Mrythdom: Game of Time (7 page)

Aurelius felt a chill wind cut through his coat and he gave a violent shiver. He tucked his head into his scarf and looked around to avoid catching any more such glances.

Outside Dagheim’s walls, the snow stretched on for miles, and apart from a broad track that was worn straight through to the brown grass underneath, the snow rose and fell with a pristine regularity, its icy crust glistening blue in the moonlight.

Without a word and scarcely a sound, the three formations started forward, falling into line one behind the other. Despite their numbers, even their footsteps seemed to blend into the casually whistling wind and the distant groaning of the mile high forest.

Aurelius found that he could see nothing past the giants in front of him, so he began to trail slightly behind his formation and a little bit to one side. There he watched their progress and saw where they were headed. Despite the darkness, the air was clear and the moon provided enough illumination to see all the way out to the horizon, yet what Aurelius saw was a wall of shadows reaching all the way up to the dark, starry sky.

Trees,
Aurelius thought, remembering the impossibly tall forest he’d flown over.
We’re going into the forest. . . .
He found that that thought unsettled him. It was probably all the talk of wolves, but there was something else as well. Aurelius was beginning to wonder what manner of prey could require an army to hunt it. No hunters he’d ever heard of went out in full battle armor or in such force. It seemed unwise to send out hundreds of clanking spearmen to find and kill a beast, or even a whole herd of beasts. Surely they would scare off the animals they intended to hunt?

Gabrian’s voice interrupted his thoughts, echoing strangely inside his head in a way that sent shivers down his spine.
“I wouldn’t linger so far from the phalanx, elder. You’ll be the first to be eaten if you stay back there.”

Aurelius turned to look at the old man and found Gabrian looking back at him.

“I can protect you, but you must stay close to me.”

Aurelius blinked. He could have sworn that Gabrian’s lips hadn’t moved, and yet he’d heard the old man anyway.

“Is that you?”
he thought.

The old man smiled and tapped his head.
Your thoughts are my thoughts now, elder.

“Get out of my head, Wrinkles,” Aurelius whispered fiercely as he fell back into line behind the phalanx.

“Too late for that.”

Aurelius’s hand found the butt of his pistol.

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I can kill you before you even draw your weapon, and because even if that weren’t the case, we still need each other, Elder.”

Aurelius gritted his teeth. “
Stay out of my head!”
With that, he released his weapon and let his ire pass in a few deep breaths of the icy air.

After about ten minutes of marching, they reached the edge of the forest. Even before they passed the tree line, Aurelius caught a whiff of the sharp, fresh scent of evergreen needles. The stars and moon were abruptly snuffed out by the branches overhead, but another, dimmer form of illumination remained to light the forest floor. Here, there and everywhere fluorescent lichen and moss began appearing, growing on the gargantuan tree trunks and branches, casting the forest and the snowy, needle-covered ground in an eerie mixture of blue, red, and green light. Glistening icicles were hanging down from branches overhead and refracting the light in their crystalline depths. It was an ethereal but menacing beauty that seemed somehow fitting for a forest completely devoid of natural light. Jagged shadows danced everywhere, revealing the hunters to any creature with eyes to see them. Worse, no matter how quiet they tried to be, the hunters’ footsteps were like an orderly stampede, disrupting the icy silence between the conifers. Once again, Aurelius wondered what type of prey they could possibly be hunting with such conspicuous force.

The deeper they went into the forest, the more prolific the lichen and moss became, until they could see almost perfectly. Deep, unyielding shadows remained behind every fallen log and looming boulder, but Aurelius felt better to be able to see most of their surroundings. He cast a quick look toward the distant canopy overhead and found his gaze lingering even as his jaw dropped. The trees went on forever above them. The branches spiraled higher and higher in a skeletal web of brown and gray that was almost entirely dead from the lack of penetrating sunlight. The fluorescent lichen and moss grew where leaves could not, and spiraled ever higher until their subtle illumination blurred into a dim mass of color and blotted out the canopy. Gigantic, hanging icicles glistened like a never-ending series of crystal chandeliers, all of them refracting cool shades of blue and green with an occasional splash of bloody red. Aurelius imagined one of those icicles falling on someone, and realized with a prickle of dread that one of those icicles would easily kill whoever it landed on, helmet or not. Even without predators, the forest held a deadly threat for all who walked the labyrinthine trails between the trees.

