Ascendance

MarcaloDE'UNNERO WENTthrough his typical daily duties, cleaning a deer he had killed as the weretiger the night before, with his usual boredom. He and Sadye had settled in well at Tuber's Creek, had been welcomed by the community with open arms. And why not? De'Unnero realized, for he and Sadye had brought something with them - different stories of different places - that the folk of this isolated little town were sorely in need of.



Life here was pleasant enough and easy enough, with fertile fields and plentiful game, and no threat from goblins or other monsters.



Well, De'Unnero realized, almost no threat from monsters. For he had brought one with him, inside him; and the beast was there, every day, part of his waking and sleeping hours. He did not try to deny that part of him now, as he had in his days in Micklin's Village. Rather, Sadye helped him channel the energy of the weretiger, keeping it at bay with soothing words and melodies during any times of tension in the town and luring it out into the forest when it came forth at night, sending the beast out in a productive manner, hunting deer. Because of that Callo Crump had the reputation as the finest huntsman in Tuber's Creek, though none of the others understood his methods or even how a human might go out in the dark forest night and survive, let alone take down a wary deer.



Yes, Sadye was his savior now, his channel for energies that he could not suppress. The passion, the fire between them amazed De'Unnero, taking him to places that he never imagined even existed in the life he had previously carved out for himself as a member of the Abellican Church. It amused him to think that he had earned the reputation as the most fiery of brothers, the great warrior, the crusader. Next to Sadye, he thought himself boring indeed, for she was full of life and energy, boundless energy and the desire to live on the very edge of complete destruction. Marcalo De'Unnero had never been afraid to take a chance - had thrown himself willingly, eagerly, into battle against the greatest foes, the greatest challenges, that he could find. But Sadye, by comparison, lived with the most dangerous person in all the world. It wasn't out of any desire to prove herself, as had motivated the younger De'Unnero. Rather, it was merely for the excitement of the situation.



Sadye had come to love him, he believed with confidence. She was, in every way, the wife of Marcalo De'Unnero. But she was more than that. By her own choice, Sadye was the willing and eager companion of the darker creature, of the weretiger. She not only accepted that part of De'Unnero, she found it perfectly thrilling.



De'Unnero paused in his work and glanced back across the yard, to see Sadye sitting quietly in the shade of an oak, plucking the strings of her lute, apparently composing some new song for the town's weekly celebration, scheduled for that very evening. With her light brown eyes sparkling with innocent joy, she looked so delicate and so calm and so . . . pretty was the only word De'Unnero could think of to describe Sadye in that scene before him.



And yet, this pretty young woman scared him at least as much as the beast within him. For she was so much like him, a person wearing two faces. The folk of Tuber's Creek thought her a pleasant and entertaining young lady, a person of respectability.



They had never seen her at lovemaking, had never seen the not-so- innocent fire that lay behind her brown eyes or that wicked little smile that crossed her face whenever she thought of something particularly delicious. They didn't know how callously she had dismissed her former traveling companions, the men De'Unnero had ripped to shreds at Micklin's Village. This innocent young lady hadn't given those murdered men a second thought.



De'Unnero chuckled helplessly as he regarded her. How he loved her, and feared her! She was his warmest thoughts and his deepest fears all rolled together, and she kept him constantly on the very edge of disaster, the very edge of excitement.



He went back to skinning the dead deer, remembering the sweet, warm taste of its blood in his tiger mouth the previous night. Strangely, without even consciously noticing it, that sensation shifted to his memories of tasting Sadye's delicious lips.



Sadye was in top form for that week's celebration, bringing the gathering of fifty villagers and another score of folks from outlying reaches to a rousing mood with her songs of the Demon War. She sang of one warrior monk in particular, a master from St.-Mere-Abelle named Marcalo De'Unnero, and her escort scowled at her fiercely when he caught on to her little teasing game.



It was a scowl that De'Unnero could not hold, though. Sadye was playing her challenge with disaster and relishing every moment of it. De'Unnero could feel the heat rising within her as she hinted, ever more convincingly, that the warrior De'Unnero was still about, and might be close by.



"When the folks' hearts turned to the softer side



And weary of battle, lust sated,



They wanted burned this warrior fine,



For they saw in him all that they hated.



So they tried with all their strength



And all their numbers to see him dead.



But quicker was the master, and to this day,



They've no body of De'Unnero to put abed.



