A pound of prevention, p.13
A Pound of Prevention, page 13
It was there, carried on the eddies that swirled around the speeding Blazer. The warm scent of rice and hyacinth.
The grass grew high on either side of the long road. As they flew toward it, Remo saw the mouth of a footpath leading through the savannah. It was angled off the main road.
“Stop the truck,” Remo commanded abruptly. The driver twisted to him, a scowl creasing his ruddy face. “We’re nowhere near the village,” he snapped. “Now roil up the damn window.” Remo didn’t listen to him. He reached over with the toe of one loafer and tapped the brake. With a painful squeal of locked tires, the truck slammed to a dust-raking stop.
The men in the rear were flung against the back of the front seat. Only the pressure of Remo’s hand against the driver’s chest kept the man from crashing through the windshield. Even as the men were catching their breath, Remo was slipping the truck into park and pocketing the keys.
“Don’t go anywhere,” he said as he popped the door. It opened onto the foot trail.
On the seat beside him, the driver had already come through the shock of their jarring stop. “Gimme those keys, Yank,” he threatened, rage sparking his dark eyes.
Remo shook his head. “Sorry.” He shrugged. And to keep the men from following him, he fused the driver’s fingers to the dashboard.
While the other two men pulled at their friend—whose hands had suddenly and inexplicably become indistinguishable from the surrounding plastic of the dash—Remo hopped from the front seat and took the path into the brush.
On either side, the swaying grass rose to his shoulders. The gray of dusk raked up from the ground like witch’s claws.
He only needed to walk until the truck could no longer be seen when he came upon the little boy. It looked as if he’d been waiting there for some time. A circle of grass around where he sat on his rump had been crushed flat. The boy had picked much of the dry grass from the area. He had woven it into the shapes of huts, which he’d arranged into a model village. Roads had been carved into the scratched-up dirt. The tiny men he had chipped from small stones stood among the huts.
The boy didn’t even note Remo’s approach, so engrossed was he in play. But when Remo stopped above him, the boy looked up from the town he had built. His brown eyes caught the reflected red of the dying sun.
“I like to fish,” he announced abruptly. “Do you like to fish?”
The non sequitur was certainly not what Remo had expected as the boy’s first words. Remo didn’t know what else to say. The kid was some kind of ghost, but he had the big inquisitive eyes of any normal fresh-faced youth. He found himself answering truthfully almost before he realized it.
“Not really,” Remo admitted. “I like eating them, don’t like catching them.”
“I did.” The boy nodded. “There was a big sea where I lived. I used to like to fish there when I was little. But the fishing was poor, and there was little fish to catch and so the men of the village hired themselves out to warlords and emperors.” Sadness brushed his bright brown eyes. Looking down, he moved one of his little stone men.
The rice-and-hyacinth smell that had led him there was the scent that clung to Chiun’s house back in Sinanju. But for Remo, the words he had just spoken clinched it. Just now the boy had started off talking like any normal child of six, but had taken a turn and lapsed into a rote recital of early Sinanju history.
Sitting on a cushion of grass, the boy moved another stone man next to the first. Remo noted that none of the figures he had made were smiling. All wore the same flat expression. Neither happy nor sad.
As the boy played, Remo crouched beside him. “Who are you?” Remo asked.
At this, the boy’s eyes grew infinitely sad once more. Remo instantly felt guilty for asking the question.
“I am the Master Who Never Was,” the boy replied. “I have been before and if fate so chooses, I will be again.”
Remo shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
The boy scrunched up his button nose. “You don’t? Most grown-ups do. Are you dumb?”
For a moment, Remo seemed at a loss. As he searched for the right words, the boy abruptly pushed away his homemade toys. He scampered to his feet.
“Want to see what I can do?” he asked, his eyes wide with the innocence of youth. Before Remo could answer, the boy held out his two balled fists. “You do it, too,” he instructed seriously.
