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.
'Stand still.r Shaithis commanded, pointing at Jazz and Zek. 'I will not chase what is mine. Come to heel now or be punished. Punished severely!'
Jazz's heel kicked metal. Blued steel. His SMG! His packs were there, too.
He fell to one knee, grabbed up the gun. The three who opposed him saw the weapon in his hand and came to a halt. They stood stock still, glaring with their red eyes. 'What?' Shaithis's voice was dangerously low. 'Do you threaten your master?'
Jazz faced the three where he kneeled; he groped blindly in a pack, then another. He found what he was looking for, slapped home a magazine into its housing. Shaithis came flowing forward. 'I said — ' Threaten you?' Jazz cocked his gun. 'Damn right I do!' But the man on Shaithis's right flank had come swiftly forward in a crouch. His sandalled foot came down on Jazz's right wrist, pinning it to the ground. Jazz deliberately threw himself flat, tried to kick the man away; but this was no novice. Avoiding Jazz's kicks and still pinning his arm and weapon, he came to his knees, caught Jazz's face in a massive left hand, effortlessly bent his head back and showed him his raised gauntlet. He unclenched his fist and hooks, knives, gleaming sickles coldly reflected the starlight. Then the man smiled and raised his eyebrows in mocking query, glancing questioningly at Jazz's hand on the pistol-grip of the SMG. The gun's muzzle was sticking in dirt; Jazz daren't pull the trigger.
He opened his hand and let go of the weapon, and the man who held him lifted him up from the ground by his crushed face. Jazz could do nothing; he felt that if Shaithis's lieutenant wanted to, he could just tear the flesh right off his skull like peeling an orange.
Zek sprang at the man on Shaithis's left, Gustan, where he now stepped forward. 'Bullies!' she cried, beating at him with her fists. 'Bastards! Vampires!'
Gustan swept her up in one arm, grinned at her, ran his free left hand over her body, pinching here and there. 'You should let me have this one a little while, Lord Shaithis,' he grunted. 'Knock some sense into her and teach her the meaning of obedience!'
Shaithis turned on him at once. 'She'll be in thrall to me, and no other. Watch your tongue, Gustan! There's room in the pens for another war-beast, if that's your fancy?'
Gustan shrank back. 'I meant only — '
'Be quiet!' Shaithis cut him short. He came forward, sniffed at Zek and nodded his head. 'Yes, there's magic in this one. But remember — she escaped from the bitch Karen. Watch her carefully, Gustan.' Now he gazed at Jazz. 'As for you — ' Again he thrust his convoluted snout forward, seemed to use it like some monstrous bloodhound. And his eyes narrowed to scarlet slits.
'He's a great magician!' Zek cried. She hung dangling in Gustan's arms.
'Indeed?' Shaithis glanced at her. 'And what, pray, is his talent? For I sense nothing of magic in him.'
'I… I read the future,' Jazz gasped from a crushed, O-shaped mouth.
Shaithis smiled a terrible smile. 'Good, for I have certainly read yours.' And he nodded to the man who held Jazz aloft.
'Wait!' Zek cried. 'It's true, I tell you! You'll lose a powerful ally if you kill him.'
'An ally?' Shaithis seemed amused. 'A servant, perhaps.' He stroked his chin. 'But very well, let us test this talent. Put him down.' Jazz was lowered until he stood on straining tip-toes.
Shaithis studied him closely, cocked his head on one side, thought of a suitable test. 'Now tell me,' he finally said, 'what you read in my future, hell-lander?'
Jazz knew he was finished, but there was still Zek to consider. 'I'll tell you this much,' he answered. 'Harm this woman in any way — one hair of her head — and you'll burn in hell. The sun shall surely rise on you, Shaithis of the Wamphyri!'
'That is not fortune-telling but wishful thinking!' Shaithis snapped. 'Do you think to lay a curse on me? What, I am not to harm a hair of her head? This head, do you mean?' He reached out and grasped Zek's blonde hair, bunched it in a knot, tightened his grip until she cried out.
And the sun at once rose in the pass through the mountains, and lit the place with its burning, lancing rays!
Before the man who held Jazz screamed in terror and hurled him away like a rag doll, the Englishman thought an entirely frivolous thought: 'Now that's what I call magic!'
Thrown down, Jazz at once scrambled toward his gun, and no one made the least effort to stop him. The reason was simple: Shaithis and his two were moving back toward their mounts, scuttling like upright cockroaches where they threaded their way through scattered rocks and boulders, always seeking shade and refuge from the fatal, blazing light. And where and whenever that light fell upon them, then they screamed aloud as if scalded, covering their heads in their near-blind, blundering panic flight.
But one of them, Gustan, still carried Zek, who writhed like a snake in his grasp, beating at his head with her tiny hands. Gustan was Jazz's first target.
He snatched up his SMG from the hard ground, tilted its barrel downward and shook it. A few tiny pebbles and a trickle of dust fell from the barrel and Jazz prayed there was nothing bigger lodged in there. Then he was down on one knee, seeking out Gustan's fleeting, double-silhouette, finding it and aiming, and at last squeezing the trigger. The gun responded with a chattering diatribe of loud, lead obscenities, all hurled at Gustan's lower legs. Shaithis's lieutenant went down as if pole-axed, raising a cloud of dust where he screamed and flopped in the shadows of a low pile of rocks, and in the next moment Zek came scrambling free of him.
Jazz couldn't fire again for fear of hitting her. 'Keep to one side!' he hoarsely yelled. 'Give me a clear line of fire!' She heard him, threw herself to one side. A target at once presented itself, moving frantically in a sweeping beam of light. Jazz fixed the vampire in the sights of his mind even as the light swept on, and again he fired. Screams and curses came echoing back. Jazz hoped it was Shaithis himself he'd hit but doubted it: the silhouette hadn't had his bulk. On the other hand, he could still feel the bruises on his face where Shaithis's second man had picked him up. That one would do nicely, thank you. The thing these creatures would have to learn was this: don't mess with magicians from the hell-lands!
Zek came creeping from the shadows at the base of the cliffs. 'It's me!' she cried as he jerked his body in her direction. 'Don't shoot!' Wolf had met her half-way, was whining and prancing about her like a great puppy.
'Get behind me,' Jazz warned, waving the girl and the wolf aside. 'Get me another magazine from my packs, quick!'
The searchlight beams from the high wall of cliffs to the south (that's what they were like, Jazz thought: powerful spotlights, seeking out the enemy) continued to play, lancing down and throwing discs of reflected sunlight onto the canyon floor. Reflected, yes, Jazz nodded to himself, from mirrors. And thank God for whoever's aiming them! And now a pair of beams converged on Shaithis himself where the Wamphyri Lord had almost reached the flank of the nearest flyer.
It was the opportunity Jazz had waited for. He could have taken Zek by the hand and fled south with her, but he'd hoped for a shot at Shaithis. Now his target sprang to the side of his mount and twin beams of light followed him. Beating at the brilliant beams where they fell on him, almost as if he beat at flames, but obviously with no effect whatever, Shaithis leaped to catch his beast's harness and draw himself up into the ornate saddle. And that was where Jazz caught him. He'd held about a third of his magazine in reserve, maybe a dozen rounds, just for this.
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.