The Forest of Peldain Read online

  THE FOREST OF PELDAIN

  Barrington J. Bayley

  www.sfgateway.com

  Enter the SF Gateway …

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Gateway Introduction

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Website

  Also by Barrington J. Bayley

  Dedication

  Author Bio

  Copyright

  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 spor
t 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.”

  Vorduthe looked toward his monarch. Krassos was smiling. “The stranger has been interrogated at length,” he said. “If he is a liar, he is a convincing one.”

  “Forty leevers of Peldain forest still sounds impassable to me,” Vorduthe replied, looking back at Octrago. “How did you cross it?”

  “By means of a special route known to me which avoids the greatest of the forest’s severities. Even so we suffered much difficulty. Of fifty who set forth, only five survived to reach the sea, where we put out in a raft whose frame we had carried with us. Had our preparations been less hasty, we would have fared better.”

  “Then you are not alone? There are others of you?”

  “I fear not. For over ninety days we drifted at sea. We of Peldain have no experience as sailors. When an Arelian ship picked us up, I alone was left, my companions having died of thirst and myself nearly so.’

  Krassos nodded. “He was in poor shape, that much we do not need his word for. And he comes from none of our islands, if I am any judge. But speak on, Octrago. Tell Lord Vorduthe the reason for so desperate a venture.”

  The stranger drew himself up. He held his head high. “I, Askon Octrago, am the rightful monarch of Peldain, but I have not been permitted to take my throne. I suffer, my lord, from treason. On the death of my father, the revered King Kerenei, my cousin Kestrew gathered together a gang of ruffians and claimed the throne for himself. Peldain is a peaceful country, my lord. The king commands no armed forces. I was forced to flee for my life. Yet there is nowhere in Peldain where I could be safe. Therefore I and my loyal companions resolved to seek help from the islands we knew existed across the ocean.”

  King Krassos took up the tale. “And now Octrago offers to become my vassal, in return for help in regaining his kingdom.” He clapped his hands. Vorduthe saw that his eyes were sparkling. “That’s it in a nutshell. What do you think, Vorduthe?”

  Vorduthe pondered these remarkable words. It was not surprising that Krassos was aroused by the tale. The possibilities it opened were, indeed, enticing….

  “What, exactly, are you proposing?” he asked Octrago, tilting his face in the typical Arelian quizzical manner.

  “A comparatively small force is needed to take the kingdom itself,” Octrago told him smoothly. “Peldain has never known external enemies—the forest itself has been sufficient defense. And it is the forest that will be the greater foe. With my guidance, and proper preparation, enough men could get through the same route I came by. The rest should be easy. Later, I believe this route could be strengthened, the forest driven back. Peldain would have regular intercourse with the Hundred Islands—and would be added, I pledge, to King Krassos’ realm. That I rule as his loyal vassal is all I ask.”

  “This matter needs thought …” Vorduthe cut off his own words. He could see that, in fact, King Krassos had already made up his mind. Here at last was a chance to do what his father had done, and moreover, to nearly double the size of the kingdom. The temptation was too strong to resist.

  But now, from the shadows at the side of the audience chamber, another figure stepped forth. It was Mendayo Korbar, a member of the Defense Council and a squadron leader under Vorduthe’s command. He wore a kilt made of pieces of beaten silver, sword-shaped and riveted to a belt. On his feet, sandals of bark leather. His torso, gleaming with oil, was bare save for the straps that held his weapons.

  With hostility, he gazed on Askon Octrago. “Sire, how can you trust this man?” he said bitterly to King Krassos. “He says he is a king. Yet all we know of him is that he was picked up out of the sea. He speaks the same language that we speak, when even among the islands different tongues may be heard, yet he claims to come from a land with which we have never had contact! I say he is an impostor, and that there is no country of Peldain. The forest covers all of the island.”

  Octrago, stepping toward Korbar, moved in and out of the bars of sunlight that shone from the high mullions of the room and made a grill pattern on the tiled floor. When the light struck his head, his straw-colored hair seemed to flame.

  His voice, with its weird accent, became cold. “The son of a royal household does not permit one of inferior rank to call him a liar,” he said. “Though I am a castaway in a foreign land, I am ready to meet and deal with that slight.”

  He too wore an Arelian kilt, though of strips of stiffened reed paper dyed in a rainbow of colors, and in addition a tunic of light green flax. The king permitted him to carry weapons, and he bore a sword, carrying it in the Arelian fashion, hilt downward, the blade slung up and passing under the left arm to jut up behind the shoulder, held in its scabbard by a clasp. Clicking open this clasp, he drew the sword. “Take back those words.”

  “Indeed I will not,” growled Korbar. His own blade whistled free and he waited for Octrago’s attack.

  It came almost immediately. Korbar was carried back by the first rush and almost stumbled. Octrago’s sword edge nicked his forearm and spattered drops of blood. He quickly recovered, and for a short while the two blades flashed blindingly in a brilliant display. It was clear that Octrago, though fighting in a style different from that taught in Arelia, was Korbar’s equal.

  King Krassos and Lord Vorduthe watched fascinated at first, but then the king became alarmed at the thought of losing either man. He shouted with displeasure and leaped down from the dais where he had been seated.

  “Enough! Put up your swords, I say!”

  The clash and sparkle ceased. Octrago’s sword slithered up its sheath and the clasp clicked as he turned to bow to the king. Sullenly, Korbar did the same.

  “I have heard tales spun as convincingly in the market place, sire,” he grumbled. “I repeat, he is a
storyteller, a tool of insurrectionists who wish to draw our forces away from the Hundred Islands!”

  “If you are right, you will have a chance for revenge,” Krassos promised him. “I am tired of you both: leave me. Not, you, Vorduthe. I would speak with you.”

  After Octrago and Korbar had departed in different directions, Krassos beckoned Lord Vorduthe close. “So what is your opinion?”

  “For one who is supposed to come from a land without war, he is handy with a sword,” Vorduthe said doubtfully.

  “He was not trained in Arelia, I’ll warrant.”

  “Unless he is a master of subterfuge,” Vorduthe admitted. “Still, I think there is some merit in what Korbar says. There is unrest across the water. There may be a need to forestall rebellion shortly. I do not think it safe to split up our forces at present.”

  “Ah, that is why I cannot come with you,” Krassos said sadly. “I must remain here to deal with what may arise. I will tell you of my decision. I believe this man Octrago tells the truth. He has described this land whence he comes, its geography, people and customs. Its beasts, and the predacious trees of the forest. Did he invent all this? I do not think so.”

  “It is odd that of fifty who set out, only their leader survived,” Vorduthe remarked.

  “Hm. Well, it is the leader who is strongest. And doubtless his followers were prepared to sacrifice themselves for their rightful king. You had better learn to get along with Octrago, Vorduthe, for you and he are to be comrades-in-arms. My mind is made up. I wish you to organize an expedition as quickly as possible. Octrago will brief you. Together, devise means of getting our forces through the forest. When you have sketched out a plan, come and talk to me about it.”

  “You know, sire,” Vorduthe said in a low voice, “that I have reasons for not wanting to be away on a long campaign.”

  “Yes, I know, Vorduthe,” Krassos said with a hint of compassion, “but you are the man to lead this expedition. I want no other. Besides, your absence may not necessarily be a long one. Once Peldain is conquered I will appoint a garrison commander, and you can return home to your wife.”