They were deep within the thicket when the forest began its attacks. He heard a cry.
“Stranglevine—beware!”
It was like huge ropy cobweb that dropped from the trees, swung and snaked through the air, suddenly appearing to seize anything it encountered, gripping and squeezing, lifting wriggling men clear off the ground by their necks, a living skein of hangman’s nooses.
But at least it was a foe that could be combatted. With swords, with long-handled cutters, the masses of vine were sliced and hacked, writhing and falling in limp strands and tangles to the ground.
Vorduthe, while slashing at the jerking cord himself, tried to count the number of men who succumbed to the manic creeper before it was dealt with. How many had he lost now?
And at this rate how many would he have left when they entered Peldain proper? He looked surreptitiously at Octrago. It was not easy to read the Peldainian’s naturally pale face. But Vorduthe fancied he looked worried.
“Tell me,” he said when the stranglevine was left behind, “do our casualties agree with your calculations so far?”
Octrago uttered what sounded like a grotesque laugh. “We have scarcely begun. The time to count our losses is at nightfall.”
He moved away as if unwilling to continue the conversation and, striding between the lines of warriors who strained at the wagon shafts, leaped lightly onto a tailboard, peering over the bulk of the vehicle to look ahead.
After some minutes he looked back, signaling to Vorduthe, then dropped to the moss and approached him.
It seemed to Vorduthe, perhaps only in his imagination, that Octrago was terrified. His bony face was unnaturally tense. And its green pallor was not only, he suspected, a reflection of the viridian twilight through which they were traveling.
“The way is barred,” Octrago informed him. “We shall have to break formation and filter through the trees.”
“Why did you not tell me this before we entered the thicket?”
“Remember, we were moving in a smaller group the last time I passed this way.”
“So you were… I wonder how a party as small as yours managed to defend itself against the stranglevine we just came through. Large numbers were decidedly an advantage there.
“Exactly,” Octrago said acidly. “You can see for yourself why so few of us made it to the coast.” He paused. “Actually, we did not come upon that particular patch of vine. I do not claim to be retracing our path yard for yard. Or, just as likely, the vine has grown since.”
By now the wedge was creaking to a halt and Vorduthe was once again obliged to issue orders through his squadron commanders. The wedge broke up. Each wagon, still pushed by its retinue of warriors, began to find its own way through the thicket.
The going was tough. Singly the wagons lacked the wedge’s power to trample down the tangle, and more and more often a way had to be cleared for them by hand, stalk and bramble hacked away with swords that now were permanently drawn. Vorduthe noted that Octrago’s sword also did not leave his hand, even though he was taking no active part in the work. His suspicion that Octrago was expecting something unpleasant increased. He clicked open the hasp of his scabbard and let his own weapon fall into his grasp.
It was becoming difficult to see what surrounded them, so dense was the thicket. A bole or tree trunk might be only feet away and give no clear indication of its presence or of its species. Vorduthe was not surprised, then, when a voice—it sounded like Lord Axthall’s—suddenly shouted out hoarsely. “Beware mangrab!”
At the same time the clumping sound of mangrab trees opening and closing came from several directions, followed by groans of utmost agony.
There was also a crunching, snapping noise. He realized one of the mangrabs had accidentally caught part of a wagon. Suddenly there was an explosion. Through the blurring vegetation, he saw a fireball burning furiously and sending a pall of smoke rising through the branches of the trees.
It was a fire engine the mangrab had seized.
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 animaclass="underline" 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.