turned; the man he relieved was the one with the tale to tell. Turgo heard it out, scowled and narrowed his glinty eyes, finally said, 'You saw all of this? Young Vidra with his neck torn and scabbed? And this stranger - he was pale, you say? Not much of a description!'
The other shrugged. 'What's to describe? A man: tall, pale, with a girl's long soft hands. Somehow, he didn't look Szgany - he was all smooth and unweathered, like he'd lived in a cave all his days. And his eyes were ... they seemed full of blood!'
'Blood? In his eyes?'
'Exactly! Like he'd been poked in them, or had sand thrown in 'em - which no doubt he had, in the fighting.'
Turgo's own eyes narrowed more yet and he nodded, mainly to himself. And sitting down by the fire, he said, 'Tell me more, everything, but in finer detail. Leave nothing out.'
The telling didn't take very long.
And shortly -
- Heinar Hagi came awake instantly, looked at the earnest face of the man who had given him a shake, grunted and glanced up through an opening in the roof of his caravan at the night sky. He knew the hour at once, from the position of the stars, grunted again and growled, 'Anyway, I was due to be up about now.'
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
Turgo Zolte wasn't much of a diplomat. He shrugged and said, 'Due or undue, you're up.' And: 'It looks like there's business to attend to, Heinar. Bad business, I fear.'
Heinar threw on his clothes, put on his eye-patch to cover the hole which an eagle had torn in his face when he was just a lad. Teach him to hunt eggs in the heights! 'Business?' He repeated the other. 'You'll be talking about murderers in the hills, right? Aye, we'll be doing what we can - but at sunup. You want to come along, you're welcome. Couldn't it wait?'
Turgo shook his head, stepped down from the caravan into the night, waited for Heinar to join him. 'Not what I've got to say,' he answered. 'Not unless you want to see plague in the camp, spreading through all your people!'
And now Heinar was very much awake. 'What?' he grasped the other's arm. 'Plague?'
Turgo nodded. 'But quiet! Let's not wake the entire camp. Not yet. Now listen, and I'll tell you what I heard from the watch. Except I know it may have been exaggerated. But you were there, so if all tallies ...' He repeated the story of the watchman. And when he was done:
'Aye, that's the story,' Heinar grunted. 'Blow for blow.'
'Huh!' Turgo returned his grunt. 'Well, and now I've a different story for you ..."
And after a moment, as they made for the campfire: 'I came from west of here, as you know,' Turgo began, 'out of the tribe and territories of Ygor Ferenc. That's way up at the end of the barrier range, where the hills slump into misted valleys, fens and mire. The swamps are dire: quicksands, mosquitoes, leeches, but the Ferenc's borders fall short of them by a good seventy miles - which to my mind is still too close by far!'
They had reached the fire; the watchmen were out, patrolling the camp's perimeter; Turgo seated himself on a stool and Heinar chose the well-worn branch of a fallen tree. They each took tea, strong and bitter, and eventually Turgo continued.
'Well, about eighteen months ago, some funny things began to happen there on the edge of nowhere. As you'd imagine, they have their share of mountain men up there, much as you do down here: loners who take to the hills, look after themselves, live on their own in the wild. And now and then such a one will come into camp with a beast he's killed, too much meat for one man, and they'll usually make him welcome. There'll be a feast, and brandy to wash it down; the women will dance till sundown; the likely lads will end up fighting ... and so on. That's how it goes.
'But there in the western reaches, that wasn't always the way it went, not in the last six-month. Some of the mountain men up there in the misty hills where they descend to the valleys and swamps, and even the occasional lone wolf ... they were suddenly changed, different. Something weird had got into them.
There were rumours: about men with red eyes, madmen with the lusts of beasts, and wolves that snatched people