DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) (122 page)

But before he could think that notion—and any possibilities it presented—through, the tiger leaped at him.

He dove sidelong and slashed back with his sword, scoring a hit, though just a minor slap against the orange-and-black-striped flank. In return, he got raked across his forearm by a kicking rear claw.

The young ranger rolled back to his feet, quickly inspecting his wound and taking comfort that it was superficial. The mere fact that he had even been hit after so perfectly executing the dive concerned him.

Aydrian set himself more determinedly, recognizing that this foe was not to be taken lightly.

The tiger landed and trotted off a few strides, then swung back and stalked straight toward Aydrian. Aydrian took a deep breath and slid one foot out to the side, but the tiger saw the movement and altered its course slightly. Still it came on confidently.

Aydrian pulled out a different gemstone, keeping it concealed within his clenched fist. He started falling into the magic just as the tiger sprang, coming forward with such brutal suddenness that it nearly got through Aydrian’s defenses without getting hit. But Aydrian did score a solid stab, though the tiger hardly slowed, forepaws batting hard at the young ranger, slashing his shoulders. He tried to skitter straight back, but the powerful beast was too fast, overpowering him, bearing him to the ground.

A sharp crackle of lightning even as the claws started to find a hold at the sides of his head, even as the fanged maw managed to slip past the batting sword arm, saved Aydrian’s life. The force of the jolt lifted the tiger into the air and sent it skidding down in the dirt at the side of the trail.

Aydrian rolled back to his feet, running the other way, trying to put some ground between him and the terrible beast. He realized as he glanced back that his lightning stroke hadn’t really hurt the creature. He knew then that he was in serious trouble, that this monster was simply too fast and too strong for him. He launched a second lightning bolt, but the tiger leaped away, landing fully twenty feet to the side and issuing such a roar that Aydrian’s ears ached.

He fell away from that sound, away from all distraction, and went back to his first stone, the hematite, diving into the swirling magic, sending forth waves of mental energy.

The tiger, starting its stalk, stopped dead in its tracks as the mental assault rolled in.

Aydrian sensed the magic of the weretiger, gemstone magic, not unlike his own! He felt the tremendous willpower of the beast, and his respect for it increased; but he trusted in his own inner strength and did not believe himself at any disadvantage.

He felt the wall of resistance, and he pushed with all his magical strength
against that wall, trying to drive through the primal instincts of the beast and into the more rational side of this creature. For many minutes the two squared off in that spiritual realm, like a pair of elk, antlers locked, hooves dug in; and while the two were nowhere near each other physically, their combat was no less intense.

Aydrian did not tire, could not tire. With resolve born of a lifetime of disciplined training, born of a bloodline of strength of both parents, and born of something stronger still, the young ranger drove at the beast, hit it with bursts of confusing, scrambling mental energy, tried to will it back into the consciousness of its human host.

He might as well have been trying to put smoke back into a bottle; for that defiant wall altered, offering him holes through which his willpower could pass, but with nothing tangible in the emptiness behind those holes, with no gains to be found.

The young ranger grew afraid, and that took some of his concentration. He opened his eyes to see the tiger stalking back in, and his first instinct had him lifting his sword to a defensive posture once more.

Aydrian resisted that losing strategy. He went back into the hematite with all his strength, hit the weretiger hard with a burst of mental energy, forcing a second standoff. This time, Aydrian sought to receive, trying to gain some insight, some hint. He sensed something plausible, something that offered hope: remorse?

Now the ranger changed his tack. Instead of trying to push through the beast, he went around it, sending a wave of compassion and sympathy, not for the tiger, but for the man behind it. He coaxed and he prodded; he bade that tiny spark of humanity to join him against their common enemy, this wild primal beast.

M
arcalo De’Unnero did not understand what call had awakened his human consciousness. He only knew that he was aware—was fully aware—of all that was happening around him, though he was surely physically engulfed by the weretiger, in the throes of its primal, feral urges.

But he felt this call within him, this assurance that if he joined the voice he—they—could control the weretiger. Despite De’Unnero’s understanding that he was then engaged in mortal combat, it was a temptation that he could not resist, and so he listened to the soothing voice, embraced it.

