Barrington J. Bayley
THE FOREST OF PELDAIN
For Joan
Chapter One
“We come to the moment of truth, my lord,” an acid voice said at Vorduthe’s elbow.
Lord Vorduthe leaned against the ship’s balustrade, staring across half a mile of water to the shore. The Forest of Peldain grew right down to the edge of the tideless sea, sending green tendrils trailing out into the sparkling blue. The scene was a deceptively quiet and pleasant one. But beyond the first rank of curiously curved and sinuous trunks Vorduthe fancied he detected a flurry among peculiar verdant growths whose structures were hard to make out at this distance.
He shuddered, and turned his gaze to the other nineteen ships riding with sails reefed, their decks crammed with engines, tackle and armored men waiting for his signal. All eyes were on the forest, either with trepidation, with chafing enthusiasm, or in the case of the sailors, with the anxious hope that the landing could be effected quickly and the ships stood off out of harm’s way, or else returned to Arelia.
But as yet Lord Vorduthe gave no signal. His finely chiseled face remained calm as he spoke to the man standing beside him, the only man, it seemed, who was not sweating inside his armor of iron and treated wicker.
“You are sure this is the spot?”
Askon Octrago nodded. Metal squealed as he lifted his arm to indicate the shoreline. “Our Captain has navigated well. There is the bluff and there the reefs. Directly ahead of us the slope of the beach is suitable for us to effect an entry.”
A few feet away the Captain himself, wearing a green frock-jacket and peaked hat, was regarding them. “Shall I give the word, my lord?” he asked.
If he did not make a move soon, his men would begin to think Lord Vorduthe was afraid. But he did not reply immediately. He looked again toward the forest.
The land of Peldain was completely enclosed by that forest, the only approaches it did not block being sheer unclimbable cliffs and the northern ice floes which no ship had ever negotiated. Men had gone into the forest before, but not for a long time and scarcely any had come out alive. For that reason only a few of the forest plants were known by name: mangrab trees, stranglevine, trip-root, fallpits, cage tigers, all vegetable but more deadly than any beast. Because of that forest Peldain had been regarded, throughout recorded history, as totally uninhabitable.
Nothing like it existed anywhere else in the world.
“Well, my lord?” Octrago pressed. He grinned, the muscles of his jaw tightening against the straps of his helmet.
He is afraid, Vorduthe thought, and the realization caused him a spasm of alarm. He did not trust the man, and still less did he like him. But King Krassos trusted him, and that was enough. It was why they were here.
He signed to the Captain. “Sound the call.”
“Yes, my lord.”
The captain put a megaphone to his lips. His bellow resounded across the water, was picked up and passed along the line.
“PUT TO SHORE!”
At the command, sails jerked up to catch the stiff breeze at half-mast. Oars angled, dipped and strained in concert, guiding the pulleys toward the shore while avoiding the reefs, and in the bow of each vessel a sailor handled a plumbline and called out the depth.
Drums began to thump, their purpose being to build up the nerve of the invading force just as if it were landing in the face of a hostile army. Yet what are we facing, by the gods, Vorduthe told himself. Trees, plants. How could such things be more dangerous than men? What has spawned this place?
The formation of ships, twenty in line abreast, became ragged as the plumbsmen shouted warnings. They were now close in to the shore and the bottom was sloping up. Sails dropped, oars plied delicately, sailors kept the galleys afloat with poles. The ramps went down, and on to them, first of all, the fire engines were manhandled.
Again the Captain roared through his megaphone. “RELEASE FIRE!” Strings were jerked, matches swung, and from the mouths of the engines on the ramps there swooshed gushes of chemical fire, licking at the jungle, burning, blazing.
Now everything was up to Vorduthe and his men. He leaped on to the ramp, coughing and choking in the acrid fumes. Through the smoke he could see the vegetation curling and writhing and blackening as the exhalation died. Then he was splashing in the shallow water, yelling encouragement to his men who were shouldering equipment down the ramps and on to the ashy beach. Beside him Octrago was panting as he waded sword in hand. And despite the flame, the smoke, the noise and the danger, Lord Vorduthe could not prevent his mind from flashing back to Arelia, and the time when Octrago had first appeared at the court of King Krassos.
Chapter Two
King Krassos of Arelia, Monarch of the Islands, had always struck Lord Vorduthe as a man chafing at the bit, frustrated for lack of conquest.
His father, King Lawass, before him had already united all the islands, bringing them under the Arelian crown and so ending centuries of inter-island warfare. In his youth Krassos had been heard to murmur bitterly that there would be nothing left for him to do, for on the ocean-bedecked world of Thelessa only the sprawl of islands bejeweling the Pan Sea were habitable. The three small continents were either ice or volcanic ash, lava plains and scoria.
Outside the Hundred Islands, as the unified kingdom was ceremonially called, only Peldain was capable of supporting life, and that life was a sport of nature, a forest so deadly that not even Krassos, for all his thirst for adventure, would think of venturing there. Therefore, although Peldain, lying to the south of the northern continent of Kurktor, was somewhat larger than Arelia, his main island, King Krassos found his dreams of achievement thwarted, and excitement to be gained only in the occasional uprising among one or other of the subject populations. Yet, despite his disappointments, he became a firm and respected ruler. He never failed to make himself available on the petition dates due each island in turn, and he meted out fair and just treatment even to the southernmost island of Orwane, whose people were generally disliked because of their peculiar brown color.
Barely a hundred days previously Lord Vorduthe, Commander in General of the seaborne warriors, had been summoned to the king’s palace in Arcaiss. There the king had presented to him a man whose general appearance was as strange, though for different reasons, as that of the Orwanians themselves. His eyes were a flinty blue, and his skin uncommonly pale, like limestone. His hair was coarse and a bright yellow in color, resembling straw. His features, too, were odd, with high jutting cheekbones. To Vorduthe, his face was like a statue of the head of one of the leaping deer of Arelia.
“Lord Vorduthe,” King Krassos said, “meet Askon Octrago, of Peldain.”
The name fell unfamiliarly on Arelian ears, and Vorduthe found the provenance incomprehensible. He nodded distantly, looking at the man and wondering from what isle he hailed.
“Did you not hear what I said?” the King continued casually. “Octrago claims to have come out of the Forest of Peldain.”
Vorduthe curled his lip. He took the remark as a joke. “Then he would need to be made of stone, as he appears to be.”
“Not even stone can survive in that forest, if what we are told is true,” the king added softly.
“Quite so.”
Then the stranger spoke, using the Arelian tongue but with a sharp, almost strangled accent. “Just the same, I come from Peldain. I will tell you what I have told His Majesty. You are mistaken about the forest. It is indeed as hostile as you believe, but it does not extend over the whole of Peldain, as you have always assumed. It forms a hedge around my country, between thirty and forty leevers deep. Within is a fertile, fair land inhabited by people like myself.”