Bamboo Dragon td-108

by Warren Murphy

  "No time for a recap," Remo told him. "Do your legs work?"

  "Pardon me?"

  He reached down and snapped the ropes that shackled Stockwell. "Can you run like hell?"

  "I think so. Yes."

  "Be ready, then. We haven't got much time."

  "I understand."

  He moved on to the next in line, freed Sibu Sandakan. Pike Chalmers glared at Remo, stubborn pride at war with the survival instinct, but he didn't pull away when Remo stepped around behind him, pulled the ropes apart as if they were flimsy threads.

  And he saved Audrey for the last, unfastening the rope around her ankles, hesitating for a beat before he freed her hands and helped her to her feet. She wore a dazed expression, no defiance visible as he took her by the arm and steered her toward the trapdoor in the stage.

  "This way," he urged the others.

  "Sod that!" Chalmers snapped. "Those bloody wogs have got a thing or two to answer for. They have my rifle and my trophy, Dr. Ward, and I'm not leaving here without the lot!"

  That said, he leaped down from the stage and sprinted toward the exit, bowling over several of the pygmy types who blocked his path. He made it halfway there before a giant, looming shadow fell across the threshold, blotting out the night.

  "My God, what's that?" asked Audrey.

  Down below, the natives were yammering, "Nagaq! Nagaq!" Some of them knelt and pressed their foreheads to the floor, while others scattered for their lives.

  "It can't be!" Dr. Stockwell said. "What's that… ?"

  "I don't know," Remo said, "but something tells me we're about to meet the big kid on the block. And from the sound of it, he's pissed right now."

  Chiun was still a half mile from the hidden city when he heard the drums, a muffled, throbbing beat that seemed to give the very jungle life. His huge mount hesitated, grumbling, but plowed ahead when he dug his heels in, snapping orders in his most authoritative tone. It made no difference what he said; he could have shouted, "Dog shit! Saxophone!" for all the pachyderm would know. It was the tenor of his voice, the aura of command, that left the Master of Sinanju in control.

  It had been simple to follow his quarry once he steered the elephant back to the trail and got it headed eastward. Even in the darkness, he could easily keep up with twenty men who took no pains to hide their tracks. They may as well have blazed the trees or planted signs along the way to guide him.

  Chiun had been concerned at first, in case their seeming negligence turned out to be a ruse, some crafty scheme to undermine his vigilance, prepare an ambush, but he quickly put his mind at ease.

  The men he stalked were clumsy idiots.

  The drumbeats told him that, if nothing else. Chiun could only marvel that the tribe hadn't been hunted down much sooner, since they were so careless with security. Of course, they dealt primarily with whites and Malays, which would make a difference. If a Korean had come looking for them, all the world would know their secrets now.

  A quarter mile before they reached their destination, Chiun's mount was distracted by a new scent on the trail. It was a gamy, pungent odor that reminded Chiun a little of the snake farm he had visited in Bangkok years ago.

  The elephant was trembling, scuffing at the ground with giant feet, but there was less fear than anger in its attitude. Chiun urged it forward, and the beast responded with the barest hesitation, trotting faster as the unidentified reptilian scent intensified. Its trunk was raised as if to trumpet out a challenge, but the only sound that emanated from its throat was the warm huffing of its breath.

  Chiun wasn't surprised at the appearance of the ancient city. It made perfect sense, considering the circumstances, and he knew now where the rhythmic sound of drums was coming from. At first glance, he was worried that the looming outer wall might be a problem—not for him, of course, but for the elephant—until he saw the wooden gates, wide open in the moonlight.

  Human figures milled about the open gates, as if they couldn't make their minds up whether to remain or flee. Chiun urged his elephant to greater speed, bent forward, with his hands braced on the giant's leather scalp until the gap had closed to fifty yards. Then something roared inside the city walls, a primal sound of rage and hunger from a set of massive vocal cords.

  The dragon? What else could it be?