He felt the first shudders of pain as the bones began to crack and change, his senses shifting from those of a cat to those of a man.

He kept his wits about him enough to leap back, to stay clear of his opponent’s dangerous blade during this most vulnerable time.

And then it was finished, and Marcalo De’Unnero stood beside a tree, staring back across the way at this strange, and strangely familiar-looking young man. From the cocky smile the young man wore, De’Unnero had no doubt that this one had been the escort through his transformation, that this surprising youngster, who did not look like any Abellican monk—and indeed, seemed too young even to have entered the Order!—held some great power with the sacred gemstones.

“Who are you?” De’Unnero asked, truly intrigued.

Aydrian’s smile was genuine. He had understood and accepted that he was overmatched by the weretiger, that the great cat held too many weapons, and too much sheer bulk and strength for him, particularly as he wielded this unbalanced and hardly adequate sword. And so he had done it, had forced the creature away; and now nothing more than a naked older man stood before him, leaning on a tree as if he needed it for support.

“I had hoped to return to the villagers with the head of a great cat,” Aydrian said coldly, “but your own head will do.” He brandished his sword and advanced.

“Who are you?” De’Unnero asked again, retreating around the tree to buy himself some time.

“I am
Tai’maqwilloq
,” the young ranger replied, “a name you will remember and mark well for the rest of your miserable life, though that hardly guarantees me longevity of reputation!” He stalked in as he finished, moving around the tree, then cutting back out in front of it, thinking to catch the man in fast retreat.

To his surprise, though, the naked man had merely walked out from the protection and into the open, and stood there staring at him.
“Tai’maqwilloq?”
De’Unnero echoed, intrigued, obviously, by the foreign ring of the words, the elvish ring of the name.
Tai’maqwilloq
reminding him keenly of another name, one held by his greatest rival.

Aydrian walked close and extended his sword De’Unnero’s way. “Yield,” he demanded. “If you choose to seek the mercy of the villagers, I will allow it. Else I will kill you, here and now.”

“I do not think that I would seek anything from the pitiful townsfolk,” De’Unnero calmly answered. “Nor, I fear, do I hold any desire to die here.”

“Then you are out of choices,” Aydrian said.

“So kill me, boy,” De’Unnero replied with a bit of a smirk.

Aydrian didn’t pause long enough to consider that smirk, and any possible reasons for the obvious confidence behind it. All of the tales that he had heard, even those indicating some link between this weretiger and a former bishop named De’Unnero, a man other tales named as the killer of Aydrian’s father, spoke highly of the fighting prowess of the human form of this creature.

More than willing to mete out death, Aydrian skittered forward and thrust hard—or started to. But even as his sword started moving forward, a bare foot flew up and slapped against the side of the blade, driving it away.

Aydrian retreated in perfect balance and with tremendous speed, but on came De’Unnero, arms working in smooth circular motions before him. His foot came up fast to kick at Aydrian’s face. When that fell short, he drove out again and again, clipping the young man’s arm and nearly taking his sword from his grasp. Still De’Unnero came on, hands like striking snakes, feet swishing dangerously.

Aydrian brought his blade sweeping in hard, but De’Unnero arched back out of range and leaped up, his left foot going around Aydrian’s right arm, tucking toes against the young man’s elbow, even as his right foot came in like the second blade
of a pair of scissors. De’Unnero’s left foot shoved, and his right kicked hard against Aydrian’s forearm, a maneuver that would have shattered the elbow of a lesser opponent. But the young ranger, very well trained, turned his blade and bent his arm. He rolled his shoulder and flipped his sword to his left hand, leading with a vicious backhand as he came around, a deft strike that would have disemboweled any other opponent.

But De’Unnero saw it coming. As he missed with his crunching double-kick, he landed on his left foot and kicked even higher with his right, boosting his up-and-backward momentum as he leaped away. After a somersault, he came up square to the now-charging Aydrian and launched a flurry of sidelong hand slashes that parried and slapped against the flat of Aydrian’s blade and forced him to fast retract his thrust or else risk having his opponent hand-walk right up the blade and right up his arm, getting in too close.

