that Wratha's plan was to build herself an army, with which to fight off the rest of them when they followed her out of Turgosheim. Or she might even use it to invade Turgosheim in her own right. Except it hasn't worked out that way.
'For now, as individual Lords - and "Lady", of course - they are lessened. Their raiding parties consist of a leader, two or three lieutenants, three flyers at most, and a warrior or two. They daren't keep more than a handful of lieutenants each for fear of treachery, of being usurped! Which has been to our advantage.
'I say again, they've raided Settlement just eight times since that first time, and each raid has cost them dearly! Do you remember the shotgun shells, the tubes of silver shot and black powder which provide the energy and killing substance of our guns? We exhausted them eighteen months ago, fighting off an attack. But then - a miracle! I sent a party of men across the mountains into The Dweller's garden, his armoury. The whole place has fallen into ruins; but in one of the little houses backed up to the wall of the saddle - in a cave at the back, snug and dry under dust and old leathers they found a box of shells. A whole box! Perhaps it was handed out to someone at the time of the battle for the garden, someone who never got the chance to use it. But it was an important find for two good reasons.
'One: we had one hundred and sixty good shells for use as early warning devices - not to mention lethal weapons - against the Wamphyri and their lieutenants. Two: ever since I saw The Dweller's weapons in action, I knew that we must have them. Which is why I've kept old Dimi Petrescu hard at it all these years trying to duplicate that black powder. Now that we had these shells, I could give Dimi a little more of the original stuff to work with. Until finally he succeeded!
'....r almost. Dimi's stuff isn't as good and it doesn't make effective cartridges, but it does make a bang! You remember the giant crossbows in Settlement? We still have them. But we also have rockets, and a lot of them! But dangerous? I've had a man blind himself, and another who blew an arm off. Ah, but on the other hand, when these things work properly, then they really do work! During one raid a year ago - Gorvi the Guile, it was, with a small handful of his lads and a warrior -didn't we make him pay? You can bet your life we did! Just you wait, Nathan, and you'll see! You'll see!
'And we've learned, lad, we've really learned. More than we ever knew before, and faster. Do you know what a flyer is? Certainly, for you flew one here out of Turgosheim. But do you know what a flyer in a pit is? No? Then I'll tell you: a flyer in a pit is a dead thing! Stick a flyer in a hole in the ground and it's useless; it can't launch itself, and has to be dragged free before it can get airborne again. So we dug pits in strategic positions in and around Settlement, with spikes in the bottom to impale their ugly bellies. That worked for a while, until the Wamphyri got the idea. Then they began crashing their beasts onto our houses, and launching them from the rubble. So we made dummy houses, fragile frameworks, with pits underneath! What's more, we left barrels of Petrescu's powder down there, all fused-up and ready to detonate! We've learned how to blast those wormy launching limbs right off them, melt 'em down hissing in their pits, and bury 'em for good when the stink has blown away!' Lardis smacked his lips, found relish in detailing the more gruesome aspects of his defensive systems.
Their warriors are the worst, of course,' he eventually continued, 'but even they are not invulnerable. We used to run from them once, but not any more. If you can get an explosive device into a warrior's gasbag, that's half the battle. And if you can explode oil of kneblasch in there, that's even better! You see, warriors manufacture gas for lift, buoyancy, but when they're on the ground the gas soaks back into their systems and the bladders are retracted. So, if you doctor a warrior's bladders with kneblasch just as he's