"Yo!"
"Er... you scout on ahead."
"I hear you!"
"Good."
As the vampire walked past Polly the world, just for a moment, changed; the forest became greener, the sky greyer, and she heard a noise overhead, like "whopwhopwhop". And then it was gone.
Vampire hallucinations are contagious, she thought. What's going on in his head? She hurried forward with Igorina, and they set off again through the forest.
Birds sang. The effect was peaceful, if you didn't know about birdsong, but Polly could recognize the alarm calls close by and the territorial threats far off and, everywhere, the preoccupation with sex. That took the edge off the pleasure.8
"Polly?" said Igorina.
"Hmm?"
"Could you kill someone if you had to?"
Polly came right back to the here and now. "What sort of question is that to ask anyone?"
"I think it's the sort you'd ask a tholdier," said Igorina.
"I don't know. If they were attacking me, I suppose. Hurt them hard enough to keep them lying down, anyway. And you?"
"We have a great respect for life, Polly," said Igorina solemnly. "It's easy to kill thomeone, and almost impossible to bring them back again."
"Almost?"
"Well, if you don't have a really good lightning rod. And even if you have, they're never quite the same. Cutlery tends to stick to them."
"Igorina, why are you here?"
"The clan isn't very... keen on girls getting too involved in the Great Work," said Igorina, looking downcast. "'Thtick to your needlework', my mother keeps saying. Well, that's all very fine, but I know I'm good at the actual incisions as well. Especially the fiddly bits. And I think a woman on the slab would feel a lot better about things if she knew there was a female hand on the we-belong-dead switch. Tho, I thought some battlefield experience would convince my father. Soldiers aren't choosy about who saves their lives."
"I suppose men are the same the world over," said Polly.
"On the inside, certainly."
"And... er... you really can put your hair back?" Polly had seen it in its jar when they'd been breaking camp; it had spun gently in its bottle of green liquid, like some fine, rare seaweed.
"Oh, yes. Scalp transplants are easy. It stings a bit for a couple of minutes, that's all - "
There was movement between the trees, and then the blur resolved itself into Maladict. He held a finger to his lips as he drew closer, and whispered urgently: "Charlie's tracking us!"
Polly and Igorina looked at one another.
"Who's Charlie?"
Maladict stared at them, and then rubbed his face distractedly. "I'm... sorry, er... sorry, it's... look, we're being followed! I know it!"
The sun was setting. Polly peered over the rocky ledge, back the way they had come. She could make out the track, golden and red in the late afternoon light. Nothing was moving.
The outcrop was near the top of another rounded hill; the rear of it became the floor of a little enclosed space, surrounded by bushes. It made a good lookout for people who wanted to see without being seen, and it had done so in the recent past, by the look of the old fires.
Maladict was sitting with his head in his hands, with Jackrum and Blouse on either side of him. They were trying to understand, and not making much progress.
"So you can't hear anything?" said Blouse.