The Coming Storm Read Online Free PDF

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