Then there was the Wamphyri fear of silver, which metal was a poison to their systems, acting upon them like lead acts on men. Lardis had discovered a small mine of that rare metal in the western foothills, and now his arrows were tipped with it. Also, he smeared his weapons in the juice of the kneblasch root, whose garlic stink would bring about a partial paralysis in any vampire, causing endless vomiting and a general nervous disorder lasting for days. If a kneblasch – treated blade cut Wamphyri flesh, then the infected member must be shed and another grown in its place.
It wasn’t so much that these things were secret or known only in the tribe of Lardis – indeed, all Travellers had been aware of these facts immemorially – but rather that Lardis dared use them in the defence of his people. The Wamphyri had forbidden to all Travellers the use of bronze mirrors, silver and kneblasch, on penalty of dire torture and death; but Lardis cared not a jot. He was already a marked man, and a man can die only once . . .
These were some of the things, then, that influenced Lardis in the way he ruled his tribe and did his best to keep them secure west of the pass through the mountains; but there was one other element beyond Lardis’s control, which nevertheless figured high in his favour, confirming his commonsense measures. It was this: that somewhere in those western peaks, in a small, fertile valley, lived the one whom the Wamphyri feared and had named The-Dweller-in-His-Garden-in-the-West. The Dweller legend was the main reason Lardis had been away this time. Ostensibly he had been seeking new routes and harbour areas for the tribe (and in fact he’d discovered several) but in reality he had been trying to locate the Dweller. He’d reasoned that what was bad for the Wamphyri must be good for the tribe of Lardis the Traveller. Also, rumours had been spreading for some years now that the Dweller offered sanctuary to anyone with spit enough to dare seek him out. For Lardis himself, sanctuary wasn’t the hook, though certainly it would be a wonderful thing to find a safe, permanent home for the tribe; but if the Dweller had power to defy the Wamphyri . . . that in itself were sufficient reason to seek him out. Lardis would learn from him and with his new knowledge carry the fight right back to the very keeps of his vampire enemies.
He had sought for him – and found him!
Now he was back from that quest, and back barely in time to save the hell-lander woman Zekintha from Arlek’s treachery; Zekintha . . . and the newcomer, whose fighting skills Arlek’s dupes had mentioned in something approaching awe. On a one-to-one basis and without the intervention of his followers, Arlek hadn’t stood a chance against Jazz. Well, if there was one thing Lardis Lidesci liked, it was a good fair fighter. Or even a good dirty one!
Lardis saw them coming across the canyon’s floor, stepped forward to meet them. He clasped Zek in his great arms, kissed her right ear. ‘Tear down the mountains!’ he greeted her. And: ‘I’m glad you’re safe, Zekintha.’
‘Only just,’ she answered, breathlessly. ‘All credit to this one,’ and she nodded at Jazz.
Weary now, and climbing out of his gear as if he unhitched an anchor, Jazz returned her nod, then looked all about in the canyon’s hushed twilight. Men and wolves moved here and there in the shadows of the cliffs, their jingling and low talk seeming very normal and pleasant to Jazz’s ears. But central in a jumble of boulders which lay towards the western wall burned a great fire, emitting roiling black smoke which climbed into a near-perpendicular column in the still air. Arlek’s funeral pyre, he supposed.
Some hundred or more yards to the south, the pass turned a little eastward and there commenced a steady descent toward the unseen foothills of Sunside. The rays of the slowly declining sun, blazing full through that last stretch of pass, beat on the western wall of the canyon and lit its crags and outcrops. Coming down from those heights, agile as goats, a half-dozen male Travellers bore mirrors like shields in their capable hands, always directing the sun’s beams into those gloomy deeps of the gorge which lay to the north. Jazz frowned as the first of the mirror-bearers came closer. The man’s great oval mirror was of glass, surely? Did the Travellers have that sort of technology at their disposal?