Ascendant (34 page)

That afternoon, Phil received a report of a re’em attack in the Monti Simbruini Park outside of Rome and gathered the troops together. During my absence, she and Neil had procured their own van to help transport us to and from hunting sites, and the four active hunters—Dorcas, Melissende, Rosamund, and me—loaded up our weapons.

“This is going to suck,” said Melissende, climbing into the van. “All the really good hunters are out sick.”

Phil ignored her, I said nothing, and Rosamund clutched her rosary and stared straight ahead. Phil had told me that the Austrian pianist had rarely attended hunts lately. I’m sure if she were less religious, Rosamund would also be seeking a way out of the biz, and if she were less forthright, she’d probably be faking her own injuries to make sure she stayed on the bench.

“I hate re’em,” she said softly once we were on the road. “I haven’t seen one since the night we were attacked outside the Cloisters, remember?”

I shivered. Of course I did; that re’em had been my first kill.

“Don’t worry,” said Dorcas. “Astrid and Melissende have both taken them before. If it’s only one, we shouldn’t have a problem.”

Rosamund stared out the window and said nothing.

The city gave way to suburbs and then countryside, and then even more rugged terrain as we traveled up into the Apennine Mountains. The ground was spotted with gray slush, and gusts of winds buffeted the van as Phil concentrated to stay on the winding mountain roads. Deep ravines and sharp peaks met every turn, punctuated by pockets of dense woods. Though only about forty miles from Rome, this land made a perfect hiding spot for a re’em, or even a whole herd of them, for the park boasted pockets of wild deer and boar, brown bears, and even a few wolves.

The sky was dim and gray, even though it was just past midday as Phil stopped the van at the entrance to a hiking trail.

“This is where the witnesses found the bodies,” she said. She distributed walkie-talkies as we got our gear together. Our arrows, I noted, were all fitted with the alicorn points that Isa-beau had had made.

“How did they know it was a re’em?” Rosamund asked, sniffing the air. There was no scent of fire and flood up here, just the freshness of evergreen and snow and rock.

“They caught a glimpse through binoculars,” Phil said. “It was up near the top of this trail, by the peak.”

“At least it was keeping its distance from the towns,” I said. “Like the bears and the wolves that live here.”

“I know.” Phil frowned. “You’re preaching to the choir here, Astrid. I’d say live and let live, too, but it’s killing hikers now. There are some big ski resorts around here, and we just can’t risk any more attacks. Especially when we’re so close to getting protection.”

So kill a unicorn to save a bunch of other unicorns? I wondered what the policy would be had it been a bear that had attacked those hikers. How far out into the wilderness would you have to go before the rights of people gave way to the rights of wild animals? Was there ever a time when the animals took precedence?

Phil’s point of view sounded oddly like Isabeau’s. She was willing to kill unicorns to develop the Remedy, which might save human lives, and she didn’t see much of a distinction between what we did and what she was doing, though hunters killed only unicorns who were actively threatening people. The end result was the same: you could kill unicorns to save people.

That was the rule, right?

“Let’s separate into two teams of two,” Melissende said. “We can take either side of the trail and contact one another if we sense anything.” She waved her walkie-talkie—one of the other bonuses from the Gordian largesse.

“Sounds good.”

“I’ll go with Dorcas,” she added, casting a distasteful glance at Rosamund, whose hands were shaking so hard she’d just spilled the entire contents of her quiver into the slush.

Dorcas and Melissende took the left-hand loop, and I waited for Rosamund to gather her bone-tipped arrows together.

“You take care, Asterisk,” Phil said.

“You, too,” I said. “Remember to stay down in that van.”

She saluted me. “Don’t worry. I don’t want to get anywhere near a re’em.”

Rosamund and I started up the trail, sliding a bit on the slippery, lichen-covered rocks pockmarking the terrain, and keeping our senses alert for any trace of unicorn. I decided I had been spoiled by my months wandering in the tiny, flat woods behind the château, carrying nothing more than my alicorn knife and the occasional steak to feed the einhorns. Scaling a mountainside with a bow, a full quiver, my claymore, the alicorn knife, and a full first aid kit was an entirely different prospect. Our progress was slow and arduous and accompanied by a lot of puffing.

“See anything?” Melissende’s voice came crackling over the radio.

