The Forest of Peldain

by Barrington J. Bayley

  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.”

  Chapter Four

  In a little over an hour and a half the task of transferring the expedition through the terror-hedge was completed. To begin with there had been more attacks by tree-lances, until the firewagons had once again been brought into play, clearing a safe area consisting of charred moss and smoking tree stumps.

  Since leaving the shoreline they had been steadily climbing. Octrago had led them to what appeared to be a broad ridge. The overhead canopy was thinner, the air clearer. Vorduthe began to feel more confidence in his foreign guide.

  He surveyed his force as the troop leaders organized the new formation, superintended by their squadron commanders. The brash shouting of the beach landing was gone, and had been replaced by a determination that was almost sullen. Orders were given in low tones, and the subdued air of the expedition, the quiet grunts and murmurs as the wagons were jockeyed into position, the clinking of weapons and armor in an oppressive near-silence was ominous.

  Vorduthe understood the new mood. The seaborne warriors were accustomed to fighting men like themselves. It affected their morale to take such heavy losses without meeting an enemy they could identify as an enemy. If they had faced the ravages of wild beasts now, they would have remained of good cheer, but against plants and trees.…

  Octrago, too, was watching the work with a critical eye. “Don’t let them spread out too much!” he warned. “Our survival depends on our numbers—we must punch our way through the forest like a fist. Any who become separated won’t stand much chance.”

  Vorduthe nodded. “Especially if they wander off the route, I suppose?” He glanced at the Peldainian. Several times he had pressed him for a map of the special route that was supposed to make passage through the forest possible. But Octrago insisted on keeping it in his head.

  Perhaps the secret was simple, Vorduthe thought: keep to the high ground. But if that was all there was to it, why was Octrago so reticent?

  He could think of one good reason: Octrago himself wanted to survive. And the Hundred-Islanders would take special care to protect the life of someone whose guidance they believed was indispensable.…

  The mass of men and wagons began to move, surging around the tree trunks like an incoming tide washing around rocks but giving them a wide berth whenever they could. Vorduthe noticed that Octrago hung back and fiddled nervously with the hilt of his sword. It occurred to him that the Peldainian wanted to be in the middle of the press so as to take advantage of the strategy he himself had outlined. The idea was that a relatively safe area could be created in the interior of the column, able to deal with threats by force of numbers, by fire—by whatever means lay at hand. To this end, the troop leaders on the periphery had orders to keep the formation compact.

  Yet Octrago claimed to have come by this route with only fifty men, Vorduthe reminded himself. In that case, a party as large as this ought to be able to overcome the hazards fairly easily.

  After a short distance springy moss gave way to tangled herbage standing calf-high. Vorduthe felt something tug at his ankle. He stumbled, then felt an excruciating pain as though his foot were being severed. In one swift motion he unclasped his sword and struck down through coarse grass and leaf. Something wriggled and attempted to pull him off balance.

  “Don’t fall!” Octrago shouted in warning. “We are in a patch of the damned stuff! Use your sword and stay on your feet!”

  Vorduthe pulled his foot free. From it there dangled a length of trip-root, woody and fibrous and harmless-looking now that it was separated from the parent plant. It creaked as he pried it with difficulty from his ankle.

  That it was far from harmless could be seen from what was happening all around. A wagon lurched, the men in charge of it stuck to the ground as if they had blundered into quicksand, their faces grimacing with pain and fear. Elsewhere, too, men were stumbling and struggling, slashing at the grass with their weapons. And some fell, the trip-root quickly fastening itself on legs, arms and necks like the stranglevine to which it was closely related.

  Octrago himself was
caught. With deft strokes of his blade he freed himself, then loped to the stalled wagon, taking long, tiptoeing leaps. He began scything at the grass, rescuing as many as he could of the haulers.

  For some it was too late. A warrior leaned against the nearside wagon wheel, one leg lifted to stare at the red-dripping stump where his foot had been.

  The Peldainian did not hesitate. His sword-point went straight to the wounded warrior’s heart, sliding between the ribs of his armor. Octrago turned away without even waiting to see the body fall.

  “On! Forward! You are too slow! Proceed like this—”

  Bending slightly, he swished at the grass before him, scything a path. Where trip-root was revealed he chopped through it, cutting the woody musculature.

