Deathstalker 04 - Deathstalker Honor

that the path was slowly but surely turning them off course. Owen yelled for everyone to stop, and they all snapped out of their half daze, guns at the ready. Owen calmed them down and explained the situation, and took the point so he could follow Oz’s directions more exactly. But when he tried to turn aside from the path, the red foliage clumped stubbornly together before him, forming a thick, ragged wall. Owen drew his sword and cut the wall with all his strength, but just as before, his blade clung stickily to the foliage, limiting the amount of damage he could do. He pulled his sword free, stepped back, and opened fire with his disrupter. The energy beam blasted a narrow tunnel through the plant wall, lined with blackened and burning edges. But as soon as Owen moved forward, the scorched sides just closed together again, like a slow-moving man trap.
    “Stubborn, isn’t it?” said Hazel. “The jungle really doesn’t want us deviating from the path it’s chosen.”
    “Maybe it’s hiding something,” said Midnight. “Some vulnerable part of itself.” “Little baby jungle things?” said Bonnie. “Could we be trespassing on a nursery?”
    “How long would it take us to go around whatever it is?” said Moon, looking at Owen.
    Owen consulted with Oz and then shook his head. “Depends on how large an area the jungle is protecting. Let’s try curling around it. If it looks like it’s taking us too long, we’ll see what high explosives will do. You do have some, don’t you. Hazel?”
    “Never without them,” said Hazel cheerfully.
    Owen led the way cautiously around the blocked-off area, gun in his hand, and looked carefully about him for possible traps or ambush points. For the first time he was forced to consider the possibility that parts of the jungle might not just be aware, but actually sentient. He tried to visualize what kind of drowsy, sluggish thoughts a plant might think, and wasn’t surprised when he couldn’t.
    He led the way for a good half hour before realizing something was wrong. Apart from the foliage drawing slowly back in front of him to form the path, nothing in the jungle was moving. Not a vine or a branch or a leaf. He stared about him into the endless twilight, straining his eyes against the denseness of the jungle and the never ending rain, but all was still and silent. The only sound was the heavy squelching of his party’s boots diving in and out of the mud, and the steady patter of the rain. Owen hefted his disrupter. His instincts were screaming that he was walking into a trap, but he couldn’t see anything dangerous or even threatening. If anything, the path ahead seemed wider than usual. But he was haunted by a sense of imminence, of something about to happen. Hazel moved up beside him.
    “You feel it too, don’t you?” she said quietly.
    He nodded. “The jungle’s watching us. It’s planning something.” “Intelligent plants,” said Hazel.
    “Spooky. Would it help if I apologized for all the salads I’ve eaten?”
    Owen smiled briefly. “I doubt it. You see anything?”
    “Not a damned thing. What do we do?”
    “Keep moving, and be ready to react whenever whatever it is hits us. We’ve fought Hadenmen and Grendels. I doubt there’s anything a bunch of plants can throw at us that we can’t handle.”
    “Getting cocky again, Deathstalker.”
    While they were busy talking, the ground dropped out from under their feet. Owen’s stomach lurched as he plunged down into the mud and just kept going. He scrabbled about him for something to cling onto, but all the surrounding vegetation had drawn back out of reach. There was only the mud, thick and confining, sucking him down. The others were yelling all around him, and from what he could see were just as badly off as him. The mud began moving, circling like a slow-motion whirlpool. The mud was already up to Owen’s waist, and he was still sinking. He fought to stay upright, and tried to remember what he’d heard about dealing with quicksand. You were supposed to be able to swim in it, if you kept your nerve, but when Owen tried to move his legs, they barely responded at all. The mud smothered his movements easily, thick and clinging and bitterly cold.
    The circling speed of the mud was increasing all the time, a whirlpool now of mud and grasses and loose vegetation a good twenty feet in diameter, churning remorselessly in a widdershins motion, pulling in everything around it like a slow, determined