight, enlivened occasionally by sudden flashes of sunlight that darted through the shifting canopy overhead. Underfoot, the ground was moss-like. As for the trees, they were close-packed and Vorduthe could not for the moment discern any unusual features about them.

By his side, Octrago spoke in a murmur. “In the forest is a large variety of trees and plants,” he said, repeating what Vorduthe had heard from him in Arelia while they had planned the expedition. “Remember that only about one in twenty is lethal, but that it is impossible to tell which is which. That is what makes the forest so deadly, so treacherous. A harmless cage tiger looks exactly the same as a predatory cage tiger.”

Ahead, the wagon twisted and turned to pass between the tree trunks, which were of smooth, straight bark. While speaking Octrago continued to glance to left, to right, and up, sword still in hand as if he expected to be set upon at any moment by invisible assailants.

Suddenly he pointed up ahead with his sword. “Stranglevine! Call a halt.”

Vorduthe bellowed. The wagon creaked to a stop, and he called forward men with cutters.

The vine, a straggly net, hung from a line of trees a short distance ahead. It could be no more than inert liana, but as Octrago had said there was no way to tell by looking. The cutters edged forward, extending their long poles on the ends of which were blades that worked scissor-fashion. The blades sliced and cut, dropping lengths of vine to the ground. Finally the way was clear; the procession pressed forward.

Octrago picked up a length of vine, flexed it and shook it. “No reaction,” he said. “It would turn like a snake if it were killer vine.”

Vorduthe looked back over the line that was still entering the forest from the clean sunlight outside, twisting and turning as it wended between the tree trunks. He glimpsed the feathered helmet of his squadron commander Mendayo Korbar, who had been so bitterly opposed to trusting Octrago. They were roughly three minutes into the forest and so far its supposedly deadly ferocity had not shown itself. Could it be that the dangers had been exaggerated?

As the thought entered his mind there came a dull thwack and something shot out of a thicket: a pointed bamboo-like shaft which speared down from the crown of a tree. It transfixed a warrior through the chest.

What followed was almost obscene. The other end of the shaft was still anchored to the tree that had launched it. Having made its strike, it began to elevate itself, like a phallus becoming erect, lifting the warrior into the air.

The serpent harrier squirmed and clutched at the shaft. Then he gave one last spasm and hung limp and motionless, thirty feet off the ground.

“Cut him down!” someone demanded in an angry growl.

“No!” Octrago warned. “We must keep going—it is dangerous to linger.” He turned to Vorduthe. “This was agreed. The dead must be left where they fall.”

“Fall is hardly the word,” Vorduthe responded glumly. “But I suppose you are right.”

He signaled. Reluctantly, the men left their dead comrade. The column resumed its slow march.

Then the surrounding forest seemed to erupt. It was as if an army of spearmen ambushed the procession. From both sides the bamboo lances lunged down, some failing to find a target, but many ripping through armor and flesh.

The thought came to Vorduthe that his men were like fish in water being speared by stalking hunters. “We are in a spear thicket!” he heard Octrago saying. “Use fire!”

There was no need for Vorduthe to give the order. As the ranks of living spears rose, lifting aloft wriggling bodies by the dozen, the firewagons were already being brought into play. Flame gushed to left and right. Fretworks of fire ran along twig and stem, consuming leaves and flowers. Sap exploded, trunks became pillars of flame.

Acrid smoke obscured the scene. When it cleared, the attack was over. The trees, however, still blazed, crackled and popped. Vorduthe looked aghast at the grotesque honor guard made by the upraised spears and their gruesome burdens. He must have lost fifty men.

“We must move quickly,” Octrago gasped, coughing in the smoke and heat. “The forest is aroused. We have to reach more open ground.”

“You directed us this way,” Vorduthe accused. “Could you find no better path?”

Octrago did not answer, but in his heart Vorduthe had not expected him to. He turned away as archers aimed at their comrades still squirming on the bamboo shafts. That was another rule he had been forced to adopt: they could not carry any seriously injured.

The column started up again, but had walked only yards when a scream came from Vorduthe’s rear, accompanied by a gurgling noise.

He dashed back along the line. The ground had opened beneath the feet of a serpent harrier, tumbling him into a pit whose tapering sides were lined with root-like substance. A nauseating, acrid stench floated up from the hole. The serpent harrier, still screaming, was floundering eight foot down in a bath of acid which came nearly to his neck.

As Vorduthe watched, broad green-brown leaves uncurled from the rim of the pit. In seconds they had made a surface not easily distinguishable from the ordinary forest floor, and the dying warrior’s shrieks were muffled.

As Vorduthe tested this lid with his sword and found it of the consistency of wood, Octrago pushed his way toward him. “It’s a fallpit,” he said glumly. “Our fire engines can’t deal with those, I’m afraid.”

A warrior’s face reddened within the ribwork of withe and metal strip that protected it. “But we walked over that spot ourselves!” he protested angrily. “The wagon went over it too!”

“A fallpit’s lid is solid most of the time,” Octrago said distantly. “It might allow one man, ten men, even a hundred men to step on it before its muscle relaxes. Beneath, the plant consists of a deep hollow root partly filled with digestive acid. Apart from the lid, nothing of it grows above ground.”

He gestured. “Come. Move quickly.”

Shortly all the expedition was in the forest, and Vorduthe hoped soon to be out of the dense fringe.

But the next ten minutes were terrifying. As Octrago had intimated, the forest seemed to have alerted itself to their presence. Every half minute or so spears came thwacking into the procession three or four at a time. The two serpent harriers placed in the van to probe the ground both disappeared into the same fallpit, which had resisted their rods like solid earth until it was actually stepped upon. Trip root caught many by the ankles, but this was the least of the dangers since a sword could sever it.

