Frost Wyrm

  What Cady and Seacra failed to notice as they walked away was Almas smiling and whispering to Ulec, “Works every time.” Then both the boys were off.

  In the four years that Almas had known Ulec he had learned to move through the forest pretty quickly. Yet he still often had a hard time keeping up with his friend. Ulec moved through the forest like they were one entity, as if the forest sped him on his travels.

  “So how many are there?” Almas asked as he tried to keep up.

  “Only three of them,” Ulec responded.

  Every so often poachers would enter Aguerius Forest. Mostly these were inexperienced poachers testing to see if the rumors about poaching being impossible in the forest were true or not. Ulec always made sure they went home empty handed. In cases where the poachers were near enough, Ulec would let Almas watch the show from a safe place.

  “This is the spot here. You should be able to watch everything from that branch,” Ulec said, pointing to a tree near the edge of a small clearing.

  Almas climbed up to the spot Ulec indicated; the branches concealed him from view although he could see the entire field. Ulec meanwhile went out into the clearing and disappeared into some tall grass. After a short time, three men appeared at the far side of the field.

  As they drew near Almas could hear them speak.

  “This grass sticks like nothing else. It’s almost like it’s grabbing at us.”

  “I told you to keep silent. You’ll scare our prey away.”

  “What prey?” asked the third man. “We haven’t seen a single living creature in this forest. I’m beginning to think there is something to the rumors here.”

  “I said keep quiet. Look at those trees up ahead. The branches are moving,” the man who appeared to be the leader said.

  “That’s just the wind,” replied the first man.

  “What wind? There is no wind.”

  All around the clearing branches on trees swayed as if there was a heavy wind, except the lower branches where Almas was perched swayed a lot less. The three poachers only had a moment to watch when all around the clearing multiple wolf howls rose up from the trees.

  Almas almost felt sorry for the poachers, watching the fear and confusion on their faces. Yet that was the price of trying to poach game in Aguerius Forest. Ulec had the power to speak to both plant and animal and ask them favors. Mostly he just did little tricks here and there, but at times like these Almas got to see just how much influence Ulec could have over the forest.

  The three poachers loaded arrows into their bows at the sound of wolves moving through the tall grass. As one caught a glimpse of a wolf he aimed his bow to shoot, but a small rock flew from the grass hitting his hand that held his bow, knocking off his aim and making him drop his bow. Two more rocks flew from the grass and two more bows hit the ground.

  Holding his hurt hand the leader said to the others as he glanced around, “I’ve seen enough, let’s get out of here.”

  Pulling out their swords and keeping their backs together, they cautiously made their way back through the meadow. As they left they didn’t even notice the grass had stopped clinging to their legs and had even made a little path for them to leave by.