“And a stupid thing that was to do!” roared Micklin.
De’Unnero understood the source of this one’s ire. Since the founding of this small community, Micklin had been undeniably and uncontestedly the man in control, the boss. Now, simply because of his actions this day, and not by words spoken against Micklin or in defiance of Micklin’s rule, De’Unnero had threatened that position.
He could see the rage mounting in the huge drunken man, could see Micklin trembling as his anger rose to explosive levels.
“Four, so he says!” Micklin yelled. “Hear ye all? The hero speaks!”
“Ah, ye be leavin’ him alone, Micklin,” said one man off to the side. “He ain’t done nothing but for the good of us all.”
“But he must show us!” Micklin demanded. “We’re all needin’ to learn to fight as well as Bertram Dale!” As he finished, the bully grabbed De’Unnero by the shoulders and pulled him away from the wall—or rather, he started to, for soon after he began to tug, Micklin pulled his hands back and clasped his face.
Clasped what was left of his face.
Marcalo De’Unnero, hardly aware of it, looked down to his right hand, his tiger paw, to see a huge chunk of Micklin’s face hanging there at the end of his great claws.
All noise in the room ceased immediately; all eyes were riveted to the two; and all jaws dropped open in disbelief.
De’Unnero then understood what was happening within him, what was coming over him fully, without hesitation, and without any chance of denial. The drink and the threat were too much for him, too demanding of the weretiger for him to suppress it. He knew it, too, understood what he was again becoming. He tried to call out for the other huntsmen to run away, to barricade themselves into their most secure buildings, to grab their weapons and slay him quickly. He wanted to say all that, but all that came out of his mouth was a great feline growl.
And then he felt the pain and the spasms as his body began the transformation. He heard them calling to him, asking him what was wrong, begging him to answer. He heard others screaming, yelling for everyone to look at Micklin, who was thrashing about the floor, blinded and in agony.
A moment later nobody in the room was paying any attention at all to poor Micklin. Every eye was trained on the spectacle of Bertram Dale, on the great tiger that Bertram Dale had become. For a few endless moments the room held perfectly still, that delicious moment of hush before the spring of the great predator.
And then it exploded, the leap and the thrashing, the blood spraying the walls and the floor, the screams and the futilely flailing limbs.
Several of the men got out of the common room, but the weretiger was soon in pursuit, chasing them around the village, pulling them down one by one and tearing them apart, or just delivering a single precise bite to crush a throat, then moving on, leaving the man to suffocate. A couple managed to get to their weapons, but even armed, and even when a trio managed to join in coordinated effort, the hunters were no match for the fury of the weretiger.
Marcalo De’Unnero awoke sometime later, in the forest some distance from Micklin’s Village. He recalled many of the scenes and the horrifying sounds, but he had no idea of how many of the fifteen villagers he might have killed.
Sore in every joint, his head throbbing from the previous night’s drinking—what fools they had been to secretly intoxicate him!—De’Unnero pulled himself to his feet and headed back toward the village. In a secluded place not far from the houses, he had buried a private stash of belongings, fearing just this type of incident. He had another set of clothing there, a water skin, a small knife, and most important of all, a bundle of parchments he had stolen from St.-Mere-Abelle when he had been sent away to investigate reports of the rosy plague in the southland a decade before.
Not even noting the movement, De’Unnero hugged those parchments to his chest as he looked back toward Micklin’s Village. He saw several forms moving between the houses, and he was glad that he had not killed them all, despite the fact that now he had left witnesses behind, yet more tales of the great man-tiger that had stalked the frontier of Honce-the-Bear for the last several years.
It wasn’t a legacy that did Marcalo De’Unnero proud.
With a resigned sigh admitting that the world itself might not be large enough to contain him, the bedraggled and weary wretch started away, down this road or that, or no road at all. How far might he walk? How many more remote villages might he find?
