The Forest of Peldain

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.

Peering through the gloom, Octrago heard a rustling sound. Then a swishing and a slithering.

He looked up and saw scores of shafts, like the one he had recently avoided, descend swiftly from the foliage. It was like seeing a second forest interpenetrate the first; or, perhaps, like the massed feeding tubes extended by a certain bottom feeding marine animal: for each shaft seemed to have selected its mark and went to it unerringly.

Sword, bow and lance were no good here. There would be only a brief, wriggling struggle as the muzzle of each hollow tube dropped over the head and shoulders of its victim. Then, a loud thwack as the serpent harrier abruptly disappeared.

Forewarned, Vorduthe dodged the shaft that sought him out and threw himself onto the legs of a warrior who was already engulfed to his shoulders. But Vorduthe’s strength was quite insufficient to extricate him; he let go only just in time as the harrier vanished up the tube like an insect being sucked up a straw.

Not all who sought to rescue their stricken comrades in the same manner were quick enough to give up. Tumbling to the moss, Vorduthe saw more than one dragged up a shaft still clinging to a pair of legs.

He rolled, sprang to his feet, and ran, to see that the dreadful columns were everywhere: his whole army seemed to have fallen foul of them.

Suddenly he heard a muffled yell from a familiar voice, and whirled to locate its source. Beass Axthall, one of his squadron commanders and a lord in his own right, had been caught by a tube! Vorduthe recognized the insignia, the unique pattern of the armored kilt. But before he could even make a move, Axthall was gone!

The progress of the procession had ceased; the expedition was in total disorder. And now a new menace appeared—but, unlike the shafts, one which had previously been described by Askon Octrago.

They dropped in almost leisurely fashion from the overhead murk: greenish lines, looking like elongated stems from some innocuous flower, whose ends sported cap-like buds or petals. Like the shafts, they appeared to have some way of sensing animal presence and they also had the power of movement, for they twisted and turned as they descended, until they fell daintily on the heads of warriors busily fleeing from the lunging tubes.

One might have thought the helmets the men wore would have afforded some protection. Not so: the cap-like cups were so pliable they pushed themselves between the strips of metal and withe to clamp directly to the skull, fitting as neatly as the cap of an acorn.

In utter horror, Vorduthe watched men lifted aloft by the dozen, the stems withdrawing as if they were fishing lines being reeled in. How the caps managed to grip a man’s skull so tightly was a mystery. But up in the cover of the branches Vorduthe could vaguely see his warriors dancing and writhing, and he could hear them crying in agony.

He knew that they would hang there like grotesque fruit, all the nutrients of their bodies gradually being drawn out.

A troop leader staggered up and almost collided with Vorduthe. His face was pallid with fear.

“Danglecups!” he gasped. “Danglecups, my lord!”

“Yes. Octrago told us of these.”