Rampant

by Diana Peterfreund

  A Band-Aid, a crossbow, a bonfire. Giovanni and me in the woods; the eviscerated unicorns; the tableau in the rotunda; me, on the ground, with a giant hole in my back…

  He’d saved me. He’d saved me again.

  A microphone, a waiting audience…

  Daughter of Alexander, can you speak?

  “Yes,” I said, in a voice like a toad.

  The karkadann stepped from the trees.

  You are getting better at this.

  22

  WHEREIN ASTRID PUTS THE PIECES TOGETHER

  THE NIGHT PASSED, and I drifted in and out of consciousness, while the karkadann watched over me in colossal silence. I could feel the waves of venom pouring off his horn, and yet they didn’t bother me as they once had. Perhaps I was growing used to it, building up a resistance after each exposure. It had almost killed me on the park bench, but here, next to a near-fatal wound, I hardly felt it. Or perhaps the venom was connected to the Remedy after all.

  “Does it help?” I asked aloud.

  A beaker in my chemistry lab back at school. My lab notebook covered in my scribbles.

  You are the scientist. You say.

  And then, much later:

  “The others—they’re all dead, aren’t they?”

  No hunter perished this night.

  Then why was I alone here? They wouldn’t have left me for dead, would they? And even if they thought I’d been killed, they would have come looking for my body. I choked and coughed.

  And then, in my mind’s eye, I saw a kirin running with a giant lump on its head. My body, impaled on its horn.

  A trophy.

  “They…took me?”

  Fireworks. Dancing. The figure of Clothilde Llewelyn.

  “To prove they killed me. The Llewelyn.” I shook my head. Perhaps I was better at translating the images when I was losing consciousness. “But I’m not so different from the other hunters. Why do they care?”

  Vengeance.

  “Against whom?”

  Against the hunters. Against me.

  “Why you?”

  Laughter. Then a pop quiz. Then kirin.

  I almost groaned, until I realized how much it would hurt. Why wasn’t it Cory here instead of me? She could give him an encyclopedia’s worth of knowledge about kirin.

  They were from Asia. That part I knew. And they had spread through Europe by the time of the first extinction. They hunted in packs, and the prevailing legend was that they appeared around the time of a great leader. Like Confucius. They were tough as hell to see at night, which may be why the ancient drawings of them were covered in clouds, and they fought like demons. In olden days, people worshipped them, sacrificed to them as if they were gods.

  Yes. The kirin desire man’s worship.

  A walled city, a barred gate…Exile, I translated.

  Exile does not please them.

  Exile? The truth bubbled up inside. That century and a half when we thought they were extinct? To them, it had been exile. These were more than simple beasts, quietly surviving in the wild pockets of the world. Unicorns had been hiding.

  Had they gone into hiding after Clothilde killed that karkadann? Did they know their days were numbered then? Cory had always described Clothilde’s karkadann kill as the Last Hunt. I’d certainly never heard of anyone killing unicorns after that.

  I was so thirsty.

  Into my head came the vision of a schoolgirl, walking along a road with a brown lunch bag in her hand. Very close, and very vulnerable. A meal for him carrying a meal for me.

  I could get you food and drink, but you would not like my methods.

  “No.” I tried to lift my head from the ground, but the flesh of my back boiled as I shifted. Was I healing? Unlike Ursula, I hadn’t gotten a transfusion of non-hunter blood. I had no idea how much I’d lost, but I was still here, still alive. Perhaps I still healed. As the gory images of the schoolgirl faded, I risked speaking again. How could he be treating me with such kindness and act bloodthirsty to another girl? “Why don’t you kill me?”

  I need your help. Like last time.

  “In the park?”

  No. With Clothilde Llewelyn.

  I closed my eyes. Right. The karkadann who thought he was Bucephalus. Talk about delusions of grandeur! “How have the last two thousand years been treating you?”

  Not bad.

  I tried to laugh then, and was rewarded with a flash of fresh pain. Well, what did I expect? For the talking unicorn to be reasonable?

