The Forest of Peldain

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.