Remo was surprised at the way the boy stood. It was the light stance used for Lodestones, a training exercise meant only for two full Masters of Sinanju. If the boy wasn’t wrapped in some ghostly disguise that hid his real age, someone of his years should not have advanced so far in Sinanju training.
To mollify the youth, Remo got to his knees before him and mirrored his posture.
“Now, the object is to not touch hands.” His hooded eyes widened. “Do you understand?” He nodded slowly, in an open tone that wasn’t meant to insult.
Before Remo could respond, the boy struck forward.
Remo matched the blow, hands drawn back with the child’s knotted fists. He tracked the tiny hands out and allowed the boy to come at him again, once more mirroring the youth’s darting movements.
“No, you have to come at me, too,” the boy insisted with a frown.
Remo didn’t feel comfortable striking out at a child, even if he was a ghost. But he didn’t want to disappoint the kid. Keeping his movements slow and wide, he threw two broad strokes the boy’s way.
He was surprised to find his actions matched perfectly. It was as if the boy’s hands were locked in orbit around his own. Always near, never touching.
They played Lodestones for a few minutes, their movements growing progressively more complex. The boy seemed lost in the game. While certainly not up to the level of a full Master, Remo was amazed at his abilities. He was far more advanced than he should have been. A child of his age would have been a prodigy in Sinanju.
After a time, the boy finally grew bored.
“I learned that when I was very little,” he announced, dropping his hands. “A long, long time ago.”
“Who taught you?” Remo pressed.
The boy looked him deep in the eyes, tipping his head to one side. “Do you like toys?” he asked. “I wasn’t allowed to have them. But sometimes I snuck away and made some with the other children. Like this.” He picked from his small village one of the stone men he’d made.
When he held it out, Remo was impressed by the detail. The features on the toy man were Asian. “You can have it if you want,” the boy said. When he pressed the figure into Remo’s hand, Remo felt the same unnatural cold he’d experienced at the airport in New York and again on the sidewalk in Bachsburg. There was a total lack of warmth to the boy’s body.
Once he’d closed Remo’s fingers around the figure, he looked up. His eyes were bright. For the first time, Remo noticed flecks of hazel at the brown edges of his irises.
“Sometimes when you look at things, you don’t see them, Remo,” he said, with a wisdom older than his physical age. “Sometimes you have to look from the side to know what it is you’ve seen. It’s almost your time. Be sure when you go to look that you see what you should, not what you want to see.”
He seemed to want to smile. But the ability to do so had been trained out of him long before he’d shucked his corporeal form. Once he was through speaking, the little boy merely put his hands to the sides of his black tunic and allowed the growing night to claim him.
Remo was left alone in the endless soughing plain, a look of confusion seeping across his face. At his feet, the rocks and grass the boy had been playing with still sat. But the woven huts of a moment before were now simple piles of grass. The stone men, once more chunks of smooth gray rock. Remo opened his hand.
A carved Korean face looked up at him.
He slipped the figure into his pocket. Turning from the mashed-down field, he headed back down the path to the waiting Blazer, his face tight with silent reflection.
On a high bluff that looked out over the great, sweeping plains of the Luzu empire, a lone sentry stood.
Behind him, the dead rock mouth of a played-out diamond mine swallowed night shadows. Before him, the gods bled into the vast twilight sky.
Eyes trained keen watched the solitary truck as it traveled the off-road path from Bachsburg. When the vehicle stopped suddenly, the native grew more alert.
A dark figure emerged, vanishing into the tall grass. Dusk was nearly gone by the time he reappeared. After another minute, the truck resumed its stubborn path into the heart of Luzuland.
The sentry watched it come.
One truck. Only a handful of men.
The bright light of the rising moon found no expression on the native’s features.
Spear in hand, the sentry slipped down the round rock face. On bare feet he ran back toward the main Luzu village.
Night descended on Africa like a settling shroud. As the moon yawned full in the star-choked sky, bathing the rolling plains in spectral white, the Blazer headed deeper into Luzuland.
