Warren Murphy: Bamboo Dragon

There was a way to do it, Chalmers knew. In Africa, the pygmies hunted elephants with spears and arrows, but they had to hit a vital spot, and sometimes they lost a few men in the process. Chalmers didn't have a few spare helpers, at the moment, so he had to do the bloody job himself.

Which meant he had to get it right the first time, or be damned.

From what he saw and guessed about Nagaq's anatomy, his only hope would be a clean thrust to the brain. That meant he would be forced to go in through an eye, or through the great lizard's palate. The latter angle was a risk, since Chalmers didn't know if reptile skulls were even built the same way as a mammal's, but if that turned out to be his only option, he would have to do his best.

He stepped across a fallen tribesman, knowing he had to get a move on now, before the bloody gargoyles found their guts again and started back to find out what was going on between their lizard-god and any hapless stragglers in the amphitheater. Experience told Chalmers that a tribe of savages could stand for almost anything where their half-baked religion was concerned, and he had no doubt they would go for him before they ever tried to show Nagaq the gate. If he could top the lizard off before they got there, though, he might pick up some points for heroism.

Hell, he might wind up as some kind of a god himself!

A few more yards, and he could smell the damned thing now. More to the point, it caught a whiff of him and turned to face him, big jaws dripping mucus streaked with blood. The rumbling sound that issued from its throat was somewhere in between a belch and snarl.

And when it moved, Nagaq was lightning fast, not slow and plodding like a movie dinosaur. It ran, instead of walking, eight- or ten-foot strides that caught Pike Chalmers by surprise and left him no time to escape. The monster jaws were yawning over him before he even had a chance to raise his spear in lame defiance.

When the five-inch teeth clamped down on his body, there was nothing he could do but scream inside the reptile's suffocating gullet.

Chiun wasn't concerned about the white man who eluded him. It was not his job to protect or punish members of the Stockwell party, and he felt no urge to do so, since he wasn't being paid to baby-sit. He was concerned for Remo, but the Master of Sinanju had faith in his pupil. None of the deformed, pathetic creatures who inhabited this city was a match for Remo, even if they came at him in numbers—but the dragon was another proposition altogether.

It required a Master's touch.

Three tribesmen came around a corner of the temple seconds after the ungainly white man ducked inside, two armed with spears, the tallest of them carrying a bow. The archer nocked an arrow, aimed and fired, his one eye gaping in surprise as Chiun reached out to snatch the shaft in flight and snap it like a toothpick, smiling as he tossed the broken halves aside.

He spurred the elephant and ordered it to charge. The great gray beast responded like a born Korean native, lowering its head and rushing at the savages, a screech of fury rising from its throat.

Chiun's adversaries tried to bolt then, but they weren't fast enough. The elephant was on them, slashing with its tusks and stamping with its big round feet before they could escape. It almost felt too easy, killing this way, but the Master of Sinanju told himself his enemies deserved no better. They were not Korean, after all, and there was not an emperor or king among them worthy of a more elaborate death.

Chiun would save himself to face the dragon any moment now.

He turned his mount back toward the savages' temple, with its open doors. The snarling, snuffling sounds that emanated from inside there told him that the dragon had found something to amuse it and to quench the legendary reptile's thirst for blood. Chiun wondered if the other expedition members had been sacrificed, but didn't really care, as long as Remo wasn't found among the human offerings.

Impossible.

His white adopted son was far too swift and clever for these stepchildren of nature. If a hundred of them tried to corner him, Chiun would bet on Remo to emerge victorious.

But even skilled assassins sometimes made mistakes, Chiun realized, and no one was immortal. It was always possible that one of these creatures would creep up on a distracted Remo from behind and unleash an arrow while his back was turned.

A spark of anger flared inside Chiun, caught on and burst into a flame that seared his heart. No dragon god would save these savages if they were rash enough to harm his chosen son and heir. The very walls of jade would tumble down upon their heads before he finished with this miserable city of the damned. Chiun would wade waist deep in blood and shout his fury at the sky if Remo came to harm.

He caught himself before his mood affected the behemoth he had drafted as his warhorse. It was better to be calm around wild animals, lest excitement drive them mad and make them run amok.

In seconds flat, his pulse and respiration had returned to normal, while the burning fury in his gut was replaced by icy calm. He was prepared to face the dragon, and teach it that a Master of Sinanju had no peers where killing was concerned.

His mount stopped short outside the temple, peering through the open doors, its trunk raised, sampling the gamy air. Instead of trying to retreat, it trembled with a kind of urgency that told Chiun it would fight. A challenge issued from its tiny mouth, the bold note amplified by lungs like giant bellows, summoning the dragon out to war.

A moment later, Chiun beheld the monster's shadow, looming dark across the threshold. He wasn't sure what form it would take, if this one would have wings or blow fire through its nostrils, but he kept his seat and waited for his adversary to emerge.

The creature that appeared a moment later was familiar from a television program Chiun had seen, with Walter Cronkite. It was not Tyrannosaurus rex, but a smaller relative, and the most peculiar thing about it—aside from its very existence—was the pair of human legs that dangled from the monster's wicked jaws.

Chiun saw the blood-soaked khaki trousers, ankle boots, and knew what had become of the ungainly white man who had run inside the temple moments earlier.

With a sharp kick of his heels, he urged his mount to the attack.

The natives were almost ready to defend themselves as Remo vaulted down the spiral stairs. Almost But there is a world of difference, though, between a fit of mindless anger and cohesive strategy in crisis situations. Charging pell-mell toward an unknown adversary doesn't always do the trick. In fact, it can be self-defeating, as his adversaries quickly learned to their regret.

The leader met him with another of their carboncopy handmade spears, the darkened point out-thrust. It snagged a piece of Remo's shirt, but missed his flesh by inches as he went inside the thrust, deflected it and snapped the warrior's neck with an explosive straight-arm shot. The flaccid body tumbled over backward, down the stairs, and set the other tribesmen scrambling as they tried to get out of the way.

They never got the chance.

Still moving, homicidal poetry in motion, Remo closed the gap between them, striking left and right at his discouraged challengers. The tribesmen had already seen four of their comrades die, and while they might have happily retreated, there was nowhere left for them to go, with Death among them, reaching out to touch each man in turn.

One tried to vault the staircase railing, heedless of the drop below, some twenty feet between his perch and the unyielding floor of jade. A punch from Remo helped him get there, snapped his spine just where it joined the pelvis and converted what might otherwise have been an awkward leap into a deadly cartwheel, ending with the warrior's skull exploding like a shattered egg.