Samurai (18 page)

And now, despite its Buddhist philosophy, it was angry.

The Dragon of Japan was very, very angry.

Simon finally remembered he had his sword, but, crowded by onlookers, he could not get any space to swing it against the glass. Mamoru was still struggling with the tigers valiantly, but the huge man was no match for them.

People were pulling at Simon, not sure
what
he was doing with the blade, and he fought against them viciously, furious at himself for not being stronger. He toppled one man, who fell against the crowd, shoving them back. Simon could hear Key yelp in response, somewhere behind him, pushed back against the wall.

But Simon’s sword struck the glass. Once. Twice. The strong steel nearly shattered the window.

“Are you out of your mind?” screamed a fat American man, grabbing Simon’s arm. “There are tigers in there!”

“That’s why I have to get in!” yelled Simon, and he punched the man in the gut.

Mamoru was being pounced on, the tiger’s fangs scraping uselessly on his chestplate, but the weight of the beast was crushing the hapless Samurai.

Simon swung for the glass again.

Crack! Crack! Crash!
The window shattered, surprising the tigers.

They looked over at Simon, rattled and ready to strike, mostly out of sheer surprise.

Panicked and screaming, the crowd surged backward, and the pressure of their bodies on the rear doorway forced the passageway open, and an escape route presented itself.

“Simon!” Key shouted, fighting the crush of people. “There’s a way out!”

Too late. One of the tigers leapt for Simon through the broken window.

The crowd screamed louder.

O
UTSIDE THE BUILDING
, A
LDRIC
faced a challenge of his own.

The crowd was in a panic now, in a mad rush away from the Japanese Dragon and its unnatural fire. But there were too many people at the mouth of the alley, and they clumped together, crushing each other, as Taro, Sachiko, and Aldric together met the Dragon’s fury.

Use the firespell. Cleanse this place,
screamed the power in Najikko’s heart.
You can destroy everything right now.

Control, control,
his mind cried.
Power spent is power lost.

Somehow, he held his true power in check, heeding his own voice.

Still the creature’s eyes burned with rage. It reached back into the bright glowing tower of fire and brought out a silver ball of flame.

The beast grinned. The fireball flew fast out of its claw—a blur of silver—and hit just below Aldric’s head, scorching his armor at the neck, his tunic torched partly away as the fire again grew over his damaged clothes. He rolled quickly, tamping it out, and righted himself painfully, sword ready.

The Dragon let loose a second fireball, its golden light smashing apart as Aldric cut it with his sword. Tatters of flame spattered the alleyway.

Silver fireballs cracked at Taro’s armor. Orbs of gold fire knocked Sachiko to her knees. They broke harmlessly over her armor, but the force battered her to the ground.

The Japanese Dragon was playing.

For all his apparent strength and control, however, he was weakening from this battle, and at least one observer had noticed. High above the fight, in the nearby palace, Issindra was watching. “Don’t show yourself to be so foolish,” she said to the Japanese beast, though he couldn’t possibly hear. “We all know you brought them here to kill me. And now what? They hurt you more than you expected, poor darling?”
You’ll need to heal,
she thought coldly.
You’ll run. You’ll hide in the slums, or in the sewers, or the rivers or the
lakes, but I’ll find you. Oh, but don’t leave like this. Kill some of them, dearest, I know you can do it.

Quakes rumbled the palace, the earth pained by the presence of Dragons.

Meanwhile, near the raging battle inside the building, Simon had just created a minor catastrophe by unleashing the tiger.

The big cat leapt at him, but he had room to fall back, now that the crowd was streaming out of the observation room. The tiger’s body lodged in the window, struggling to get at him, clawing, brushing against the glass shards in the frame, as Simon ran for the back door.

Key stood there, awed by the massive animal.

Simon had to drag him out.

“What about Mamoru?” cried Key.

But the tiger was on their trail now, rushing into the room, chasing Key and Simon down a narrow wooden hallway, where the dozens of onlookers had fled, screaming in the darkness, clambering for escape.

Simon and Key ran right into the thick of them, but were pushed back, to the rear of the throng. Jammed in, unable to escape, everyone turned to see the tiger creeping forward, with too many choices to feed on, too much prey.

It was joined by a second tiger.

“You wanted him out,” said an angry American to Simon, “you got him.”

And he shoved Simon toward the tiger.

