Jazz took his SMG from behind his back, automatically loaded up. ‘We have to help,’ he said. ‘No, I have to help. You stay here.’
‘Don’t you understand?’ she clutched at him, stopped him before he could get started. ‘It’s all over! You can’t help. That was a warrior, one of several. If you had a tank and crew you still couldn’t help!’
As she spoke there came a last, booming explosion and dull orange fire blazed momentarily through the screen of trees and mist. There sounded a fresh bout of screaming: human screaming, nerve-shattering, from many terrified throats. Then through a barrage of lesser shouts and yelps, Shaithis’s booming voice, reaching up through drifting cordite-stink and mist:
‘Find them! Find Lardis and the hell-landers! As for the rest: destroy them all! But don’t let the warriors glut themselves. I have been hurt, and now I take my vengeance. Now it is my turn to inflict pain! Now find the ones I want, and bring them to me!’
‘So much for Lardis’s defences,’ Jazz groaned.
‘He was ambushed,’ Zek sobbed. ‘His people didn’t stand a chance. Come on, we have to get out of here.’
Torn two ways, Jazz ground his teeth, turned his head this way and that. ‘Please, Jazz!’ Zek dragged at him. ‘We have to save our own lives – if we can.’
They couldn’t go down, so they started up. But –
Before they could take more than two paces there came a hoarse panting from below, a scrabbling amidst the shrubbery. White-faced, Jazz and Zek shrank back into the shadow of the rock, stared at each other. A figure came reeling up through the trees, clawing at the base of the rock, thrusting itself from bole to bole. In Zek’s ear, Jazz whispered: ‘A Traveller?’
Her face strained in concentration. The panting was louder, frightened, almost a sobbing. Jazz thought: it has to be a Traveller. He let the stumbling figure come closer, reached out from cover and grabbed him. At the same time he heard Zek’s hiss of warning:
‘No, Jazz! It’s – ‘
Karl Vyotsky!
Vyotsky, seizing his one chance to make a break for it – or perhaps simply fleeing from the horror of what was happening below.
The two men recognized each other in the same moment. Their eyes bulged. Vyotsky’s mouth flew open in a gasp of complete astonishment; he started to bring up his gun, drew breath for a mighty shout – which went unuttered. Jazz clubbed him in the throat with the butt of his SMG, tried to kick him and missed, slammed a blow to his face. Vyotsky’s head rocked on his shoulders; he went crashing backwards, off-balance, probably unconscious, into brambles and mist-damp shrubbery. The ground mist rolled over him as he went sliding out of sight.
Jazz and Zek listened with bated breath, their hearts pounding. They heard only the hoarse, unending screams from below, a gigantic snuffling and bellowing, loud crunching sounds. And in another moment they started in again to climb.
They forced aching muscles to the limits of effort, drew level with the dome of the rock and climbed above it, ran waist-deep through clinging mist and tearing undergrowth where the ground levelled out a little. Then they were climbing again, still not daring to pant too loudly, hearts and lungs straining as they forced weary legs to pump and tired arms to drag them through the foliage. But the sounds from below were gradually fading, and trees and mist both were thinning out.
‘A vampire mist,’ Zek gasped. ‘They cause it to happen. Don’t ask me how. I should have known, should have heard them in my head. But they knew about me and were shielding themselves. Wolf knew, I think. Oh! -where is he?’
She needn’t have worried; the animal hounded her heels like a faithful dog. ‘Save your breath,’ Jazz growled. ‘Climb!’
‘But I might have heard them, might have given a warning if I wasn’t so tired. And if- ‘
‘If your mind hadn’t been on other things? You’re only human, Zek. Don’t blame yourself. Or if you must blame someone, blame me.’ Jazz dragged her up onto a shale-covered ledge in a slippery rock-face. They had come through the tree-line to the cliffs, the feet of the very mountains themselves. Clear of the mist, they could see a fading orange glow far to the south. It was the sun, and it was down. Sundown, and nowhere was safe now. But at least in the clean light of the stars they could see where they were going.