  Chiun's elephant stopped short on hearing that, and actually backed up several yards before he could assert control. He thumped a fist on the behemoth's skull, not hard enough to damage anything, and dug in with his heels once more. The elephant resisted for another fleeting moment, but its will posed no real challenge for the Master of Sinanju. Finally, reluctantly at first, but then with greater energy, it moved ahead.

  The natives clustered at the gate were unaware of Doom advancing on flank, until the elephant raised up its trunk and blared a challenge to the night. The tribesmen turned at that, and Chiun confirmed what he had surmised already from a number of their tracks. They were deformed, most of them, with a solitary normal-looking man who stood back and deferred to the grotesques. There was no time to speculate on how they got that way, no pity in Chiun's heart when three of them stood fast instead of taking to their heels as any sane man would have when confronted with a charging elephant.

  The beast crushed two of them beneath its tree-stump feet before they had a chance to launch their spears in self-defense. The tallest of the three screamed once as he was lifted with the trunk coiled tight around his rib cage, emptying his lungs. Instead of goring him, the elephant released him with a quick toss of its head that flung him headfirst toward the wall. There was a crunch on impact, and his lifeless body tumbled ten or twelve feet to the ground, where it lay twitching in the mud.

  The gates were tall enough that Chiun wasn't required to duck as they passed through. Where he had expected sentries on the wall, it was deserted. Something had distracted them before the Master of Sinanju put in his appearance, and the sound of human screams, with loud snarls overriding them, led him in the direction of the battle.

  Maybe not a dragon, thought Chiun, but it was something he had never seen before, and that alone could make the trip worthwhile.

  The Master of Sinanju spurred his mount to greater speed, his lips turned upward in a beatific smile.

  Kuching Kangar hadn't been with his brothers in the Hall of Ceremony when Nagaq arrived. It was forbidden lor the normal ones to take direct part in a sacrifice, since they weren't considered pure. It galled him sometimes when he thought of the humiliation he endured to serve Nagaq, but it wasn't his place to argue with tradition.

  Not when it could get him killed.

  Still, none of them had counted on Nagaq appearing in the flesh. Nagaq always waited for the sacrificial offerings to be prepared and taken outside, to a clearing where the stakes were planted. You could hear it from the City, growling as it fed, bill there were few among the tribe who claimed that they had actually seen the dragon god. The chief, of course, and several of his close advisers, but no one else.

  Tonight was different, somehow. Perhaps Nagaq was hungrier than usual, or maybe it could tell they had three offerings instead of one. Kuching Kangar could no more read a god's mind than he could predict the future, but tradition told him it would mean something momentous for the tribe if great Nagaq should ever deign to come inside the City.

  From the sound of things, momentous massacre would be more like it. Great Nagaq was surly at the best of times, but if its snarls were any indication, then it must be positively rabid at the moment. Men were screaming in the courtyard, some of them in mortal pain, the rest in fear.

  Kuching Kangar, emerging from his quarters, was uncertain how he should react. There had been no rehearsals for this moment, nothing to prepare them for a house call from the forest god.

  He frowned and took his spear along for comfort.

  Just in case.

  A hundred yards separated Kangar's sleeping quarters from the courtyard of the shining fountain. There was no sign of Nagaq when he arrive
d but there were several bodies—and parts of bodies—scattered in the courtyard, as if some gigantic child had run amok and torn his toys apart. Fresh blood was everywhere, its sharp, metallic scent strong in the night.

  Where was Nagaq?

  The temple doors were open, wild screams issuing from those inside. The drums were silent now, but something had replaced their background noise. A rumbling sound, much like the purring of a giant cat.

  The whisper of Nagaq.

  Kuching Kangar was moving toward the temple when a babble of excited voices from the gate distracted him. A small group of his fellow tribesmen had collected there, wanting to flee the City, but something seemed to block their way. As Kangar stood watching, he was treated to a new and wholly unexpected sight.

  An elephant came through the gate, trunk furled, tusks flashing in the moonlight, bellowing a high note to announce itself. Astride the gray behemoth's neck, a slight man with snow white puffs of hair and flowing robes sat watching with a smile as his mount trampled one of Kangar's brothers, then scooped up another with its trunk and flung him far across the courtyard.

