The Forest of Peldain

At least it was possible to fend them off. Vorduthe’s sword scythed the air, severing a green cord that seemed to have been making for the troop leader. The danglecup cap flexed itself as it lay on the moss.

And not far away there was a blur of motion followed by a sickening thud mixed with the crunch of metal. A warrior had fallen to his death from far overhead. A stalk projected from his helmet, and a danglecup clung to his scalp. The sword with which he had managed to hack himself free was still clenched in his fist.

The troop leader’s tone was pleading. “What shall we do, my lord?”

“Fire is our only weapon.” Vorduthe pointed with his sword. “You take that wagon. I’ll take the other one.”

The crew of the fire engine had either been plucked from it or else had joined the other warriors who were huddled beneath it for protection. Sliding his sword up his scabbard, Vorduthe vaulted at a run onto the operator’s perch.

No new tube-shafts were descending now. Those that had already appeared seemed sated by their activity, or perhaps they were only capable of applying their suction once. Indolently they were withdrawing. But danglecups there were in plenty, and one was dropping straight at Vorduthe with frightening speed. He swung the nozzle to his highest elevation, pointing it up into the trees. Frantically his feet worked the pedal boards up and down, pumping oil. He snatched up the matchcord and reached out with it as the stream began to issue in a fountain.

The satisfying gout of fire that answered his efforts reached far when aimed upward, assisted by its natural inclination to rise. Its fringe caught the danglecup no more than a dozen arm’s lengths from Vorduthe’s head and burned it to a crisp.

By now the troop leader had managed to get his fire spout into action. From both engines billowing clouds of fire boiled up to the tree cover. Vorduthe turned his muzzle in a wide circle, spreading conflagration among the lower branches.

But suddenly his firestream died, the spout dribbling the last few drops of oil. The wagon had been in the van of the expedition, and it had drained its tank.

Vorduthe jumped to the ground. He reached beneath the wagon and roughly dragged one of the men hiding there into the open. Then he started kicking at the others.

“Cowards! Come out and fight! I’ll kill any man who doesn’t fight!”

“Fight who, my lord?” groaned a voice. But about a dozen men crawled into the open, climbing to their feet with shamed but grim faces.

Fragments of blazing twig and leaf rained down. The hanging shafts had become columns of fire.

Beyond the vicinity, however, danglecups wrought havoc as before.

“Those sucking tubes aren’t doing anything anymore,” Vorduthe told the men. “The danglecups you can use your swords on. So go to it—get those fire engines working!”

Though they were reluctant to leave the glade of safety he had created, he led them through the chaos, eyes constantly on the alert for the deadly caps that still were falling from the semi-darkness.

Now that the terror of the tubes was over, others were recovering their wits enough to take Vorduthe’s lead. From points all around came the roar of billowing flame. The gloom of the forest turned to lurid incandescence. And slowly, as the danglecups burned and the foliage overhead became a canopy of fretted fire, the expedition began to move again.

How much fire do we need to get us through this hell? Vorduthe asked himself. How much fuel is left? And what happens when it is gone? In their panic the warriors were using it wildly, and he gave orders for the spouts to be used only when necessary. Gloom returned, and the attacks of tubes and danglecups became only occasional.

At last Askon Octrago appeared. Vorduthe noticed that the front of his armor was stained green, as though he had been lying on his belly in the moss. He seemed distressed, and at once approached Vorduthe, laying a hand on his shoulder.

“I’m glad you came through, my lord. That was a rough passage.”

“You never told us about those shafts that drag men up inside them,” Vorduthe accused him. “Why not?”

“Those are shoot-tubes,” Octrago told him. “I had hoped we wouldn’t meet any of those, that’s all.”

Vorduthe didn’t believe him. He thought the Peldainian had probably kept quiet about them for fear of deterring the expedition from setting forth.

How much else had he withheld?

“What happens to a man who is taken that way?” Vorduthe asked. “He is slowly devoured, I suppose.”

Octrago shook his head. “No, it is not like that. Shoot tubes are open at both ends: they work like blowpipes. They hurl a man high in the air, over the treetops to fall down into the vales. If the fall doesn’t kill him he faces horrors greater than anything we can meet here.”