"Remo, I miss you. Come home soon."
"Thank you," said Remo, and turning to Anna, he asked her about a Tartar encampment between Vladivostok and Kubsk.
She unfolded a map on her imported glass coffee table and drew a circle encompassing thousands of miles.
"These are what we call tribal lands. It is amazing that Chiun knows of them. From the czars to us, every Russian government has allowed these people to live alone the way they wanted in total autonomy. We don't bother them and they don't bother us.
Every year, whatever government is in power delivers massive amounts of grain and feed for their horses. Even if we are starving, we deliver them grain."
"Why?" asked Remo.
"Because we want to be left alone."
"But if they use horses, why are you afraid of them?"
"Because they, Remo, are the descendants of Genghis Khan's horde."
Remo turned up his face. Sinanju knew Genghis Khan. Another military leader. Another bloodsoak-sack-a-city-destroy-a-culture-go-on-with-the-bloodfest military butcher.
"You have some revulsion for Genghis Khan?" asked Anna.
"Not that much. That was someone else's problem, and that problem was taken care of."
As they arranged a flight into the restricted tribal territories, Anna said:
"You might not know this, but Genghis Khan was never defeated in battle. The horde stretched west, overrunning all the Moslem East and driving into Europe before it simply turned back."
"Yeah," said Remo as they boarded a Russian Fox three-seat fighter plane for the great eastern expanses of Russia. "I know. He overran Baghdad against Sinanju's warnings, and we took care of him."
"Genghis Khan died of a heart attack," said Anna.
"I'll show you what I mean when we get there." The pilot was afraid to land his plane on the frozen wastes. He knew the tribal areas of Russia and knew that no pilot ever came back alive. Once, one had bailed out and certain delicate and private portions of his anatomy were left with his uniform at the tribute station.
Remo made the pilot think otherwise by getting hold of the nerves in the pilot's neck and showing him that there were worse things than death.
The pilot made a very bumpy landing. When Anna and Remo climbed out, jumping down to the frozen tundra, he took off immediately, almost crashing because he wanted to get out so quickly. Almost immediately, hundreds of horsemen in fur hats on small ponies appeared in the distance from all directions.
Anna grabbed Remo's hand.
"I'll show you the Genghis Khan heart disease," he said.
As the horsemen got closer, they seemed to drive themselves harder, as though the first to get to the intruders would be able to claim them.
The first horseman extended his hands during the ride, reaching for Remo's head. There was a Mongol game where they would fight for the head of a victim as sport. This sport was later transferred to India, where the British learned it and named it polo.
Remo caught the horseman, lightly plucking the small deadly warrior from the saddle like a ring on a carousel.
He slipped his right hand into the man's chest and through the sternum, feeling his heart collapse, his hand around the upper rib cage, blocking external movements of the heart. The man's eyes popped wide. His mouth opened in desperation, he let out a groan, and then slumped backward, his face contorted, his lips blue.
"Heart attack," said Remo to Anna, dropping the first one. He had to handle the next two simultaneously because they had arrived that way.
On one he scratched markings into the face and crushed the spleen.
"Pox," he said.
On the other, he manipulated the blood vessels in the neck until the warrior was unconscious. "Stroke," he said.
He caught the next, and with deft movement around the rib cage, in a manner Anna could not understand, made the joints swell suddenly.
"My rheumatoid arthritis," said Remo pleasantly. "Good, but not great. Chiun's is absolutely perfect. We can do lots of other diseases but we need time for the heavyweight loss involved."
And time was what they did not have. The invincible horde was just about to close on them from all directions and Anna could not see how Remo could get them out of this one.
Chapter 11
Huak the greater warrior, son of Bar, grandson of Huak Bar, great-grandson of Kar, all of whom traced their lineage to Sar Wa, who himself carried the seven-yak-tail banner of the Great Khan, Genghis himself, had lost none of his horse skills. He had not lost one flickering finger of accuracy with the short bow.
Nor did he fail to understand the gun, which his great-great-grandfather had been the first to capture from the whites.
Huak had the first flintlock taken from a Russian nobleman, whose head was strapped in a bag with a dozen scorpion beetles. He had the Enfield taken from the British troops who tried to help one of the Russian armies during its rebellion. He had the shortnosed submachine guns taken from Russian troops who got lost on their way to the border with Korea.
But his favorite weapon was the short razor-sharp sword that could take the ears off a man before he could hear the words of challenge, lie facedown, and submit.
This sword did the chunky five-foot-two-inch Huak, warrior, brandish before him, lathering his horse to reach the two whites before there was nothing left to attack.
Because Huak had taken the time to command everyone to attack the whites, because he had called out the ancient battle cry, "Let blood honor your swords," because he had been in his own mind too much of a gentleman, there would now be nothing left.
They would already be disemboweled. The ears would be gone. Someone would undoubtedly have plucked the eyes with a dagger, and as for the sexual organs of the two, those would be the first to go. There might not even be a bone left.
That was what Huak would get for being a gentleman, and as he raced his little pony, also a descendant of the horses of the horde, the only army in the world never to lose a battle, Huak the Greater thought: No more Mr. Nice Guy.
But when he was less than a spear's throw away from where the remnants should be, he saw the white man whole, the woman whole, and at least eighteen of his brothers lying peacefully in repose, numbers nineteen and twenty rapidly following suit, and with the great horse skills undiminished since the horde left the Gobi desert to devour everything and everyone in its path, Huak pulled his steed up short, almost breaking its neck.
"Skirah," he screamed, and that meant "spirit." Huak was not afraid of death. He believed that a man killed honorably in battle would live to fight again. Only those who fled from battle died like tow animals. But the spirit that came from the winds, that could snuff his soul and put him in the sleep from which his spirit would never awake-that would torment him for eternity, leave him without a horse forever, without a sword forever, and steal his name so Huak would not even know who he was but be like some grain of sand, nothing, undifferent from any other, unbeing.
A few were not in time to hear his warning about the evil wind spirit, and went to sleep at the spirit's hands. He had brought his pale woman with him, probably also to feast on the souls of those to be made like dust, like sand, like nothing.
Of those gone before the other horses were able to rein in, the number was twenty-two, not dead so much as lost forever.
A young warrior, hearing Huak's command, but thinking there were so many of them that the white man could not possibly dodge a hundred arrows, pulled back his bow in the quick short draw of the bowstring made famous at the gates of Baghdad and at the fringes of Europe.
Huak's knife cut that short with a snap jab into the jugular. The boy fell instantly like an old wineskin spilling its red contents on the tundra.
The boy's father, riding adjacent to the son, saw what Huak had done, and said:
"Thank you, brother Huak." And no more was said. The father understood that if the son had died at the spirit's hands, his soul would be gone forever. Now they could take the body back with them and bury it knowing it was still part of them, possibly returning even in the next birth, a boy of course.