De’Unnero was gone from his sight, then, so fast that the movement hardly registered. Only instinct had Aydrian skipping high as the dropping monk executed a beautiful leg sweep. Aydrian got clipped on one foot but landed securely on the other, turning and bending forward.

There before him sprawled his opponent, vulnerable, helpless even—Aydrian knew that the man was helpless, not from any warrior insight or understanding of the nearly prone man’s position as much as from the sudden burst of music that he heard, a rousing, cheering song that told him without doubt that the time of victory was at hand. He let himself fall into his turn then, using his forward momentum to loose the killing thrust.

To any wayward observer, Marcalo De’Unnero surely looked defeated and helpless, with his left leg bent under him and his right, having executed the less-than-successful trip, straight out wide.

But De’Unnero had spent a lifetime training his body to move in ways that seemed impossible, had earned his reputation as the greatest warrior ever to march through the gates of glorious St.-Mere-Abelle long before the weretiger had inhabited his body and soul. That left leg, seemingly so trapped, used the resistance to heighten the speed of its upward kick, catching Aydrian, who was practically diving at the prone monk, in his extended sword arm, pushing him up and away. Every muscle working in harmony and to the limit of its strength, De’Unnero went right up to his shoulder blades, fully extending to lift Aydrian higher.

In came the warrior monk’s right leg, snapping under Aydrian, then flashing back to crash against the side of the surprised young man’s knee. Pushing back with that right leg, kicking out even harder with the left, De’Unnero had Aydrian flying to the side and flipping over backward.

To his credit, the amazing young ranger landed with enough of a roll to absorb some of the breath-stealing crash. He kept rolling right over his head, pushing as he went around to regain his footing.

But there was Marcalo De’Unnero, in close, clasping Aydrian’s sword wrist with his left hand, cupping the right over the back of Aydrian’s hand and bending it
hard over the wrist, easily taking away the blade.

Aydrian punched him hard with his free left hand, and the former monk staggered back a step.

But he smiled and threw the sword into the brush at the side.

In he came, and Aydrian charged with a roar, thinking to tackle the man.

He was flying again suddenly, as De’Unnero ducked low to clip him across the thighs. He landed harder this time, but fought back to his feet and turned just in time to see the sole of the leaping De’Unnero’s flying foot, the instant before it crashed into his face, laying him low.

“A pity to kill one so handsome,” came Sadye’s voice from the side. “He fought well.”

“Too well.” De’Unnero was bent over and breathing hard, with more than one bruise and cut for his efforts. “And with a fighting style I have seen before, a style unfamiliar to the King’s soldiers and the Abellican monks.”

He looked up at Sadye and saw that he had piqued her curiosity.

“You aided me in the battle,” De’Unnero remarked. “You sent your music to him to bolster his confidence, to make him err with thoughts of victory.”

“I did not—” the woman started to answer apologetically, but De’Unnero cut her short with an upraised hand.

“I would have expected that I would need no help to easily defeat any man in all the world, whether in tiger form or not,” the former monk continued. “Nor would I have ever expected to need any help against one so young. But his fighting style … the same style that Nightbird used, the same style that Jilseponie used …” He shook his head and gave a little laugh. “He called himself
Tai’maqwilloq
,” he remarked. “Elvish words, by the sound. I know of only one other who took such a title.
Tai’marawee
, Nightbird. Coincidence?”

“Ask him,” Sadye replied, slinging her lute over her shoulder and motioning toward Aydrian, as a groan told De’Unnero that his young opponent was waking up.

De’Unnero took Sadye’s belt and rushed to Aydrian, propping and securing him in place against a tree.

“He frightens me,” Sadye admitted to De’Unnero, who seemed surprised to hear those words coming from the mouth of the woman who had so many times toyed with the weretiger.

“He is just a boy,” De’Unnero replied.

“A boy who is alive now because he was powerful enough with the gemstones to control the weretiger,” Sadye reminded him.