I caught my breath long enough to shoot back a no. She didn’t sound winded in the slightest. Maybe they got the flat side of the trail. So unfair.

There was very little sound up here except for the whistle of the wind and the creaking in the branches of the occasional grove of trees. We hiked steadily uphill for another forty-five minutes, not talking much, listening to the crunch of gravel beneath our hiking boots and the soft clinks of our equipment shifting around as we walked.

It was hard to believe I was less than fifty miles from one of the oldest cities in the world. Beyond the edge of the trail, there seemed to be nothing out here that bore the touch of man. I found myself wondering if my einhorns would like this place, if Angel would have enjoyed frolicking in the snow or chasing hedgehogs and martens around the rocks.

Of course they would. They would like any life outside the confines of their pitiful little grove, trapped, unable to hunt or chase or be safe. I’d known them too long and too well. I’d seen into their dreams and fathomed their desires. This was all they wanted. I’d abandoned them because I realized how much I wished they could have it. Out here, like this, it seemed easier to imagine Phil’s dreaming coming true. Easier to believe that there could be someplace in the wild where unicorns could live free and happy.

And then I remembered that we were out here to kill a unicorn for trying to do exactly that.

“They said they found corpses.” My words spilled out.

“What?” Rosamund said, understandably.

“Corpses,” I repeated. “The unicorn that attacked those people—it didn’t eat them after it killed them.”

“So?”

“That’s kind of weird, don’t you think? “ Rosamund shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps it had plenty of food stored for the winter. Perhaps it was scared away by something—a bear, maybe.”

“Unicorns aren’t afraid of bears.”

“A lion, then.”

“There are no wild lions here. A wildcat, maybe. But a re’em wouldn’t be afraid of that, either. Besides,” I added, “other animals can’t eat carrion tainted with alicorn venom. It’s poisonous to them as well.”

“Well, then, I don’t know,” Rosamund said. She hugged her arms around her shoulders. “I’m just cold and wet and tired. Do you feel anything yet?”

I shook my head. “You?”

“No.” We kept walking, and Rosamund began to hum softly, a slow melody I recalled she used to play on the piano down in the chapter house.

“So tell me,” I said as we puffed along. “Does music have charms to soothe the savage beast?”

“What?”

“It’s, um, a saying.”

“Oh. I could not say. Bonegrinder seems to like it when I sing, but she likes everything we do. I don’t know if it would work on another kind of unicorn. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“Yeah.”

We were silent for a few more yards, then Rosamund spoke again. “Astrid?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you love Giovanni?”

I stopped walking. My instinct was to say yes, but if I loved Giovanni, would I have kissed Brandt? Would I have let my ex-boyfriend put his hands all over me? Wouldn’t I have contacted Giovanni as soon as it happened to confess the truth? If I loved Giovanni, wouldn’t I have spoken to him in the last few days? “Why?” was all I said.

“Because I was thinking of Zelda. She loves David, and she left for him. But you are with Giovanni, and you don’t leave.”

“It’s not as simple as love,” I said. “I thought you believed that as well. You said you didn’t want to have sex until your wedding night.”

“I don’t,” said Rosamund. “But I would also like to have a wedding night.” Touché.

“I’ve never been in love,” Rosamund said. “I had one boyfriend, but it was only for a week, at a music camp. We went to a dance, and he kissed me under the stars.”

“Sounds nice,” I said. Still no trace of the re’em.

“I probably would have had more boyfriends if I weren’t so busy with my music.”

I turned to look at Rosamund, at her long, wavy red hair and her elfin face. “Definitely.”

The walkie-talkie crackled again. “We see her. It’s a re’em. Big one, too.”

“Are you within range?” I asked back.

“No, we—” I heard a shouted curse, then the radio went silent. I stared left over the ravine that separated us from the lower part of the trail, wondering what the quickest route was to the other team. Rosamund scanned the landscape, searching for movement.

“Do you see them?” I cried.

“No.” She closed her eyes and raised her face into the wind, sending out feelers of magic. I breathed in, hoping to trace the telltale scent of fire and flood, but felt nothing.

“I hear them!” she shouted. “The chords. Over here!” She took off, sprinting up the path, which wound around a large boulder and headed to the right.

