Diana Peterfreund - Ascendant

ASCENDANT

Diana Peterfreund

For my father, who taught me about science and strong women

I n ancient times, royalty hunted unicorns for sport. Theyd sally forth from their castle, gaily dressed, armed with spears, bows, knives, dogs, and their secret weapon: a virginal maiden. Without this girl, the unicorn could never be captured. Noble of birth and pure of body and heart, the virgin would enter the depths of the forest and allow the men to tie her to a tree. There she would wait, chaste and silent and still, until the elusive unicorn, attracted to her as if by magic, would come forward and lay his head in her lap.

Once the unicorn was subdued, the virgin would grasp its horn and trap the beast with her. The men would spring forth from their hiding place and stab the dangerous unicorn as it lay in the gentle virgins arms. And so it was that brave and glorious men would be able to kill a unicorn.

Never mind that it was the virgin who had its blood on her hands.

T he unicorn drew its last breath. Within its chest, its heart shuddered and stopped. Twenty yards away, I felt it die, and the world settled into normality. Fire and flood ebbed, the tunnel widened, and my thoughts became my own. I lowered my bow and ran to the corpsea human run, at a human pace, sluggish compared to the recent rush of hunter-granted speed. I bent over the body and withdrew my arrow. It had pierced both lung and heart, and the alicorn arrowhead was soaked in the almost black arterial blood of the kirin. Steam escaped from the corpse at my feet, twisting around my legs and mingling with the early-morning mist in the field. I wiped the arrow off on the grass and returned it to my quiver. These arrows were not so common that we could afford to lose any. I withdrew my knife and knelt by the unicorns head. Its yellow eyes were flat now, snuffed of the bloodthirst that had so recently filled us both.

I was carefully carving into its skull by the time Cory arrived. Didnt need backup after all, then? she puffed.

For a single kirin? I replied without looking up. Over the past month, carving out an alicorn had become a perfunctory postmortem operation. In through the eyesocket to the orbital, a quick jab up to break the nasal cavity, and then use the alicorn itself as leverage to shatter the top part of the skull and peel back the ligaments and skin protecting the base of the horn. In the early days, wed simply sawed off as much horn as we could grab, but now we were trying to dig as deeply into their heads as possible to retain the venom reserves.

Cory watched me work. How many kills does this make for you?

On this hunt? I asked, and cracked the alicorn free.

Four?

Four?

Cory said nothing. I swung my braid back over my shoulder with my less-bloody hand and looked up at her. You?

Zero.

I stood. Really?

She gave me a tight smile. Someone always marks them before I get a chance.

If the statement was intended to sting, I could hardly feel it over the burn of alicorn venom. Beneath my sweater, droplets of sweat prickled the tender skin of the scar at the base of my shoulder blades. Its not a competition, I said.

Her smile grew even more strained. All evidence to the contrary.

Together we doused the ground around the unicorn with flame-retardant, then took out our vials of gasoline and lit the corpse on fire. It was the only way to deal with the bodies, wed learned. No vultures, no bugs, would touch unicorn carrion. The bravest among us had even tried the meat, wondering ifas with so many other aspects of the animalshunters possessed a higher tolerance to unicorns. But apparently the flesh was vile. Even Grace, who ate Roman-style tripe with glee, spat it out. So cremation was our only option.

Cory and I returned to the rendezvous point without further conversation. In all honesty, I couldnt see the source of her pique. When I took a unicorn, it was more out of reflex than anything else. The magic took over. It was just me, my prey, and my weapon. There was no discussion with the other hunters about whose turn it was. Hesitation might result in one of us ending up dead. A unicorn moved too fast for us to stop and think about how many kills wed each gotten. If I had a shot, Id take it. The alternative was a horn in the gut.

I knew that all too well.

Two of the other hunters who met us in the clearing were splattered with dark kirin blood, though only one of them clutched a horn. Grace was twirling hers like a gory baton, and Ilesha looked baffled. Its horn was broken off, she explained, wrapping a bandage around her leg. Teeth still worked. The rest of the hunters stood in readiness, their bodies drawn as tight as any bowstring, their chins lifted, their eyes shrewd and darting.

Give it a rest, Cory grumbled. Alone among the unsuccessful, she slumped, the tip of her bow dragging in the dirt. There arent any more.

She was right, of course. The sun was already rising over the distant hills, burning off the morning mist and sending any unicorns back into hiding until twilight. They were crepuscular creatures, active at dawn and dusk, when shadows and mist would be most likely to shield them from human eyes and memory. It was a rare kirin who would stay out in the full light of day. I stretched my senses to the limit but caught no lingering trace beneath the scent of burning fuel and wet earth.

I looked at the other six girls in the clearing. Only a few short months ago, they would have been an unthinkable sight in their blood-spattered clothes, clutching pieces of the monsters theyd slain. A couple of months ago, few people believed there had ever been unicorns. And even if there were, they hadnt been venomous, man-eating beastsbut gentle, sparkly, magical creatures. That was the story, anyway. And it was about as accurate as the one that held that medieval noblemen kept virginal maidens around simply as unicorn bait. Why complicate the issue? We virginal maidens could do more than simply attract and capture the animals. We could shoot them ourselves. The women of my family had been unicorn hunters since time immemorialexcept for those hundred and fifty-odd years in which wed erroneously thought that unicorns were extinct.

Unicorn hunters may know more about the monsters than the average person, but even we make mistakes.

Actually, if I started cataloguing the things we didnt know about unicorns and our own unicorn magic Id be here all day. And my morning had already been long enough.

I finished my perusal of the circle. Had I really killed more than my fair share? Ilesha had three, Grace five, Melissende and Ursula two apiece, and Zelda one. I frowned and flicked a sliver of skull off the back of my hand. Perhaps I was on the high end of the scale, but it certainly wasnt outlandish. And, as Id told Cory, it wasnt a competition, either. We hunted as a group, and helped one another with kills if the initial shot didnt bring the animal down.

Of course, as often as not, my marking a unicorn meant ending its life. Gone were the days Id risk anything but a killing shot. Two weeks ago, Id hit a unicorn in the leg, and before I could string a new arrow, it had reared up and kicked Valerija in the face. She was still drinking her meals through a straw.