And finally the squat one, Dezmir Babeni, mused, 'You're soft and pale, whoever you are! For all that you're a big 'un and strong, you haven't known much of hard work. What's your tribe?'
Shaitan shook his head.
The muscular, prognathous Klaus Luncani wanted to know: 'Why are you naked? Were you set upon? Ah, there are too many wild ones in the mountains these days, loners who'd kill a man just for his good leather belt!'
Again Shaitan shook his head, and shrugged.
But the young and wiry one, Vidra Gogosita, opened a pack and took out a long leather jacket, which he draped over Shaitan's shoulders by the fire. It was an old jacket but comfortable. And he said, The nights are cold. A man — even a fool — shouldn't go naked on the hillside!'
And Shaitan smiled and nodded, and thought: Of the three, he alone shall live — but only as my thrall For he is sensitive, wherefore his agonies in my service will be that much sharper! A 'fool' has willed it… so be it.' But out loud he said, 'I thank you. But of myself… I wish I could tell you more. Alas, I can't remember.' It was mainly the truth.
'Set upon, aye,' Klaus Luncani grunted, as if it were now decided beyond all doubt. 'By outcasts in the mountains. Clubbed on the head, all memory flown. Stole his clothes, they did. A man who hunts alone risks much!'
Dezmir Babeni moved closer, went to touch Shaitan's head, perhaps discover a wound there. Shaitan put up a hand to ward him off. 'No! There is… a pain.'
Dezmir nodded, and left it at that.
The matter seemed to be settled: Shaitan was obviously the victim of thieves. He was lucky they'd spared his life.
'Well, and Dezmir's right about one thing,' Klaus Luncani offered Shaitan a chunk of cheese and a bit of coarse bread. 'You certainly look big and strong enough! You'll live, I'm sure.'
Alas, but you won't, Shaitan thought, looking at the food in Luncani's outstretched hand. It was execrable stuff and he shook his head. 'I… I killed a creature,' he lied, 'for its flesh. It wasn't long ago. I'm not hungry.'
'A creature?' This was young Vidra Gogosita.
'With horns, curving back. Like this.' And Shaitan used his long slender hands to demonstrate. 'A small one, but sweet…' Though you will be far sweeter.
'A goat,' said Dezmir Babeni. 'A kid, anyway. Huh! Why, it seems he's had better luck than all of us together!'
'A… goat, yes,' Shaitan slowly repeated him, with a hand to his forehead, to indicate gradually returning memory.
'It'll all come back in time,' said Klaus Luncani, making a bed for himself in a triangle of boulders a short distance from the fire. 'But listen, we've been hard at it for most of the day — though there's only a couple of piglets in our bag to prove it! So now we'll catch a little sleep. A sight safer than climbing in the dark, for sure! A few hours, that's all, until the moon's up again; then it's back down to the levels and the camp of our leader, Heinar Hagi.'
Dezmir Babeni took it up. 'You'd do well to come with us, Shaitan, as you've nothing better in mind. Oh, you're a strange one, to be sure: tall and pale, with your brains all shaken up in that handsome head of yours. No memory to mention, nor even a tribe to claim you. But the Szgany Hagi have taken in a few strays in their time. So… what do you say?'
Shaitan looked up at him, and in that same moment Babeni was struck by the way the fire lit in his eyes. But Shaitan was quick to turn away again, gazing into the glowing embers as before. And: 'Get your sleep, all of you,' he told them. 'I shall likewise sleep. And later… we'll see what we'll see.'
Babeni shrugged, walked off a little way and trampled a bed of bracken for himself; he lay down, pulled a blanket over his lower half, snorted once or twice and fell silent. In his nest of boulders, Klaus Luncani was already snoring. But the youngest of the three, Vidra Gogosita, simply seated himself by the fire, close to Shaitan.
'I'll not sleep,' he said, 'but keep watch. It's my turn. You, however, would do well to get your head down. There's a blanket I can throw over you.'
Shaitan nodded, and in a low voice answered, 'In a little while.'
Aye, in a very little while…
Of the rest: Vidra remembered very little, and all of it ill-defined, unclear in a mind which had rapidly succumbed to the hypnotic allure of Shaitan. He remembered talking to the — man? — and the feeling of drowsiness, lethargy that had crept over his limbs, his mind, his will.
There was something about a face (but not Shaitan's handsome face, surely?) which had changed hideously to a bestial, nightmare mask with the forked tongue and dripping fangs of a snake. The face's approach… a blowhole stench, of sulphur?… and a pain, like the hot sting of a wasp where the artery pulsed in Vidra's neck… no, two wasps, stinging him there, inches apart. And Shaitan's crooning, and his kisses where he sought to suck the stings from — Vidra came awake with a small cry, seemingly in answer to some other's cry. He was cold and cramped in all his limbs, his neck stiff and caked with a great scab… of blood? His dream!
… Not a dream?
He lurched to his feet, stumbling in the ashes at the edge of the fire. But where was his strength? He was dizzy, staggering, weak as water! And tangibly present in his mind — indeed visibly present, burning behind the night scenes which his eyes showed to him — were other eyes, like malignant crimson scars on his soul. Which was precisely what they were. And something was looking at him through those windows on his mind, smiling at him sardonically, leering at him.
The moon was up, arcing over the mountains; the fire was out except in its heart; a ground mist lay all about, writhing where it lapped the scrubby hillside, filled the small hollows, twined in the roots of bracken and heather. No owls hooted, nor wolves sang, nor any earthly or human sounds at all. But in the shadows over there… something slobbered!
That was where Dezmir had made a bed in the bracken, and Vidra lurched in that direction. But here on his right, the triangle of boulders which sheltered Klaus and gave him protection; his legs were sticking out even now, where the mist lapped about them. Vidra stooped, went to grab Klaus's ankle and shake him awake. Before he could do so, the extended foot gave a massive start, trembled violently, flopped loosely and was still.
Vidra's flesh crept. He jerked upright, took two staggering paces down the length of Klaus's prone body to the cluster of boulders, leaned on them to look down on his sleeping friend — and saw that he wasn't merely sleeping. Not any longer.
For someone or something had taken a huge and impossibly heavy rock, levered it up over the top of the three embedded stones, and let it fall squarely on Klaus's face! Its roughly circular rim entirely obscured the area where his head would be, and in the flooding moonlight it seemed that a tarry substance seeped or was squeezed out from beneath. But Vidra Gogosita knew that the moonlight lied: it wasn't black but red.
Scarcely in control of his limbs — choking, unable to cry out by reason of his gulping, the dryness of his throat — the youth went flailing through the sentient mist to where Dezmir Babeni lay in the bracken. 'Dezmir!' he finally forced a warning croak. 'Dez…
'.. mir?'
For Dezmir's blanket had been thrown aside, and over him now Vidra's own long jacket, which his mother had begged him to bring with him. Except the jacket seemed alive, humped and mobile, fluttering like some huge black bat fallen to earth!
Vidra reeled, cried out! And the jacket, and what it contained, flowed upright, stood up and faced him. Shaitan — but no longer handsome, indeed barely human — his monstrous metamorphic face scarlet from gorged blood! And the slimy, alien mist pouring off him like sweat, and billowing out from under his borrowed leather jacket!