That was the end of it. Reeling in their saddles, the Wamphyri admitted defeat, dragged their bellowing, straining mounts sky ward, wheeled in great arcs and went racing northward to the darkness and the shadows. When the pulsating throb of their leathery wings had faded into distance there was only the silence, and the pounding of Jazz’s heart in his chest.
‘Zek?’ he called out breathlessly in a little while. ‘Are you OK?’
She came out of hiding, nervously dusting herself down in a spotlight beam of bright light where it found the three, man, woman and wolf, and held steady on them. ‘I’m all right,’ she said, but her voice was very trembly. Jazz put his gun down and reached for her where she stumbled into his arms. He held her loosely at first, then fiercely, as much for his own comfort as for hers. The encounter with the Wamphyri had shaken him badly. This was his natural reaction to it. So he told himself, anyway.
Zek clung to him briefly, then freed herself and shielded her eyes against the light playing on them from the western heights of the pass. ‘We’re in full view,’ she said.
Wasting no time, Jazz went to his packs, found another loaded magazine for his gun. He fitted it to his SMG, then seated himself and broke open small cardboard boxes of ammunition to start re-loading the empty magazines. This was his training surfacing. While he worked, he asked: ‘I take it we’ve been rescued – by friends?’
As if in answer, there came a shout which echoed down to them from the heights: ‘Zekintha – is it you? Is all well?’ The voice was anxious, taut as the skin on a drumhead.
‘Lardis Lidesci!’ she breathed. And to Jazz, ‘Yes, we’ve been rescued. I’ve nothing to fear from Lardis – except Lardis himself! He fancies me a little, that’s all. But you can be sure he’s a good man.’ Then she cupped her hands to her mouth and called back: ‘Lardis, we’re all right!’
‘Come back along the pass,’ his voice came echoing again in a moment. ‘You’re not safe there.’
‘He’s telling us!’ Jazz grunted. He finished loading up his packs, said, ‘Help me on with this kit.’
As they began to make their way south again, they could see several mirrors glinting on the western wall, where the setting sun still turned the crags to the colour of molten gold. The glittering flashes of light were descending, and every so often tiny human figures were glimpsed silhouetted against the sky. From the bed of the pass ahead came the distant jingle of Gypsy movements, and at last the panting of runners where they converged on Jazz, Zek and Wolf. Fleeting shadows became the outlines of men in Traveller garb, their faces anxious. Not men of Arlek’s party but faces which were new to Jazz. Zek knew them, however; she breathed her relief and said, ‘Oh, yes – we’re safe enough now.’
Oh? thought Jazz. And am I safe, too? What will your Lardis Lidesci think of me, I wonder?
From a distance of a mile and more to the south, shrill screams came echoing – cut off as they reached a crescendo of terror. Then silence reigned and distant flames leaped up, burning orange and yellow.
Tiredly pacing it out beside Zek – with Lardis’s runners on the flanks urging them to greater speed, and Wolf loping in the shadows – Jazz said: ‘Now what do you reckon all that was about?’
Zek’s face was very pale. ‘I would guess Lardis has dealt with Arlek,’ she quietly answered. ‘Dealt with him?’
She nodded. ‘Arlek was ambitious. That’s no crime in itself, but he was also a traitor – and a coward! He sought to make deals with the Wamphyri, at the expense of others – at their total expense. Lardis has warned him before, on several occasions. Now he won’t have to warn him again.’
‘You mean he’s killed him,’ Jazz nodded. ‘Pretty rough justice around here.’ ‘It’s a rough world around here,’ she said.
Arlek’s screams lingered in Jazz’s mind. ‘How would Lardis have done it?’
Zek looked away. The punishment would fit the crime,’ she finally answered. ‘I think that maybe Arlek died the death of a vampire: a stake through the heart, beheaded, burned.’