He opened up, aiming carefully and squeezing off single shots, praying that at least one would find its target. Shaithis, in the act of climbing into the saddle, suddenly jerked and fell back, but still clung to the harness. Jazz cursed the inaccuracy of his short-range weapon, took still more careful aim. His next shot must have missed Shaithis but hit the flyer in a delicate spot, for the great beast threw back its head and gave a weird cry, then commenced lashing its tail frenziedly. A moment more of this before a nest of hideous worms seemed to uncoil from the creature's belly, thrusting its bulk aloft. And still Shaithis clung there, even managing to haul himself safely into the saddle!

By then the other flyers were airborne, too, and Jazz was astonished to see that they both had riders! Gustan at least should be crippled - or should he? For now Jazz remembered Encounter Five. Bullets hadn't stopped him, either; they'd merely inconvenienced him. Likewise, apparently, with Shaithis and his lieutenants.

Zek came from behind, slapped a fresh magazine into Jazz's waiting hand. He loaded up, looked for his targets; glanced skyward at the wide ribbon of stars riding high over the rearing walls of the pass - and found all three 'targets' sweeping down on him!

'Jazz, get down! Oh, get down!' Zek was screaming. She and Wolf went scrambling on their bellies into a tangle of jagged rocks, but Jazz saw that the aerial beasts would be upon him before he could follow suit. He couldn't dodge them, but he might be able to turn them aside.

Again he went to one knee, and with the three flying creatures and their riders swooping upon him from only thirty metres away, he opened fire in a steady, sleeting arc of lead. Shaithis was in the centre, and that was where Jazz concentrated his fire. He laced the three creatures, and attempted to lace their riders, left to right and then back again to Shaithis. How he could miss at this range - if he missed - was beyond his understanding; but when the beasts and their Wamphyri masters were almost on top of him he began to believe he had in fact missed. Until the last moment.

For as the firing-pin on Jazz's weapon slammed home on thin air and the gun fell silent, and even as he made to hurl himself flat behind the nearest boulder, then at last he saw the effect of his fire. The three beasts were bleeding dark red ichor from rows of black holes in the forward parts of their bodies, and their riders rocked to and fro in their saddles, apparently holding themselves upright by willpower alone!

Then-

A great lip of flesh opened in the belly of Shaithis's mount as it swooped on Jazz, a trapdoor gash whose scalloped lower rim scraped across the top of the boulder shielding him and gouged at the dry, pebbly earth behind him. For a moment all was darkness and he smelled the powerful animal stench of the thing, but then its shadow lifted from him. By then, too, the unknown wielders of mirror-weapons had found their targets again and the flying beasts were bathed in lancing beams of searing light. And the light did actually sear them; for wherever the rays struck them, clouds of loathsome evaporation billowed outwards from the shrinking flesh of the beasts, like water boiling on dry-ice in the rarefied air of high altitudes.

That was the end of it. Reeling in their saddles, the Wamphyri admitted defeat, dragged their bellowing, straining mounts sky ward, wheeled in great arcs and went racing northward to the darkness and the shadows. When the pulsating throb of their leathery wings had faded into distance there was only the silence, and the pounding of Jazz's heart in his chest.

'Zek?' he called out breathlessly in a little while. 'Are you OK?'

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.