They’d been stalking through the forest for barely five minutes when he heard it. At first he thought it was an earthquake because the sound vibrated underfoot even before it shuddered through the air. Without a word of warning, phalanxes halted their march and Aurelius almost piled into the man in front of him. The ranks went incredibly still and quiet, and then the sound came again: a deep thrumming roar, accompanied by a steady plod of vibrations underfoot and the occasional cracking of branches. Then a much louder
crack!
sounded and Aurelius’s gaze snapped up in time to see a giant icicle come crashing down between the branches. He watched in slow-motion horror as it fell toward the foremost phalanx. The men in its path didn’t even shuffle their feet. Aurelius winced. Then it hit the ground and there came a sound like a whole case of wine shattering; the formation was sprayed with jagged shards of ice as the icicle shattered barely an arm’s length from their feet. Again, they didn’t move a muscle.

When Aurelius recovered from his shock enough to see, he realized why they were so stolid. There, not far from the foremost phalanx, moving through the hazy blue-green glow of the lichen and moss was a massive shadow. With every plodding step the ground shook and rumbled. Aurelius meandered out of line with the formation on wobbly legs to get a better look. It was hard to judge size against the gargantuan trees, but the way the ground was shaking with its footsteps, Aurelius knew the creature had to be monstrously large. It had a long, fat tail and walked on two legs, though its arms looked suspiciously like another pair of legs, since they were at least as thick and muscular. A line of spines ran all the way down the creature’s back and tail, ending in a vicious nest of spikes at the tip. Aurelius gaped at the sight. He’d never seen something so incredible in all his life. The monster passed out of sight behind a group of trees, but Aurelius waited until the creature’s lumbering footsteps had faded to a mere shiver in the frozen ground before he dared to move. Another roar sounded, now just at the edge of hearing, and the phalanxes shuffled into motion again, now marching at a more subdued pace.

Aurelius whispered, “What was that? A dragon?”

“No, a leviathan.”

“A what?”

“The largest and most fearsome predator in all of Mrythdom. Just one of them could wipe out this entire hunting party, but fortunately for us, they are nearly oblivious to the smaller creatures in their world.”

“So it won’t try to attack us?”

“Not unless we get in its way or appear to be threatening it or its young.”

“Well, that’s a relief.”

Gabrian turned to him with an amused look. “Yes, it is.”

*   *   *

The wolf’s fangs dripped with saliva as he watched the serried ranks of men pass his hiding place. He lay flat on his belly beneath a fallen log, golden eyes piercing the gloom to search the phalanxes for but one man. There, marching a few ranks up in the rearmost phalanx was a man with wavy blonde hair and a smirk on his lumpy human face. His coat was a rare cobalt blue, shot through with streaks of pure white. It was difficult to tell the true color of the coat in the dim, colored light of the forest, but Reven knew the patterns and colors of that coat intimately. Its previous owner had been his mate, his precious Doana, and the only good thing to have ever happened in his long, miserable life.

Now she was gone. Slaughtered like an animal for her alleged crimes, skinned to keep an evil man warm during the long, frigid winters.

A rivulet of moisture trailed down from Reven’s running snout, making his nose itch. He could smell the stink of those humans a mile away. Even though their numbers were in the hundreds, their fear was a palpable, sweaty stench that stirred the still, pine-scented air of the forest until it was churning with their nauseating odor.

Reven growled softly, his lips peeling back from long, dagger-like teeth. He’d kill them all, one by one until he reached the man wearing his mate’s coat. Then he’d skin the man alive and see how
he
liked it.

Apart from the appearance of the leviathan, the forest had been deadly quiet for the past hour. Aurelius was starting to get tired of the endless marching, and he began to wonder how long it would be before they came upon their prey.

Hydrons.
What was a hydron anyway?

The hunting party slowly rounded a massive tree trunk that looked just like all the other massive tree trunks. It was as wide at the base as any skyscraper, though considerably less uniform, knobbed with shadowy holes that spoke of small woodland creatures making their homes inside the ancient wooden structure. The mighty roots stretched out from the base like girders, some reaching a dozen stories up from the ground. The roots left deep curtains of shadows around the base of the tree, and Aurelius found himself obsessively checking those shadowy crevices to see if there was anything hiding between the roots, but his eyes couldn’t pierce the gloom unless the lichen and moss were particularly dense.