  Great Nagaq would have to wait. This stranger had the gall to trespass in the City with his elephant, slay members of the tribe as if they were insects. It was every tribesman's duty to defend their sanctuary from the Outside, make sure the secrets of the City were preserved for future generations. Even normal members of the tribe, excluded from its sacred rituals, were still expected to lay down their lives, if necessary, for the common good.

  Kuching Kangar knew what he had to do. He didn't hesitate, but took a firm grip on his spear and charged directly toward the elephant, lips drawn back from his sharp white teeth as he unleashed a fearsome battle cry.

  He couldn't kill the elephant, perhaps, but that wasn't important Given time, sufficient spears and arrows, they would bring it down or chase it back into the forest. No, it was the man who mattered, one who could betray their secret to the Outside.

  The toss was perfect. He could actually see the spear arc toward its target, silent, deadly—

  No!

  Somehow the scrawny man had snatched his spear out of the air before it struck. Kuching Kangar stood speechless, stunned. Could such a thing be possible? Should he believe his eyes, or was the whole scene a hallucination, prompted by the lethal aura of Nagaq?

  Before he had a chance to ponder that, Kangar observed the old man toss his six-foot spear into the air, reversing it, and catch it, primed for throwing, with the point directed back from whence it came. His feet refused to move somehow, and he was rooted to the same spot when the lance burst through his chest and out his back, below one shoulder blade. The impact knocked him over backward, and he would have fallen, but the three-foot shaft protruding from his back was jammed into the dirt. He screamed as gravity took over and his body started sliding down the wooden shaft by inches, creeping toward a rendezvous with Mother Earth.

  He never made it, though, because the elephant stepped forward, following instructions from its master, and a large, round foot came down on Kangar's lower body. His last coherent thought, before eternal darkness, was a quick prayer to the only god he knew.

  Avenge me, great Nagaq!

  A living nightmare stepped in through the open temple doors. Or rather, hopped in, since the movement was distinctly birdlike, even with the new arrival's bulk and clear reptilian aspect. Remo thought it most resembled re-creations of Tyrannosaurus rex, except that this one had a blunt horn on its snout and bony knobs above each eye. A quick guess made it twenty feet in length, with half of that devoted to a heavy, twitching tail that helped the creature balance on its stout back legs and three-toed feet. The forelimbs looked a bit like chunky human arms, except for the four-fingered hands with wicked claws designed for holding lively prey.

  "Ceratosaurus!" Dr. Stock well blurted out. "Extinct since the Jurassic period!"

  "Why don't you tell him that?" said Remo, looking for a weapon that would let him keep some distance between himself and what appeared to be one pissed-off prehistoric carnivore.

  "This is incredible!"

  "You'll think so, while he's snacking on your ass," said Remo, scooping up a fallen spear. It felt more like a toothpick in the presence of their snarling enemy, but it would have to do.

  Pike Chalmers recognized the better part of valor, in the circumstances. Dodging to his left, he grabbed a quaking pygmy, scooped him up and threw him at the monster like a basketball. Nagaq, or whatever the hell it was, snapped once and caught the offering in midair, chomping down a time or two before it shook its head and spit the mangled body out.

  No sale.

  By that time, though, Pike Chalmers had a lead and he was out of there, arms pumping as he ran. The Brit ran true to form. True-blue to himself, that was. Women and children last.

  The snarling dinosaur was momentarily distracted by some stragglers from the audience, a couple of them kneeling down to worship him, while others had the good sense to evacuate. The supplicants were first to die, pinned down with giant three-toed feet and shredded with a set of teeth that looked like sharpened railroad spikes. That done, Stockwell's ceratosaurus started checking out the temple, looking for more agile prey.

  "We'd better get a move on if we're going," Remo said.

  Behind him, Sibu Sandakan and Audrey were intent on emptying the contents of their stomachs, gagging at the sight of mutilated bodies down below. Professor Stockwell stood erect and glassy eyed, as if he had been hypnotized.

