Day of the Djinn Warriors

by P. B. Kerr

  “Don’t tell me,” said Groanin. “Tell the typhoon.”

  “Mr. Groanin’s right,” said John. “It appears to be pursuing us now.”

  “I wish I’d taken a plane,” said Groanin. “I hate these things. Unnatural, so it is. If man had been meant to fly in a whirlwind, God would have made us prophets like Elijah, or gods like Apollo, and then he’d have been out of a job.”

  By now, the typhoon appeared to be a mile or two away, which would have been a lot if it hadn’t also been three or four miles tall. And Nimrod was forced to admit that John was right: The typhoon appeared to be chasing them. Except that he knew typhoons just didn’t behave like that. Not unless …

  “There is another possibility,” he yelled, increasing speed of the whirlwind to the maximum in an effort to outrun the malevolent black column. And he was shouting because the typhoon was now closing in fast, so close that they could hear the sound of the five-hundred-mile-an-hour winds that were being generated by the typhoon. “There remains a distinct possibility that someone is flying that thing. Someone who doesn’t want us to get to China.”

  “You mean another djinn?” shouted Finlay.

  “Well, it’s not Charles Lindbergh,” Groanin bellowed crossly. “I say, it’s not Charles Lindbergh. Of course, he means another djinn.” He looked at Nimrod. “Can’t you make this thing go any faster?”

  “I’m going as fast as I can,” yelled Nimrod. “There’s not enough air in here to go any faster.” Sweat was pouring off his forehead as he concentrated every fiber of his djinn being into flying the whirlwind, zigzagging one way and then the other in the hope that he could bring about their escape.

  John looked around and found Finlay’s heart was in his mouth. By now, the typhoon was almost close enough to touch. He felt it sucking at the edge of the whirlwind like a giant vacuum cleaner. They were inches away from being vacuumed up. And was he mistaken, or did he see the vaguely sinister shape of someone sitting inside the dark depths of the cloud?

  “Do something, Nimrod!” he yelled. “It’ll overtake us in a minute.”

  Nimrod didn’t answer. Just the thought-power needed to answer his nephew would have required that he direct a crucial amount of energy away from flying the whirlwind.

  “Next time I go to China — if there is a next time,” shouted Groanin, staring back into the column, “I’m going to make sure I do like the song says and take a slow boat to China.”

  “Groanin,” said Nimrod. “You’re a genius. Why didn’t I think of that? Of course! That’s how we can generate more hot air inside this whirlwind and go faster. We can sing.”

  “Me? Sing?” yelled an incredulous Groanin. “I can’t sing. I say, I can’t sing. Sing what exactly?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” shouted Nimrod. “Sing anything. But sing as if your life depended on it. Which it rather does, I’m afraid.”

  He himself started to sing the British national anthem as loud as he could and, uncertain of what to sing himself, Groanin started to sing that, too.

  John would have sung the American national anthem but, of course, it was not his physical body and so he felt obliged to leave the choice of national anthem to Finlay, who was, of course, British. Generating as much hot air as possible seemed to demand some consistency in their singing and so, putting aside his political feelings about kings and queens, Finlay thought it best to join in with Nimrod and Mr. Groanin.

  “God save our gracious Queen,

  Long live our noble Queen,

  God save the Queen.

  Send her victorious,

  Happy and glorious,

  Long to reign over us,

  God save the Queen!”

  Soon all three of them were bellowing “God Save the Queen” at the top of their voices and with such enthusiasm that it left poor John feeling quite left out of things.

  “Light my lamp, I can feel it working,” cried Nimrod. “Keep singing.”

  Twenty minutes passed. Then half an hour. And maintaining a distance of just a few feet in front of the huge typhoon that threatened to annihilate them, they still continued to sing the British national anthem. All six verses. Again and again and again.

  Hot air swelled the whirlwind, slowly adding to its power. Half an hour became an hour. Which turned into ninety minutes. The typhoon made a last deafening, terrifying attempt to suck them into its cold, black maw, before the whirlwind gradually began to inch away. Inches became feet. Feet turned into yards. Yards added up to furlongs. Until, certain that the malevolent typhoon was far behind them, Nimrod said they could stop singing at last.

