Somehow the scrawny man had snatched his spear out of the air before it struck. Kuching Kangar stood speechless, stunned. Could such a thing be possible? Should he believe his eyes, or was the whole scene a hallucination, prompted by the lethal aura of Nagaq?
Before he had a chance to ponder that, Kangar observed the old man toss his six-foot spear into the air, reversing it, and catch it, primed for throwing, with the point directed back from whence it came. His feet refused to move somehow, and he was rooted to the same spot when the lance burst through his chest and out his back, below one shoulder blade. The impact knocked him over backward, and he would have fallen, but the three-foot shaft protruding from his back was jammed into the dirt. He screamed as gravity took over and his body started sliding down the wooden shaft by inches, creeping toward a rendezvous with Mother Earth.
He never made it, though, because the elephant stepped forward, following instructions from its master, and a large, round foot came down on Kangar's lower body. His last coherent thought, before eternal darkness, was a quick prayer to the only god he knew.
Avenge me, great Nagaq!
A living nightmare stepped in through the open temple doors. Or rather, hopped in, since the movement was distinctly birdlike, even with the new arrival's bulk and clear reptilian aspect. Remo thought it most resembled re-creations of Tyrannosaurus rex, except that this one had a blunt horn on its snout and bony knobs above each eye. A quick guess made it twenty feet in length, with half of that devoted to a heavy, twitching tail that helped the creature balance on its stout back legs and three-toed feet. The forelimbs looked a bit like chunky human arms, except for the four-fingered hands with wicked claws designed for holding lively prey.
"Ceratosaurus!" Dr. Stock well blurted out. "Extinct since the Jurassic period!"
"Why don't you tell him that?" said Remo, looking for a weapon that would let him keep some distance between himself and what appeared to be one pissed-off prehistoric carnivore.
"This is incredible!"
"You'll think so, while he's snacking on your ass," said Remo, scooping up a fallen spear. It felt more like a toothpick in the presence of their snarling enemy, but it would have to do.
Pike Chalmers recognized the better part of valor, in the circumstances. Dodging to his left, he grabbed a quaking pygmy, scooped him up and threw him at the monster like a basketball. Nagaq, or whatever the hell it was, snapped once and caught the offering in midair, chomping down a time or two before it shook its head and spit the mangled body out.
No sale.
By that time, though, Pike Chalmers had a lead and he was out of there, arms pumping as he ran. The Brit ran true to form. True-blue to himself, that was. Women and children last.
The snarling dinosaur was momentarily distracted by some stragglers from the audience, a couple of them kneeling down to worship him, while others had the good sense to evacuate. The supplicants were first to die, pinned down with giant three-toed feet and shredded with a set of teeth that looked like sharpened railroad spikes. That done, Stockwell's ceratosaurus started checking out the temple, looking for more agile prey.
"We'd better get a move on if we're going," Remo said.
Behind him, Sibu Sandakan and Audrey were intent on emptying the contents of their stomachs, gagging at the sight of mutilated bodies down below. Professor Stockwell stood erect and glassy eyed, as if he had been hypnotized.
"Incredible," he said, and then repeated it for emphasis. "Incredible."
"Unfortunately, we are not inedible," said Remo. "I'm afraid we have to leave right now."
With Audrey's help, he hustled Stockwell off the dais, toward the wings, with Sandakan behind them, bringing up the rear. Nagaq let out a screech that sounded like Godzilla dragging claws across a chalkboard, and you didn't need a special training course on dinosaurs to recognize the sound of big feet slapping on the stonework, gaining on them in a rush.
It would be snack time any moment now, and Remo felt a little like an appetizer, destined to be eaten raw.
One thing about this morsel, though, he thought. Nagaq might choke before getting it down.
Chapter Eighteen
Remo passed the trapdoor up deliberately. They were already short of time, with an alarm in progress, and he didn't care for the idea of getting ambushed on the stairs—or in the winding corridors that led back to the exit, either. It was a deliberate gamble, since he didn't have another way out of the temple readily in mind, but with the rush of tribesmen to escape their hungry god, he reckoned something would present itself.
The natives weren't just running, though. Enough of them still had their wits about them to remember who they were and who they were supposed to serve. Nagaq might be a bit disgruntled at the moment, snacking down on some of their compatriots back in the amphitheater, but what else could be expected from a demented, jungle-dwelling lizard-god? For a believer, it was only logical to think their god would be even more pissed off if it got done with the hors d'oeuvres and found out that its acolytes had let the main course slip away.
A couple of the pygmy types were waiting for them as the party made its way backstage. It felt like lighting children, but in this case both tykes carried six-foot spears and knew exactly how to use them. Remo put himself between the sawed-off warriors and his onetime traveling companions, bracing for the rush he knew was sure to come.