So beware, little children, by the fire's light,



And beware, brave huntsmen, for in the night,



And in the wilds and in your towns,



In fields afar and rolling downs,



There comes a growl, the marking that



Announces the master, the warrior, the lover, the cat."



She sang it in a lively manner, sometimes with a voice strong and other times in a raspy, threatening whisper. Her eyes darted at every syllable, falling over men and women and the few children in attendance, particularly the children, for Sadye seemed to revel in their wide-eyed stares. Every once in a while she glanced back at her lover, who stood there, staring at her, dumbfounded.



The partying went on long into the night, and Sadye repeated her song several times at the requests of the villagers. She found little time alone with De'Unnero, mostly to whisper lewdly into his ear of plans she had for him for later. And then she'd quickly run away, giggling. Finally, as the last of the villagers filtered out of the common room, De'Unnero was able to confront her about her new song.



"Every day, you increase the danger," he said, and he hooked his arm around Sadye's waist and jerked her against him.



"The excitement, you mean," she countered, her eyes sparkling. Indeed, De'Unnero could feel the heat emanating from her lithe body.



De'Unnero stared hard into those eyes, those intense, scary orbs.



"Take me out into the forest," Sadye said to him, "now."



It was an offer he could not refuse.



Much later he sat beside a fire in a small clearing some few hundred yards from the village. All was quiet down there, the people of Tuber's Creek worn out from their revelry. Not Sadye, though. The partying only seemed to wind up the already intense woman even more. She sat across the way from her lover, unabashedly naked and plucking her lute absently.



And discordantly, De'Unnero realized, as one note twanged. And then another. He was about to ask Sadye what she was doing when she plucked a series of discordant notes in a row.



How they shivered his backbone! De'Unnero realized then that the grating sound was surely magically enhanced, that Sadye was using the gemstones set in her magnificent instrument in the opposite way from harmony.



"What are you doing?" he tried to ask, but a growl erupted from his throat in place of the words.



De'Unnero looked at her curiously. More twanging sounds came rolling out at him, and her smile was genuine, with a twinkle in her eye.



"The beast," he managed to rasp, and he jerked spasmodically as one of his arm bones broke apart and reshaped. "What?"



Sadye played more insistently, sitting forward now and seeming to enjoy the spectacle. Perhaps she could not put the weretiger away, but, it seemed, she could bring it forth!



And she was enjoying this dark power!



She played more quickly, her hands banging against the strings, sending forth shocking, magically enhanced discord.



And De'Unnero could no longer even try to protest, for he found the tiger rising quickly within him, boiling up and over the rim of his control.



"Go hunt, my lover," he heard Sadye say, her voice full of excitement.



The weretiger regarded the tender woman for just a moment, then bounded off into the forest, seeking the sweet scent of blood.



The effect on his day-to-day life proved immediate and irreversible. With the defeat and capture of the bandit band, Aydrian was viewed no longer as some wayward child. Now the folk of Festertool and Roadapple spoke of him in hushed tones whenever he ventured near, and called him Nighthawk instead of Aydrian.



He was quite amused.



And even more amused by the reaction of grumpy Rumpar, who walked around town with his thumbs hooked in his vest, telling everyone that it was his sword that had felled the giant. His sword, put to heroic use once again.



Aydrian allowed the man his fantasies, for Rumpar's pride was serving his purposes. He had wanted to make a name for himself - Nighthawk, the ranger of Festertool - and, it seemed, he had gone a long way already toward making that happen.



Soon there came requests from other towns for the ranger to come and aid with a problem: a rabid wolf or bear, perhaps; or more fears of bandits. On one occasion late in the summer, Aydrian helped a more western community track down and kill a goblin, a pitiful, spindly-limbed thing that seemed afraid of them. That reality did little to diminish the growing legend of Nighthawk.



Aydrian soaked it all in, glad that he was at last on course toward his lifelong goal. He knew that his tenure here was a temporary thing, though, for in the absence of another all-out war - and that seemed unlikely - there was only so much he could accomplish, only so far the legend could spread. Still, the fates had dealt him a fine beginning hand, he knew, a better starting point than he ever could have hoped for. The arrival of that first bandit band, especially considering that it was led by a giant, had elevated him quickly to a status above any of the others in the region. Now all that he had to be wary of was that level's becoming an endless plateau.



He kept his ears and his eyes wide open, seeking opportunities to push things further. He went to Oracle every night, and found the darker voice waiting for him there, prodding him, pushing him, telling him that it was his destiny to rule.



