And with every stab, Wang seemed to kiss his forehead with a prickly thing.
The Wissex realized Wang was making a mark on his forehead with his teeth. He felt hot blood cloud his vision and then he was flailing wildly into air. But such were the powers of this Korean that even when Wissex had seen, he could not touch.
He dropped his knife and waited to die.
But he did not die.
"Go ahead and kill me, you pointy-eyed son of a plagued she-cow," said Wissex.
And Wang laughed again.
"If I kill you, others of your family will return- for that is the business of your family, to seek gold for strength of singular arms. And then I will have to kill them, for all they will know is that none
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return and it will take generations before the message gets through. Now you can know and tell. I have placed the mark of my kimono on your forehead. Stand back. It is not for you."
"But I cannot see your kimono. I am blinded by blood."
"When the wound heals on your forehead, you will see the mark in your mirror. It is the same as on my kimono. And do not use that smelly wound poultice you carry. It almost made me retch as I circled you all the way from Burma."
"It's a good poultice. A third of the wounds heal perfect!"
"It is an awful poultice," Said Wang. "Two out of three die from it." And from mosses, he pressed a new poultice upon the wound and within three days it had healed miraculously leaving only the faint red outline of the House of Sinanju.
And that was the last Wissex to bear arms in Asia.
Thus spoke Uncle Pimsy, taking his nephew Neville to a secluded room in Wissex Castle. There, in an old dusty painting, was the Wissex who had ventured into the realm of the Thais.
And on his head was a faint mark.
It was the same mark borne by the agent back from the Yucatan, the agent who had suffered his cut in moves he did not see, as a warning.
"Sinanju lives," said Uncle Pimsy, desperately clutching Neville's arms. "Run, lad. Save the House of Wissex. They've spared us again."
But Neville was thinking. What Uncle Pimsy had told him was apparently that the Sinanju peo-
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pie, whoever they really were, were still confined to hand-fighting. No weapons. And they might not have faced any sort of modern technology. Really modern.
"What are you thinking, lad?" asked Pimsy.
"Nothing."
"For God's sake, Neville, do not challenge the awesome magnificence of the House of Sinanju. Withdraw from this foolish scheme to fleece this Moombasa creature. Return to the old days. To British steel. To honest labor."
Uncle Pimsy was squeezing Neville's arm a bit hard. This part of the castle had always been uncomfortable and Uncle Pimsy was so close that his drool was reaching the cuff of his afternoon suit. Any closer and Pimsy might be on Neville's tie.
"Go piddle a poodle, Pimsy," said Neville. "I'm running things."
"You always were a perfect rotter," said Pimsy.
Seven
Generalissimo Moombasa waited for the American woman to be delivered. He would interrogate her himself, he decided, and he would use his wiles instead of torture.
He would show her his subtle nature, his romantic side, make her want to help the Hamidian people's struggle against imperialism or whatever.
And if that didn't work, he'd beat the information out of the American bitch.
For the first meeting, he chose the military presence of his armored corps uniform. It was robin's-egg blue with gold epaulettes, tight bands with black Cordoba leather boots, with the Hamidian insignia of a condor embossed in gold and green.
The hat was a high peak supported by the same condor insignia. In tiny zircons, the motto of the armored corps was displayed across the visor. The motto read:
"Crush the world beneath our treads."
It was a very big visor. The armored corps was 300 strong and every man had a uniform. But since the uniforms were so expensive, the People's
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Democratic Republic of Hamidia had to cut back somewhere else.
So the armored corps made do with a 1948 Studebaker with an extra layer of tin on the outside, held in place by zircon studs, naturally spelling out "Crush the world beneath our treads."
A foreign manufacturer had once gotten to the armored corps and convinced its officers that they should have tanks, under the reasoning that other countries' armored corps had tanks. Many tanks. Big tanks. And with treads.
How did it look for Hamidia to have a slogan: "Crush the world beneath our treads" when it didn't even have treads, but four 1949 Firestone Silverrides, three of which were bald?
"You not only don't have treads, you don't even have traction," said the manufacturer.
"That all right, Serior. We don't have much engine either," said one of the officers. But the idea caught on and the armored corps was close to rebellion when Moombasa, being a shrewd Third World politician, recognized the meaning of the revolutionary ferment in the souls of his valiant warriors.
"Great heroes of the Hamidian revolution, I will follow your desires. We can buy a tank that only a few can use at one time, or we can buy new cravats for everyone, beige to offset the robin's-egg blue of your glorious uniforms."
There was instant outrage among the Hamidian officer corps.
"Beige don' go with robin's-egg blue. Navy blue. Black even. Maybe a dark green. But not beige."
"I am a foot soldier," said Generalissimo Moom-
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basa. "What do I know of armored warfare and you brave men who carry it out?" And then he ordered the cravats, one of which he now wore. He realized that he could really trust his tank commanders. He ordered navy-blue cravats and found out that they were right. The navy blue really went well with the robin's-egg blue.