When Robbie caught sight of the imposing monastery, he slowed his frenzied pace.
Now that he was near his destination he knew he must pause and force his distraught mind to focus on practical considerations. All at once Wallace’s words seemed more rational than they had earlier in the evening.
“ . . . I know your heart is right, but your act could do more harm than good . . .”
He shoved Wallace from his mind. Prayer was not a weapon men like Wang understood or honored. Perhaps God had put Robbie at the mission for just this occasion. Hadn’t God used force over and over in the Bible? This must be another such occasion where prayer had to be supplemented with strength. Maybe God had brought Robbie here so that there would be a man of action ready to intercede when the need arose.
He looked up at the ancient walls a hundred feet above where he stood. Part of the edifice was carved right into the rock of the mountain, giving it the appearance of a fortress rather than a place of contemplation and worship. What a fitting contrast! Robbie thought.
He stepped off the path he had been following. He could not walk right up to the temple gates! Instead, he climbed a more circuitous route, over rock and through brush, hoping to approach the compound unobserved. It was still dark, with an hour or two left before daylight. If he could just sneak into Wang’s hideout, locate where they were holding Hsi-chen, he might be able to get her out and avoid any unnecessary violence.
Wang’s lookouts, however, had been watching for and expecting Robbie. They had, in fact, known of his approach even as he left the village.
When he reached the south wall, Robbie began to assess it for breaches. There had to be another entrance other than the front gates. Slowly he began to walk along the length of the wall. He had not reached its end before three stout figures jumped from the undercover of darkness and laid hold violently on him. With a sudden horrible ache, Robbie knew the truth of Wallace’s words. His madcap flight had been a foolish gesture of knight-against-dragon. But this was no fairy tale. The dragon’s lair would no doubt be his tomb.
Struggling uselessly, he was half carried, half dragged inside the fortress-monastery, then forcefully thrown down in the center of the courtyard at the foot of a statue of some deity he did not recognize, nor care to.
Before he could look up, a searing and shrill laugh, devoid of all humor, rent the night air. It was a familiar sound he had never expected to hear again.
Robbie’s eyes moved in the direction of the sound. Benjamin Pike!
“Oh, laddie,” said the broken-down old sea captain, “how I wish I didn’t know ye so well! But ye showed up jist like clockwork!”
All the questions that came to Robbie’s mind didn’t seem so important just then. Pike was here, that was all that mattered, no doubt in league with these scoundrels. He quickly surveyed his immediate surroundings. It was not unlike the Buddhist temple where he had passed the night several days ago, only this was larger and built on two levels. Glancing up toward the long balcony that skirted the second level, he spied some ten or twelve of Wang’s soldiers heavily armed, positioned along its length. Robbie had imagined Wang’s forces to be larger—as in truth they were, for only a small portion had been dispatched from his main headquarters farther inland. But even though there were fewer than twenty men altogether, the chance of escape seemed hopeless.
Robbie brought his attention back to Pike just as two more men left one of the buildings and approached him. Without having laid eyes on the man, he instinctively knew Wang at first sight.
Robbie pulled himself to his feet, and his three captors fell away. Pike and Pien took their positions on either side of Wang, and the warlord eyed his enemy up and down with a derisive glint in his narrow eyes.
“So this is all the barbarians could spare to rescue their little flower! Ha, ha!”
“You won’t get away with this, Wang!” retorted Robbie. But his empty words of challenge were met only with mockery for his fool’s hope of rescue.
“But you see, I have gotten away with it, as you say!” Wang laughed again, then turning coldly sober, motioned to one of his men.
The next moment another door opened, and two more men emerged, bearing Hsi-chen roughly between them. She appeared pale, even in the lantern-lit darkness, and fragile. But she walked proudly, bearing a strength within her that even these ruthless villains could not daunt.
“What of your feeble rescue attempt now, Wai-chu?” spat Wang.
“Let her go!” begged Robbie.
“Even now you think you may convince me to release my prize, perhaps this time by pleading rather than violence.”
Wang rubbed his beard.
“Hmm,” he mused, “what would the maiden think of her brave barbarian, watching him grovel in the dirt before me, begging for his life?”
“Any coward could make a man grovel, with a dozen guns pointed at him,” returned Robbie defiantly.
“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’ve 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.