“Wait!” I cried. “Rosamund, that’s the wrong way!”

But she kept running, and I followed. After all, who was to say that Melissende and Dorcas hadn’t already passed the ravine? Their path appeared to be flatter. Maybe they were able to make better time than we were.

Sure enough, on the other side of the boulder the path turned into a series of long switchbacks that Rosamund was blithely ignoring in favor of cutting straight up the mountainside. I panted behind her for a few yards until suddenly I could feel a tingle of unicorn magic. It bloomed inside me and I breathed clear again, my strides lengthening as the world seemed to slow and shrink around me. There were unicorns on this mountain. Several of them.

Melissende’s voice came over the radio. “It’s coming toward you! Get ready!”

“I know!” I said. “I can feel it. You guys okay?”

“Yes.” Now Melissende did sound out of breath. “Oh, it got Dorcas in the arm, but she’ll live. She’s hanging back while her wound closes. I hit it in the flank with an arrow, but that doesn’t seem to have slowed it down any.”

“Good to know.”

“I’ll meet you. Are you still on the path?”

“Sort of. We’re cutting through some switchbacks, still heading up the mountain. I can feel it now.” Threaded through the scent of fire and flood was great terror, a hunger, and something that felt like … loneliness? No, abandonment.

The switchbacks ended abruptly in a copse of thickly threaded evergreens. I plunged through it in seconds and out the other side, where a boulder field seemed to have provided some shelter from the mountaintop elements for the trees to take root. A maze of rocks and tiny peaks jutted up all around me, making it impossible to make out the entire trail. Rosamund was nowhere to be seen, but it felt as if the unicorn was everywhere at once.

I ran faster. “Rosamund!” I called. “Arrow on the string!”

The words whipped away from me on the wind, and then I tripped on a rock and fell, sprawling, the momentum of the magic carrying me several more yards before I stopped.

That’s when I heard it. An enormous bellow. And then, over the crest of a ravine to the left of the trail came the re’em, growling and snorting, its galloping hooves pounding the earth, kicking up massive clods of dirt and gravel and snow. This unicorn was even larger than the one I’d killed in Rome. It had to weigh at least fifteen hundred pounds. It tossed its wide, oxlike head wildly about, swinging its great ridged horn from one side to the other as it ran. The green shaft of Melissende’s arrow still jutted from its side, and dark red blood ran from the wound in a fanning stream down its dun-colored flank.

I scrambled to my feet, pulling my bow from my shoulder and an arrow from my quiver. With the stopped-time speed of my hunting magic, I scanned the trail ahead for any sign of Rosamund or Melissende, but could find neither. “Rosamund!” I hissed. She must have ducked out of sight when I tripped.

I climbed a boulder, the better to catch sight of my quarry. The re’em galloped toward the rock field, bellowing long and loud. I paused, my bow at full draw. I felt more than one unicorn. Several, in fact. Thanks to my practice at doing a head count back at Gordian, I could detect at least three unicorns in the immediate area. Was this unicorn I was about to shoot responsible for the deaths of those hikers, or was it a different one? A more remote, wild area could not possibly be found. Was it possible that Melissende had injured a unicorn who was just trying to escape mankind?
It didn’t eat the corpses…
.

In the middle of winter, yet. Food must be scarce up here, and yet the man-eating unicorn had left its kill behind. Why?

Why else does an animal kill? For food, in defense, to protect its territory … and how could anyone deny that this rugged mountaintop, a home to wolves and bears, was not the perfect territory for a monster?

I heard the thwang of an arrow, and the re’em stumbled, a second green shaft sticking in its hind leg. Melissende climbed out of the ravine, limping slightly as she ran, and reached for a third arrow. By this time, the re’em was closer to the rock field, quartering toward me. I could hit it right in the heart. If I wanted to.

You seem to have lost your taste for unicorn hunting…
.

I reached out to the unicorn with the tendrils of my mind, remembering how I’d bent the einhorns to my will.
Calm down. Stop your stampede
. Maybe there was still some way. Still some other solution. Like that time with Breaker when the fence went down. Maybe I could make it listen.

The re’em was staggering now, trying its best to run with blood still streaming from both arrow wounds. I didn’t know if it was listening or just dying. I skidded down the side of the boulder, back to the earth, and reached into its mind.