'No.'

'Good! But now I know what you taste like, the sooner Wolf gets to work on these bindings the better.' He rolled over onto his face. Trussed like a chicken, his legs were bent at the knees, feet uppermost. His wrists were tied behind his back, and tied again, to his feet. Wolf at once began tugging at Jazz's leather bindings. 'No, dammit!' Jazz spat out dirt. 'Don't pull, chew!' And in a little while Wolf was doing just that.

Jazz could see his packs, gun, Zek's too, lying only paces away. The weapons had a metallic sheen in the dark. 'I notice Arlek took my compo,' he said.

'Compo?'

The hard-tack. The food.'

She was silent.

'I mean, he did tell Shaithis he'd leave everything except my hatchet.'

Quietly she said: 'But he knew Shaithis would have no use for the food.'

Jazz tried to turn his face her way. 'Oh? But he eats, doesn't - ' And he paused. He could see her eyes, unblinking in the dark shadow of her face. The Lord Shaithis of the Wamphyri,' he grunted. 'Of course. He's a vampire, right?'

'Jazz,' she said, 'hope springs eternal, but - maybe I should tell you something of how it could be. I mean, if we're taken.'

'I think maybe you should,' he said.

Something small, black, chittering, flitted close by, came closer in dips and swoops, then darted off again. Then another, and more, until the air seemed full of them. Jazz had frozen into stone, stopped breathing, but Zek said: 'Bats - but just bats. Ordinary bats. Not Wamphyri familiars. The Wamphyri use the real things for that. The big ones. Desmodus, the vampire.'

A thong parted behind Jazz's back, and very quickly another. Jazz flexed his wrists and felt a little give in his bindings. Wolf carried on chewing. 'You were going to tell me about Shaithis's transport,' Jazz reminded Zek.

'No,' she said, 'I wasn't.' Her tone of voice told him not to ask any more. But in any case he didn't need to. As the last thong parted and his straining wrists flew apart, he straightened his aching legs, rolled over onto his back and looked up. His eyes were drawn to an ominous stirring overhead. Level with the high walls of the pass, a black blot - several of them - shut out the stars as they began to descend.

'What the hell - ?' Jazz whispered.

They're here!' Zek breathed. 'Quickly, Jazz! Oh, be quick!'

Wolf loped anxiously to and fro, whining, while Jazz got his cramped fingers to work on the thongs binding his feet. At last they were free. He turned to Zek, rolled her unceremoniously face-down across his knees, went frantically to work on her knots. As each one came undone, he kept glancing up at the heights a little north of their position.

The descending blots were falling like flat stones dropped in still water, sliding from side to side, settling like autumn leaves on a deathly still early September morning. Three of them, their true outlines were now distinguishable: huge, diamond-shaped, where opposing points of the diamonds merged into heads and tails. They side-slipped this way and that, settling silently down toward the bed of the pass.

Zek's hands were almost free; Jazz left them and turned his attention to her feet. It was his thought to pick her up, throw her over his shoulder and run. But he faced the truth: his legs were still badly cramped and the darkness was now almost complete. He'd only be able to stumble at best, with Wolf bringing up a pitifully inadequate rear guard.

Three dull thumps in close succession announced the fact that the flying things had settled to earth. Jazz's fingers were fully alive now, deft where they hastened to free Zek's feet. She was panting, plainly terrified. 'It's OK,' he kept whispering. 'Just one more knot to go.' Down the pass, maybe a hundred metres away, three anomalous shapes lay humped against a horizon of stars, with spatulate heads swaying at the ends of long necks. The last knot came loose; and as Zek came struggling to her feet, staggering a little, so Wolf's tail went down between his legs. He gave a whining, coughing little bark and began to back off toward the south.

Jazz's arm was round Zek's waist, supporting her. He said: 'Move your arms, stamp your feet and get the blood pumping.' She didn't answer but stared with saucer eyes beyond him, in the direction of the grounded flying creatures. He sensed more than felt the shudder going through her, moving from her head, down through all her body. An entirely involuntary thing, almost like a dog shaking off water. Except Jazz suspected that this was something which wouldn't shake off. And he turned to follow her gaze.

Three figures stood not ten paces away!

They were in silhouette, but that hardly detracted from their awesome aura of presence. It radiated from them in almost tangible waves, a force warning of their near-invulnerability. They had all the advantages: they could see in the dark, were strong beyond the wildest dreams of most Earthly muscle-men, and they were armed. And not only with physical weapons, but also with the powers of the Wamphyri. Jazz didn't yet know about the latter, but Zek did.

'Try to avoid looking at their eyes,' she hissed her warning.

The three were, or had been men, so much was plain.

But they were big men, and even silhouetted against a backdrop of stars and black, nodding sky-beasts, Jazz could see what sort of men. In his mind a recurring picture of a man like these, dying in an inferno of heat and flame, screamed his fury and his defiance even now: 'Wamphyri!'

The one in the middle would be Shaithis; Jazz reckoned there'd be close to eighty inches of him, standing almost a full head taller than the two who flanked him. He stood straight, cloaked, with his hair falling onto his shoulders. The proportions of his head were wrong; as he looked with quick, curious glances from side to side and showed his face in profile, Jazz saw the length of his skull and jaws, his convoluted snout, the alert mobility of his conch-like ears. It was a composite face: human-bat-wolf.

The two beside him were near-naked; their bodies were pale in starlight, muscular, easy-flowing as liquid. They wore topknots with tails dangling, and on their right hands... those were silhouettes Jazz would know anywhere. The weapon-gloves of the Wamphyri! But so sure of themselves: they stood arms akimbo, almost uncaring, staring at Jazz and Zek with their red eyes almost as if they considered the antics of insects.

'Not bound!' Shaithis said in that unmistakable, rumbling voice of his. 'So either Arlek is a fool or you are extremely clever. But I see your broken thongs, and so I would say that you are clever. Your magic, of course. My magic, now!'

Jazz and Zek backed off a stumbling pace or two. The three moved after them, marginally more rapid but in no great hurry, gradually closing with them. Shaithis's lieutenants moved in the manner of men, with paces swift and sure; but their master seemed to flow forward, as if carried on the strength of his own will. His eyes were huge, crimson, seemed to burn with some weird, internal light of their own. It was hard to avoid looking into those eyes, Jazz thought. They might well be the gates of hell -but tell a moth not to investigate the candle's flame.

Zek's elbow struck him sharply in the ribs. 'Don't look at their eyes!' she said again. 'Run, Jazz, if you can. I'm all cramped, I'll only slow you down.'

Wolf came from nowhere, snarling his outrage - and probably his terror, too - as he loped from the shadows under the eastern cliff. He leaped at Shaithis's lieutenant on that flank; the man turned casually toward him, struck him aside left-handed as Jazz might strike aside a small, yapping dog. Wolf backed off, whined, and the man he'd attacked showed him his gauntlet. 'Come on then, little wolf,' he taunted the animal. 'Come, let Gustan pat you on your sleek grey head!' 'Get back, Wolf!' Zek cried.