Robbie Taggart

by Michael Phillips

  “Ha! I will kill you for such insolence!” shouted Wang.

  A nudge from Pike, who cleared his throat meaningfully, seemed to bring the warlord back to his senses. He stopped to reconsider his strategy.

  “We will soon see who is the coward,” growled Wang. “And my sweet lotus blossom herself will see who is the true man, and to him she will give her loyalties.” He paused, then issued Robbie a challenge: “You want little Hsi-chen, barbarian? Then fight for her!”

  Robbie cocked his head toward the armed listeners. “What kind of fool do you take me for? How can I expect a fair fight from you, much less your living up to your bargain?”

  Even as he spoke, Robbie began to hope that all was not lost yet. For some reason Wang wanted to toy with him. That was fine; it gave Robbie the edge, for Wang was a proud man. And Robbie well remembered the proverb, “Pride goes before a fall.”

  “You stinking, filthy pig!” screamed Wang. “As if I needed those clumsy buffoons to crush a worm such as you into the dirt!”

  He waved an arm at his soldiers and shouted out an order in Chinese. It was instantly obeyed, as with a clatter and shuffle, all weapons were lowered. With a sudden sweep of his arm, Wang pulled his cutlass from its scabbard. Robbie’s original captors retreated, as did Pien and Pike, to the walls—well away from the center of the makeshift arena—the courtyard of an ancient monastery.

  Robbie jumped back, drawing the fisher’s knife in readiness.

  Sword against knife. Though it was a hefty blade of some twelve inches, it was hardly an equitable match. Yet Robbie was swift and daring, and driven by a desperate need to win. But he could not keep from being solely on the defensive, as Wang approached, an evil glint of blood in his thin eyes.

  With amusement showing on his face, Wang came on, thrusting a few tentative strokes toward Robbie, playfully rather than seriously. Robbie dodged, blocking them with his short weapon as best he could. This was a form of defense utterly foreign to one who had grown up knowing how to use his fists. Yet, as instinct had served Coombs on the riverbank, it also came to Robbie’s aid now. What he lacked in experience with blades, he made up for in savvy, a quality of character with which Wang was scantily endowed.

  Suddenly Wang lunged at Robbie’s midsection with his cutlass. Robbie quickly sidestepped the maneuver, though the sword caught the edge of his shirt, slitting a clean gash through it. Another blow came on its heels. Lurching to the other direction, Robbie’s foot caught on a broken stone in the floor and he tripped, falling to the ground. Hsi-chen screamed as with a mighty thrust Wang leaped toward his downed foe. But Robbie rolled to his left, avoiding the near-fatal blow by the merest of inches. While Wang recovered himself from the miscalculation, Robbie jumped back to his feet, and prepared himself for the next attack.

  Robbie steered off with his knife the volley that followed, managing to keep his feet. All was silent except the clang-clanging of steel on steel, mingled with the dusty shuffling of booted feet on the stone floor. With each renewed approach by Wang, Robbie parried the blows with increasing skill. The dark worked to Wang’s advantage, for his blade was difficult to see as it sliced through the air. The longer the battle went, the more Robbie’s chances improved, but he could not keep Wang’s blade from penetrating dangerously toward him. By the time the first hints of the dawn began to show gray in the sky to the east, his shirt was smeared with blood from several damaging gashes, and across one thigh ran a six-inch bloody impression of Wang’s deadly weapon. All it would take would be one split-second lapse in his concentration, and he would be dead. Wang was waiting for that moment to come with cunning expectation.

  Robbie had managed to inflict only minor damage to Wang. The big man handled his sword with great skill, and kept his presence of mind despite his great bulk. As light began to bathe the compound, both men were bruised, Robbie badly cut, and each panting from the exertion that had by now gone on more than twenty minutes. However, the time factor was more seriously telling on Wang, some twenty years Robbie’s elder. The Chinese’s experience served him well, but the white barbarian with nothing more than a knife was a wild man—as the decrepit sea captain had once said.

