Meanwhile his men had found signs left by runners (free- and far-ranging members of the tribe who acted as Lardis's intelligence agents), which corroborated previously arranged liaison points for both the next Traveller group, only five miles ahead, and the primary encampment some twenty to twenty-five miles beyond that. As Lardis got his hook into a large catfish and hauled it ashore, he was well satisfied. Things seemed to be working out exactly to schedule.

As for Jazz and Zek: while she bathed in the river he worked on her SMG, clearing the blockage and oiling the parts, getting the weapon back into serviceable order. In the event of another confrontation, two guns would be better than one. Also, Jazz had called for the rest of his equipment to be brought to him; he wanted at least one member of this Gypsy band he travelled with, preferably Lardis himself, to understand the workings of various items - specifically the flame-thrower. When his gear arrived, Jazz found to his surprise that no one seemed to have tampered with his packs since he'd re-packed them. And maybe that was just as well. In the bottom of one pack there was a small nest of six deadly Russian fragmentation grenades. About the same size as hen eggs, they reminded Jazz of foil-covered chocolate Easter eggs in the compartmented, sawdust-packed tray of their wooden box. If anyone had tampered with those... Jazz supposed he'd have heard about it long before now.

Lardis, on his way to the campfire with the huge catfish jerking spasmodically where it lay across his shoulder, nodded to Zek and Jazz on the riverbank and called out: 'Let me just rid myself of this, then I'll be back to see these tricks of yours.'

They watched his burly figure out of sight over the rim of the bank, then turned back to what they were doing. While Zek finished drying her hair, Jazz tested her gun one last time; he drew back its cocking piece sharply and was rewarded by the clean, clear, very familiar ch-ching of metal parts engaging. Then he squeezed the trigger and the breech-block flew forward, slapped firmly home. Jazz nodded his satisfaction, put the gun on safe and slotted a full magazine into its housing. He handed the weapon to Zek and said: "There, and now you're a power in the world again. I still have six full mags and ammo to refill four of them. That's five apiece. Hardly an armoury, but a sight better than nothing.'

He picked up a grenade and weighed it in his hand. It had a twist-action, ring-pull pin. Packed with high explosive, on detonating the shell would break down into two hundred curved metal splinters, each one scything outwards from the blast at the speed of a bullet. Devastating! Even the most powerful vampire Lord wouldn't stand a chance against one of these. At the very least he'd be maimed, and at best decapitated. Jazz would have used them back in the pass that time, except he hadn't been sure what Arlek's lot had done with the grenades, and anyway his SMG had been more immediate.

Zek dragged his thoughts back to the here and now with: 'Do you want me to tell you about the Lady Karen's aerie?'

Jazz stood up, said: 'Yes, while I bathe. I'm starting to smell like you did the first time we met! Shouldn't look if I were you - it's gruesome in here.' He stripped down to his shorts, took a dive into the water. Then he swam back close to the bank and started washing himself. 'OK,' he said, 'let's hear about these vampire castles. I've a feeling it won't be pleasant, but whatever you consider to be worth the telling

And so she continued with her story...

Karen's Aerie - Harry at Perchorsk

'First of all, let me explain that no human being could ever adequately describe an aerie of the Wamphyri. I don't think our language, or any language of the old world, has the right words for it. Or if there are such words, then the description would become so repetitious - so laced with grisly-sounding adjectives - that the entire exercise would soon become a bore.

That's why I'll tell it as I saw it, like describing a picture or series of pictures, without putting too much emphasis on the grotesque anomalies and abnormalities of the ... but there! - do you see what I mean?

'The Lady Karen's aerie had belonged to Dramal Doombody, and so it has to be fairly representative of all the aeries, or castles if you wish, where they sit atop those fantastic stacks. So let's begin with the stacks themselves:

'As far as I was able to tell they're natural, weathered out from the mountains in their slow retreat. Why the stacks should remain while the earth around them crumbled... I'm no geologist. Maybe they were once the cores of a series of volcanoes, choked with a basalt magma which was tougher than the surrounding cones. The craters have long gone but these titan plugs remain. That's theory, of course, and anyway it doesn't matter. The stacks are real, and since time immemorial the Wamphyri have built their aeries on them.

'But just looking at a stack from a distance, you don't see the entire picture. By that I mean that you don't see the actual stack. It's there, inside the shell, but what you see is that shell, which through the ages the Wamphyri have built around the inner core. So ... the next question has to be: what is this artificial "skin" made of?

'Well, I think the best way to answer that would be to liken a stack to coral on a submarine shelf. The stone is there, and the living coral forms a skin on it, and the skin dies and itself becomes stone. So on the submarine shelf the "skin" is dead coral. And on the stacks... it's dead flesh.

'When an aerie requires repairs or extensions, the Wamphyri breed cartilage creatures whose sole function is to bridge a gap, form a section of wall, roof over a new hall or causeway. Which is to say, their living bodies form the building or repair materials. Except I said "breed" and that's the wrong word. They don't really breed anything, they merely change what already is. They take out of storage a troglodyte, perhaps, or punish a vampir-ized henchman who has been remiss in some way, or maybe steal a Traveller or two from Sunside. All human or sub-human flesh is the same to the Wamphyri. They can take it, change it, mould it to their individual needs. These cartilage things lock themselves in position wherever they're required, die and eventually fossilize there. Being of vampiric origin - having been vampirized - they take a long time to die; maybe they don't die as we understand it, but simply age and become... fixed.

'So what I'm saying is this: when you walk through an aerie, as often as not you're surrounded by the fused, polished bones and the hard, leathery hides of what were once men. And if you look closely enough - which is something you very quickly learn not to do - then you start to recognize the shapes of altered rib-cages, thigh bones, spinal columns and even... but I think you get the picture.

'The Wamphyri can stand extremes of cold. That's not to say they prefer it, simply that they seem inured. Except when under siege, they do heat their stacks with a complicated sort of central heating. Gasses are burned in the base of the stack and the hot air is channelled through pipes - great, hollow bones, usually - to every level. Other pipes carry the gas itself, which may then be burned as required. There are two sources for these gasses.

'Each aerie has its refuse pit. "Refuse" to a Wamphyri Lord can be anything from bodily wastes to wasted bodies. You know what vampires feed on. Well, they're not obliged to (indeed they can go without blood, without sustenance generally, indefinitely) and they do vary their diets with vegetable fibers, various oils, even fruits which are gathered during sundown on Sunside. They have vast storehouses of foods such as these, not to mention larders of suspended troglodytes and Travellers. In this instance, let's consider their "usual" fare.