Lardis watched Jazz strip down to his combat suit, then approached him smilingly with outstretched right hand. Jazz tried to take his hand, found himself clasping his forearm instead; Lardis likewise clasped his. It was a Traveller greeting. ‘A hell-lander,’ Lardis nodded. ‘How are you called?’
‘Michael Simmons,’ Jazz answered. ‘Jazz to my friends.’
Again Lardis’s nod. ‘Then I’ll call you Jazz – for now. But I need time to make up my mind about you. I’ve heard rumours about hell-landers like yourself; some take sides with the Wamphyri, working for them as wizards.’
‘As you’ve seen,’ Jazz told him, ‘I’m not one of them. And in any case, I don’t think any, er, hell-lander, would side with the Wamphyri of his own free will.’
Lardis took Jazz aside, guided him toward a spot where a party of men sat forlornly on broken boulders, heads hanging low. Around them stood a guard composed of Lardis’s men. The ones who were seated had been Arlek’s followers; Jazz recognized several faces. As Jazz and Lardis approached, the captives hung their heads lower still. Lardis scowled at them, said: ‘Arlek would have given you to the Wamphyri Lord Shaithis. But he was a great coward, and he coveted the leadership of the tribe. You’ve seen the fire burning there?’
Jazz nodded. ‘Zek told me what you’d do,’ he said.
‘Zek?’ Lardis’s smile faded a little. ‘Did you know her before? Did you come to seek her out and take her back?’
‘I came because I had no choice,’ Jazz answered, ‘not because of Zek. I had heard something of her; we’d never met, not until now. Back in our own world, our people are . . . not friends.’
‘But here you’re both hell-landers, strangers in a strange world. It draws you together.’ Lardis’s assessment was fairly accurate.
Jazz shrugged. ‘I suppose it does.’ He looked straight into Lardis’s face. ‘Will you make Zek an issue?’
Lardis’s expression didn’t change. ‘No,’ he said. ‘She’s a free woman. I have no time for small things. The tribe is my main concern. I have had thoughts about Zekintha, but … she would be too much of a distraction. Anyway, I fancy she’d rather be friend and adviser than wife. Also, she’s a hell-lander. A man shouldn’t get too close to something he doesn’t understand.’
Jazz smiled. ‘The place you call the hell-lands is very large, with many people of diverse cultures. It’s a strange place, but hardly the hell you seem to imagine it to be.’
Lardis raised his eyebrows, thought about what Jazz had said. ‘Zekintha says much the same thing,’ he said. ‘She’s told me a great deal about it: weapons greater than all the Wamphyri war-beasts put together; a continent of black people dying in their thousands, of disease and starvation; wars in every corner of your world, men against men; machines that think and run and fly, all filled with fire and smoke and a terrible roaring. It sounds close enough to hell to me!’
Jazz laughed out loud. ‘Put it that way and you could be right!’ he said. He had kept his SMG, whose strap he now adjusted where it crossed his shoulder. Lardis glanced at the weapon, said:
‘Your . . . gun? The same as Zekintha’s. I saw her kill a bear with it. The bear had more holes than a fishing net! Now it is broken, but she still carries it.’
‘It can be repaired,’ Jazz told him. ‘I’ll do it as soon as I have the time. But your people understand metal. It surprises me no one has tried to fix it.’
‘Because they’re afraid of it,’ Lardis admitted. ‘Me too! They’re noisy things, these guns . . .’
Jazz nodded his agreement. ‘But noise doesn’t kill the Wamphyri,’ he said.
Lardis grasped upon that, became excited as a child. ‘I heard the chattering of it, echoing up the pass! Did you really strike at Shaithis?’
‘At close range, too.’ Jazz smiled wryly, ‘ – for all the good it did! I put a good many holes in their flyers, and a few in them, too, I think – but it didn’t stop them.’
‘Better than nothing!’ Lardis slapped his shoulder. ‘Their wounds will take time to heal. Give the vampires in them something to do. Keep them out of mischief a while!’ Then he grew thoughtful again. ‘These men,’ he scowled at the seated group of unfortunates, ‘were Arlek’s followers. If they’d had their way you’d be vampire-fodder by now. With your gun, you could kill them all as easy as that!’ He snapped his fingers.