The Forest of Peldain

For all of the following day Vorduthe’s force remained in possession of the stronghold, having slain half its garrison and taken the rest prisoner. The men rested, and chose additional weapons from the captured armory—daggers, lances, bows and quiversful of arrows. Broken-up furniture provided sufficient timber to build a funeral pyre for Lord Korbar and the two dead serpent harriers. The ceremony was held on the fortress roof, and while the smoke rose to the sky the men gathered round, asking anxious questions.

“What are our prospects, my lord?” Donatwe Mankas, a troop leader, pressed Vorduthe. “Our numbers are negligible and the Peldainians in this castle, at least, were not without fighting skill. We alone could not conquer a whole country.”

Octrago was elsewhere in the fortress and Vorduthe was expected to speak frankly. Yet it was difficult to be hopeful. A sad vision had come to his mind. He pictured the fleet from the Hundred Islands returning to the landing place, waiting at anchor a few days, then departing with the news that the expedition had failed to appear. No one—not King Krassos, not Vorduthe’s wife, nor any Arelian—would ever know what had become of the costly army that had so bravely set forth.

He motioned the men closer, and spoke while the flames flickered on his face. “We cannot go back, we can only go forward to whatever the gods have in store for us. But in one respect matters lie in our favor. We have in our possession both the claimant to the throne and the high priest of this country, and that may well be worth a thousand armed men.”

He paused before continuing. “I sense much underhandedness in the way the Peldainians conduct their affairs—Octrago and Mistirea, at any rate, are hard to pin down. Now we are blunt soldiers and strangers to deviousness. But one thing we can resolve—we serve King Krassos to the last, and if Askon Octrago betrays us he dies, king or no.”

That was his last word on the subject and he ordered the men back to work, preparatory to their departure next day. It would have been impracticable to take prisoners on the march, so he set about stripping the fortress of its weapons. The catapults were smashed, and the boulders that were stored in the stones-chute sent rattling down the cliff face. It would take some time, he reckoned, to fill it again.

He also dealt with the poisonous vapor that was contained, it developed, in the barrels stacked in the first storeroom he had entered. It was stored in the form of a horrid jelly which had to be burned in the vats in the forecourt, so as to give off a dense deadly smoke that flowed to the lowest level.

Octrago offered the information that the jelly was derived from a tree resin. “Nearly everything in Peldain comes from a tree,” he smiled. “Only stones and metal come from anything else.”

Vorduthe recalled the furniture he had seen, with its grainy, rough-finished quality. He had inspected Mistirea’s desk, for instance. It almost seemed to have grown into shape, for he had not found a single join. He guessed it had been carved from a single piece of wood, carefully chosen by some patient craftsman.

“You are cut off from the sea here,” he remarked. “Many of our materials come from ocean life.”

He ordered the barrels rolled farther along the cliff, and their smelly contents poured over the edge.

Early next morning the war party wound its way down the big newel that was drilled through the interior of the cliff. At the bottom was a short tunnel whose exit was barred by a massive slab of stone. This was raised by means of an ingenious counterbalance, and they walked out into daylight.

Here it was even more striking how absolutely the fortress dominated the region. The path along the foot of the cliff was no more than a narrow ledge. It bordered a drear swamp stretching as far as the eye could see, plentifully dotted with trees, or possibly they were only bushes, of a squat, splayed appearance. Vorduthe thought them sinister enough to avoid at all cost, even had the swamp not been impossibly marshy.

Seeing him scan the terrain, Octrago smiled his understanding. “The bog is deep,” he said. “Nothing would get through it, not even a boat. And yes, those bog-trees are death to touch, although they don’t compare in deadliness with the trees of the forest. They are sticky-trees—even a bird that alights on one never gets away. Still, we needn’t worry about that.”

He pointed to a narrow swath of firm ground that divided the swamp in two, extending from near where they stood to the horizon. It was raised slightly above the general level, and was marked at intervals by rough stone pillars. Vorduthe guessed it was an old causeway.