Or could he even, in good conscience, insinuate himself into the lives of others again? he had to ask himself. He had thought the weretiger beaten this time, suppressed and under his complete control. And though it had taken extraordinary events to bring forth the beast, such events might well happen again, he knew. Even worse, the tiger had found its way past his discipline and his determination and would not easily be put back away.
The weretiger’s hunger was sated now, if only temporarily. That, Marcalo De’Unnero realized and admitted, was the only reason that he didn’t then transform into the beast and rush headlong back into Micklin’s Village to finish what he had started. Because the great and terrible cat was still there, he knew, lurking below the surface, ready to claw its way out and rain destruction on De’Unnero’s enemies.
“If that was only the truth,” De’Unnero said aloud, voicing his frustrations, for it wasn’t that the weretiger arose to destroy enemies, but, rather, that the weretiger arose to destroy—randomly, indiscriminately.
Those men back there in Micklin’s Village—even the brute Micklin himself—had not deserved to face the fury of the weretiger. Perhaps Micklin had earned a punch in the mouth; perhaps De’Unnero would have been well served and justified in showing the man his more conventional martial powers, slapping him around and throwing him down, embarrassing him in front of the others. But that was the problem, the former monk recognized. He could not begin to seek that kind of a release for his frustrations, for that beginning would serve as a port for the lurking tiger. Yet, without that release, De’Unnero’s inevitably mounting frustrations would also serve as a port.
And so he was in an unwinnable and untenable position, and he was acutely aware of the fact that any village he entered would be placed in mortal danger by his mere presence.
He could not do that. No more, for now he could, and had to, admit the truth of his internal struggle.
The beast was stronger than the man.
Forlorn, facing an existence of exile, the life of a hermit, Marcalo De’Unnero wandered away from Micklin’s Village, moving west instead of east, further from the civilized lands of Honce-the-Bear.
He wandered for days, having little trouble in finding sustenance, for in his defeated state, Marcalo De’Unnero no longer tried to deny the urges of the weretiger. When he got hungry, he let the great cat run free, and soon enough, and so easily, he fed.
He didn’t know how many miles he had covered, or even how many days had gone by, when, while walking along a high ridgeline one late afternoon, he heard the sounds of a stringed instrument drifting past on the autumn breeze.
And a voice joined in the melody, one that Marcalo De’Unnero recognized.
As desperate for conversation as for revenge, the man ran along the ridge, trying to trace the source of the melody.
It seemed to come from everywhere at once, echoing off the stone walls of the rocky, hilly region.
He entertained the notion of letting loose the weretiger then, for surely the great cat would have little trouble finding the bard. He dismissed that thought immediately and completely, for his needs this day were of a different sort, were for companionship.
The sun began to disappear behind the western horizon; the song halted for a bit and then began again. As he searched for the direction once more, De’Unnero found a definitive clue: the glow of a campfire.
He moved with speed and made no attempt at stealth. A short while later, he simply strolled into Sadye’s camp, walking to stand directly across the fire from the surprised
woman.
She leaped up, pulling her lute in defensively, wearing a horrified expression and glancing all around. De’Unnero expected her to try to run. But then, as if she merely came to accept the inevitable, her muscles relaxed and she even managed a helpless chuckle.
“I would not have believed that you would be stubborn enough to track me all the way out here,” she said.
“Not stubborn and not tracking,” De’Unnero honestly replied. “I happened upon you by chance. Simple luck.”
“Bad luck for Sadye the bard,” Sadye said.
De’Unnero merely shrugged.
“I am composing a new song,” Sadye said after a while. “ ‘The Lay of De’Unnero,’ I call it.”
That set the former monk back on his heels!
“That is your true identity, of course,” Sadye remarked. “Though I would have thought you much older.”
De’Unnero put on a puzzled expression and stared at her hard.
And she laughed all the louder. “Of course you are he!” she said. “Your movements alone betray you as an Abellican monk—a former Abellican monk.”
“There are many former Abellican monks,” De’Unnero answered.