  All at once, without warning, as if divining the enemy’s thoughts, Robbie charged, taking the offensive and lunging fiercely at the warlord. The change took Wang, lulled momentarily into a slackening of concentration, by complete surprise. Each had been watching the other’s eyes, but Robbie’s gaze probed more deeply into his opponent’s psyche. Almost without realizing it, Wang retreated a step, and in the confusion, lowered his guard for the merest fraction of an instant. Robbie’s swift thrust sliced a deep gash in Wang’s cheek. The bandit reacted with a crazed attack in reprisal. But his frenzy was ill-timed and only played into Robbie’s hand. As he pressed his sword forward, leaning toward his foe, Robbie was in perfect position to step aside and grab deftly at his arm. Gripping it with all his might, he twisted it with a sharp sideways motion. The sword fell with a clanging echo to the stone below. Robbie wrenched Wang to the ground almost in the same motion, and the next instant had his knee rested on the warlord’s chest with the sharp point of the fisher’s knife pressed against the warlord’s throat.

  The fight was over.

  Throughout the fight Robbie had not given so much as a moment’s attention to Wang’s henchmen surrounding him. But now suddenly he heard a clatter all about him as hands were quickly laid to their weapons.

  “Tell them to keep those guns out of sight, Wang!” ordered Robbie through gasping breaths. “And tell your two over here to let the girl go.”

  Wang squirmed as if to test both the man’s sincerity and his strength. But in reply Robbie pressed the knife painfully against its target. The tip broke the skin and a trickle of blood began to flow.

  “I have nothing to lose, Wang! Do as I say or you’re a dead man!”

  Wang shouted the order in Chinese and again it was obeyed. Hsi-chen was released and she ran toward Robbie. Violently he shook his head as she approached. “Go!” he yelled. “Run . . . get out of here—now!”

  She hesitated but a moment, then obeyed, ran across the courtyard to the gates, flinging them wide, then ran from the temple down the path.

  Robbie eased the pressure of his knee against Wang, drew the knife back, and slowly pulled the adversary to his feet. With the knife still held dangerously in place, and with his left arm around his shoulder gripping Wang to the front of his own body, Robbie backed toward the open gate, using the girth of his enemy as a shield against some foolish bandit who might want to raise his position in this den of thieves by killing the interloper.

  When Pike saw that again Robbie had eluded the fate he had planned for him, the last and final bond of his sanity and human control broke. As Robbie began his retreat toward the gate with Wang, steadily eyeing the men on the second level, Pike inched his way toward where the sword had fallen several feet from him. Slowly he retrieved it, then began cautiously working his way around the outside of the courtyard in the opposite direction, remaining all the while out of Robbie’s direct line of vision.

  At the gate Robbie paused. He could take the big man no farther; that would only tempt disaster. Wang’s men still had not moved from their positions, and thus Robbie would have several moments after he released Wang before they could either shoot or make pursuit. He only hoped Hsi-chen had kept running and was well away from this hideous place! There should have been time for her to get halfway down the mountain by now.

  He backed several paces outside the gate, not realizing who was waiting for him there. With a great heave he shoved Wang forward, taking no pleasure in seeing the mighty bandit crumble to his knees, and turned to dash away.

  But as he did he saw the narrow path blocked by Pike, wildly brandishing the blood-stained cutlass in the air.

  “Get out of my way, Ben! My fight’s not with you.”

  “Ye’ve ne’er understood, have ye, laddie?” said Pike with menace in his evil tone. “Ye’v
e never understood what the fight was about!”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ben. Just get out of my way! I’m coming through!”

  Knowing that to pause even a few more seconds would mean certain death, Robbie charged down the hill, doing his best to ward off Pike by waving the knife he still held in his right hand.

  He did his best to twist his way around to the right of Pike, having no intention of trying to do him harm, only trying to get past him so he could flee down the path ahead of Wang’s men.

  But Pike stood his ground, heedless of the knife, heedless of death, heedless of former friendships, thoroughly given over to the madness which had come over him. Clutching the razor-sharp saber in both hands, almost as if the weight were too much for him, he sliced it through the air wildly, his hysterical eyes gleaming with the delirious and maniacal fire of crazed revenge.