It came.
The runt on Remo's left went with a feint to try to throw him off before the other pygmy made his move straight down the middle. Remo turned the lance into a yardstick with a sharp flick of his wrist, then grabbed the shorter part and used it as a lever, yanked the pygmy close enough to kill him with an open-handed blow against his knobby forehead.
His companion could have run for it and saved himself, but something—call it courage or stupidity—made him stand fast, the spear poised out in front of him as if he were about to prod a hornets' nest. The point was darkened, maybe dipped in something lethal.
Instead of waiting for the pygmy to attack him, Remo went in for the kill, deflected an impressive thrust with no real effort and removed the long spear from his adversary's grasp. He could have let it go at that, but this was life-and-death, no substitutions, no time-outs. He gave the pygmy time to bark Nome kind of curse, a final gesture of defiance in the face of certain death, then ran him through.
Behind him, Audrey grappled with another bout of nausea, the others simply stared.
"Let's go," he said. "We haven't got all night."
They followed him past massive columns, all carved out of jade. The raw material in just one column would have kept a hundred Chinese sculptors busy for a decade, but there seemed to be no shortage where the tribesmen did their shopping.
Tribesmen.
It occurred to Remo that he hadn't seen a woman or a child so far, since entering the ancient city. They were obviously somewhere, but he hoped his luck would hold, remembering that females were among the most ferocious members of some primitive tribes, from early North America to "modern" Venezuela and Brazil.
They reached a spiral staircase leading down to what must be the ground floor near where he entered, though he didn't recognize the stretch of corridor that he could see. He had no trouble recognizing the committee gathered to receive them, though: eight warriors armed with clubs and spears.
"Stay close and watch yourselves," Remo cautioned his companions, starting down the stairs to meet their enemies.
One thing about the locals, while they might be crafty with an ambush in the jungle, they were pitiful on strategy for stand-up fights. If Remo had to guess, he would have said they didn't get much practice, having no real neighbors, but for now he would be satisfied to take advantage of whatever weakness they displayed.
They started up the spiral staircase three abreast, spears held in front of them, prepared to skewer him before he could resist. It would have worked with most opponents—Remo gave them that—but warriors lived or died on their ability to cope with an exception to the rule.
These died.
He stepped between the thrusting spears, gripped one in either hand and used the long shaft on his right to block a thrust from number three, the farthest out of roach. A swift kick dropped the tribesman on his right and left Remo with his weapon. He turned the spear on the others, nailing both of them and leaving them to wriggle like a pair of insects pinned on a dissecting needle.
The survivors were advancing with a bit more caution when a sudden babble in the corridor behind them reached his ears. And Remo saw the women now, God help him, some holding babies, others herding small, misshapen forms in front of them like livestock. They were shouting at the warriors on the staircase, managed to distract a couple of them from the work at hand.
It was enough.
Without another glance, Remo cleared a path like a whirlwind sent by the wrath of God.
Pike Chalmers found his nerve again somewhere between the amphitheater and the deserted courtyard. He came charging through the exit, snapping the neck of a native in his way, looking for a way to save himself. The others had evacuated, though, and that was fine with Chalmers, since he didn't feel like taking on an army when his only weapon was a bloody spear.
His guns were somewhere handy, if he just knew where to look. But he didn't speak the lingo, and they had only met one member of the tribe who had a grasp of English. And from what he saw, across the courtyard, poor Kuching Kangar was well past giving interviews.
Pike guessed the bloody lizard must have had him, though his corpse didn't display the kind of rip-and-render damage common to the others strewed about the courtyard. It would be more accurate to say their former guide looked broken, as if he had fallen from a lofty height, but that made no sense whatsoever, since he lay an easy fifteen paces from the nearest wall.
Forget it, Chalmers told himself. Not your problem.
He was gunning for a dinosaur, without a bloody gun, but now that he had found his guts again, all he could think of was the money he could make from packing home the monster's head—hell, any part of its anatomy at all. Live capture was a hopeless case, and it would take a cargo helicopter to transport the bloody carcass in one piece. Chalmers calculated that the head alone must weigh two hundred pounds or more, but he would settle for a jaw-bone and some bits of skin if he had to. Any egghead worth his salt could tell the specimens were fresh, and if that didn't do the trick, then he would lead them back to view the rotting carcass.
For a hefty fee, of course.
In fact, he saw a whole new profit angle on the site itself. He could run walking tours of the city, point out spots of interest for the visitors who could afford his services. The local wogs would want a piece of it, he realized, and they might cut him out entirely if they started getting greedy. In the meanwhile, though, there should be ample time for him to walk a film crew through the ruins, cut a deal with some fat-cat producer out of Hollywood—hell, why not Steven Spielberg?—for the movie rights.