In the truck’s dashboard were ten deep indentations, the shape of the driver’s fingers. Behind the wheel, between hateful glances at Remo, the man flexed each hand in turn, trying to force away the residual numbness.
Unlike the first leg of their journey, Remo’s thoughts had found focus. As they drove, he stared out the windshield, alert to all that was around them.
The old rutted path grew worse. Around him, Deferens’s men bounced and jostled on squeaking springs.
When they had at last traversed the plain and the truck broke through the claustrophobic stretch of dry grass, a rocky expanse funneled them into a string of low hills.
The instant they entered the ravine, Remo was alert to the men crouching high up on the canyon walls. When he looked, he saw dark figures silhouetted against the white glow of the night sky.
One of the men in the back had seen the natives, as well. Eyes growing wide, he scanned the jagged rock line far above. There were dozens of silent Luzus, washed in the black of night. They traced the path of the speeding truck.
“We got company,” the man in back growled, already fumbling over the seat for one of the weapons crates.
It was all he managed to say before the window at his right shoulder shattered in around him and the business end of a hurled spear split his skull just above the ear.
The other man in back screamed.
In the front, the panicked driver spun left and right. “What happened?” he yelled, loosening his grip on the wheel.
The truck immediately pulled wildly to one side, scraping the wall of black stone in a shriek of sparks.
Remo grabbed the wheel, steering them back to the path. “Eyes on the road,” he warned, annoyance in his voice as he watched the natives. “I want to get there in one piece.”
As soon as he spoke, he detected multiple objects rocketing their way. Too many to avoid.
“Oh, great,” Remo managed to grouse just as the windshield shattered at the impact of five hurled spears.
Remo caught the spear that was meant for him by its sharpened nose. A fingernail flick and it clattered harmlessly over into the back. Three more he harvested from the air. Unfortunately for the driver, Remo was too far away to stop the fifth.
The spear pounded the man square in the chest, prying ribs and puncturing lung. Releasing a shocked gasp of air, the driver promptly slumped over the wheel.
The truck was already losing control before yet another spear pierced a front tire. It exploded in a spray of tearing rubber and choking dust. Frayed black sheets flew away in anger as the racing truck dropped and spun.
As the truck whipped sideways, the naked wheel snagged a jagged rock. They went up and over.
In the passenger’s side, Remo folded his arms in quiet irritation as the world spun upside down. Bodies and shattered glass whipped about the cab. The big truck rolled wildly, end over end, along the ravine road, roof and doors buckling as momentum propelled it forward.
Only when they finally crashed and rolled to a creaking, grinding stop, did Remo uncross his arms. “Chiun had better not hear about this,” he muttered to himself. In response, the last survivor in the rear groaned.
Remo ignored the man.
The truck had landed at an angle on its crushed roof. Through the window slits, Remo saw dozens of bare ankles. His ears detected a chorus of thudding heartbeats. Brushing glass from his chinos, he climbed out into the cloud of softly rising dust.
About two hundred warriors encircled the wreck. At Remo’s appearance, spears were raised menacingly. Remo didn’t seem concerned with them in the least.
“You’re all my witnesses,” he said, addressing the multitude. “If anyone asks, I was not driving.” He slapped more dust from the knees of his pants.
Behind Remo, the last of the men who had accompanied him from Bachsburg crawled out into the dirt, a British assault rifle clutched in his shaking hands.
“Mooka bastards!” he screamed.
His finger didn’t have time to brush the trigger before a single spear struck him in the shoulder. It tore straight through flesh and bone, throwing him backward and pinning him to the crumpled hulk of the truck.
When the man opened his mouth to cry out in pain, another hurled spear flew inside it, snapping his head into the Blazer. His body slumped, held in place by the two spears. The gun slipped from his fingers.
Remo turned from the dead man. “Okay, I’m serious,” he said to the Luzu army. “I don’t want you telling anyone I did this, ‘cause I didn’t.”