  Robbie ran by him unscathed, then, with the words, “Ye son o’ an evil man!” Pike made a final, desperate sweeping gash with the fateful weapon toward Robbie’s retreating form.

  As he reached full stride, Robbie’s swinging arms were extended from his body. The final blow of the saber found its mark just above the wrist of the left hand.

  Every nerve of Robbie’s body exploded in pain. With a terrifying scream of tormented anguish, he looked to see blood pouring from where his left hand had once been.

  “Oh, God!” he screamed, even as his legs continued involuntarily to carry him down the hill. “God, what has happened to me?”

  Behind him he was unaware of Wang’s voice from just inside the compound, “After him, you fools! Get him!”

  “I got him!” yelled Pike, his demented eyes still glowing with sickening dread at his awful deed. “Ha, ha! Got him better’n killing him! Let him go! Let him see what it’s been like all these years! Taking away Robbie Taggart’s strength’s better’n putting a bullet in his heart! Let him go, if the blag’ard don’t bleed to death first! Ha, ha, ha!” A stream of barking laughter rolled from his twisted lips even as the sword fell from his hand.

  Down the path Robbie stumbled, his legs weakening, his brain growing faint, his face white with shock and loss of blood. He could not tell whether he had gone but a few steps farther or a great distance. All gradually slipped into slow and heavy motion, sounds faded from his ears, all about him seemed to be seering light, until finally the pain and shock overwhelmed him.

  The light dimmed, his consciousness faded, and Robbie collapsed into utter blackness.

  Part IV

  Awakening

  51

  Changes

  Great clouds moved across the western sky, glowing around the edges with red and orange and amber as they reflected the setting sun. A storm was making its way inland from the coast. Possibly the tail end of a typhoon. It would hit by tomorrow and release a torrent of rain over Wukiang.

  Rain was good for the newly planted rice. But not a few of the farmers, shaking their heads in concern at the rolling clouds, were already busily testing the soundness of their drainage systems, a maze of ditches designed to carry off the expected surplus.

  Robbie marveled at the perennial quality of the lives of these Chinese country folk. Watching them from atop a little hill about a mile from the village, it was not difficult for him to believe that their revered ancestor had weeded their rice and watched the skies with the same concern. For hundreds, even thousands of years, day in, day out, they walked to their fields and went about their labors—the same fields, the same dirt, the same rice, all underneath the same storm-laden sky. A baby might be born, an old man die, a son leave home. But all these passing incidents were but threads of a slightly different texture woven into the huge, unchanging fabric of life.

  How odd it was, Robbie thought, that he should be reclining on the grassy hillock, thus musing upon the unchangeableness of life. Why should the daily routines of these people so impress him now—not only impress him, but deeply stir him with a kind of envy?

  For young Robbie Taggart—sailor, adventurer, soldier of fortune—all life had been dramatic change. New ports, new people, new journeys, new assignments—he had grown accustomed to a life where his footsteps never retraced the same ground twice. Yet even in his life as a wanderer, as he now reflected on it, he could see that there had been a perennial aspect to it too. Perhaps he was not so different from these farmers as one might have thought at first glance. Even the diversity of his life had contained a certain predictability, a certain unchangeableness.

  But everything was different for Robbie now.

  Almost against his will, his eyes wandered to the empty end of his sleeve. He shuddered, as he always did, wondering if he would ever get used to it, hating it, wanting desperately to ignore it. But how could you ignore such a horrible reminder that you were different, maimed, grotesque in the eyes of others—that life would never again be the same?

  When he first learned his fate, he only wanted to die; and that attitude remained even after the days of weakness, delirium, loss of blood and nausea subsided and his strength returned. Why couldn’t Coombs have just left him on the mountain road where he and Hsi-chen had found him, rather than trying to stop the bleeding long enough to load him into the rickety old cart? He was already unconscious; if they hadn’t found him, he’d have died a painless death, if not from loss of blood, then from Wang’s sword through his heart. In either case, the pain for Robbie would have been over.