“But how many of them have a reputation for turning into a tiger?” the woman asked. Her grin was sincere, for it was obvious that she had made some connection.
De’Unnero narrowed his eyes threateningly, if for no better reason than to destroy that confident grin.
“The rumors of Baron Rochefort Bildeborough’s demise?” Sadye asked. “Rumors tied to Bishop Marcalo De’Unnero.”
“You presume to know much.”
“That is my trade, is it not?” Sadye answered. “I collect tales, embellish them, and pass them along—though I must admit that the tale of Marcalo De’Unnero, if the rumors are true, needs little embellishment.”
“They are true,” De’Unnero said flatly, “every one.”
“You have not heard every one,” Sadye said.
“But I know that there are enough truths so that lies are unnecessary,” the man admitted.
“Then you are Marcalo De’Unnero, still alive despite all the efforts of the widow Wyndon?”
“Widowed because of me,” De’Unnero said. When Sadye raised her delicate eyebrows at that, he added, “Yes, it was Marcalo De’Unnero who slew Nightbird, curse his name.”
Sadye shook her head slowly, hardly digesting the information, stunned by the admission. “Why would you tell me—” she started to ask.
“Why would I not?” De’Unnero answered. “For all these years, I have had to hide my identity and my history. What have I to lose in telling you?”
“Because you mean to kill me,” Sadye stated more than asked.
“After the treatment your band offered me, can you give me a reason why I should not?” the former monk asked.
The woman paused, then shrugged. “Because without me, you are alone,” she said simply.
“With you, I will likely be alone soon enough,” the man replied. “You have seen the beast that is within me.”
Again came a reflective pause. “Then the tale of your last fight with Jilseponie is true,” Sadye remarked. “It is said that she goaded the tiger out of you, showing the truth of you to all the folk of Palmaris and to the Baron Tetrafel and his soldiers, thus banishing you from the city.”
“She goaded, or I allowed it,” De’Unnero replied with a casual shrug, trying very hard to show that he hardly card.
Too hard, he realized, as perceptive Sadye’s face brightened knowingly.
“I am still waiting for a reason,” the man said coldly.
Sadye stared at him hard. “I am not without talents,” she said, presenting her lute, with a touch of lewdness in her voice.
It was De’Unnero’s turn to laugh. “You are offering me companionship?” he said. “After seeing that other side of who I am?”
The woman shrugged. “Perhaps I enjoy living dangerously.”
“What you do not understand, dear, foolish bard, is that the weretiger can come out on its own accord,” the former monk admitted. “And it does not discriminate between friend and foe. Only between dinner and lunch.”
“Charming,” Sadye said dryly. “And,” she added, holding up her lute, “charming. I am not without skills, Marcalo De’Unnero, and not without magic. Perhaps I can help you.”
“And if you are wrong, the price would be your life,” De’Unnero replied.
“And if I do not try, is the cost any less?” Sadye remarked.
It was a good point, De’Unnero had to admit, for from Sadye’s point of view, she and her fellows had tried to kill him, and certainly he would pay her back then and there the same way he had paid back the other ruffians. But was that the case? De’Unnero honestly asked himself, for in truth, he harbored no resentment toward this interesting woman. Indeed, so relieved was he at merely hearing another human voice that he could not begin to imagine purposely killing her.
Of course, he knew that the weretiger might have other ideas.
“Your life is the stuff of epic song,” Sadye said. “And despite the actions of my former traveling companions—fools all and never friends of mine!—I truly am a bard, or hope to be. Who better than Sadye, who has seen the wrath of … your darker side, to write ‘The Lay of De’Unnero’?”
De’Unnero’s stare was less imposing, then, for in truth, he did not know what he was thinking. Sadye had caught him off guard with every turn of the conversation. Why in the world would she want to remain anywhere near him? Was this just a ploy to save her life, to buy her some time? That, of course, seemed the most probable.
