Warren Murphy: King's Curse

DeJuin raised his hand slightly in a small gesture, careful not to call attention to himself.

"And let the fun begin," he said.

"There is someone in that window, Remo," Chiun said.

"I know. I saw."

"Two persons," Chiun said. "One young, one old." He was interrupted as a voice rang out over the maze. It echoed and seemed to come from all around them.

"Help. Help." And then there was a scream.

"That's Bobbi," Remo said.

"Yes," said Chiun. "The voice came from over there." He pointed at the wall of the hedges, in the general pilot's direction of ten o'clock.

Remo broke away into a run. He let Valerie go. She was unsure of herself, but suspecting she was safer with Remo than away from him, she ran after him.

As deJuin watched from the window, he saw something that even later he would find difficult to believe.

The old Oriental did not run after the white man. He looked around him, then raced into the hedge to his left. DeJuin winced. He could imagine what the prickers and thorns were doing to the old man's flesh. Then the old man was in the passageway on the other side of the hedge, moving across the six feet of gravel and charging again into another of the five-foot-thick growths of shrubs. And then he was through that, too.

"Help, Remo, help," Bobbi's voice came again.

When the maze was built, it had been designed around a small central court, and Bobbi Delpheen was there. She was tied to a high marble bench. Her tennis shirt had been ripped open and her bare breasts were exposed.

Behind her stood two men wearing the yellow feather robes. One held a wedge of stone, its two edges chipped into a knife blade.

They stood looking down at her, and then they looked up. Coming through the hedge directly facing them was a small Oriental in a golden robe.

"Hold," he called. His voice rang out like a whipcrack.

The men froze in position momentarily, then both turned and fled into one of the pathways leading away from the central court. Chiun moved to the side of the girl, whose arms and legs were tied to the corners of the bench.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes," Bobbi said. Her lips trembled as she spoke.

She looked up at Chiun then past him as Remo suddenly raced into the clearing. A few paces behind him came Valerie.

Chiun flicked at the ropes binding Bobbi's wrists and ankles and they fell away under his fingernails.

"Is she all right?" Remo asked.

"No thanks to you," Chiun said. "It's all right that I have to do everything around here."

"What happened?" Remo asked.

"She was here. The feathered men fled as the Master approached," Chiun said.

"Why didn't you chase them?" Remo asked.

"Why didn't you?"

"I wasn't here."

"That was not my fault," Chiun said.

Bobbi stood up from the marble slab that served as a bench. Her tennis shirt hung open and her bosom jutted forward.

Oblivious to that, she rubbed her wrists, which were red and chafed.

"You'll never be a tennis player," Remo said.

Bobbi looked up, startled. "Why not?"

"Too much between you and your backhand."

"Cover yourself up. That's disgusting," Valerie shrieked-again proving that beauty is in the eye of the beholder "and that "disgusting" is a 38-C being viewed by a 34-B.

Bobbi looked down at herself as if at a stranger, then took a deep breath before pulling her shirt closed and tucking the ends into the waistband of her torn shorts.

"Did they hurt you?" Remo asked.

"No. But they… they were going to cut my heart out." The last words came out in a gush, as if speaking them slowly would have been impossible, but there was less horror in haste.

Remo glanced toward the house. "Chiun, you get these girls out of here. I'm going after those two canaries."

"Girls?" shouted Valerie. "Girls? Girls? That's patronizing."

Remo raised his left index finger in a caution. "You've been a very good girl up until now," he said. "Now if you don't want your jaw patronized by my fist, you'll shut off that perpetual motion machine you call a mouth. Chiun, I'll meet you at the car."

Behind him, deJuin heard the two men in feathered robes enter the room. Without looking, he waved them forward to the window. "This will be good now," he said.

The four men leaned forward to watch.

"Be careful," Chiun said to Remo.

"You got it," Remo said.

He turned, but before he could take a step away, the corridors of the maze resounded with a deep angry baying. The sound was answered by another howl. And another.

"Oh, my god," said Valerie. "There are animals here."

"Three," said Chiun to Remo. "Large."

The baying changed now into angry excited barks that moved closer.

"Take the girls, Chiun. I'll watch the rear."

Chiun nodded. "When you leave," he said, "place your left hand against the wall. It will bring you back the way you came."

"I know that," said Remo, who did not know that.

Chiun led the girls away down one of the gravel paths leading from the central courtyard.

The barking was louder now, growing more frenzied. Remo watched as Chiun and the two women hurried down the passageway, then turned left and vanished from sight.

Along one of the paths to the right, Remo caught his first glimpse. It was a Doberman Pinscher, black, brown, and ugly. His eyes glinted savagely, almost taking on a blood-red glow, as he saw Remo standing in front of the marble slab bench. Behind him came two more Dobermans, big dogs, one hundred pounds each of muscle and teeth that glistened white and deadly, like miniature railroad spikes covered with dental enamel.

When they all saw Remo, they drove forward even faster, each trying to be first to get to the prize. Remo watched them coming, the most savage of all dogs, a breed created by intermingling other dogs selected for their size, their strength, and their savagery.

They moved together now in a straight line, coming at Remo shoulder to shoulder, like three tines of a deadly pitchfork.

Remo leaned back against the marble slab.

"Here, poochie, poochie, poochie," he called.

Remo moved a few feet farther to his right, away from the path Chiun and the women had taken. He did not want the dogs to be diverted from him and go off chasing a random smell.

With one final growl delivered almost in unison, the three Dobermans moved into the clearing. They crossed the space between themselves and Remo in just two giant strides, and then they were in the air, their muzzles close together, their hindquarters separated, looking like deadly feathers attached to an invisible dart.

Their open jaws all went for Remo's throat.

He paused until the final instant, then moved down under the three soaring dogs.

He sent the center one up over his head with his shoulder. The dog did a slow, almost lazy flip in the air and landed on its back on the marble slab with a splat. He yelped once, softly, then slid-off onto the gravel on the far side.

Remo took out the dog on the right with an upward thrust of the bent knuckle of his right middle finger. He had never struck a dog before, and he was surprised at how much a dog's belly felt like a man's belly.

The results of the stroke were the same, too, as with a man. The dog dropped dead at Remo's feet.

The Doberman on the left missed Remo, hit the marble slab, skidded on its paws, fell off the slab, scrambled to its feet again, and turned back with a snarl toward Remo, who was backing away.

He came through the air at Remo just as Remo decided he did not like killing dogs, even Dobermans who would gladly kill him just to keep their teeth cavity-free.

As the dog's massive head turned to the left so its powerful open jaws could encircle Remo's throat, Remo leaned back, pulling his neck away, and the jaws closed harmlessly with a loud click as tooth surface contacted tooth surface.