Andrew Offutt - The Tower of Death

It came. In that narrow compass of the stairwell the thick relentless stalks pressing ever up from below forced its swift-slithering second wave past the destruction of the vanguard. Up came the preternatural kelp, for Cormac and his four.

The attack must be met in the doorway. Only two men dared hew in that narrow space, and Edric and Hugi leaped forward. Hugi wielded both sword and dagger. Edric soon saw the wisdom of that, for a buckler was of no avail against this sort of viney attack. That burly Dane shook off his shield and slung it behind him into the lightchamber. He fought then with short-ax and dagger against the ceaseless assault of a half-dozen snaking twitching vines at once.

A probing runner slithered between Hugi’s feet and started to arch up. Cormac sheared through it with his sword, dropped to one knee and sliced off another kelpy tendril that wound about Edric’s ankle.

The assault thickened and more and more the two men struck sparks from the walls with their flailing blades. Indeed, they endangered one another.

“Gudfred-light torches from the beacon!” Cormac yelled, and used dagger and thumb to slice a tendril from around Hugi’s ankle.

Grease-soaked brands leaped aflame; two, then three.

“Back,” Cormac called. “Edric-JUMP back-disengage! Hugi-out of there!”

Hugi bent both knees, sliced away a serpent of horridly living plant, and pounced backward so that Hakon only just avoided being knocked down. Edric tried-and sprawled his length on his back. He’d been tripped up by the thallophytic serpent that whipped twice about his leg. Cormac’s sword bit through the finger-thick algae stem inches from Edric’s foot. He was forced to twist his sword to free it of the wooden flooring. Edric still had to sit up and slit the clinging bit of weed from his leg.

On one knee, Cormac twisted half around and seized a torch from Gudfred.

He swung back and hurled it down the steps in one motion. The brand never reached bottom; Laniinaria clogged the stairwell now like the thick, impossibly living web of an enormous spider. Living plant crackled, for its wetness could not extinguish the burning grease any more than it had the quicklime.

It was even more sinister and eerie, their knowledge that something living and predatory was burning, alive-and without a sound. Only the constant rustle of its violent movements announced the vampire plant’s reaction-awareness?-pain!-to its own burning.

The odour of the sea and its dread get pervaded the tower now. The mephitic vapours of sorcery could have been no more repugnant to the five besieged men. Faceless, eyeless, unseeing and unhearing, mouthless and yet provided with the most ghastly of mouths, the baleful algae came again.

Each man backed against a wall to diminish his danger from the efforts of his fellows. And in the beacon-chamber itself they battled the onslaught from the sea, with sharp steel and grease-soaked brands.

Leafy structures shook and rustled and through the doorway came the many-mouthed enemy, the thickness of its runners ranging from that of a brooch-pin to burly Edric’s thumb-and behind them thrust algaeous branches thick as sword-hilts… and behind them?

The men fought in silence, resisting panic and heeding each the flailing arms of the others. Flames blazed high and yellow. Black smoke boiled so that they coughed. Their eyes streamed tears to mingle with their sweat and slice runnels down through the sooty deposit of smoke on their faces. This man and then that was grasped, so that another must tear and cut him free of the vampire kelp, and sear the base of that grasping runner. Each man fought with brand and dagger. Blood oozed from sucker-wounds. The pods for its storing popped under booted feet.

Cormac mac Art had reason to rue his wearing of mail, for twice seaweed snakes wriggled in betwixt rings and padded hauberk to begin a ghastly lacing of themselves to him.

First his own efforts and Hugi’s, then his own and Edric’s freed him. And then Edric was on one knee with a pommel-thick rope of living brown about his leg and another circling his left arm, and his companions sliced off his preternatural attackers in voiceless, grunting horror, and Gudfred was caught, and he had to be sliced free, and in the doing of that Hakon cried out wordlessly as the runner that had snaked up his back slapped, his throat and applied a sucker…

Gudfred’s hand was burned. Hakon’s neck bled. Cormac’s cheek oozed red from a vampiric sucker he’d torn loose and crushed betwixt fingers and dagger-hilt. A swipe from Edric’s dagger saved Hugi’s leg and slit open his leather legging. Another time Hugi moved too swiftly and Hakon could not twist his blade aside, and now Hugi’s wrist dripped blood from the little cut on its back.

Shuddering in primal horror, the men heard the kelp sucking up the blood from the floor…

Once the hem of Hakon’s russet-hued tunic flamed up from his own brand, and he hurled the torch into the stairwell and slapped out the fire on his clothing himself. Up his boot as he did slithered a ghoulish little horror, so pretty in its brown pigment over green, and Cormac squatted and neatly sliced it away before applying his own torch to the thing’s stem.

And still the rustling pseudopods of the awful weed came in unearthly onslaught.

Minutes had passed; an hour had passed; outside the wind shrieked in primal anger and none of those in the tower so much as heard. Grim death stalked them in awful silence and the wind had naught to do with it.

At last Cormac released a frustrated roar. Barely able to see amid the smoke and rustling lashing tendrils, he stabbed his torch into the cauldron. The great black pot was still partially full of grease. It spat and hissed, swiftly liquefying. Flame leaped up-and instantly melting fat extinguished the brand. Hugi thrust his in and sawed a kelpy serpent from his arm. Even as it died it snapped down and clung to his wrist, so that blood oozed when he tore it free.

Snatching up more brands, Cormac dumped them into the cauldron. Flame leaped to darken the ceiling and plants withdrew from heat that was nigh unbearable to humans within helms, and their tunics, hauberks and mailcoats.

Cormac and thick-thighed Edric set each a foot against the big black pot, and exchanged a glance, and shoved.

The cauldron tumbled through the doorway, spewing hissing grease-fire. It bounded down the steps, clanging, throwing off blobs of unquenchable flame and blazing torches. It tore through the clogging plants it spattered with flaming grease. Resistless, the heavy hemisphere of iron fell and bounded and clanged, rebounding clangourously from stone walls as it came to curves. It smashed and rolled and bounced all the way to the bottom of the steps.

“Chop and chop and chop!” Cormac yelled, putting his strength against the door.

The others did, men with black faces and desperately staring eyes. They cleared the floor before the door. Cormac was able to slam it against a stairwell that was brightly aflicker with lurid flames.

With the cloak he’d taken off on entering this horror-besieged chamber, Gudfred drove the smoke out the beacon-window. Around him his companions crouched and knelt while they daggered serpentine runners of vampire seaweed ranging in size now up to one flopping monster thick as Hugi’s wrist. It sprouted two foot-long fingers, and the men had to mince them to make the awful things cease their attack.

Swiftly as Cormac hurled a dagger-long piece out the window, a sucker fastened and drew blood as it was torn from the back of his hand.

The stairwell crackled with the burning of grease and dry wood and obscenely motile plants. There was no other sound from that quarter; the door was not assaulted.

Men with smoke-darkened faces stared at each other from pale eyes, and all were tinged with horror. They had existed and fought in a sort of mindless hysteria, disbelieving but saving themselves from the impossible. Panting, they leaned together, at once hanging onto one another’s shoulders-and supporting each other. Their legs quivered. Blood dripped and now burns began to beat like little hearts of pain.