The Coming Storm (4 page)

With a nod, Alic pointed at scratches on the stone, a little faded but clear.

“More than one, to judge by the claw marks. They went down there.”

He pointed to a thickly wooded ravine.

Such places, with so many trees, tumbled rocks and small caves and caverns, held the dens of many of the natural predators that roamed these hills. There would be water there, usually a small stream, and cover in plenty. Small game would be available, even some larger if deer or elk wandered along in search of the water. A quick foray up onto the slopes would gain a larger meal if a mountain cat or a bear wished. It was also more danger than Elon would have wished them to take, so with the sign of  boggart Colath avoided them. Instead, they rode along the rim looking for sign or glanced down through the trees to see if they could spot one of the mountain cats lounging in the sun as they liked to do.

None had been seen. On a bright and sunny day they should have caught a glimpse of at least one in all the ravines they passed.

A cat wouldn’t cross a boggin, much less its larger cousin.

Boggarts or boggins, both stood upright and were massively muscled. For all that, they were fast, if not as fast as a kobold or as sly. Boggins were smaller and less clever than their larger cousins. Both had large distended jaws, with canine teeth that pushed upper and lower lips into a permanent snarl. The older a boggart, the more its front teeth showed, small and sharp for rending and tearing. In length a boggin was smaller than a mountain cat but its mass was greater. A boggart was as large as a mountain cat and that much greater in mass. They weren’t venomous but they were vicious, tenacious and frequently, though not always, moved in a group of three or more individuals.

This wasn’t their usual territory.

“If they come up the slopes tonight, they’ll pick up the trail of the horses. We should put distance between and find a secure place to camp,” Colath said.

Alic nodded. “Agreed.”

For all the silence and the possible dangers, it was a beautiful day. The sun shone brightly. Flowers dipped and nodded among the blowing grasses on the hill and the leaves on the trees hadn’t yet lost the new-leaf brightness. Colath appreciated the beauty of this wild place. If not for the growing tension it should have been a pleasant ride.

The sun lowered. The shadows of the mountains fell far behind them when they stopped. Both Mortan and Jalila. They slid off their horses to examine a mark in the dirt.

Jalila looked up, her eyes showing puzzlement.

“Alic, Iric, stand guard,” Colath said and swung off his horse to crouch near them.

Looking at the print in the dirt, he understood their confusion.

“What is it, Colath?” Mortan asked. “I’ve never seen the like.”

“Nor I,” Jalila added.

He shook his head.

Mortan had spread his hand over the track to gauge its size. For a man he didn’t have small hands. The track was two of his handspans wide, plus a little more. There was weight as well, the front of the track pressed deeply into the dirt more so than the back.

“Like a cat’s somewhat,” Jalila commented, her head tilted and almost in the grass. “It was chasing something. Or running.”

Mortan stalked across the grass, his head down and eyes intent. “A boar from the looks of these tracks.”

Trotting over to join him, she nodded. “A good-sized one as well. I wonder that it stayed when all else fled.”

“Too old, or sick?” Colath asked.

“Not the way it’s moving by these tracks,” Mortan said.

Jalila nodded. “It’s big. So it’s old and canny. Perhaps it had its den deep enough it felt safe until now.”

“These look fairly new.”

Colath looked up at the sky.

They had another hour of two of daylight left, plus some of twilight. The men wouldn’t see so well but the Elves would have no problem.

He considered it. An unknown dweller of the borderlands. Big. Catlike.

“We follow.”

“I’ll track it on the ground,” Jalila said, “it will be easier to cut trail.”

She was experienced enough not to get too far ahead, beyond the cover of their arrows and her own bow was in hand, an arrow nocked and ready for quick flight.

He nodded.

Moving off, she settled into the steady trot their folk could maintain for miles or even days, if necessary. Her eyes were on the ground. Every now and then she bent a little to better see the track, slowing only by a fraction.

They followed, arrows notched loosely in bow strings and the horses at an easy jog.

By size and weight, that which they followed was too big for them to risk being caught unawares.

The sun was getting lower and Colath was becoming concerned. Time grew short, they would need to find a good camp soon. With something like this stalking the countryside he didn’t want to be out in the open but under some kind of cover. He’d seen the claw marks of the thing and the way its feet were set. Those weren’t promising.

Jalila slowed and raised a hand, then lowered it. A signal. Slow and quiet. The horses were nervous suddenly, hides twitching just a little, as if they smelled something or sensed something they didn’t understand but knew was unsettling.

Ahead was a tumble of rocks, part of a small ridge that dropped off beyond them. Jalila trotted toward it cautiously and then pointed them toward it.

Setting the others to guard the horses, Colath followed Jalila’s sign as she came to join him near the rocks. Using hand signals only, she indicated that the chase had gone around the rocks. A good-sized boar wouldn’t have fit between them and his small, hard hooves wouldn’t have had good purchase. A tall, slim Elf, however, would have no difficulty. They eeled their way among the boulders, keeping low until they had a good view of the slope below.

The chase had ended there.

The boar was still alive. Hamstrung but still alive, its front hooves clawing and digging at the earth. It squealed weakly as it thrashed. It wouldn’t live long but it would have a terrible death.

Most natural predators preferred fresh meat freshly dead from a severed spine or crushed throat. It made sense. A thrashing hoof or a chance bite from the taken prey could do it injury.