  Pop quiz: Karkadann, I thought, since I didn’t have the strength to speak. Alexander’s warhorse, Bucephalus, according to all accounts except my mother’s, had died, mid-campaign, in what is now Pakistan. In his mourning, Alexander named a city after his greatest companion: The “horse city” Bucephala was now known as Jhelum.

  True. But I did not die there.

  That’s what my mother said. She said Bucephalus had escaped, and that Alexander had made up the death story to save face.

  According to the legends the unicorn hunters passed around, Bucephalus lived for another two thousand years, until Clothilde Llewelyn came along and finally defeated him, the last surviving unicorn, in an epic battle that had cost them both their lives.

  I did not die there, either.

  No, he didn’t. It was different karkadanns, each time. A few animals could live a hundred years—I think we learned in bio class about birds of prey—and a few plants could reach into the thousands. But a two-thousand-year-old, battle-tested unicorn? He looked awfully spry for his age.

  Besides, I’d seen the unicorn in the rotunda, the one Clothilde killed.

  There is only me.

  Then what’s the thing in the rotunda?

  The karkadann began to growl, and the earth itself trembled beneath my palms, chest, and cheek.

  Do you doubt me, Daughter of Alexander?

  I was in real trouble now, if my thoughts were no longer my own. I was used to keeping my mouth shut in front of my mother. With this karkadann, it wouldn’t help.

  I wondered about the other hunters. Where were they? Where was I, for that matter? What did they think had happened to me? Did they think I’d been eaten? Did they think I was dead?

  Do you want them to?

  The thought was so clear in my mind that, for a second, I thought it belonged to me alone.

  “No!” My mother, and Phil…they’d be so upset.

  Are you sure? It is very nice, being dead. No more hunting. No more being hunted.

  “You’d know, Bucephalus,” I said, “what with dying twice now.”

  Laughter. You must be getting stronger. I felt him shift above me, and the corresponding wave of venom-filled air. It is almost closed now.

  I got a flash of my back: my shirt, torn to shreds and stained brownish red with dried blood. Beneath it, a glimpse of a horrific, enormous wound.

  I recoiled from the vision in my head. How had I survived? No one could live through a wound like that, not even a hunter. I’d have bled to death or stopped breathing or—was it possible that the horn had missed all major organs? No, I couldn’t breathe. My lung must have been pierced, at the very least. But it had healed, too.

  The karkadann snorted. He was growing impatient, standing here. I could tell. You’d think that a few millennia would chill a guy out.

  I will have all the time in the world when the rebel kirin are defeated.

  “You need my help?” I glanced at the body of the nearest kirin. “I think you’re better at killing them than a hunter is.”

  For now. You get better. Besides, I do not want to kill them all. I want to free them.

  “I don’t understand.”

  A rush of images flooded my brain, each more confusing and muddled than the last. The burnt scriptorium of the Cloisters; Marten watching Philippa at target practice; the head of the kirin that Valerija had killed;, the Wall of First Kills; the alicorn throne; the claymore of Clothilde Llewelyn, the golden, blown-glass vial that my mother had used
the night she’d saved Brandt’s life—

  “Stop,” I gasped. “Please.”

  A Band-Aid; a crown; an endless, barren wasteland; the scent of hot horse and dying men; the bronze bit in my mouth, tearing, tearing—

  I tried to rise, but I blacked out.

  When I woke again, the pain in my back had subsided a lot, and I risked pushing myself to a sitting position. The corpses of the kirin were gone, and I shuddered to think what had happened to them. I didn’t see the karkadann, either.

  “Karkadann?” I whispered into the woods. The quality of the light through the trees made me think it was late afternoon. “Um…Bucephalus?”

  Daughter of Alexander, are you well?

  Yes, I thought. Where was he?

  Near. Your skills have increased.

  My skills at reading his mind? He couldn’t be too close—I didn’t even sense the venom.

  Yes, you grow better for me. Better to withstand me. Better to listen to me. Better to hunt.

  “Hunt you?”

  Laughter. Try it.