  For several minutes, no one said anything. They just caught their breath and rested their vocal cords and wiped the sweat from their brows. It was Finlay who spoke first. “If I ever hear that song again,” he said, “I think I’ll kill someone. Myself probably.”

  “Me, too,” puffed Groanin.

  “Talking of killing someone,” said John. “Back there just now, someone was trying to kill us. I’m pretty sure I saw a human shape inside that typhoon.”

  “Someone who doesn’t want us to get to China, perhaps,” said Finlay.

  “It would certainly appear that way,” observed Nimrod.

  “But who?” asked John.

  “I don’t know,” said Nimrod. “But they’ve certainly wasted their time.” He pointed down. “Look.”

  Several hundred feet below them was what looked like the exposed bony spine of some elongated green dragon.

  “Wow!” said John. “It’s the Great Wall of China.”

  “Now that’s what I call a wall,” said Finlay.

  “If you ask me, there are too many walls in this world,” said Groanin. “Keeping this lot of people in and that lot of people out. I don’t care how old it is. Best thing you can do with a wall like that is what they did with the one in Berlin. Knock it down.”

  “You surprise me, Groanin,” said Nimrod. “I never guessed you had such an appetite for democracy.”

  “I don’t know about an appetite for democracy,” observed Groanin. “But I do have an appetite. All that singing has made me so ravenously hungry I could eat a horse. I say, I could eat a horse.”

  “I thought you didn’t like foreign food, Mr. Groanin,” said Finlay, helping himself to another bowl of steaming-hot boiled rice.

  They were having dinner at the Shikua Urchi Restaurant in Snack Street, in Xian, the capital city of ancient China. The picturesque street was well-named, as there were almost a hundred eating establishments from one end to the other, all of them full of Chinese people stuffing themselves with a wide variety of exotic dishes. The restaurant was just around the corner from the Most Wonderful Hotel in Xian, which was the name of the hotel where they were staying.

  “Ordinarily that’s very true,” said Groanin, tucking into a bowl of what looked like fried chicken legs. “But these are extenuating circumstances. First, I don’t happen to have brought my own supply of baby food. Second, the guidebook says this is the best restaurant in this part of China. And third, after what happened to us this afternoon, I could eat a horse. I say, I could eat a horse.”

  “You’ve been saying that since we landed,” said Finlay.

  “For once, the guidebook is right,” said Nimrod. “Xian is the capital of Chinese delicacies such as the chow chow you’re eating now, Groanin. Not to mention popular Szechuan cuisine like the hot pot Finlay ordered. And without question this is the best restaurant in Xian.”

  “So there,” Groanin told Finlay, with an air of triumph.

  “Xian is also where Faustina found herself when there was that disturbance in the world of spirit,” continued Nimrod. “And the home of the famous terra-cotta warriors. Which is why we’re here. As soon as we’ve finished dinner, we shall go and take a look at them. They’ve been on show in the local exhibition hall since they were unearthed by accident in 1974 by some peasant farmers. Eighty thousand Chinese soldiers, chariots, and their horses.”

  “What, no
China dogs?” said Groanin. He chuckled. “You’d think they’d have included a couple of China dogs, wouldn’t you? My auntie Florence used to have a pair of ornamental China dogs on her mantelpiece. Everyone did where I come from.”

  “Those dogs were not made in China, Groanin,” said Nimrod. “But in Staffordshire, England. For the dog-loving English market. The Chinese themselves look on dogs as something wholly unfavorable. Which is why you won’t see many pet dogs in China. Mostly they’re just kept for meat.”

  “Meat?” Groanin stopped eating for a moment. “Did you say that dogs are kept for meat?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But Miss Philippa said that was just an old wives’ tale.”

  “What on earth does she know about it?” demanded Nimrod. “I don’t think she’s ever been to China. Has she, John?”

  “She doesn’t even like Chinese food,” said John.

  Groanin looked unhappily at the plate of chicken legs he had been eating. Except that they weren’t chicken legs. If they had been, those chickens would have been several feet tall. With tails. And personalities. And collars. “You don’t mean — ?”

  Nimrod nodded.

