Part 21 (2/2)

Doremus' unicorn was turned and away before his arrow was released and, as he let go the fletches, he had to bring up his left hand to adjust the aim.

The arrow flew wonkily from his hand, and he felt a burning up and down his arm.

'Good shot, Dorrie,' blurted Otho, clapping his agonised shoulder. Doremus winced, and tried not to let his pain show.

The unicorn was almost out of sight before the arrow found him. It slid past his flanks, carving a red runnel in his white hide, and bit deep beneath his ribs.

It should be a heart-shot.

Doremus' unicorn stumbled and fell, but got up again. Blood gouted from his wound.

The animal screamed, emptying his lungs.

'A kill,' Count Magnus said, nodding approval.

Doremus could not believe it. From the moment he had chosen his arrow, he had been sure he would miss. He usually did. In wonder, he looked to his father. The Graf Rudiger's heavy brows were knit, and his face was dark.

'But not a clean kill,' he said.

Doremus' unicorn staggered on, vanis.h.i.+ng between trees.

'He won't get far,' Balthus said. 'We can track him.'

Everyone was looking to Rudiger, waiting for his verdict.

Grimly, he stepped over the crest of the subsidence, choosing his footmarks well among the leaf-encrusted floor-vines. His bow was slung on his back again, and he had his dwarf-forged hunting knife out now. The von Unheimlich fortune was one of the greatest in the Empire, but, beside his bow, this knife was the graf's most prized possession.

They all followed the master huntsman, edging around the still pool to the fallen beast.

'A shame it was only a stallion,' Count Magnus said. 'Otherwise, it would have been a fine trophy.'

His father grunted, and Doremus remembered the hunters' lore that he had been made to learn by rote as a child. The unicorn horn his great-grandfather had brought to the von Unheimlich lodge was from a mare. Only unicorn mares made trophies.

Rudiger's unicorn was already beginning to putrify, suppurating brown patches spreading on his hide like the rot on a bruised apple. Unicorn males did not last long after the kill.

'You'll soon have your arrow back, Rudiger,' Count Magnus said. 'That's something.'

Rudiger was on his knees by his kill, prodding with his knife. The animal was truly dead. As they watched, the rot spread, and the stinking hide collapsed in on the crumbling skeleton. The remaining eye shrivelled, and plopped through its socket. Maggots writhed in the remains, as if the carca.s.s were days dead.

'That's amazing,' Otho said, making a face at the smell.

'It's the nature of the beast,' Balthus explained. 'There's some magic in their make-up. Unicorns live well beyond their time, and when death catches up with them, so does decay.'

The pale girl tutted to herself, face blank. It could not be pleasant for her to see such a thing, to know this must eventually be her lot.

Rudiger put his knife away, and scooped up a handful of the unicorn's cooling blood. He held it up to Doremus' face.

'Drink,' he said.

Doremus wanted to back away, but knew he could not.

'You must take something from the kill. Every kill makes you stronger.'

Doremus looked to Count Magnus, who smiled. Despite the bright red mess a wildcat had made of his face, he was a kindly-looking man, who often seemed more willing than his own father to overlook Doremus' supposed weaknesses and failures.

'Go on, my boy,' Magnus said. 'It'll put iron in your bones, fire in your heart. Libertines in Middenheim swear by the potency of unicorn blood. You'll partake of the virility of the stallion. You will sire many fine sons.'

His courage stiffened, Doremus shoved his face into his father's hands and swallowed some of the thick red liquid. It tasted of nothing in particular. A little disappointed, he did not feel a change.

'Make a man of you,' Rudiger said, rubbing his hands clean.

Doremus looked around, wondering if he were seeing more clearly. The guide had said there was some magic in the make-up of the beast. Perhaps the blood did have its properties.

'We must follow the wounded stallion,' Balthus said. 'He mustn't be allowed to reach the mare of the tribe.'

Rudiger said nothing.

Suddenly, Doremus wanted to be sick. His stomach heaved, but he kept it down.

For an instant, he saw his companions as if they wore masks, masks reflecting their true natures. Otho had the jowly face of a pig, Balthus the wet snout of a dog, the girl a polished and pretty skull, Magnus the smooth and handsome face of the young man he had been.

He turned to look at his father, but the vision pa.s.sed, and he saw the graf as he always did, iron features giving away nothing. Perhaps there had been magic in the blood.

The unicorn was just a sack of bone fragments now, flat against the forest floor, leaking away essence. Otho prodded the corpse with his foot, and opened a gash in the hide, through which belched a bubble of foul air and yellow liquid.

'Euurgh,' Otho said, with an exaggerated grimace. 'Smells like a dwarf wrestler's loinstrap.'

Rudiger took his arrow from the unicorn's head, breaking it through the papery skull. He considered the shaft for a moment, then snapped it in two and dropped the pieces onto the messy carca.s.s.

'What about the horn?' Otho said, making a grab for it. 'Isn't there silver in a unicorn's horn?'

The horn powdered in his grip, the traces of silver glittering amid the white pulpy ash.

'A little, Master Waernicke,' Magnus explained. 'It goes with the magic. Not enough to be worth anything.'

Doremus noticed that the girl was staying well away from the kill. Her kind didn't care for blessed silver. She had a fair face and shape, but he couldn't forget the skull he had seen.

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