as he rode to and fro, in and out between her salivating lips.
And for a long, long time Shaitan took Maria in every way he knew and others which he invented, until his lust was sated, however temporarily. And sprawling there lewdly, with the girl all bruised and insensible between his thighs, and his sperm like foam on all her openings, he thought: These people are clever, yet in many ways they are innocent as trogs. And like the trogs, the Szgany Hagi shall be mine!
It was Shaitan's first major error. His stay with the trogs had lasted for two long years, and little occurring in all that time to tax or stimulate his superior mind and talents; so that in certain respects he had grown lax, and perhaps as naive as the trogs themselves. But as he would soon discover, the men of Sunside were in no way trogs.
For now, however… his excesses with the girl had wearied him. He would join Maria in sleep a while.
Which was his second big mistake…
One third of the way into the night, Turgo Zolte was called to his duty watch. Zolte was a big, taciturn man; tough, iron-grey in the eyes, with shoulder-length hair to match. He wore silver earrings, a silver buckle on his belt, silver buttons to fasten his black clothes; like all Sunsider men he jingled when he walked, only more so. Zolte was a loner, not quite an outsider. The Szgany Hagi had accepted him now.
He'd come to them only a year ago, chased out of his own far western band by a chief whose son he'd killed. According to him, it was a fair fight; the other had called him out over a woman, and Turgo had broken his neck. Well, he had the brawn for it, certainly; and since there was no lack of space among the Hagis for big, strong fighting men — so long as they were working men, too — Heinar had let him stay. Since when no one had bothered with Turgo Zolte very much, and he'd kept mainly to himself. But if a man could catch him in the right frame of mind, with a jug of good plum brandy inside him, he might occasionally tell a few wild tales of his latter days along the western reaches. Campfire tales, of bogeymen and beasts. His audience might snort a bit, but none called him a liar.
This night, when Turgo reported to the fire, the tables were 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.'
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 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.
'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.
