The winter ended as Heinrich’s new family journeyed, the heat increasing even in the dank belly of the southern forests of Wallachia. Over hills and rocky mounts, through sunny glens and shadowy gulches they crept, never doubting their purpose. Vittorio talked incessantly while Paolo had not spoken since he recognized the grotesque buboes bulging under Heinrich’s arms when the man removed his robes to pop blisters and peel skin, depositing them in a river upstream of a mill. Paolo had certainly become mad as a mooncalf but his education stayed with him. Only when Vittorio scratched at his groin and armpits did the barber’s son inspect his own, and at seeing the purple swellings he rejoiced to know he would soon die. He did not, nor did Vittorio, nor did Heinrich.
When they skirted the massive city of Al-Gassur ’s birth Heinrich danced lewdly by moonlight, reciting litanies inspired by the whispers he heard not in his ear but in his heart. Drawing symbols in the dirt with a woodsman’s severed finger, Heinrich repeated the words that freed similar beings from their torment, granting Paolo and Vittorio the same privilege he enjoyed.
Crossing the channel proved nigh impossible with the three demoniacs’ aversion to running water but they managed to steal a boat and float across without dampening themselves. They were almost apprehended by mounted Turks several times in the barren regions they crossed, but they hid in caves when the numbers were too great and descended on smaller groups, again devouring all but one or two, leaving those to stagger home, infecting their loved ones and ranting the cursed name Grossbart that all three of the possessed chanted hatefully.
Into the wastes, those born men now appeared barely more human than the twins, both of whom had grown to the height of horses from constant feeding. Their buboes big as the honey-melons so loved in those regions, their pace weakened but their intent did not, Vittorio and Paolo eagerly following their brothers into combat with men who shrieked and fled at their approach. Their guts sagged with black and yellow biles, the humours churning but refusing to burst from their copious sores and wounds so that they were able to drain them only into the pleading mouths of their victims. Any oases they traversed rotted to desert at their presence, and for months they ate only men; all other creatures smelled their evil from great distances and could not be caught even by the twins.
The things inside them communed while their hosts slept, delighting in the willingness of their servants and bartering with their still-imprisoned kin for information regarding the Grossbarts. Those without form could do naught but enviously watch, but the two released into the Italians had dutifully scoured with sight not constrained by space before being granted their salvation. They were very close indeed; fortunate, for the oppressive heat that cooked them even as the seasons changed threatened to slay their mounts before they captured their game, and in such desolate regions they might not find replacements before being thrust back into the place they had so vigorously fled.