Another important advancement had occurred during that first bandit encounter, Aydrian knew, and he pondered it often. His sword had found its first blood. Human blood. He had killed, and that was no small thing. Even though he would have been hard-pressed to find a group more deserving of such brutal justice, that act of killing weighed heavily on the young man for a long time. At one point, Aydrian even considered returning the sword to Rumpar's mantelpiece and living out his life as a farmer or huntsman.



The internal struggle, conscience against pragmatism, endured for weeks, tearing at Aydrian. Again, Oracle helped him sort through it, helped him to understand that this was the way of the hero in an often brutal and violent world. When his emotions finally settled, when he came to accept that he had done well, when he came to understand that battle was an inevitable part of his life's course and that mortality, for every man and woman, was an inevitable part of being human he came to look back on that fight with a sincere smile.



That acceptance of his role as the cause, the source, of death would prove to be the most important result of the bandit battle, though neither Aydrian nor any of the folk who now viewed him as a hero had any idea of its significance.



He could see the first signs of winter gathering in the northern sky, and to Marcalo De'Unnero, it was not a welcome sight. Not at all. For winter would mean more hours spent inside, more hours sharing time with the inane folk of this miserable little village. They went about their chores every day wearing stupid smiles, acting as if they were actually accomplishing something.



Chop the wood, burn the wood, chop some more.



Cook the meal, eat the meal, cook some more.



To De'Unnero's thinking, they should have just built a circular stretch of road and run around it hour after hour, day after day. No, he decided, this existence was even worse than that, because at least running the road would increase stamina, at least there would then be some gain, some movement forward on the path of personal growth and enlightenment.



How many years had he been living this wretched peasant life - no, it couldn't rightly be called a life but rather this wretched existence?



He was out in the cold, damp rain one morning, repairing a roof with a trio of others. A simple structure, a simple repair, and certainly this roof and all the others would have to be done again and again, until he and the other townsfolk were all dead of old age. And then, of course, their children and other, younger settlers could repair the roofs, and so on and so on, and all wearing the same stupid smile - a grin wrought of inanity, of thinking that there was something grand and wonderful in mere survival and existence.



"I am cursed to be born intelligent," he muttered, loudly enough for the man working near to him to take note. That villager turned a curious eye De'Unnero's way, but didn't respond other than to wear a perfectly oblivious expression.



"Which, of course," De'Unnero said in the face of that face, "is the perfect answer coming from you."



With a frustrated growl, De'Unnero threw his hammer across the courtyard, to skid down into the piles of fallen brown leaves with a snakelike hiss.



"Ye'r to lose the hammer!" one of the others, who fancied himself the overseer of the job, cried.



"And if so, then we will make another," De'Unnero snarled at him. "And when that breaks, we will make another, and feel even more pleased with ourselves."



"What nonsense are ye talking?" the gruff man asked.



"Those who see truth as such are doomed to . . ." De'Unnero started to respond, and he sputtered and looked all around, waving his arms. "Are doomed to . . . are doomed to this!" he yelled, and he leaped off the edge of the low roof and stormed across the dirt courtyard. He thought of going to Sadye then, and of taking her powerfully, without a word.



But even that thought gave him pause. Sadye had been talking lately of having a child, De'Unnero's child, and she was certainly still young enough to do so. The thought of a child did not put Marcalo De'Unnero off so much - until he looked closely at his surroundings. How could he bring forth his child and Sadye's - an intelligent one, to be sure - into this?



The Abellican Church envisioned hell as a place of fire and brimstone and evil creatures torturing hapless souls. To De'Unnero, it seemed more and more likely with each passing day that hell was a peasant village on the edge of nowhere.



The tormented former monk walked out of Tuber's Creek then, into the forest, breaking any branches low enough to reach and thin enough to crack. He even stopped at one small, dead tree and fell into a martial practice routine, similar to the ones he had taught so well at St.-Mere- Abelle. Feet and hands flying, De'Unnero splintered the dead tree apart and dislodged its trunk from the ground.



Even that did not satisfy him, though, and so he kept walking through the forest. He thought to sing, to try to use music to quiet himself as Sadye often did, but even as he started, his senses became overwhelmed by a different kind of tune, the discordant tune that Sadye had played to bring the weretiger out. At first, De'Unnero tried to block those twanging notes, tried to flush them from his thoughts, fearful of what they might cause in his agitated state.