There seemed to be too many places for something to hide. Aurelius unconsciously began walking a little closer to his phalanx, sometimes nearly stepping on the feet of the man in front of him. He was overly aware of his ears; they were burning from listening keenly to the silence for so long.

Or possibly just from the cold.

Yet the air was curiously warmer inside the forest, as though the canopy overhead provided some type of insulation. By his reckoning the canopy should have only made the forest colder, but perhaps the trees generated some type of warmth. Or maybe it was the fluorescent growths. Light and heat typically went together.

As Aurelius was considering these things, he became gradually aware of the sharp whispers rising from his phalanx. The men seemed agitated.

“What’s going on?” Aurelius whispered to the nearest man.

That man jumped with fright, but visibly relaxed when he saw only Aurelius standing behind him.

“Someone is missing,” the man said.

“What? How?”

The man shook his head. “No one saw what happened to him. One minute he was there, and the next . . . gone.”

Aurelius felt a chill creeping down his spine. He cast a quick look over his shoulder and felt a thrill of adrenaline send sparks shooting through his fingertips as he realized that he was in the rearmost rank of the rearmost phalanx. He wasn’t even technically a part of the formation, making him and Gabrian the most logical targets for any predator to pick off.

Aurelius’s fist tightened around the butt of his pistol, and he whispered to Gabrian, “I don’t like this.”

“Shhh.”

Aurelius looked away with a frown. Something told him that his life didn’t mean much to the old man, but it gave him comfort to know that Gabrian needed him to pilot the
Halcyon
.

Aurelius’s gaze skipped nervously through the trees, his head turning this way and that in quick sweeping arcs. The men had quieted again, but apparently they were not willing to stop marching to look for one missing man. Perhaps it was not unusual for a few men to go mysteriously missing on a hunt, but that made Aurelius uneasy. They were too eager to give up one of their own for dead, as though they feared that by stopping they’d all be lost.

A number of minutes passed in silence and Aurelius’s pounding heart began to slow to a more reasonable pace. He breathed a deep sigh and heaved his shoulders uncomfortably. His coat was almost making him sweat. Something about the forest was definitely heating the air. The persistent icicles upon the tree branches were testament that the temperature was still below zero, but he couldn’t imagine it was by much.

Suddenly Aurelius heard sharp whispers among the men, and his heart rate spiked. Had someone else gone missing?

“. . . is that you? Where in the name of the ancestors were you? We thought you’d been . . .
taken
. Sargham?”

There was a long pause, and then there came a gruff mumble for a reply.

“Well, next time you have the need, hold it until Rathgur calls a halt. You know better than that! No one leaves the phalanx until the chieftain calls a rest.”

Another mumble.

“You sound strangely, Sargham. Are you okay?”

Aurelius strained to make out the man’s mumbled reply, but found it to be too far beyond the edge of his hearing.

“You shouldn’t have come if you weren’t feeling well.”

Someone hissed angrily at the pair of hunters for making so much noise and they grew silent. Aurelius felt unsettled by the reappearance of the missing man, almost more so than by his disappearance. It seemed out of place with the men’s general aura of fear and caution that one of them would split off from the group without so much as a word to his fellows. Perhaps the forest wasn’t as dangerous as they pretended it to be?

As Aurelius was considering that, the phalanxes abruptly stopped marching. He felt another sweaty spike of adrenaline and waited to feel the ground shuddering beneath his feet with the approach of another leviathan, but instead he saw the phalanxes relax their formations ever so slightly. Men were setting their shields on the ground and taking swigs of water from insulated canteens, while others were producing strips of dried meat from their coats and chewing nervously on them. Yet a few more split off from the formation entirely and walked to one side where others were massing. As Aurelius watched, he saw a few of the men set down their arms and begin fiddling with their raiment, their backs turned to the others. The rest kept their weapons and shields in hand and glanced about warily.

The ground began hissing with steam as the men who’d set down their arms relieved themselves. Aurelius nodded slowly to himself.
The chieftain called a halt. So why didn’t the missing man wait?
A frown wrinkled Aurelius’s brow as he watched the men take turns relieving themselves while the others stood guard.

