Werewolves were hard to kill regardless of the weapon, and most human guns were made to kill humans.  And it wasn't like there were any silver mines still working.  Never a common metal, the Old People had depleted the easy-to-get mines, and the technology was gone to go deep, and much of their silver was trapped in radioactive hellholes or simply lost.  He was not frightened of guns<i>killing</i>him.  But bullets hurt more than any other weapon humans made - not just pain, but the damage they caused - and in large numbers, they could tear almost anything apart.  These were crap, but even crappy guns were more dangerous than a good sword in the hands of a master swordsman in Geraint's experience.<br/><br/>Geraint had no particular problem with nudity.  When he scouted, he invariably ended up nude for long sections since it made shapeshifting less complicated and his beast eventually destroyed any clothes he might have worn.  Back with the witches, he had left his armor which had been spelled to change with him, and he regretted that absence in some ways, though he moved more swiftly, more quietly without it, carrying just his gunny sack.<br/><br/>There has been a great deal of noise in the fight, and they only barely missed a patrol of gunmen who came from deeper inside the tunnels under the doomed city.  They were human... mostly.  Generations of living cheek-on-jowl with the radiation and mutagenic biohazards of the Old People had changed them.  Useful mutations were rare, grotesque ones common, though about 1 in 5 humanoid mutants had something surprising.  They were ugly by above-ground standards - where mutants were rare and often killed outright - and they were certainly filthy, dressed in the cast-off remnants of the dead world, but armed to the teeth with black powder shotguns and short thrusting swords useful for tunnel fighting.  By stink alone, the werewolves would have ample time to know they were coming, and Geraint climbed into a horizontal shaft above the tunnel that once went to the surface but was now blocked.  Pulling Vara up, the mutants went below them, using flashlights to cut the darkness but not bothering to look up.  People rarely looked up unless something alerted them.  After they were gone, it was easy to drop down, find the side passage that Geraint knew, and move to his hidey-hole.<br/><br/>The spot was an old machine shop for whatever vehicles had passed through the tunnels.  Most of the gear had fallen into rusty ruin, but the room was still well-drained, and dry, except in one corner that had a barrel full of water, the overflow leading to a drain in the floor.  Inside one of the broken machines, Geraint found the emergency stash he'd put away.  Part of the stash was a homemade bucket with a cache of charcoal filters.  He set up a filter, got some water from the barrel, so it emptied into another bucket.<br/><br/>"Water doesn't get radioactive, but there are particles in it," he said.  "There's food packets, too, and dried meat in sealed containers.  Old People containers.  I don't know how they work, but you can put something in it and it gets dryer over time and doesn't get any mold in it."