But it was precisely that agitated state that forced him to continue playing the song in his head, that led him to embrace the twanging.



Within minutes, Marcalo De'Unnero was running on four padded paws, leaving his shredded clothing behind. Perhaps if he killed a deer, it would satiate his anger. Perhaps if he found a bear to do battle with, he could play out his rage.



Bad fortune brought a pair of huntsmen in his path, returning to the village, after a successful hunt, a bloody deer strung out on a pole between them.



Ah, the sweet scent of blood!



The weretiger sprang to a low branch, then leaped again mightily, soaring across the expanse to crash down on the huntsmen in a blind fury. In the span of a few heartbeats, a few agonized screams, three carcasses littered the ground.



The weretiger feasted, unaware that the death cries had carried through the forest to those peasants working in Tuber's Creek.



As soon as she heard the screams - primal, utterly terrified, and agonized - Sadye knew the source, knew that the beast had come forth again. She joined the gathering of the villagers at the end of Tuber's Creek closest to the screams. Most of the strongest men were out and many of the women, as well. There was quite a bit of confusion and finger- pointing. Sadye used that to her advantage, ordering the others to form up some line of defense back here in town, while she went out to see what she could learn.



Of course, a couple of the younger men argued that course, and so Sadye offered them scouting positions, as well, and pointedly sent them off in the wrong directions.



She sprinted through the trees, her thoughts whirling. Marcalo hadn't been at the gathering, though she knew that he was working in town this day, and that only confirmed to her what she, in her heart, already knew.



She had a keen ear and was fairly certain of the direction and the distance, but, still, how could she hope to find him in this tangle of forest, an orange cat running along the backdrop of dead, fallen leaves?



She'd need more than a bit of luck, she knew, and so she thanked God profoundly when she came upon the first signs, the tattered clothing of her lover. She scooped the garments up and ran on, bending low and finding a trail; and soon enough, she came upon the grisly scene.



The weretiger turned to face her, growling low and threateningly. She could sense its agitation, had never seen De'Unnero so on the edge of explosion. Suddenly thinking that coming out here might not have been a good idea, Sadye pulled her lute around and began playing a soft and gentle melody.



The weretiger growled again, dropped the human leg it was gnawing, and began to stalk her.



Sadye knew better than to try to run. She played on and began to sing, her voice cracking more than once with sorrow and remorse, for she thought herself doomed.



She sang and she played, and she interjected more than a little begging into her music, pleading with De'Unnero not to kill her. The great cat was barely ten feet away, within easy pouncing distance, and Sadye's heart skipped a beat and she nearly ran off when she saw the weretiger shifting its rear paws, to get solid footing for a leap.



She held her heart and her hope, and she played and she sang, and her voice nearly cracked again, when she saw the cat suddenly relax.



She changed her song to the one she had often used to send the weretiger off into the forest, but this time, De'Unnero did not run away but just stood there staring at her for a long, long time.



She heard the cracking of bones, then came the low, pained growl as the transformation began.



Marcalo De'Unnero soon lay naked on the ground before her, covered in the blood of the two dead villagers.



"What have you done?" Sadye asked, slinging her lute behind her and running to her lover.



De'Unnero looked from her to the scene of destruction and growled again, this time a human sound, but one of utter frustration. He grabbed at his black hair and pulled, then balled his hands into fists and punched them against his eyes.



Sadye rubbed his shoulders, trying to comfort him, but trying, too, to get some answers. "Why, my love?" she gently asked.



De'Unnero let out a wail, and Sadye caught as much outward anger as self-loathing in its notes.



"How did this happen?" Sadye demanded. "You must tell me!"



No answer.



"How could this happen?"



De'Unnero growled at her. "How could it not?" he asked angrily, spitting every word with frustration. "For a decade and more I have lived among the small villages, trying to survive among . . . them!" he said contemptuously, waving his arm in the general direction of the distant village.



Voices in the forest cut the conversation short. "Run off!" Sadye whispered harshly into his ear. "Be long gone from this place that you so hate!" There was anger in her tone and pure venom, but De'Unnero, despite any questions he might need answered from her, found himself complying, found himself running naked through the autumn forest.



Sadye watched him go, then rushed to the gory scene and rubbed his tattered clothing with the blood. She fell to a sitting position and began talking to herself, alternating her voice so that it seemed as if she was holding both ends of a two-sided conversation.



