Read The Floodgate for Free Online Page B

fear or pain.
    They found Rekatra sprawled beside a swift little creek, clutching at the four deep, widely spaced wounds that sheared through leather armor to plow deep furrows through belly and bowels. The Crinti scout was drained nearly dry. The eyes she lifted to Shanair’s face were already glazed and dull.
    “Mother,” she said faintly. Her voice held hope and supplication, the plea of a wounded child.
    Shanair leaped from her horse and stalked over to the fallen scout. She drew two curved swords in a single, fluid sweep. They flashed down, crossed over the young warrior’s throat, and came back blooded.
    The Crinti chieftain sheathed the stained blades and stooped over the carrion that had been her scout and her daughter. The other two women dismounted and drew near. Their faces held no hint of revulsion at their leader’s actions and no surprise.
    “Look at these marks.” Shanair trailed her fingers along the edge of one deep gash.
    The others crouched down to look. The cuts alone were deep enough to kill, but within each slash was another tear, slanting up at a sharp angle to the main cut.
    “Whatever cut her was not only sharp, but barbed,” observed Whizzra, Shanair’s second in command.
    “And big,” put in the third Crinti. Xibryl, a fleshy warrior nearly Shanair’s height and strength, placed her hand on the dead scout’s belly and spread her thick fingers as wide as they would go. Her hands were long-fingered and strong, and like Shanair she wore her nails in blood-red talons. “If these marks came from claws, the hand was four times the size of mine. What creature in these hills could have done this?”
    Shanair rocked back on her heels and rose in a smooth, swift motion. “Something new. Something we’ve not seen before.”
    Her gaze swept the dismal terrain, searching for clues. No tracks were visible to her keen eyes, no trail sign. Rekatra’s attacker had fled through the stream.
    Shanair’s blue eyes narrowed as she considered the bubbling stream. Snow still crowned the highest peaks of the mountain ranges encircling Halruaa, but the spring thaw had come and gone. Summer was upon them, but the heavy rains of the monsoon season were still two or three moons away. The water should not be running so swiftly.
    “We follow the stream to its source,” she announced.
    She vaulted onto her horse’s back and set a brisk pace north, sparing no glance or thought for the dead girl.
    The terrain grew steeper and more inhospitable with each step. Soon the rocky pass gave way to forest, which thinned to scrub pine as they climbed higher into the mountains. With each step, the song of the stream grew stronger and more urgent.
    The Crinti warriors rode until the sun had set, and they pressed on through the lengthening shadows of twilight. The sounds of gathering night echoed through the trees-the screech of raptors, the snarl of wild cats, the sharp sudden squeal of prey. When it grew too dark to ride, they dismounted and led their horses, trusting the keen night vision inherited from distant drow ancestors.
    Dawn was near when they came to a small clearing. In the center of it, the stream flowed out of a small and apparently shallow pool. There was no sign of the creature that had shredded Rekatra.
    Shanair left her horse at the edge of the clearing and crept cautiously nearer. She circled the stream’s mouth, peering keenly at the moss-covered ground. “Bring me a stout stick,” she ordered.
    Xibryl complied at once, dragging a six-foot length of deadfall wood over and hacking off the side limbs with a hand axe. Shanair took the rough staff and jabbed tentatively at the water. Try as she might, she could not find the spring’s source. The bed beneath was solid ground.
    “Impossible,” she muttered. Raising the stick high overhead, she plunged it hard into the water.
    The staff dived so deep and so easily that Shanair nearly lost her footing. She leaped back, staring in amazement at the two-foot