understand,' the other nodded, then frowned at Nathan and added: 'But something is strange here. I remember you differently: not only from your colouring, which is rare among the Szgany, but also for the fact that you were quiet and retiring. You have a brother, right? He's the one I remember as forward and outspoken!'
'Am I forward and outspoken?' Nathan was surprised. Then perhaps I've gained from Nestor's loss.' He explained his meaning and his mission: how his brother had been taken, and how he had 'dreamed' of the flyer crashing in the hills close by.
That ... rings bells,' Karl told him then; but if anything his frown was more deeply etched than before. 'Some men were up in the hills this morning, looking for changelings who had escaped out of town. You'll understand that there are many people we can't account for. Anyway, they discovered a flyer and ... a man. A youth, at least.'
Nathan grabbed his arm. 'A youth? Alive?' 'He was - living - when they found him, yes,' the other replied. 'But "alive"?' He shrugged. 'Undead, perhaps.'
Nathan groaned. And: 'Explain,' he said. Karl told him the story as he'd had it, finishing with: 'He leaped into the torrent and was swept away. They saw him go under in the white water, but they didn't see him surface.'
'And you say he ... he murdered two men?' The other could only nod. 'He was seen to do it, aye.' Nathan shook his head. Then it couldn't be Nestor!' Again Karl's shrug. 'Who else could it be? The description I was given fits. Also, you've related how things were in Settlement. So how do you know Nestor wasn't vampir-ized before the flyer took him? You don't.' He sighed. 'I'm not unsympathetic, Nathan, but it seems to me you should forget him now and go back home to those you have left.' Nathan was bitter. 'I have no one left!' Then follow me,' Karl urged. 'I need good, strong young men. I'll take my people out of here and return to my father's way of life before he built this place, and be a Traveller.'
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
But Nathan's mind was still on Nestor, and now he mused: There are two tributaries plunging out of the heights. Which one did he jump into?'
The one that descends to West Ford,' Karl answered. 'But what will you do?'
Til try to find his body,' Nathan told him. 'And then I'll know, for better or for worse.'
The other nodded. 'Good luck. But Nathan, if you do find him ... be prepared.'
Nathan didn't find Nestor, but at least he found word of him.
He spoke to the guards at the ruined bridge. They'd seen the body of a man go drifting down river. There had been blood in the water and the body was facedown, motionless. They would have dragged him out but had failed to notice him until he was over the slippery weir and drifting deeper. He could be one of two things: a murdered victim of last night's raid, or a vampire thrall caught by the sun in the foothills.
Anyway, that had been more than two and a half hours ago. By now he'd be tangled in roots somewhere down river, or sunk to the bottom in the mud and the weeds ...
Nathan thanked them for the information, if not for their 'assurances', then forded the river and set out to follow its course downstream. Walking a path used by the town's fishermen, and scanning the overgrown banks as he went, he followed the rushing waters to where the river joined with its twin in a broad green swath, but saw never a sign of Nestor. At which point most men might have given up, but not Nathan. He would follow the greater river all day, if need be. And when night came? ... Well, sundown must find him wherever it found him.
And for that matter, what difference did it make?
Fifteen minutes after Nathan passed from sight of the West Ford bridge, Lardis's runner made the crossing. He had been held up by a string of vampire hunters along the way.
By then the guards at the fording place had changed; one of them reported that he'd seen a man of Settlement talking to Karl Zestos in the town; the runner hurried on into Twin Fords without ever knowing that Nathan was less than three miles away but in a different direction.
Having found and spoken to Karl, the runner quickly returned to