Two of the scouts crashed onto the scene a moment later, crying out as they came to recognize their fallen friends.



"And my Callo!" Sadye wailed, holding up the shredded clothing. "Oh, but the beast took him!" The irony that there was more than a little truth in that last statement was not lost on the witty woman, but she kept her amusement private.



The hunters brandished their weapons and proclaimed that they would go and kill the beast straightaway, but Sadye stopped them short. "A great cat, it was," she wailed. "Bigger than three men! My Callo's already long dead, to be sure, and he'd not have others running foolishly to their deaths in pursuit! Back to town we must all go, to set our defenses."



She was amused again, this time by how quickly the brave men agreed.



"Bah, but we could've used the likes o'yerself," the man said to Nighthawk as they sat with all the folk of Festertool in Rumpar's common room one evening, the stranger showing off his ghastly scars like medals of honor. "Though I doubt that even a giantslayer would've had much a chance against the beast!"



Aydrian didn't respond, just narrowed his gaze and listened to every word the man, Mickael by name, spoke.



"What remains of Micklin's Village?" he did ask sometime later, after Mickael had recounted the tale yet again.



"There's a few living there," Mickael answered.



"How long would it take me to get there?"



"Three weeks o' hard walkin'," Mickael answered doubtfully, his tone sounding to Aydrian much like that of someone who didn't want his lies uncovered. "Why'd ye be going? Ye're not to find a hot trail."



"But I will find some trail," Aydrian replied. "Some place to start. If there is such a beast as you describe - "



"Are ye doubting me wounds, then?" Mickael protested loudly.



Aydrian stared at the man's bare leg, the outside of it nothing more than four deep scars. "Then I must go to Micklin's Village at once," he said, "to learn the nature of this beast. To find its trail and destroy it."



"Ye'll be dead in the forest," Mickael said with a laugh, turning back to the others at his table and lifting his glass in a toast, chuckling as he did.



Aydrian grabbed the man's shoulder and abruptly turned him. "Draw me a map to the village," he said evenly, his voice grim enough to take the blood from Mickael's face. "And tell me again every detail of the night, every detail of the beast."



Mickael did just that, and, with a grim nod to the folk of Festertool, Nighthawk left the common room.



"He's going right out," Rumpar remarked, and several others nodded and murmured their agreement.



"He's to be dead soon, then," Mickael said, "if he's finding the cat- man."



His words were met with great derision from the folk of Festertool, the folk who had come to rely upon Nighthawk, who had come to transform this wayward youth into some vision as one of their own. Nighthawk was the ranger of Festertool, by his own words, and the folk of Festertool had come to take great pride in that.



But every one of them sitting in the common room that night was deathly afraid that Mickael might be right, that their young hero might soon be their young, dead hero.



She found De'Unnero two mornings later, sitting on a hillock not so far out of town, a favorite place where she and the former monk had often wandered to make love. She had left Tuber's Creek behind, telling the villagers that, with her husband dead, there remained nothing there for her and explaining that she was returning to her family in Palmaris. Of course they had argued, and when she had denied those arguments, several had offered to travel with her. And when she had refused that help, they had advised her to wait a few more days, at least. She didn't want to run into the great murderous cat, after all!



But that was precisely the point; and now she had found him, sitting calmly, wearing the extra set of clothing he had buried in the forest not far from the town, and seemingly completely at ease.



"I did not believe that you would come," De'Unnero admitted coolly, as if it did not matter - though Sadye, of course, knew the truth, knew that he had been sitting here desperately hoping for her company.



"And would you hunt me down?" she asked teasingly. "Or are you fool enough to believe that you can live without me?"



That last statement, and even more than that, the absolutely cocksure and collected manner in which she had spoken it, brought a burst of laughter from the tormented De'Unnero. He came forward suddenly, powerfully, catching the woman in a great hug and bearing her down to the soft, leaf-covered ground beneath him.



"Are you not afraid?" De'Unnero asked her when they were done, lying in each other's arms under the blue autumn sky.



"If they find us, you will send them away, I am sure," Sadye answered flippantly, but De'Unnero clasped her face hard with his powerful hand and forced her to look at him directly.



"Not of them," he asked, as if the mere notion was preposterous. He clarified, speaking every word slowly and deliberately, "Are you not afraid of me?"



"Perhaps that is the allure, Marcalo De'Unnero," Sadye purred in reply, her grin genuine.



They were on the open road soon after, bound for . . . wherever.