  Gingerly, I reached behind me and touched my back. My skin felt rough and rippled beneath my fingertips, and I cringed, coughed again, and felt dizzy.

  The ground trembled, and the karkadann emerged through the trees. He stood above me and dropped three small, slightly squashed oranges to the ground near my feet.

  Good?

  I picked one up, ignoring how sticky my hand felt, how it was spattered with blood and dirt. “Yes. Thank you.” It was wet and slimy to the touch, and the caked mud and dirt stuck to the rind. Gross. Unicorn spit.

  I tore into it anyway, then sucked at the juice as best I could without eating the dirty parts. How far had I come from the hospital aide who would never dream of eating food without freshly washed hands?

  I guess once you spent the night in a mud pit made with your own blood, you relaxed the rules a bit.

  “Okay,” I said, between mouthfuls of orange. “You saved my life. Now tell me about the kirin.”

  Not all kirin but some. They have been deceived. They think they will find a new glory among men. But all they shall find is slavery. They do not listen.

  “Well, I can’t talk to them…can I?”

  No. But your sword can.

  I lifted my arm. It hurt. “I doubt I’ll be doing anything with a sword anytime soon. Besides, you saw what happened last night. We hunters are no threat to more than one unicorn at a time.”

  You will be now. You are better all the time.

  I shook my head. “The ancient hunters had years to learn their craft. We’ve had a couple of months. They had experienced people to train them. We have no one. They understood their powers. We do not.”

  The last is true.

  “Do you…understand the powers?”

  Daughter of Alexander, I am teaching you now. When the kirin gored you, he taught you. When you pet your—Bonegrinder?—she teaches you. When you stand in your prison, surrounded by bones that sing and horns that scream, it is all a lesson.

  Being around unicorns made us better hunters. If our abilities manifested themselves only when we were around unicorns, it would make sense that prolonged exposure could enhance the powers. That I could understand. And it explained the bones in the wall just fine. But it didn’t tell us how to take on a pack of kirin.

  Alexander and I were with each other all our lives. We were born at the same moment. He was best of all. But he was lost without me. Hunters are different. It took me thousands of years to understand. And then I met Clothilde.

  “And killed her!”

  No. Clothilde Llewelyn died in bed surrounded by her grandchildren.

  “That’s impossible.”

  Is it? You too are dead, Daughter of Alexander.

  And all at once, I understood. I didn’t even need the images the karkadann placed in my mind. A young woman stood in a field, her hunting clothes torn to shreds, her wounds closing as she strode forward, past the bodies of dead einhorn and kirin, her claymore held high. Her fair hair wasn’t long, like in the tableau, but shorn short, the better to show off the scar that ran vertically across her scalp.

  She stood before the karkadann, her face battle weary and drawn, pointed her sword tip into the earth, and said, “The world changes, unicorn. The fences rise, the forests fall. There is nowhere to hide and nowhere to hunt that does not rob from men. This world is not for you. And neither is it for me.”

  “You made a deal,” I whispered. “Exile.”

  Yes.

  “Where?”

  Secret.

  There had been no extinction, no Last Hunt. There had been no great battle between Clothilde, the greatest of all unicorn hunters, and Bucephalus, the greatest of all unicorns. It was all a lie. And Clothilde “died” so that no one would know the secret. So she could stop hunting. And she got married, and she had children. And the hunters never knew! Talk about a line of lost Llewelyns! Cory would flip. That is, if she still thought there was anything special about Clothilde’s lost descendants once she knew the truth.

  Her descendant has been found.

  The golden vial appeared in my mind’s eye. The golden vial Lilith had procured from the man who’d been my father. The very last remnant of the Remedy.

  “Shut up.”

  Why do you think I come to you?

  “I honestly couldn’t say.”

  You are the only one I trust not to kill me on sight.

  “None of us would,” I insisted, “because we can’t. We aren’t good enough at hunting.”

  Did you think you could kill that re’em? You can do anything. It is your choice.

  “I choose to remain dead, then. Like Clothilde.”

