right off the fringes of their camps and territories! Always by night, or in the light of the moon. It was like an infection, a sickness spreading out of the swamps, and people grew wary of any stranger who might come into their camps at twilight or sundown. But in the Ferenc's camps, or on the march, beating his bounds ... well, as I've said, all of this was rumour. The other camps may have been hit, if the stories were true, but old Ygor was the lucky one. For a while, anyway.
Then, just before I landed in trouble - Ygor's hotheaded fool of a son, Ymir, forcing me to kill him over a woman's favours and what all - that's when the luck of the Szgany Ferenc ran out. It happened like this:
'I was out with Ygor and maybe a dozen others, beating the bounds just like now. One twilight, we reached this old clearing where we'd make camp. Ygor knew the place well enough: it was about as far west as folks have ever journeyed, except for the loners, of course, who often step where no one else would. Nothing superstitious about that, it's just that west of there the ground's no good for growing things; the water's scummy and the mists are far too frequent. It's like the end of the world! But old Ygor, he likes to beat the ground there anyway, to make sure no one will come down out of the hills and settle on it.
'And there in the clearing, that's where we found Oulio lonescu - something that looked like Oulio, anyway ...'
As Turgo paused, so Heinar cast him a sharp glance. 'Eh? Something that looked like him?'
'Give me a chance and I'll explain,' the other held up a restraining hand. And after a moment's thought:
'Oulio was one of these types who'd come into camp for an evening's entertainment. Oh, he liked his own company best, but from time to time got a little too much of it. His parents had been mountain people, too - until an avalanche killed them - and Oulio had a cave up there somewhere. Also, he was known to wander west and trap big lizards in the swamps. See this belt of mine? A bit of Oulio's good leather.
"Vampire World 1 - Blood Brothers"
'So, we knew him well. Or thought we did. But this time he was in trouble.
'At first we didn't know what we'd stumbled over. The Oulio we knew was big and wild as they come: clothes all in patches, eyes black as night, hair like a waterfall. And garrulous? He was full to the brim of words that didn't mean much, all spilling out of him because he'd kept them so long bottled up. He played his fiddle like no one I ever heard, drank brandy like water, would dance till he fell. But he danced alone, because he was wary of the women.
'But now? Well, he wouldn't be doing any dancing for a while, for sure.
'How long he'd wandered like that, who knows? But it had slimmed him down a lot. All of his fat was gone, and quite a bit of his skin, too. Why, he was ... black! Burned black, by the sun, as it turned out. But he was red, too. Red where the skin had peeled from his face and limbs, and red in his eyes. Aye, red as blood. And there he lay, sprawled like a dead man in the clearing, with only the occasional twitch or moan to hint of any life left in him at all.
'We looked after him. We didn't know what had befallen him, but despite all rumours and old wives' tales we cared for him. Even as we're now caring for this stranger ...'
'Eh?' Heinar gave a start. 'The stranger? But he was here, by the fire!'
'Until Maria Babeni took him in,' Turgo nodded grimly. 'She had him carried to her cart.'
And now Heinar thought that maybe he understood something of what was going on here; for he knew that Turgo had paid one or two small, polite attentions to Maria, even though the girl hadn't seemed to notice or acknowledge them. But Turgo saw the Hagi's thoughts written plain in his one good eye, and:
'Better let me finish,' he said, 'before you go jumping to any conclusions.'
'Get on with it, then,' Heinar told him.
'Oulio was taken to the tent of one of the younger men, a man who had his young wife