“Leave,” he found himself to his own surprise saying to her. “Go far, far away and compose your song.”
The woman was obviously surprised, but she hid it well. She stood there for a moment, then carefully placed her lute on the ground beside her—and De’Unnero saw that it was gem encrusted, as he had expected when he had sensed the magic during the fight at Micklin’s Village.
“I would prefer to stay,” the ever-surprising Sadye said softly, and she came forward, placing a hand on the front of each of De’Unnero’s strong shoulders, then bringing one to his cheek, gently. So gently.
De’Unnero wanted to say something; he just didn’t know any appropriate words at that moment.
Sadye came even closer, her lips brushing his softly. “You fascinate me,” she whispered.
“I should frighten you,” he replied.
Sadye backed off just enough to show him her wistful smile. “Oh, you do,” she assured him, and she came forward again and kissed him hard, then pulled back. “And nothing excites me more than danger.”
She came at him again, forcefully, full of passion that bordered on anger, and De’Unnero resisted.
For the span of about three heartbeats. And then he was kissing her back, their arms rubbing all about each others’ bodies, their legs entwining and bodies pressing. Sadye pulled him to the side, tripped him, and down the pair went in a passionate tumble.
Marcalo De’Unnero had never known the love of a woman, both because of his standing among the brothers of St.-Mere-Abelle and, even more important, because giving in to such base emotions had always seemed to him an admission of weakness and a denial of discipline. He gave in then, though, wholly and with all his battered heart and soul; and it was not until that moment of completion, of complete release, that he understood the depth of the danger.
For in that instant of ecstasy, the beast within him growled, the primal urges of the tiger found their release to the surface.
Marcalo De’Unnero leaped away from Sadye and shoved her back when she tried to pursue. “Warned you,” he managed to gasp as the feline change began to strangle his throat.
And then he fell back, angry, so angry, because he knew that he was about to slaughter this one, too, thus throwing himself back into absolute solitude. He was becoming the weretiger and could not stop it, and Sadye would die as all the others had
died.…
In the throes of the agonizing change, Marcalo De’Unnero did not hear his own screams of protest and denial.
But he did hear the music.
He opened his eyes and stared at Sadye, sitting cross-legged and naked, her lute in hand, gently brushing the strings and singing softly. He couldn’t make out the words, but that hardly diminished their sweetness.
For a brief moment, he was Marcalo De’Unnero again, the man and not the beast, but, no, he realized, Sadye’s music alone could not deny the weretiger once it had been roused.
And then he knew no more, for the cat had won.
Sometime later, after feeding upon an unfortunate deer, Marcalo De’Unnero, cold and naked, walked back to the camp, expecting to find the gruesome remains of his latest human victim.
Sadye sat by the fire, smiling at him.
If a wind had come up then, it would have knocked an astonished Marcalo De’Unnero to the ground. “How …” he started to stammer.
“Sit with me,” Sadye said with a teasing, wistful smile, and she lifted a blanket that she obviously meant to drape about his shoulders. “You owe me a bit of conversation, I guess, and then, perhaps, we can rouse the beast once more.”
“You should be dead,” De’Unnero managed to say, and he did take a seat beside the amazing woman.
“I already told you that I was not without a bit of magic,” she replied, and she lifted her gem-encrusted lute. “Music to charm the wild beast, perhaps?”
De’Unnero stared at her with a mixture of amazement and admiration. She was on the very edge of destruction here, facing the prospect of a terrible death. And yet, there was no hesitance in her voice.
“You are a far preferable companion than the last group,” Sadye said with a laugh. “And a better lover than I have ever known.” She gave a lewd chuckle. “And I assure you that I am not without comparisons!”
De’Unnero merely continued to stare.
“And less dangerous than that last group,” Sadye went on.
The former monk’s eyes widened at that remark.
“ ’Tis true!” Sadye declared. “There is that power within you, indeed, but there remains within you, as well, a code of honor and discipline.”
DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) Page 78
