Free Mrythdom: Game of Time by Jasper T. Scott Page B

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