Chiun had been a real pain in the ass about his driving skills lately. On top of everything else, he didn’t want to take the blame for this latest wreck. In response to his words, a spear flew his way.
When it was a hair from his eyeball, Remo batted it by the shaft. It clattered harmlessly to the rocky ground.
“Cut it out,” he said, peeved. “And since you just killed my guides, I’d appreciate it if you’d take me to wherever Batubizee is.”
At the mention of their chief, another dozen angry spears sailed at him. With unseen swatting hands, Remo lrnocked them all away.
“Listen, I hate to play on my celebrity status,” Remo said as the last spear fell and the first murmurs of concern began to rise from the ranks of the Luzu, “but I am a Master of Sinanju.”
Doubtful expressions blossomed on the faces of the Luzu warriors.
“You lie,” one menaced.
Remo bit the inside of his cheek, wondering how to prove his identity to them. “It’d help if I’d brought my Sinanju decoder ring.” He frowned, glancing around.
When he saw the machete in the hands of a nearby native, a thought suddenly occurred to him. Reaching over, Remo snagged the weapon. To the crowd, it was as if the blade had appeared in his hand by magic. Spears rose menacingly.
“Don’t get your loincloths in a bunch,” Remo grumbled.
He didn’t raise the weapon against any of the Luzus. Instead, he marched around the side of the overturned truck.
Suspicious eyes tracked him as he went.
A door had been ripped off the Blazer in the crash. The bent shape nestled amid a pile of rocks near the wall of the ravine. Raising the machete, Remo slashed it down against the painted panel of the door. With a few rapid strokes, he etched a trapezoid in the steel. A final, single blow brought a bisecting slash mark through the geometric shape.
“There,” Remo announced, turning from the door. “Satisfied?” He tossed the machete back to its owner.
The symbol of the House of Sinanju had the desired effect. Shocked gasps rose from the ranks of the Luzu army.
“Sinanju,” a few men hissed, awed. With growing wonder, they looked on the stranger with the milk-white face.
“Told you,” Remo said. “Now can we shake a leg?”
The Luzus weren’t sure what to do. Although their first impulse was to kill Remo, the symbol of Sinanju was too great a thing to ignore. It was finally decided that they would do as he requested and bring him back to their chief. But given the abilities he displayed, they would treat the intruder with extreme caution.
Shrill whistles called the natives on the hills down into the gorge. They fell in with the rest of the crowd. The entire army began marching through the ravine on foot.
And at the front of the armed horde, prodded with the points of three hundred spears, Remo Williams trudged deeper into Luzuland, a growing scowl on his skull-like face.
Chapter 17
Once fertile land had long since grown arid. In the moonlight were visible the ancient scars of collapsing canals and earthen dams. If water pooled in them at all, it was at another time of year and then purely by accident. Artificial reservoirs that had collected rainwater during the height of the Luzu Empire were now filled with dusty silt and brush.
As the Luzu army led him along a bone-dry canal, Remo took note of the scraggly brown brush growing wild all along its crumbling banks. Beyond the ancient irrigation system, a huge expanse of savannah was charred black—victim of a recent uncontrolled fire sparked by lightning.
Everywhere he looked were remnants of the civilization that had once thrived here.
Arid wells sat in the middle of nowhere. Too perfect tiers on a hillside was proof of steppe farming from another century. As they entered the shantytown that now served as the main Luzu village, Remo saw a huge pile of rocks that had been part of a large stone building. The rock had been cut from an abandoned quarry in the nearby mountains. A sentry had spotted the war party when it was still far off. By the time Remo and his army arrived in the village, the main square was filled with frightened Luzus.
If he hadn’t been depressed already before coming to East Africa, the pathetic Kwa-Luzu capital would have sent him into an emotional tailspin.
The sight of so many distended bellies and malnourished faces filled Remo’s heart with pity. Skeletal faces watched, eyes too big for shrinking sockets, as he was led through the crowd, past rows of crumbling huts and pathetic tin houses. They steered him to a large home near the stone remains of a dried-up well.