  But they had found him, had somehow managed to get him loaded before Wang’s men arrived, and kept him alive long enough to lay him out on Wallace’s operating table, where the doctor had saved his life. At first he had cursed the doctor for sending Coombs to follow him, for rescuing him from the jaws of death. Dr. Wallace had calmly told him that he was experiencing a natural reaction and that soon he would come to accept his loss. He bore not a trace of self-righteousness, only tenderness and understanding and compassion—which at first had made his words and his presence all the more impossible to tolerate. Robbie had been in a hateful mood and wanted an excuse to despise Wallace all over again. But the good doctor had given him none.

  Since then three weeks had somehow inched past. But still the gnawing ache remained. Not the weird pain, as if his fingers still throbbed, of the itch that his right hand unconsciously sought to scratch only to find nothing there—phantom feelings, Wallace had called them. No, the ache that plagued him was of a deeper, an even more frightening quality.

  For a man in love with life, it was sheer terror wondering if he could go on another day. Every morning he had to face his unendurable fate all over again, asking himself over and over: could he survive another twenty-four hours?

  He had survived. His presence here on the hill was witness to that. And though he dreaded tomorrow, he knew it would come also. Each day would come, one upon the other, just as it did in continuing cycle for these Chinese peasants. It was a fact he had to face—and accept.

  He had to ignore that cursed voice that kept telling him he was no longer a man. When that voice came, he could only focus on what he wasn’t, what he no longer could do. The voice told him that people would stare at him the rest of his life as a freak, as an incomplete human being. The voice told him he would never sail again, or if he did, it would only be as a result of the courtesy of some compassionate skipper. The voice told him he could no longer carry his own weight, no longer protect himself, no longer fight for what he believed in.

  But was his entire existence wrapped up in one hand?

  He tried to shake the probing question from his mind. Over by one of the streams, a tributary of the K’uan-chiang, an unskilled boatman was having difficulty with the small bamboo sail of his junk. The wind had picked up considerably in its effort to usher in the storm, and the young sailor had not trimmed his sail in time. It was now stubbornly refusing to obey his inexperienced hands—his two hands.

  Wherever he looked, Robbie could not shake off the sudden new quandaries of his life. One way or another, so
oner or later, he was going to have to look them squarely in the eye and deal with them. He had begun to realize that. Yet still he put it off.

  Wallace told him he did not have to face his future alone. There was a God, a Lord if he would make him that, who was very near, who was listening to the cries of his heart, who was waiting with outstretched arms to welcome him into a future of purpose and wholeness.

  But what did “wholeness” mean to one like Robbie? How could he now lean on God to support his own faltering being without admitting that he was not whole, that he now needed the crutch of a Savior, something he had always prided himself that he didn’t need?

  He had to smile at the question. It was not, however, one of Robbie’s open, infectious grins. They came seldom these days. This upward twisting of his lips more resembled one of the Vicar’s bitter, sarcastic smirks. The reason for this rare attempt at mirth was his growing familiarity with the subject of dependence. Miss Trumbull or Shan-fei (Hsi-chen had the good sense to defer to others in these tasks) had to cut his meat and spread the butter over his bread for him. Thomas or Ying had to tie his shoes, and Wallace was still struggling to teach him to button his own shirt with only one set of fingers.

  Dependence . . . ha! Why should he quibble over such a thing anymore? He needed people now—he was helpless! So why not need a God, a Savior, too? Why not admit it—proud though he had once been? He needed a crutch now!

  When several weeks ago he had been thinking so much about what being a Christian might mean, he had still conceived of it primarily as a mental process. He had heard Wallace tell him that belief meant to trust fully. Yet still he envisioned his own potential coming to faith on his own terms—as active and vibrant. Now it seemed, he must come crawling to God, helpless, weak, with nothing but half a body to offer.

  “Oh, God!” he cried out to the stormy heavens, “what am I to do?”

  Then as if in answer to his unintentional prayer, voices from the past weeks flooded into his thoughts. Wallace and Coombs and Hsi-chen had poured their lives and knowledge into him—and their prayers too, though he had not seen that aspect of it. By their words they had given him the key to all his questions, though it was only now, with hindsight clarified by his present suffering, that slowly the pieces of the eternal puzzle began to fit together in his anguished heart.