Out on the street, the Japanese Dragon, grinning with imminent victory, lifted his flaming claws to his spiked and armored head, setting it alight. The creature rushed at Aldric, its head lowered. He slammed into a wall as Aldric leapt out of the way.

“I feel no anger,” the Dragon hissed aloud.
Like surgery,
he thought,
no anger, just clean, simple cuts, slash slash slash—

The Dragon swung its head again, its flaming crown of jags connecting with Aldric, jabbing him in his side and burning his armor.

“I feel no anger,” the creature repeated.

Taro howled, rushing in with a war cry, landing several blows with his sword on the Serpent’s back. In the same moment, Sachiko struck at the creature with her sword, flashing in terrible efficiency.

But the Tokyo Serpent would not be held back. It angled its fiery, spiky head once more for a deadly blow to Aldric.

“I FEEL NO ANGER!” he raged.

Suddenly, there came a rain of silver arrows out of the sky, thudding into the beast with an angry patter. Confused, the Dragon halted, looking skyward.

Akira fell out of the sky first, then Kisho and Toyo, the Samurai dangling from cables hooked to a high building above the alley, firing crossbows down upon the Japanese Dragon, the whisk and clatter of their shots joining with the sounds of the whipping fire. Aldric looked up and smiled, blood dripping from his lip.

Partly veiled in the drifting smoke, the Samurai continued their onslaught. The Dragon was badly injured and wailed. His sense of control was lost. Inside him, the firespell begged for use, his new blaze urging release.

In a show of defiance, the Creature leapt up high into the air, and grabbed hold of Akira’s line just above him.

Now the Dragon began to swing the cable back and forth as he viciously cursed the warrior, hating himself for taking time to play with his prey.
Never feel delight in the kill,
he told himself.
Nature punishes joy. Just kill them, kill them.
He swung the cable into the fire further down the alley, tossing Akira into the blaze.

The Dragon then crawled up the cable and jumped away, scampering over the rooftops.

Kisho got off one parting shot, but missed.

Far below him, Aldric rose with Sachiko’s help.

Suddenly, Akira emerged out of the blaze on the ground, armored head ducked down, his body tightened up, hands around his knees. He stood up with a
raised fist, crazed, screaming with rage and pain.

Taro pulled him away from the burning alley.

Aldric turned. The silver-gold fire had left only one escape route, and that was clogged with fleeing people. With no other choice, Aldric and the Samurai joined the pushing crowd, and eventually broke free into the city.

The rush from the alley became a riot of movement on the avenue, as a much larger crowd grew terrified of the smoke and fire.

The Samurai stood and watched in shock as the entire boulevard became a giant, raging ocean of people, running and screaming, throwing themselves against each other, thundering over cars and bicycles. Rats scurried in the street below them, driven out by Dragonmagic, while the ground rumbled dangerously.

Aldric’s first thought was of Simon—fear that he was in that mess, carried away or crushed in the stampede of humanity unrolling before him. But a strange feeling made him look upward, and he saw the Japanese Serpent high above on a rooftop, its silver-gold chest heaving with breath. The beast would need somewhere to hide and recover. But for now the Dragon stood examining—enjoying—his handiwork.

The Thing was too weak to spin out his true fire, his full strength, but there were other pleasures in life. Almost as enjoyable as a fire…was a good riot.

Down below, Aldric tapped Sachiko, and began moving away from the rushing crowd, trying to track the Dragon. Sachiko, Taro, and the other Samurai, now on the ground, hurried to follow him.

There was still time to kill this monster.

Outside, part of the building was burning, but inside, Simon and Key hadn’t even smelled the smoke. They had other distractions.

Simon fell back, as the other tigers tracked into the hall, with gleaming eyes and low growls. Feeding time had come.

The horrified people trapped in the hallway pressed back, quieting their shouting, awed by the creeping tigers.

Key yelled and started to come forward, as Simon motioned him to stay back.

Suddenly, Mamoru burst into the hall. He kicked at the rear tiger, and it spun around, roaring, while the others were jostled and turned in a snarling commotion to stare down the Samurai.

Key started yelling at the animals, trying to distract them. Simon watched him, amazed, not sure if he should respect him or call him the stupidest person on earth.

The tigers turned at the noise, seeming confused.

The shocked and confused crowd hung back,
whispering in terror, trying not to provoke the tigers. Simon and Mamoru were the ones closest to the angry creatures, and they could see the whispers were only agitating the beasts.