“Sargham, you’re a cripping faucet, you know that? You just went!”

“Shhh!” hissed a nearby huntsman.

Aurelius watched their “missing” man amble over to the group of men waiting to use the makeshift latrine. Even for one of the giant men of Nordom, this man was large. He stood head and shoulders above the others and his heavy round shield looked like a toy in his hands. Once he reached the others, he dropped his shield with a noisy
clunk
, but instead of moving to the back of the line or taking up a position with the other guards, Sargham walked straight up to a man in a blue and white fur coat and tapped him on the shoulder. The man cast a scowl over his shoulder just in time to see the fist swinging for his face. He barely had time for the shock to register before Sargham’s knuckles met his nose in a meaty crunch.

To his credit the man gave nothing but a stifled cry and he stayed on his feet, clutching his bloody nose in both hands. The men standing guard snapped into action without even a second’s delay, barring the attacker from his victim with spear points raised and thrust out toward him, but Sargham was already spinning away from the confrontation, his teeth bared in a jagged, spitting fury. His emerald eyes were flashing, and his hands were clenched in rigid claws. He’d dropped his spear, too, as though he needed no weapons to defend himself. The attacker began backing away slowly, in the process half turning to face Aurelius. It was then that Aurelius really saw Sargham. His thick black beard and long, wild black hair were completely out of place with the almost uniformly fair men of Nordom, and Aurelius had never seen eyes like those in all his life, so
deeply
green, nor had he ever seen nails so long and sharp. Sargham was either a very scruffy, unusual man, or . . .

“A werewolf,” Gabrian whispered.

The man seemed to swell before their eyes, splitting his coat and armor open like a chick breaking out of its shell. The man’s face distorted, growing longer and hairier, more triangular in appearance. His arms and legs bulged and writhed with cords of muscle and suddenly his skin was covered in coal black fur. His eyes grew larger and deepened in color, becoming a clearer, darker green, and his ears formed pointy, fur-covered tips. Suddenly, Aurelius knew he was looking not at a man, but at a wolf. From its giant paws to its slavering jaws the beast was a rippling mass of terrifying fury, towering at least a foot above even the largest of the giant men of Dagheim. As he watched, it dropped down on all fours, but seemed no less imposing for its sudden lack of height. It was the size of a bear.

The men were cautiously pushing the monster deeper into the shadowy forest with warning thrusts of their spears, and the wolf was reluctantly backing away, its jaws snapping and snarling at them. The nearest phalanx moved to join the fray as though the half a dozen men already confronting the beast wouldn’t be enough to stop it.

“Aurelius, we must take cover. Come.”

Aurelius went on staring dumbly at the scene as if he hadn’t heard.
Take cover?
he wondered as a hazy curtain of unreality settled over his mind.
Why should we take cover?

Suddenly the wolf tossed its head back and howled so sharply that Aurelius felt the urge to clap his hands over his ears.

A terrified shout went up behind him, and Aurelius spun around to see dozens of shadowy beasts bounding down out of the trees and landing in the midst of the distracted phalanxes. Horrible noises rose into the night; the sounds of flesh thumping against steel and men screaming their last as wet tearing and ripping noises reduced their screams to gurgles.

Aurelius reeled away from his phalanx as a trio of dark monsters fell into the middle of it, ripping the orderly formation into terrified shreds. Men were literally flying out of the middle of the phalanx and landing on their fellows’ spears.

This couldn’t be happening. He was dreaming. It was all one long, horrible nightmare, and he was just about to wake up. A massive beast with corpse gray fur landed on all fours in front of him and met his terrified expression with a contemptuous snarl of glistening white fangs. A flash of light in his peripheral vision caught his eye and he saw Gabrian pinned beneath another wolf and warding off the beast’s jaws with glowing palms. The beast before Aurelius padded slowly forward and Aurelius drew his weapon. He pulled the trigger in a hasty shiver of fear, but nothing happened.

Safety’s still on!
Aurelius fumbled desperately with the gun in his suddenly numb fingers.
It’s a nightmare; it’s a nightmare; it’s a nightmare. . . .

He looked up just in time to see the wolf pounce, its jaws gaping wide enough to swallow his head whole.