Meanwhile, the widow Gogosita had had her son carried to their tent where she watched over him. The badly bruised flesh of his neck was puffy, lacerated, probably infected. His fever was high and he tossed and turned, moaning in his sleep. As for what he moaned: they were things of blackest nightmare, resulting no doubt from what he'd experienced in the hills.
At the campfire Shaitan had been made comfortable, a blanket thrown over him, his head propped up on a bundled skin. And Maria Babeni had come to sit beside him, staring at his drawn, handsome face in the flaring of the fire. It seemed to her he should be taken in, given proper shelter, cared for and protected until he was fully recovered. Hadn't he risked his life for the men of the Szgany Hagi? All in vain where her father and Klaus Luncani were concerned… but at least he had saved young Vidra Gogosita! When the night watch returned she'd have them bring him to her small caravan (hers now, aye, and lonely at that), where she could give him the care he deserved.
Which was exactly what she did.
But most of the camp slept on, with the majority knowing nothing of the night's events; nor would they know until they got up to eat, tend their animals, take turn at watch. Unless something should happen before then, to break the routine.
And the stars turning in their endless wheel, dappling the clearing at the edge of the woods; and high in the mountains a lone wolf howling for his mistress moon, to rise up again and lend him her light for the hunting…
As Maria Babeni prepared for bed behind a curtain, she heard Shaitan stirring, then his moan. Making fast her night clothes, she went to him where he had her father's narrow bed at the other end of the caravan. By the light of a wick burning in oil, she saw that his face was pale as ever, with long, dark hair swept back, the colour of a raven's wing, and lips very nearly as red as a girl's. He would be perhaps forty years old (his looks, at least); his proportions perfect, his brow high, intelligent, lordly. For a man, Shaitan was quite beautiful.
And she thought: Wherever he comes from, he is not Szgany.
Then Shaitan opened his eyes.
And now there could be no mistaking it: his eyes were red!
Maria gasped where she leaned over him. And quick as her thoughts — just exactly as quick — he grasped her arm, rose up half-way on an elbow… then closed his eyes, released her and fell back. And knowing what she had seen, he said, 'My eyes… my eyes! They hurt. There's blood in them. Someone struck me there…'
'Bloodshot?' The word fell from her lips as if conjured, which it had been, half-way. His eyes were bloodshot? So very evenly?
For a moment, only for a moment, Maria had seen something other than a handsome man. Something hideous lurking behind the beauty. But… it could only be the strangeness of the situation: this man in her father's bed, and Maria alone with him in the night. Maria, who for all that she was nineteen years old, had known only her father's close company since the day of her mother's death. And the fact of a new bereavement slowly sinking in. The aftershock; the enormous hole inside of her; the loneliness. Of course she saw shadows where there were none, and phantoms to inhabit them.
He moaned again, tried to sit up, again opened his eyes — but kept them half-shuttered. She helped him, propped him up, said, 'How did… how did he die? My father, Dezmir Babeni. He was the short one, bearded, laughing.'
Shaitan avoided the question. 'I didn't see it all,' he answered. 'I only heard their cries, and went to help. But… your father?' And glancing around the caravan, as if noticing his whereabouts for the first time: 'Where am I?' His question was so innocent, childlike.
She sat on the edge of his bed and told him everything he desired to know. About the Szgany Hagi, the Szgany in general, herself, her situation — everything. And as his eyes opened more fully (but oh so slowly, so gradually), so Maria's small feelings of anxiety retreated, her ill-formed suspicions fell away, her will was subverted.
His voice was so low — like the rumble of a great cat, deceptively gentle but full of a fierce energy — and fluent despite its as yet alien use of her tongue. And behind every word a hint, a suggestion, an enticement. Shaitan beguiled, entranced, seduced; of course, for he was the great seducer. He seduced with his eyes, his tongue, the lure of his magnet personality, so unlike anything Maria had ever known before. And despite his strangeness, and the strangeness of her own innermost feelings, awakened now for the first time, she was drawn like a moth to the blood-red fire of his eyes.
She knew his fingers were at the fastenings of her night clothes, turning them back, laying her flesh bare; but as if to salve each burning brush of those fingers against her sensitized skin, Shaitan poured forth his balm of words. And his furnace heat enveloped her, spreading into every region of her body. So that she grew hot, so very hot.
Maria felt the perspiration swelling in her pores, forming droplets, trickling from neck and shoulders, breasts and belly. And she heard Shaitan's honeyed voice confirming the sultry oppression of the night, telling her how hot it was, how good to be free of such clammy restrictions as clothes and bed covers.
He had turned back his blankets; he sat up and helped her disrobe entirely; their sweat mingled as he rubbed his body against hers. Maria's breasts were firm and proud, with dark brown buds… erect, now, where Shaitan stroked her. Before, she'd known only Szgany lads, clumsy buffoons whose hands and faces she'd slapped. But now, when Shaitan stood up, drew off his shirt, stepped from his breeches… she clung to him and kissed his nipples, and stroked his horn where it steamed and jerked.
'See?' he said. 'My body would know all of you! For while my eyes have observed this softest of soft fruits,' and while my hands have touched its perfect skin, still the lips of my probe would test its flesh for succulence. Aye, for I fear it may be bitter, that a worm may have crept into your juicy core, to itch there in the heart of your heat and spoil your flavour. But don't you feel him itching?'
He touched her belly, the cleft in her bush, and her thighs lolled open. And: 'Ah, you see? You see?' Shaitan's face showed his amaze, and a very little of his lust. This dark and secret hole, all unsuspected! That's where he entered, be sure. So let me in, of your own free will, to drown your worm with my cock's wet kiss.'
He entered her in one, long, slow pulse, breaking her without pause and feeling her sweet virgin's blood hot on his bony shaft. And Maria's hunger was such that she might cry aloud for more, but could only gasp and gurgle 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.