was tonight... you must work out the finer details for yourselves, for from now on I don't want anything to do with it. But in any case, and since we'l never see any of the Lykans again, there'l be no one to deny your story.'
As Giorga finished speaking, Ion and Lexandru looked at each other. A mutual message, however silent, passed between them: that they'd beter have words with Provisioner Borisciu, too, to ensure that his lips were likewise sealed. Or maybe to seal them permanently, if they weren't already. And:
'Wel, what are you waiting for?' Giorga wanted to know. 'Best get to it, before this spreads any further.'
And all four of them, they got to it ...
Radu knew nothing of the fact that he was dumped in the river, and that a big rock dragged him down to the mud and weeds. But the Zirescu twins had been very sober by then and in something of a hurry; the knot around his neck was fumbled; it had slipped loose before he hit the bottom. Then the current found him, buoyed him up, and whirled him downstream.
Midnight found him on his back, where wavelets washed white pebbles at a bend in the river. He was tethered by weeds, supported by a mat of drifted branches. The swelling at the back of his head was large as a hen's egg, but apart from a handful of scratches and bruises he was in one piece, and felt all the better for it after he'd emptied his system of river water. He remembered . . . well, something of the night before (the vengeful killing he had done, certainly, and of being knocked down and dragged through night-dark undergrowth; fragments of whispered conversation) but precious little. Still, it was enough for now. Sleep and warmth were what Radu needed most, to give the soft spot at the back of his head a chance to harden up.
He managed to get a fire going, dried out his clothes and got back into them, built a bed of bracken and grasses to sleep out the night. And spent most of the next day in sleeping, too, and in trying to forget about his father and his sister. It was hard, but he tried anyway.
Because by then he'd decided to forget about mankind in general and be a loner, one of the strange wild men who came down out of the hils now and then to sit by a campfire in the night. Except Radu would be a real loner; no campfires for him but his own, and no man's company, either.
All his life he'd known the brutalities of his 'brother' men, and for al he knew it would be the same in any tribe as it had been with the Szgany Zirescu. With which Radu Lykan was gone from the Szgany of Sunside, and claimed by the forest and the wild mountains. He had no friend but himself (at least for a while), no cares but his own, no counsel but that of the sun, moon, and stars. For the first time in his life he was free.
And he moved from place to place and territory to territory as if there were no bounds to speak of, taking to the ways of the wild as if it had been preordained. Thus Radu became a creature of nature, a man alone who went where his fancy took him. He left no tracks, and skirted or otherwise avoided the camps of men. But more especially he vowed to keep apart from the Szgany Zirescu, for he knew that if he returned to them it would be a bloody thing ... his blood or theirs, whichever.
But he also knew that having tasted the blood of his foes, he'd found it to his liking, which meant it could easily become a habit. Two of his had died, and two of theirs had paid the price. Let that suffice; let Giorga, Lexandru and Ion Zirescu, and the Ferenczy brothers, stew in the juice of their own miserable existence, and if they thought Radu was dead so be it, he was dead - to them, anyway.
East lay the territories of the Szgany Hagi, the Szgany Tireni, the Mirlus, Lidescis, and many another band or tribe.
Radu often heard their babble, saw their fires reflected from clouds drifting low over the woods at night, read their boundary marks and crossed their trails; but other than that he had nothing to do with them, and