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.'
'Oh?' Jazz took that in, nodded again. 'You mean just to be absolutely sure, right?'
Her answer contained no trace of humour. 'That's right,' she said, 'to be absolutely sure. Vampires are hard things to kill, Jazz.'
He shook his head, thought: God, you're a cool one!
'No, I'm not,' she clasped his hand tightly — very tightly — in her own. 'It's just that I've been here longer than you, that's all…'
Lardis Lidesci wasn't what Jazz had expected. He was maybe five-eight tall, long-haired, gangling in the arms as Jazz himself but built like a rhino as opposed to Jazz's cat. He was young, too — younger by three or four years than Jazz — and, in sharp contrast to his squat shape, he seemed surprisingly agile. This agility of Lardis's wasn't only physical; his intelligence was patent in every brown wrinkle of his face, which was expressive and had more than its share of laughter-lines. Open and frank, Lardis's round face framed in dark, flowing hair had slanted, bushy eyebrows, a flattened nose, and a wide mouth full of strong if uneven teeth. His brown eyes held nothing of malice; indeed, they were usually smiling, but they could also turn very thoughtful. On the Earth Jazz and Zek had left behind he'd have made a professional wrestler; certainly he looked like one. Among his people here in this vampire-ruled environment beyond the Gate he was a natural leader, and the great majority of his five-hundred-strong 'tribe' rallied behind him all the way. Arlek had been a rare exception which proved the value of Lardis's rule, and Arlek was no more.
Since taking on the job of leader from his father five years ago when the elder Lidesci had grown crippled with some arthritic disease, Lardis had succeeded in keeping his Travellers free and secure from the ever-present Wamphyri threat; so that the tribe had grown and expanded, absorbing other smaller Gypsy groups into itself. Not nearly as large or strong as many of the eastern tribes, still Lardis's people had a record for safety which was the envy of all the Travellers: namely that since he became leader, the Wamphyri had not once ravaged successfully amongst them. There were several reasons for this.
One of these stemmed from that fundamental difference between Lardis and Arlek, which was so strong that it had now resulted in the latter's permanent removal. Lardis did not believe that the Wamphyri were the natural Lords and Masters of this sphere, or that the time must come when a devastating raid would decimate his tribe. He would not give in to the Wamphyri, would not placate them in any way. Other Traveller tribes had tried this in the past, were trying it even now, and it had never worked. Gorgan Lidesci, Lardis's father, still talked of the fate of his first tribe, when he himself had been a mere boy.
In those days, for a time, there had been a measure of peace among the Wamphyri; this had enabled the vampire Lords to consolidate their forces and commence raiding far more effectively and in overwhelming numbers. Gor-gan's tribe, a large one and governed by a Council of Elders, had attempted to make a deal with the Wamphyri, to come to a mutually satisfactory 'arrangement' with them. Before each sundown a raiding party would go out from Gorgan's people to make captives of men and women of lesser Traveller groups. Since such minor groups might be as small as two-or three-family units, ranging up to the strength of small tribes of perhaps forty adults, and since they were scattered all along the Sunside flank of the mountains, there was little difficulty in obtaining, before each sundown, a 'tithe' of about a hundred people. These were kept imprisoned through the long nights, so that in the event of a Wamphyri raid they could be offered in appeasement. The belief among the elderly leaders of Gorgan's tribe was simply this: that so long as the Wamphyri could find ready-made tribute, they would not have need to glut themselves on the tithe-paying people of the tribe: they would not bite, as it were, the hands that fed them.
For some years and through many nights this scenario held true. There were times when the Wamphyri came and others when they failed to find Gorgan's tribe (for the Travellers were never sedentary but constantly on the move, a restlessness bred into them through hundreds of years of Wamphyri rapaciousness), on which fortunate occasions at sunup the prisoners would be set free to fend for and feed themselves, and continue their lives as of old or until the next time they were taken prisoner, perhaps before the next sundown.