  Groanin spat a large piece of meat out of his mouth, which flew across the restaurant and stuck to a glass tank full of nervous-looking goldfish. He swallowed biliously. “But you said this was chow chow.”

  “Chow chow is Chinese for ‘dog,’” said Nimrod. “Look here, Groanin, I’m really sorry but I thought you wouldn’t mind. In India, you ate all kinds of things you don’t normally eat.”

  “Yes, but I were an Indian back then,” said Groanin. “With an Indian stomach. I’m back to being English now.”

  “Besides, you said you were so hungry you could eat a horse,” said Nimrod. “You’ve already eaten horse. You ordered it as a starter. I therefore assumed you would have no ethical objection to eating dog.”

  “That were a figure of speech,” said Groanin, putting his hand to his mouth and looking generally nauseous. “I say, that were a figure of speech. Besides, there’s a heck of a difference between eating a horse and eating a dog.”

  “Nonsense,” said Nimrod. “Basically if it moves, it’s on the menu here at Shikua Urchi’s. That’s what ‘Shikua Urchi’ means. Four legs, two wings. Dog, horse, cow, sheep, and pigs. People come from hundreds of miles around to eat here. We’re very lucky to get a table at all. Snakes, rabbits, pigeons, foxes, cats. And rats, of course.”

  “But rats are filthy animals,” objected Groanin.

  “So’s a pig,” said Nimrod. “But I notice it doesn’t stop you cooking yourself bacon and eggs in the morning when we’re back in London. In China, a pound of rat meat costs twice as much as pork or chicken. Which might indicate how prized a delicacy the meat is.”

  “A pig’s different,” said Groanin, who was looking very pale.

  “The rat here is excellent. Better than any pig.”

  Suddenly, Groanin sprang up from the table and, holding his hand to his mouth, ran out of the restaurant.

  John/Finlay had stopped eating, too. “Tell me you’re kidding,” said Finlay.

  “Not at all,” said Nimrod. “That spicy bean hot pot you’re eating is called ping shu guo, and its principal ingredient is a fat juicy rat. They burn the hair off them with a blowtorch, wash them, chop ’em up, season them, and then fry ’em up. Delicious.”

  John, who had once eaten locusts, didn’t really mind that he had just eaten a rat. It tasted delicious, after all, if not quite as good as locust. And it wasn’t like rats were an endangered species or anything. Even so, it was immediately clear to John, who was inside Finlay’s body of course, that Finlay’s stomach didn’t agree at all with the very idea of eating a rat. John did his best to talk Finlay around and to overcome his evident disgust, but it was no good and a minute or two later he found himself outside in Snack Street, alongside Groanin, throwing up into the gutter, much to the amusement of several Chinese people who had seen them running out of the restaurant.

  A minute or two later, Nimrod came outside and eyed his companions sadly. “Well, I’ve heard it said that if you eat too much rat you get a nosebleed, but this is ridiculous. I shall never be able to show my face here again.” He sighed and pointed up the neon-lit street. “Come on. We’d better be getting along to the exhibition hall. It ought to be closed by now.”

  There were, in fact, three exhibition halls, each of them covering an enormous burial pit where hundreds or thousands of terra-cotta warriors had been found. The exhibition hall covering the main pit was a modern-looking building that was the size and shape of an aircraft hangar. The hall was closed for the night and, once again, Nimrod used the little skeleton key to make an unauthorized entry. Finlay/John helped themselves to a guidebook in English as they made their way past the gift shop and into the main body of the hall.

  Finlay/John pointed one of the flashlights, which they had bought from a late-night hardware store, into the echoing depths of the building and gradually began to appreciate the enormity of what had been discovered here. The hall was vast — about twice the size of a football field — so vast that the beams of their flashlights couldn’t reach the ceiling or any of the four walls.

  In the pit immediately below them stood a vanguard of 204 warriors and behind them an army that numbered about six thousand figures that were slightly larger than life-size. A few were missing heads and hands but all of them stood facing east, in neat ranks, as if at any minute they might start marching somewhere on the orders of the devil Emperor Qin. Everything — figures and pit — was the same dusty shade of gray, like the color of death itself.