  “You need your wits about you in this forest,” he said disapprovingly when he caught up with Vorduthe. “Your men should be more spirited, my lord.”

  Vorduthe did not answer. They were leaving the field of trip-root; the ground was reverting to moss with only clumps of coarse grass and strange flowers with crude, blotched colors. He forced himself to turn around and look back to the bodies that lay scattered about, abandoned to be cut to pieces by the inexorable root network and slowly to add their blood, flesh and bone to this ghastly jungle.

  He lingered until the last of the troops into which the force was divided had moved onto mossy ground. For the next half hour they traveled without incident. The ground continued to rise; rocky outcrops appeared. The trees, whether straight-trunked or gnarled and twisted into fantastic shapes as many were, became fewer.

  But after a while their path began to slope downward, gradually at first, then more steeply. The eerie twilight cast by the overhang grew deeper. Octrago appeared to hesitate several times, casting his gaze here and there before resuming the march with dogged steps.

  Vorduthe caught up with him. “Is something wrong?”

  “No, we are on course.”

  “Yet we are descending. Isn’t that dangerous?”

  “The terrain is uneven,” Octrago responded grumpily. “We can hardly climb all the time. You must trust me, my lord.”

  “So I must,” Vorduthe muttered, and fell back to where he could keep watch on his juggernaut of an army as it wended its way down the hillside. The forest was growing thicker, with less space between both the tall trees that supported the overhead canopy and the variegated species, mostly shorter, that displayed such strange shapes and foliage. Vorduthe spotted mangrab trees, lance trees, and the striped trees that Octrago had warned were cage tigers. So far none appeared to be of the active lethal kind, or if they were they were staying dormant.

  The wagons were also carefully steered round the clumps of bush, bramble and other plants for which there were no ready names. Then an indistinct tangle loomed up ahead. It was as if the tree trunks rose from a foggy sea of twig and fern which barred the way in all directions.

  Octrago halted, staring at the massed vegetation.

  “Well?” Vorduthe asked. “Do we turn aside?”

  “Not unless you want to go down into the vales, and you know all about that. It’s only a thicket. Call the wagons together. We’ll push them forward in a solid wall to trample it down, and walk behind.”

  “Tell me what dangers lie in this thicket,” Vorduthe asked. “You had to come through it on your way to the coast, presumably. How did you manage it?”

  “We hacked our way through,” Octrago said after a pause. “It held no special dangers on that occasion—but now, who knows? The forest is unpredictable.”

  With that answer Vorduthe had to be content. Following the Peldainian’s suggestion, he had about half the wagons formed into a wedge, while his small and already-battered army clustered behind. The remaining wagons he kept in place along the flanks, as before.

  The wedge crashed through the thicket with a crackle and a swish. For some time this, plus the creak of wheels, the clink of armor and tramp of feet, were the only noises to be heard. The air thickened and dimmed; overhead seemed to be an aerial jungle which cut off the light, and through which the wagons were carving a rough tunnel.

  Occasionally a wagon would jerk and stop, caught in a clump of vegetation or mass of roots, and the whole procession would pause while it was cut free. Vorduthe would have begun to relax, had he not been aware of the nervousness of Octrago, which made him suspect the Peldainian of hiding the truth.

  They were deep within the thicket when the forest began its attacks. He heard a cry.

  “Stranglevine—beware!”

  It was like huge ropy cobweb that dropped from the trees, swung and snaked through the air, suddenly appearing to seize anything it encountered, gripping and squeezing, lifting wriggling men clear off the ground by their necks, a living skein of hangman’s nooses.

  But at least it was a foe that could be combatted. With swords, with long-handled cutters, the masses of vine were sliced and hacked, writhing and falling in limp strands and tangles to the ground.

  Vorduthe, while slashing at the jerking cord himself, tried to count the number of men who succumbed to the manic creeper before it was dealt with. How many had he lost now?

  And at this rate how many would he have left when they entered Peldain proper? He looked surreptitiously at Octrago. It was not easy to read the Peldainian’s naturally pale face. But Vorduthe fancied he looked worried.