  The karkadann growled again, and I could tell that he regretted his slip. But if he could talk to me, he could talk to the others, right? I’d been granted a reprieve. A single, perfect chance. I could have died last night. Could die the next time I was sent on a hunt. I can’t do it anymore. I won’t.

  I rubbed my hands together, and the grime began to ball up and flake off. Before, Phil would have been all over this unicorn conservation plan the karkadann and Clothilde had dreamed up. I bet Ilesha and Rosamund would go for it as well. Cory, not so much, but—

  Daughter of Alexander, I need you. You have also been harmed by this false Alexander. This upstart. But it is nothing to what shall become of the unicorn. The kirin begin to sense the cage door closing. They think when they kill all hunters they will be safe. Last night was an ambush. The kirin believe you are weak, now. No Llewelyns. Now is the time.

  The false Alexander? I remembered what Giovanni had told me about the man who called himself Alexander in the bar. “Do you mean Marten Jaeger?” A less likely latter-day Alexander the Great I could not imagine. Alexander had been a young, strong warrior. Marten Jaeger was an old man with a nice manicure and a sleek car.

  The world changes. Now, one needs no army and no sword to conquer the world.

  “But he still needs unicorns.” The Remedy. A drug that could save the world or seize it. But it still didn’t make sense. “Marten is not a hunter. How can he interact with the kirin at all?”

  I do not know.

  God, why was I listening to this? It was crazy. Bucephalus! Alexander the Great! Magic I could learn just by sitting here soaking up unicorn venom! It was all ridiculous. The only remotely useful thing he’d told me was that Clothilde got away with feigning death and quitting the Order of the Lioness.

  I should follow in her footsteps.

  You will not help me. The karkadann seemed to growl. Again, the earth shook, and the birds grew quiet in the trees above.

  “Will you kill me for real if I don’t?”

  Kill me then, I thought at him. For I’m dead if I go back to the Cloisters. I’m dead every time I pick up a bow and arrow and go after a unicorn. We’re all dead. Clothilde was right. The only way to avoid death is to embrace it—and run.

  He lowered his horn and parted his jaws. I sat
trapped, on the ground, incapable of standing, pinned between a tree and a monster. I don’t know how long it went on, but at last, the beast turned and galloped away.

  And I breathed free.

  “Mi scusi,” I said to the startled shopkeeper in my tourist Italian. “È un’emergenza. Per favore, posso usare il suo telefono?” He just stared at me, eyes wide. I hoped I’d said it right. It was all the Italian I could think of at the moment.

  Of course, what else could it be other than an emergency? I was standing on the linoleum across from his tabacchi counter, covered in blood and grime, holding my torn shirt together with both hands. He handed me the telephone. I prayed that I recalled the number correctly, and dialed.

  “Hi. It’s Astrid. I need your help.”

  23

  WHEREIN ASTRID CHOOSES DEATH AND LIFE

  THE SHOPKEEPER THREATENED to call the police, after he’d gotten me settled in a chair with a blanket, some wet towels, and a lemon soda. I was never so thankful for Italian hospitality. The walk out of the woods had sapped every last bit of strength from my body, and I was fighting to remain conscious.

  I couldn’t understand much of what he was saying to me, but he seemed to think I was the victim of either a hit and run or a really bad mugging. He also wanted to take me to a hospital, but I insisted I wasn’t injured. Then he started getting suspicious, which I understood just fine, language barrier or no. If the blood staining every inch of my skin and clothing wasn’t mine, who did it belong to?

  Through the window of the shop, I saw a passenger van pull up outside, and a familiar figure jump out of the driver’s seat. He’d come. Giovanni had come.

  The bell over the door jangled as he ran inside, ten feet away, then eight, then five. I could feel his arms around me already. Four feet away, with nothing but the corner of the counter between us, and he stopped dead.

  “Astrid. My God, what happened?”

  When I rose, hands extended, he recoiled. I fell back on the bench, deflated. I bet I looked like a monster. I bet he was relieved he’d gotten out when he’d had the chance. “What do you think?” I croaked.