  “Why do we always have to visit these places at night?” complained Groanin. He shuddered as the damp smell of an ancient grave pricked his nostrils and he caught his first sight of the crowded ranks of terra-cotta warriors. “Freaks me out, creeping around in the dark like this. And them all staring at us blankly like that. I say, it freaks me out, so it does. Feels like we’ve intruded on something private.”

  Groanin did not exaggerate. The place was undeniably creepy. But then, it’s an unusual mass grave that doesn’t give you a little pause for thought. Nimrod climbed over the barrier. “Stay here while I take a closer look.”

  “At what, exactly?” said Groanin.

  “I don’t know,” said Nimrod. “I won’t until I see it, probably.”

  Nimrod jumped down into the actual pit so that he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the terra-cotta warriors.

  “Be careful, Uncle Nimrod,” said John. “I wouldn’t want you to get absorbed, like poor Mr. Rakshasas.”

  “May I remind you that we don’t have that golden tablet of command?” said Groanin. “Look here, sir, John’s right. If one of them comes to life now, you’ll be stuffed, and no mistake.”

  “We’re not leaving yet,” said Nimrod. He ran the beam of his flashlight up and down the torso of the nearest warrior. It might have been more than two thousand years old, but the figure was fantastically well-preserved. He touched it carefully and then tapped at the torso with his flashlight. The warrior sounded hard and hollow, like a heavy china vase. “This chap is a little bit like Groanin,” he said. “I don’t think it will absorb anything very much. These fellows down here are solid terra-cotta.”

  “Very amusing,” said Groanin.

  “All the same, that’s what happened,” said John. “Mr. Rakshasas went inside the body of the warrior devil of Dendur, and never came out again.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you’re right,” said Nimrod. “But this one seems quite harmless.”

  They all glanced overhead as something flew above their heads and, a little surprised by the sudden movement, Nimrod dropped his flashlight.

  “What was that?” said Groanin, flicking the beam of his flashlight at the distant ceiling.

  “Probably just a bat,” said Nimrod, bending down to retrieve his flashlight from the brick-paved floor.

  “It had better be careful,” m
uttered Groanin. “I expect the Chinese eat those, too.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Nimrod. Something had caught his eye as he picked up the flashlight. He steered the powerful beam along the floor of the pit. “Look, here. Shine your flashlights onto where mine is, would you?”

  Groanin and Finlay/John concentrated their flashlights on a gap in the ranks of the warriors, illuminating several sets of footprints in a thick layer of dust that lay on the floor, as if six or seven of the terra-cotta warriors had simply stepped off their little plinths and walked to the back of the pit.

  “That’s odd,” said Nimrod.

  “It’s a little more than that,” said Groanin, glancing nervously over his shoulder. “I say, it’s a little more than odd when statues go walkabout.”

  Still standing on the viewing gangway while keeping their lights trained on Nimrod, Finlay/John and Groanin made their way to the back of the exhibition hall as the English djinn trailed the footprints along the pit.

  “Strange,” he said. “The footprints end abruptly in front of this brick wall. Almost as if they went straight through it.”

  Shining his flashlight up the side of the pit wall, Nimrod ran his hand across the dusty surface, and then uttered a noise that seemed to indicate he’d found something.

  “What is it?” asked Finlay.

  “Some writing,” said Nimrod, rubbing away some of the dust with the flat of his hand. And then: “I don’t believe it.”

  “What does it say?” asked John.

  “It’s a sort of command,” said Nimrod. “Only it’s in Chinese. Which is rather odd because I always thought this kind of kabbalistic command was only seen in tombs of the Middle East. Never in China.”

  “Cannibalistic?” said Groanin. “Is there anything these people won’t eat?”

  “Not cannibalistic,” said Nimrod. “Kabbalistic. It means ‘mystic’ or ‘occult.’ You have food on the brain, my dear fellow.”

  “Is it any wonder since there’s none in my stomach?” complained the butler. “Not since dinner, anyway.”

  But Nimrod wasn’t listening. “These words. They amount to the same command used by Ali Baba to open the door of the robbers’ den in the story of ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.’ It seems out of place here in China.”