Desperate, Key climbed up to the low ceiling and began monkeying his way across the wooden slats, trying to get above the tigers. But his hand accidentally struck some sort of a trapdoor in the ceiling and a dark passageway opened above his head!

Everyone looked up.

Butterflies fluttered out of the dark opening.

It seemed to be a channel used for releasing prisoners to the tigers.

“Up here,” said Key, and he put out his hand, helping Simon up. Wooden slats along the wall gave Simon a foothold, but he was hampered by his backpack. He looked back to see one of the tigers leaping at Mamoru, pinning him against the wall.

Simon looked at Key, desperate for ideas, but the Japanese boy had slipped into the opening in the ceiling, and was up there muttering something about levers.

“We need some way to bait them,” yelled Simon, crawling up behind him. “What are you wasting time with?”

But Key stared back at him, looking over from a series of wooden levers. Calmly, the boy hit one and
Simon heard a clicking below. Looking down through the trapdoor, he saw a wooden gate lowering in the middle of the hall.

Mamoru saw it, too, and twisted free of the tiger, slipping to safety just as the big gate slammed down, trapping the tigers in the hallway.

“I thought that was the right lever,” Key said simply.

All right
, thought Simon.
From now on you handle the technical stuff.

The crowd below broke into cheers for Mamoru. He smiled at them in tired triumph.

“COME ON!” yelled Simon.

Key found another lever, opening a gateway for the crowd to get out into the street. No sooner did the crowd shuffle onward than the wooden gate was rattled by the tigers, eager to get free from their traps.

Mamoru leapt upward to the trapdoor. Simon helped pull him up.

“You need to think about a diet,” Simon groaned.

“You need to think about bigger muscles,” the Samurai retorted.

He pushed away Simon’s hand. “The Tiger Dragon’s men, they overtook me on the street and threw me in there. I got lost from Taro and the others.”

“Look,” whispered Key. Simon and Mamoru
moved up to join him. He was pointing at a doorway up a ramp, where dozens of butterflies were clinging. The insects were bright blue and unnaturally beautiful.

“The Serpent is there,” whispered Mamoru. “With luck, we can surprise it.”

He took Simon’s sword from him and moved up the ramp toward the door.

Mamoru forced it open.

A Dragon stared back at them from the dark little bedroom.

It was the Black Dragon of Peking.

Amid the chaos of the Bombay streets in the hot afternoon sun, Aldric ran, leading the Samurai toward the building where the Dragon of Japan had crouched. Sachiko barrelled inside just behind them. It was an office building, with rows of desks and telephones, but no one was inside—the occupants were now rushing away madly in fear of fire.

Aldric rushed up a stairway cluttered with papers and debris, and the others followed close behind him. The second floor brought the stink of something rotten and an infestation of flies. The insects swirled around in great swarms, the glass-paneled offices absolutely filled with the pests.

Aldric batted them away, bowing his head to
avoid the buzzing insects, and made his way down a corridor to a giant balcony, where a terrible stench mingled with the scent of fire and ash.

Looking out across the city, he could find no sign of the Dragon on the nearby rooftops. But on his right, nearly abutting the office building, was the palace with the carved tigers. He could see that on its side, the second floor was covered with many boarded-up windows painted with Indian scenes. And perched at the ledge there, several pigeons wriggled in unison, their wings opening and closing nervously in
exactly
the same way. All of the birds were black.

“Serpent,” said Taro.

But Aldric was already sidling along the office ledge. He leapt across the narrow space to the Tiger Palace, and his momentum brought his body through the boarded-up window, which cracked apart easily, the pigeons scattering, as he landed in a dark bedroom.

His eyes adjusted quickly, and suddenly he was staring at the Black Dragon of Peking.

“Knight,” said the old Chinese Dragon. A canary chirped at his shoulder.

“Dad,” said a voice, and Aldric looked past the beast to see Simon standing at an open door with Key and Mamoru.

There was only a split second for them to react to
the shock of seeing each other before the other Dragonhunters burst through the window behind Aldric.

“Kyoshi!” yelled Sachiko, but the boy froze, afraid to step toward her with the Black Dragon in his path.

Taro raised his crossbow, but a hand materialized out of the darkness and pushed it down. Surprised, he didn’t resist. It was a female hand, and Simon watched in awe as a ripple of light swept up the woman’s arm, until it revealed her completely, lifting away the invisibility magic that had fooled even his St. George eyes.

“Nobody fire a shot,” said the woman.

It was Alaythia.