R. Salvatore - Echoes of the Fourth Magic

Fearing that the scowling captain would order them to go around the chasm despite Del’s crossing, Billy immediately sprang onto the bridge and rushed to join his friend. Mitchell shook his head and huffed angrily as Billy disappeared from sight, but with two of his crewmen going over, the captain had to relent.

“I’ll go last,” he volunteered to Reinheiser and Brady. “I’m the heaviest.”

Doc Brady was of a different opinion.

“Let me go last,” he insisted. And he finished his thought silently, Today I die anyway, and if it’s to be here, then let the rest of you all be across before the bridge falls.

Disgusted at being upstaged by Del, Mitchell didn’t care enough to argue with Brady. The doctor was relieved that he wouldn’t be endangering the others and at the temporary stay of his expected fate, but all too soon Reinheiser and the captain were across the gorge, calling for him. For many minutes Brady stood frozen in fear, unable to take that step.

“Hurry up!” came Mitchell’s snarl. “Or we’ll go on without you!”

On the planks now, his breathing coming in short puffs, and beads of sweat cold on his forehead, Brady forced himself ahead. It didn’t get any easier, his terror heightening with every step to the point that he almost wanted to just throw himself off and get it over with. And yet, before he knew it he was on the solid ground of the other side, surprised, but nearly faint with relief.

With the gorge behind them, they continued on in even greater anticipation. Shortly after noon they emerged from the wood to a disheartening sight.

They had come to a meadow of tall swaying grass. The land before them sloped down a long grade as it continued to narrow, and at the bottom was a second wood, this one dark and gloomy. North and east the great mountains towered over the low ground, and to the south a high ridge of gray stone, as if the land had split apart, blocked their way. The ridge ran eastward, curved north for a short distance, and then turned back toward them again along the base of the northern mountains, forming a horseshoelike ring around the dark wood.

“A box canyon,” Mitchell groaned over a chorus of sighs.

“Just a minor delay, Captain,” Reinheiser said. “All we need do is double to the southwest and find where the ridge starts. It can’t be far. We should be up on that plateau in a few hours.” But Mitchell had once again grown angry and frustrated at this whole business, and his stubbornness overruled reason. His retort startled Reinheiser and all the others.

“We’re not doubling back,” the captain fumed. “Not yet. There might be a way through that wall ahead, a tunnel or something. Or maybe it’s climbable. I want to know for sure before we waste the rest of the day going backward!”

“But Captain-” Reinheiser began.

“No arguments!” Mitchell yelled. “You don’t even know if we can get back across the damn river without using that rope bridge again. You want to do that? That thing in the hall said go east. We go east!”

“I don’t know,” Del said. “I don’t like the look of that forest.” But Del’s disagreement only strengthened Mitchell’s resolve and he started off down the slope, ripping aside the tall grass as he went. Del wanted to argue further-somehow the mere sight of the wood below them offended his senses and promised danger-but the thought of facing Mitchell again made his jaw and nose throb with the acute memory of pain. He shrugged his shoulders, sighed, and followed with Brady and Billy.

Reinheiser hesitated, though. He stood for a few moments petting his goatee and considering the captain’s tirade, amazed that Mitchell had turned on him with such anger. “You should not have spoken to me like that,” he muttered under his breath. And with a wicked chuckle that warned of retaliation, he started after the others.

The sun all but went away when they entered the dark forest, with huge black trees bent nearly in two by thick strands of gray-green moss forming an unbroken roof above them. Though it was springtime in Aielle, no vibrant colors of fresh-blossomed petals decorated this landscape. Perhaps it was due to the dim light, but Del sensed that even in full sunshine this wood would remain dreary with decay. It seemed to him that the life about them had gained dominance in a past age and refused to relinquish it to new growth. There was no rebirth here, no seasonal cleansing. Even the scent of the few flowers had long ago gone stale.

Though there was little undergrowth and no tall grass, the path remained difficult. Knotted roots crossed every course, twisted from the ground as the ancient trees leaned wearily, and many were too large to step across, forcing the men to climb over or crawl under them.

Eventually the group came to a wide expanse of towering ferns, as tall as a man and taller, with stems nearly an inch thick. Still not daring to argue with the determined captain, they reluctantly drew their swords and hacked their way through.

Out of the corner of his eye Del saw a squirrel the size of a small dog leaping across high branches. It didn’t seem out of place, not here in this grandfather of woods, so Del brushed it off with a shrug and made no mention of it. He understood now the nightmarish fears of the romantic poets so far removed from the bricks and highways of his world, for all about him the trees and plants, and all the life of the wood, seemed to close in, scowling with passive yet stifling hostility. This was a place where a man could be completely overwhelmed by the vast dimensions and sheer power of nature; a place where a man could realize his own insignificance.

But unlike Del, Mitchell had no time nor heart for such reflections. The dismal surroundings and the fern barrier only made him grit his teeth and push on harder. He hacked mightily with his sword, leveling fern after fern, driving the men ever deeper into the black shadows of the decrepit wood.

Then the insects came. Mosquitoes mostly, biting them and buzzing in their eyes and ears and flying up their noses, making this leg of the journey even more miserable.

The ground was getting softer under their feet.

Reinheiser and Billy understood the signs and they both fully expected what lay ahead when, finally, Mitchell cut through the last line of ferns and found himself on the muddy bank of a swamp. It meandered lazily about the trees ahead, great pools of black water sweating wispy vapors into the already rank air. Stillness surrounded the men, but it was an uneasy, anticipating silence, like a predator’s hushed crouch before its spring.

Following Mitchell, they labored on as best they could, but every path ended at one of the stagnant pools, and the obstructing roots were slick with slime and nearly impassable. The ground oozed mud now, threatening to swallow them up with every step.

Every time Del wiped the sweat from his forehead, he left behind a streak of mud and slime. “This is crazy,” he cried, feeling thoroughly wretched. “We should’ve turned back hours ago.”

“I didn’t ask for your opinion!” Mitchell retorted, though he, too, had to realize the folly of continuing through the swamp. It wasn’t a hard puzzle for Del and the others to put together, though: stubborn Mitchell would simply never allow Del to point out his error. Sword in hand, the captain puffed out his chest and glared, daring Del to defy him.

Shaken by the threat, but determined that he was right, Del continued cautiously. “I’m just trying to point out that this place… if we get lost in here, we’re dead.” A mosquito buzzed in his eye. “And these bugs!” he added, slapping futilely at the pest.

“Listen to him, Captain,” Billy pleaded. “We had a swamp back home where I grew up, and I’m telling you, it’s a bad place to be wandering blindly.”