Camilla pivoted right cutting through the grasping route with a clopping sound. The greenish gray root tip dropped to the snow crusted ground and began to slither forward towards the wood cutters. Emmaline kicked the agitated timber back into the forest. Her breath steamed in the cold winter air even as her body sweated from the effort of two hours spent trying to make headway into the stubborn forest. She had traded her rapier for a pair of hand axes with narrow half moon blades. Cydric and the dwarves were hacking their way deeper into the treeline with axes of their own setting the example for a score of soldiers similarly occupied. Camilla let the men work, restricting herself to targeting the constant swinging branches and questing roots that reached out to strike at the axemen.

"This isn't working," she called to Cydric who was standing atop a pile of greenish woodchips, hacking a great elm that had appeared during the night. The dwarves were cutting like daemons, wide mouth split in toothy grins, tireless in their assault on the woods. After two hours of frenzied effort though, they hadn't made much progress. The forest was resisting the attack. Even worse the areas on either end of the cutting line seemed to advance marginally each time Camilla glanced at them. They were beginning to form a decided pocket, the edges of which were slowly pinching in.

"We need to..." 

One of the guardsman screamed like a gelded horse and Camilla's head whipped around fast enough to catch an elm tree gripping the man with great armlike boughs. She flung one of her axes overhand and it whipped thorough the air to bury itself near the base of one of the branches. Unbothered, the tree limbs drew apart with a crack of bone and spraying blood. The motion was oddly unhurried which was even more horrific than frantic action might have been. Screaming with rage and fear a half dozen of the soldiers threw themselves at the elm, cutting and hacking in a frenzy. The elm accepted the blows, as still and uncaring as any other tree save for the sheen of steaming blood on its bark.

"This is Elgi work," Gunir snarled, making 'Elgi' sound like no fouler insult could exist. Camilla didn't speak Khazalid of course, but she had been around enough dwarves to know a few of their words. Her skin prickled, expecting a flight of arrows to issue from the trees at any moment.

"We aren't going to cut our way through," Camilla said, returning to her previous thought. One of the soldiers, braver than the others, pulled her axe from the tree and tossed it underhand towards her. Camilla snatched the weapon from the air before it could fall to the snow. 

"A hell of a price to pay for firewood," Cydric groused, his eyes lingering on the blood stained snow.

_________

"All I'm saying is there has to be SOME reason for it," Camilla declared as they sat around the fireplace in the sitting room which the four adventeruers had commandeered for their own. It seemed like at any moment the staff might decend and kick them out but so far the shock of the last few days seemed to be keeping the staff at bay. Camilla sipped a smoky liquor from a leaded glass tumbler and crossed her deerskin boots on the carpet before her.

"Trees don't just decide to attack cities," she continued. 

"Aye, they normally have enough sense to steer clear of stone and steel," Gunir agreed.

"Why then, Donnkeubruk isn't any more offensive than any other city in the Empire I'm sure."

"Do you think the Countess is behind it?" Cydric asked. There was a sudden gasp and their eyes pivoted to a serving girl who was standing in the door, her eyes wide and whitefaced. She turned and bolted but Camilla was on her feet and across the room in a flash, seizing the girl by the elbow.

"Please, I'll lose my place if I tell," she blubbered. Camilla cocked a curious eyebrow, having only thought to dissuade the girl from speaking ill of the party to their hosts. She half dragged half guided the girl into the citing room.

"Tell us what?" Cydric asked in a patient tone. The girl began to sob and Camilla pushed her down into a chair.

"The Count's physician, he is an educated man, from Altdorf you know, he took something from the woods, something to help the count get better. That is all I know I swear!"