  “Tell me,” he said when the stranglevine was left behind, “do our casualties agree with your calculations so far?”

  Octrago uttered what sounded like a grotesque laugh. “We have scarcely begun. The time to count our losses is at nightfall.”

  He moved away as if unwilling to continue the conversation and, striding between the lines of warriors who strained at the wagon shafts, leaped lightly onto a tailboard, peering over the bulk of the vehicle to look ahead.

  After some minutes he looked back, signaling to Vorduthe, then dropped to the moss and approached him.

  It seemed to Vorduthe, perhaps only in his imagination, that Octrago was terrified. His bony face was unnaturally tense. And its green pallor was not only, he suspected, a reflection of the viridian twilight through which they were traveling.

  “The way is barred,” Octrago informed him. “We shall have to break formation and filter through the trees.”

  “Why did you not tell me this before we entered the thicket?”

  “Remember, we were moving in a smaller group the last time I passed this way.”

  “So you were… I wonder how a party as small as yours managed to defend itself against the stranglevine we just came through. Large numbers were decidedly an advantage there.

  “Exactly,” Octrago said acidly. “You can see for yourself why so few of us made it to the coast.” He paused. “Actually, we did not come upon that particular patch of vine. I do not claim to be retracing our path yard for yard. Or, just as likely, the vine has grown since.”

  By now the wedge was creaking to a halt and Vorduthe was once again obliged to issue orders through his squadron commanders. The wedge broke up. Each wagon, still pushed by its retinue of warriors, began to find its own way through the thicket.

  The going was tough. Singly the wagons lacked the wedge’s power to trample down the tangle, and more and more often a way had to be cleared for them by hand, stalk and bramble hacked away with swords that now were permanently drawn. Vorduthe noted that Octrago’s sword also did not leave his hand, even though he was taking no active part in the work. His suspicion that Octrago was expecting something unpleasant increased. He clicked open the hasp of his scabbard and let his own weapon fall into his grasp.

  It was becoming difficult to see what surrounded them, so dense was the thicket. A bole or tree trunk might be only feet away and give no clear indication of its presence or of its species. Vorduthe was not surprised, then, when a voice—it sounded like Lord Axthall’s—suddenly shouted out hoarsely. “Beware mangrab!”

  At the same time the clumping sound of mangrab trees opening a
nd closing came from several directions, followed by groans of utmost agony.

  There was also a crunching, snapping noise. He realized one of the mangrabs had accidentally caught part of a wagon. Suddenly there was an explosion. Through the blurring vegetation, he saw a fireball burning furiously and sending a pall of smoke rising through the branches of the trees.

  It was a fire engine the mangrab had seized.

  Bellowing to the men to keep going, Vorduthe trudged doggedly on, keeping to the path flattened by the wagon ahead. At length the stench and crackle of the flames were left behind. And now the thicket began to grow somewhat sparser, though the trees remained as close-pressed as before and were hung with liana-like creeper. Luckily it stayed inert, swaying slightly; it was not stranglevine.

  Vorduthe stepped from the path and slashed with his sword at the standing stalks. He moved a few feet to the side, placing his feet gingerly though he did not think fallpits grew in a place like this, and peered cautiously. He could partly see the outline of a neighboring wagon trundling jerkily along, until it was eclipsed by a tree trunk.

  His momentary carelessness as to his own safety saved him from certain death. When he looked back it was to see a long shaft, a kind of bamboo pipe thicker than a man, that had lowered itself from the opaque verdure overhead, aslant like the tree-lances they had encountered earlier. Its lower end hovered above the spot where he had stood, hunting to and fro as if searching.

  The shaft, no doubt, was hunting him. It had sensed him; it had lunged, and it would have caught him had he not at that moment chanced to step aside.

  Where was Octrago? Vorduthe wished to question him as to the nature of this thing. The Peldainian was out of sight, however. Vorduthe skirted the spot, warning off the following warriors who paused to gawp.

  The thicket petered out quite suddenly a short distance farther on and the wagon rolled over clean moss. Hereabouts the forest was an eerie, semi-darkened palace whose columns were ragged rows of tree trunks, decorated with gargoyle-like bark of twisted, ravaged boles. The overhead canopy shut out nearly all light.