The creature that had caught it wasn’t natural and like many of the things that came out of the borderlands by all appearances it clearly preferred the opposite.

It’s very wrongness offended Colath’s sight.

Built like a cat, yes, like the sleek fast cats of the desert grasslands, it was long and lithe. Its tail lashed lazily as it fed. It ate leisurely, its face buried in the thrashing boar’s lower belly, oblivious to its struggles. It had no fear of the boar’s sharp little hooves. Hooves that had been known to cut a careless man to the bone. Armor – a thick ridge of hide or bone – grew over its face, a ridge not unlike a mane in appearance that ringed its neck and protected the vulnerable throat.

Its hide wasn’t fur but more closely resembled the boiled leather men used in their armor. If there was fur on it at all, he couldn’t tell it from here and didn’t wish to get close enough to look. At that size, the boar was a fairly good meal for it but maybe not enough of one. As the creature pulled its face back to drag out the entrails, Colath got a good look at its muzzle. That wasn’t something he wished to see close, either. Longer and narrower than that of cats, it seemed designed to snap at the heels of its prey and cripple them, or to burrow into the soft underbelly as it did now.

Killing it wouldn’t be easy. An arrow from the side beneath the neck armor, perhaps. That tough hide would resist much. Elven swords would probably cut it but the duller blades of men might be hard put to do more than glance off it or scratch it. The hide looked thinner at the joint of hip to body. An arrow there might cripple it but it was a chancy shot.

He waved Jalila back and followed himself swiftly but quietly.

“Go look, quickly but with care,” he said quietly to the other three. “Remember what you see. I’ve heard of something like it but I’ve never known someone who’s seen one in life. For our purposes, we’ll call it a manticore. I want you to be able to describe it. Don’t give it cause to consider anything other than its current prey. If some of us fall, one of us must bring a description of this thing to Elon and those in Aerilann and the Kingdoms beyond.”

He looked up at the sun. Time grew short. He wanted distance between that thing and his people and some surety something similar couldn’t be a threat to their small party.

Stringing his bow, he and Jalila took up the guard positions. He hadn’t forgotten the boggart in the ravine, either. While it wasn’t likely  it would choose to leave the ravine at exactly the spot where they’d paused, it might pick up the scent anywhere along it. They had a very sensitive nose, boggarts did.

Jalila was tense, too, he could feel it. As tense as he and for the same reason. Her eyes scanned everywhere as his did but she also eyed the sun as he had. He knew she also had no liking for that creature below and misliked being even this close to it, as did he. Not that any sane thing would.

The others returned and quickly. Both men were paler and visibly disturbed, Mortan much more so.

Alic, of course, being Elven, showed little except for a certain tightness around his eyes.

“Let’s go and quietly,” Colath ordered. “Keep bows ready and swords at hand.”

The horses were nervous as well, their muscles twitching. They couldn’t see the source of their unease but something disturbed them. There was no stamping of the feet as the horses of men would do or shaking of heads to rattle bridles but they were distressed and showed it in the whiteness around their eyes. Glad to be away, they moved with quick, mincing steps at first, then lengthened their stride into a trot and the ground-eating canter for which they were known.

Above, the sun had dipped behind the mountains, with only the fading glow in the sky to light their way.

Colath led them away from the manticore and the ravine with the boggart, searching for a place to camp. He wanted stone on three sides, preferably with an overhang, deep enough for them and the horses. In the last light of the sun he saw a likely spot but shadow pooled deep within it.

He sent an arrow winging into those shadows and at the screech from within, Jalila and Alic sent two more to follow. A small salamander writhed out, twisting sinuously, biting frantically at the arrows that pierced it before it flared up in a burst of flame and died. Taking the precious arrows with it.

A salamander, here. Salamanders were creatures of the south and east, not here.

They wouldn’t seek shelter this late again, Colath decided, not in these lands.

Arrows couldn’t be spared for tasks like this. They all carried spare fletching and arrowheads in case of need, the fletching carefully pressed to keep the feathers from curling and throwing off the flight. The shafts, though, were harder to find.

With one to watch and one to fetch, they gathered up firewood quickly as the light faded from the sky. Fire was one of the few things some of these creatures feared but it also attracted them. So the fire wasn’t set, merely laid ready. Colath set a small elf-light down low within a crevice so  they could see but so  its light wouldn’t blind them or their night-sight. Each watch sat with bow at hand and blade loose in the scabbard.

Colath sat unsleeping. His eyes looked out into the darkness but only part of his mind was there.

They weren’t yet truly near the borderlands but given what they had seen here this day he didn’t think they needed to go much closer. A little further west come morning, then south for a time before retracing their steps and scouting to the north. Already he had a sense this would be echoed all along the stretch between here and the mountains.

Now he knew what it was Elon feared, what his foresight had told him. He needed only proof. Colath would gather it and mark its breadth but he knew it now for truth.

With caution and stealth they would return and report. With that and a great deal of luck, which wasn’t something in which Elves liked to put their trust. Preparation and skill offset luck. He had no illusions. Not now. A manticore or something very like it. Something out of legend. Boggins or boggarts. What other creatures would they run afoul of? More, of that  he was certain and far from the borderlands that were their home. Very far in the case of the salamander.

Their sleep that night was uninterrupted, if they slept at all.