Barrington Bayley - The Forest of Peldain

“What a fool I was! Missed the signs! Damned carelessness—quick! Quick !”

They were not the first to escape the slime carpet and crash into the bushes. All about them were the grunts of men and the breaking of stems. Then they broke suddenly into a tiny clearing, where Octrago looked about him wildly.

“Dart-thorns!” he yelled. “This way, my lord!”

Abruptly the air was thick with the zipping thorns, shot from shrubs and bushes screened by the more innocent varieties they had burst through. Flinging his arm in front of his face—a useless gesture, Vorduthe thought—Octrago pulled him through an opening to clear ground beyond. But it was too late. Vorduthe had been struck by perhaps a dozen penetrating points. Vaguely he became aware that the Peldainian was frantically brushing the thorns from his skin. His senses swimming, he felt a presentiment of death. Then consciousness slipped from him.

In his dream Lord Vorduthe found himself drifting, a breeze-driven ghost, through the limpid greenness of the forest. Cage tigers and man-grab trees snapped about him, shoot tubes lunged toward him. But none of them could touch him. He was dead, and insubstantial like sea mist.

So dead that he rose smoke-like through the forest’s roof, temporarily losing himself in a close tangle of leaf, branch, bud and every kind of surprising growth, before gaining the clear air to go drifting over the dazzling ocean. And suddenly he was in the Hundred Islands.

That was when death turned into a nightmare. Happenings at home were just as Lord Korbar had warned and he had secretly feared. An army of cruel primitives rampaged through Arcaiss, a horde of brown-skinned Orwanians, always the least civilized of the peoples of the Hundred Islands, ever half-eager to revert to the savage practices of their forebears. For the Orwanians had been ardent cannibals until restrained by Arelian conquest, and they still worshipped their traditional god Krax, who ate the flesh of men.

Flame and smoke billowed over sundrenched Arcaiss. In the royal palace the dreaming Vorduthe beheld a terrible sight: the Monarch of the Hundred Islands, King Krassos himself, spread-eagled over a brazier, face contorted, his skin crackling. And in the streets were fires and cooking grids, and the buildings echoed to the dreadful cries of men, women and children who were being roasted alive for the pleasure of the brown savages.

Vorduthe looked up to the headland where his own home was situated. Against his will his spirit was drawn there, passing through the cool rooms to the interior courtyard. He saw a band of grinning savages, their teeth filed, carrying the paralyzed form of his wife to the fire they had prepared.

One primitive could not wait to see her flesh cooked. Taking a knife of black flint from the waistband of twisted grass that was all he wore, he cut off her nose and stuffed it into his mouth.

Vorduthe’s ghost fled, recoiling into the sky among the wheeling wide-winged seabirds, calling out in agonized protest to Irkwele, the great sky god who had thrown down clods of earth into Thelessa’s perfect oceans so that man might have islands on which to live. But Irkwele did not reply. Instead a gigantic figure rose cumbersomely out of the ocean. Vast seaweeds draped it. Water streamed down the angles of its face. Sea beasts the size of ships tumbled from its hair.

It was Ukulkele, ruler-god of the ocean who had opposed Irkwele in the beginning. Vorduthe recognized him easily: his image, made of wood and coral and dyed with the inks of various marine creatures, faced Irkwele’s across the sacred grove that lay in the exact center of Arelia. Towering over the island, over Vorduthe, the god glared angrily down at him. The iron-like mouth opened; Ukulkele began to speak, in a voice like the sound of the summer typhoons that beset equatorial regions. He had never forgiven Irkwele, he said, for spoiling his unbroken world ocean. He would create great waves to throw against all these scraps of land, washing them away as if they were mounds of silt.

The roaring voices receded; the face of Ukulkele blurred, framed by the blue sky. When it solidified once more it had altered, was smaller, staring down at him with enigmatic sternness.

“He’s coming round, my lord,” a voice said.

He knew that face. It was troop leader Ankar, a member of Lord Korbar’s group. “Where are your troops?” Vorduthe croaked. “Where are they, troop leader?”

“All gone, my lord. Shoot tubes took the last two.” The words brought Vorduthe completely to his senses. He was alive. And, he realized with wonderment, there was still blue sky framing the face that stared down at him.

He raised his head. He lay on soft bracken. From somewhere nearby came the gentle sound of flowing water, suggesting that they were camped by the bank of a river. Lord Korbar came into his range of vision, walking toward him. More men were farther off.

Were they out of the forest at last? The spot was hemmed in by trees which included types he had become familiar with in the past three days, but no dense canopy blotted out the sky. Overhead, green and blue were mixed.

Lord Korbar knelt by his side, his face grave. “I am glad to see you may be recovering, my lord. Are you able to rise? Do you still feel ill?”

“Korbar, I have had a dream,” Vorduthe muttered. “A dreadful dream. Pray to the gods that is all it was.”

He shook his head to shake off the memory. Best say nothing of it, he thought. Some men believed in dreams.

“What happened?” he demanded. “Why am I still alive?”

“You have the Peldainian to thank, my lord,” Korbar replied. “It was he who brushed the thorns from your body before they became embedded; they were of the burrowing type. Their contact introduced poisons to your body, but not enough to prove fatal.”

“What is this place? How did I get here?”

“We carried you here on a litter, my lord. You have been unconscious for a good part of the day.”

“That was against express orders, Korbar!” Vorduthe was angry. “No injured men are carried!”

“It was at Octrago’s insistence, my lord,” Korbar said apologetically. “He advised us you would likely recover, and that we needed you. I agreed. There were no dissenting voices.”

Vorduthe grunted in displeasure, even shame. He struggled to a sitting position. “Tell me everything that happened.”

The young troop leader dropped his eyes as Korbar told the tale, as if not wanting to be reminded of it. “Most fell either in the slime bed or in the thorn bushes,” Korbar said. “A hideous time! The few of us who were left managed to retrieve a few tools and some of the mountaineering equipment we will need, but all the wagons had to be left behind. So, without the protection of fire, we made the remaining journey here, and of the few who remained fewer still have arrived. Luckily we had not too far to go, though only Octrago knew it. We are not actually out of the forest, my lord. This is a sort of sterile spot in it, known to the Peldainian—yes, I grant he is a Peldainian, though none the better for that.” Korbar made a wry face. “He tells us the main danger is over. We now take to the water.”

“Where is Octrago?”

“Up the river a short way, seeing to the construction of boats.”

“And how many men have we left?”

“Counting the Peldainian, fifty-three, my lord.” Korbar’s tone became one of deep disgust. “Roughly the number he claims to have set out with.”

After resting a while longer Lord Vorduthe was recovered sufficiently to get to his feet and examine his surroundings more closely. All that was left of the effects of the poison was a slight aching in his joints.