Monster Planet(64)

'Someone has left me a snack,' the green phantom announced, cheerfully. Ayaan could feel the goat's energy herself, flickering away slowly but still golden and almost irresistible. She put out a hand to stop the green-robed lich, though.

'Why hasn't some wandering ghoul finished this animal off long ago?' she asked.

'Maybe there aren't any nearby.' He looked down at her arm as if he would happily chew it off to get to the goat.

'Not any more, there aren't.' With her free hand Ayaan pointed to piles of bleached bones'human bones'mixed in with the woody deadfall at the edges of the clearing. Then she pointed out a shallow depression in the grass on the far side of the goat's mound. Once one knew to look for it it could be seen that broken vegetation pointed away from the defile in a radial pattern. A similar crater dipped down not more than a dozen feet from where they stood. 'Have you ever seen a minefield before?' she asked.

'Ridiculous,' the green phantom rasped. Behind him Erasmus came up with a large rock in one furry hand. Before Ayaan could stop him he tossed the rock deep into the clearing. Metal sprouted from the ground like an evil weed and then a flash of light pressed up hard against Ayaan's side and nearly knocked her over. Hot dirt and bits of shredded goat meat splattered her leathers.

'I didn't expect that big an explosion,' Erasmus said, spitting dirt and pebbles out of his mouth. All three of them had been caught by metal shrapnel, ruining their clothes. Had they been any closer their brains would be strewn around the trees behind them.

'That,' Ayaan said, fingering a hole in her skull-print leather jacket, 'was a Bouncing Betty. It was spring-loaded to jump in the air when detonated. This spreads the shrapnel over a much wider area and dramatically increases the kill radius.'

'You've seen these before?' the green phantom asked.

'Friends of mine have. From closer up.' Ayaan peered through the smoke that filled the clearing. 'Mines. There are better ways to keep out strangers, but few that make as much noise. They will know we're coming now if they didn't before. We have to move faster. That's probably the quickest way in,' she said, pointing at a continuation of the trail on the far side. 'It's probably booby-trapped, every step of the way.'

'So we go around.' The green phantom turned away from the minefield and headed back into the darkness of the forest. He had a small compass and while they lacked a map he could at least tell if they were headed in the right direction. Erasmus went first, his vicious claws effective at clearing the overhang like ten little machetes. Ayaan followed and was followed in turn by the green phantom. The handless ghouls brought up the rear, so silent Ayaan kept forgetting they were even there.

They'd been moving for the better part of half an hour, pushing westward and southward when they could, when Erasmus stopped short and Ayaan's face collided with his furry back. 'Hold on,' he said. 'There's something... there's some energy up here.'

Ayaan called his name but he rushed forward, perhaps intent on reaching their goal, perhaps after something else. She followed as fast as she could while keeping her wits about her. Her feet'nowhere near as steady as they used to be'kept getting snagged in tree roots and undergrowth and she had a terrible presentiment that she would arrive too late, that he would fall in some pit lined with sharpened stakes or trigger a precariously-balanced log to fall on him from high branches. She shouted to him again but he made no answer.

She nearly ran into him when she finally found him. He had stopped before an enormous old-growth tree, big enough that the trail wrapped around it, a massive wooden column climbing with ants, wrapped with the tendrils of epiphytes, studded everywhere with stunted, sunlight-deprived limbs still as thick as saplings of their own. Erasmus looked as if he were leaning forward into the tree's bulk, perhaps just resting for a moment. Resting on his face. She cautiously moved around him. He had his eyes and nose pressed up tight against a knot in the trunk the width of a dinner plate. He wasn't moving. Coupled with a dead man's lack of breath or pulse he looked more like some furry excrescence of the tree than a separate organism.

The green phantom came stumbling through the underbrush behind her, making enough noise to alert every enemy in the forest. 'What's wrong with him?' he demanded. 'What's been done to him? Get him out of there.'

Ayaan wasn't sure if he should be moved but she tugged at one of his paws anyway. She might as well have pulled on a strand of ivy'Erasmus' body, while still flexible, was stuck to the spot. She tugged again and again. Finally the green phantom stepped up to help her. He leaned his staff against the tree and pulled.