  "Incredible," he said, and then repeated it for emphasis. "Incredible."

  "Unfortunately, we are not inedible," said Remo. "I'm afraid we have to leave right now."

  With Audrey's help, he hustled Stockwell off the dais, toward the wings, with Sandakan behind them, bringing up the rear. Nagaq let out a screech that sounded like Godzilla dragging claws across a chalkboard, and you didn't need a special training course on dinosaurs to recognize the sound of big feet slapping on the stonework, gaining on them in a rush.

  It would be snack time any moment now, and Remo felt a little like an appetizer, destined to be eaten raw.

  One thing about this morsel, though, he thought. Nagaq might choke before getting it down.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Remo passed the trapdoor up deliberately. They were already short of time, with an alarm in progress, and he didn't care for the idea of getting ambushed on the stairs—or in the winding corridors that led back to the exit, either. It was a deliberate gamble, since he didn't have another way out of the temple readily in mind, but with the rush of tribesmen to escape their hungry god, he reckoned something would present itself.

  The natives weren't just running, though. Enough of them still had their wits about them to remember who they were and who they were supposed to serve. Nagaq might be a bit disgruntled at the moment, snacking down on some of their compatriots back in the amphitheater, but what else could be expected from a demented, jungle-dwelling lizard-god? For a believer, it was only logical to think their god would be even more pissed off if it got done with the hors d'oeuvres and found out that its acolytes had let the main course slip away.

  A couple of the pygmy types were waiting for them as the party made its way backstage. It felt like lighting children, but in this case both tykes carried six-foot spears and knew exactly how to use them. Remo put himself between the sawed-off warriors and his onetime traveling companions, bracing for the rush he knew was sure to come.

  It came.

  The runt on Remo's left went with a feint to try to throw him off before the other pygmy made his move straight down the middle. Remo turned the lance into a yardstick with a sharp flick of his wrist, then grabbed the shorter part and used it as a lever, yanked the pygmy close enough to kill him with an open-handed blow against his knobby forehead.

  His companion could have run for it and saved himself, but something—call it courage or stupidity—made him stand fast, the spear poised out in front of him as if he were about to pro
d a hornets' nest. The point was darkened, maybe dipped in something lethal.

  Instead of waiting for the pygmy to attack him, Remo went in for the kill, deflected an impressive thrust with no real effort and removed the long spear from his adversary's grasp. He could have let it go at that, but this was life-and-death, no substitutions, no time-outs. He gave the pygmy time to bark Nome kind of curse, a final gesture of defiance in the face of certain death, then ran him through.

  Behind him, Audrey grappled with another bout of nausea, the others simply stared.

  "Let's go," he said. "We haven't got all night."

  They followed him past massive columns, all carved out of jade. The raw material in just one column would have kept a hundred Chinese sculptors busy for a decade, but there seemed to be no shortage where the tribesmen did their shopping.

  Tribesmen.

  It occurred to Remo that he hadn't seen a woman or a child so far, since entering the ancient city. They were obviously somewhere, but he hoped his luck would hold, remembering that females were among the most ferocious members of some primitive tribes, from early North America to "modern" Venezuela and Brazil.

  They reached a spiral staircase leading down to what must be the ground floor near where he entered, though he didn't recognize the stretch of corridor that he could see. He had no trouble recognizing the committee gathered to receive them, though: eight warriors armed with clubs and spears.

  "Stay close and watch yourselves," Remo cautioned his companions, starting down the stairs to meet their enemies.

  One thing about the locals, while they might be crafty with an ambush in the jungle, they were pitiful on strategy for stand-up fights. If Remo had to guess, he would have said they didn't get much practice, having no real neighbors, but for now he would be satisfied to take advantage of whatever weakness they displayed.

  They started up the spiral staircase three abreast, spears held in front of them, prepared to skewer him before he could resist. It would have worked with most opponents—Remo gave them that—but warriors lived or died on their ability to cope with an exception to the rule.