From above, there began to rain on the column brambletangles, as Octrago called them—loose clumps of thorny stems which detached themselves from the treetops. If a thorn or a serrated edge touched skin, death followed in seconds from fast-acting poison. The troops, whose bodies were mostly protected against accidental contact, soon learned to ward off the slow-falling masses with the flat of their swords.

Octrago seemed to grow more nervous and advised the almost constant use of the forward fire wagon, so that they marched through a sort of charred, smoking tunnel seared into the deadly jungle. While this made it possible to progress in relative safety, Vorduthe wondered how long his stock of fuel would last at this rate. At length, however, the spaces between the trees began to enlarge, the green gloom to lighten to a viridescent twilight that was almost pleasant. The column filled into a large glade, where Vorduthe paused gratefully. At least one of Octrago’s promises had been fulfilled, he told himself.

“Will the going now be easier?” he asked him.

Octrago’s reply was a wry quirk of his mouth, and to point to a tall line of bush that barred their path and was almost artificial in its regularity. No end to it was visible, either to left or to right.

“Yonder is a terror-hedge. We must burn our way through it.”

“We cannot burn our way through the whole of the forest. Might there be a way around?”

A short, explosive laugh escaped Octrago’s lips. “Perhaps, if you care to walk a hundred leevers down into the vales. The terror-hedges criss-cross the forest like a maze. The route we are taking encounters only a few of them.”

“Then how thick are these hedges?”

“A few yards, usually. But don’t think to hack our way through. The terror-hedge is not named for nothing. If interfered with it writhes and surges like a mad thing so that no one could ever evade its touch. Its thorns do not kill. Instead their poison instills uncontrollable fear into a man, so that he loses his mind and destroys himself.”

“Very well.” Vorduthe stepped forward and spoke to the fire engine operator, who told him his tank was running low. He summoned a fuel wagon and watched while the viscous liquid was transferred through a waxed fiber pipe.

The column was spreading out as it filled the spacious glade. From now on they would be able to move in a more compact mass, less vulnerable to the forest’s vegetable attacks.

Vorduthe mused on what he had learned from Octrago of the geography of Peldain. Their route kept to high ground, once they had climbed up from the beachhead. According to Octrago a bird’s eye view would show a forest roof that was more or less even, except where it swept down to the sea at the coastal fringe. Beneath it the landscape consisted of hills and valleys, hidden because, for some reason that was not understood, the forest grew everywhere to the same height. In consequence the valleys were like deep dark pits. In them there would be not the smallest chance of survival, even for a force as large and well-equipped as this.

Out of earshot of Octrago, Mendayo Korbar approached Vorduthe. “The Peldainian says two marches will take us to the mountains,” he muttered. “I hope he is telling the truth. I have a sense of foreboding.”

“This place would fill anyone with fears,” Vorduthe agreed. “But his word has been borne out so far.”

He turned as a strangled cry interrupted him. One of the trees that dotted the large glade had undergone some kind of convulsion. It was large-boled, monstrously bulbous near the root, and this bulging trunk had somehow opened up, splitting into stretching segments. Already it was contracting again, but caught in the closing cracks was a serpent harrier who was being crushed like an insect.

The branches of the tree trembled ecstatically. The warrior’s comrades ran to attack the bole with axes and swords. The tree responded in a flash, opening and closing once more with a motion the eye could scarcely follow. And in it was now trapped a second man, whose shriek became a creaking groan as he was squeezed like the first.

Men fell back in dismay as the fissures joined and hands-and legs fell off to drop to the moss. Only lines of fresh blood showed where the cracks had been.

Octrago sauntered over. “Now you have seen what a mangrab tree can do,” he said casually. “With a reach of twelve feet it is difficult to avoid in some quarters. Here in the clearing, however… it is hard to avoid saying that your men are being careless.”

While Octrago spoke, Vorduthe saw a man near the edge of the clearing seemingly swallowed up by the ground, arms flailing but briefly before he was gone. With everyone’s attention on the man-grab tree, the fallpit had taken its victim almost unnoticed.

“On the other side of the terror-hedge we should form up for regular progress, as I prescribed,” Octrago went on. “Form groups of twenty or more, moving in clots for a common defense. The whole to advance in a broad column, with the wagons on the outside, so that attacking plants will be surrounded and can be dealt with. Keep up the men’s morale. Assure them we shall best the forest in the end.”

“These are disciplined warriors and need no sweet words from you,” Korbar replied in a throaty growl.

Octrago turned away, his ironic smile once more coming to his lips.

The fuel wagon was being rolled away. Vorduthe signaled to the operator. A long gout of flame emerged with a roaring noise from the nozzle, followed by three shorter ones. The dense, prickly hedge, almost geometrically precise in its lines, blackened, recoiled, and began to writhe along its visible length in a shockingly unvegetable reaction. Vorduthe wondered if the forest was, in fact, more akin to animality in nature.

For some moments it looked as though the flames would take hold, creeping through the hedges to either side. Then they waned, flickered and died. Octrago had explained that fire was an effective weapon at short range, but on a larger scale the forest was invincible. It could not be burned down; for some reason, flames would not spread in it.

The operator swiveled the fire spout and jerked the matchcord again, filling the air with a smell of burning wood that would have been almost pleasant if it had not been so intense. When the smoke cleared, Vorduthe found he could peer through the gap. He saw woodland, much like that on this side except that the trees stood closer together.

“So, then.” Octrago seemed almost amused. “Now the journey begins in earnest.”