The Legend of the Condor Heroes Chapter 2 – Part 2

Wanyan Honglie tucked the gold and silver into his robe and made straight for the busiest part of town. The townsfolk struck him as refined and gentle in manner, and even the pedlars and porters were for the most part handsome, out-of-the-common figures. He admired them in secret.

Suddenly there came a rapid drumming of hooves ahead, and a rider was galloping hard towards him. The street was none too wide to begin with, it was thronged with people, and stalls and pedlars’ loads lined both sides of it. How could anyone gallop a horse through it? Wanyan Honglie hurriedly stepped aside to the edge of the street, and in the blink of an eye a yellow horse came bursting out of the crowd. It was a magnificent animal, tall and well fleshed, a steed of rare quality. Wanyan Honglie cheered it silently. Then he looked at the rider, and was lost for words.

For all the horse’s splendour, its rider was a squat, fat, unprepossessing fellow who sat on its back like a great ball of flesh. His arms were short, his legs were short, he seemed to have no neck at all, and his head, which was absurdly large, was sunk deep between his shoulders.

Strange to tell, the horse tore through the crowd at full gallop without touching a single person or knocking over a single thing. Its hooves fell lightly and it leapt with perfect ease. It jumped a porcelain stall, stepped over a load of greens, and time and again slipped past people with not a hair’s breadth to spare, racing through the crowded market as freely as if it were galloping across open country.

Wanyan Honglie could not contain himself and cried aloud, “Well done!”

The squat man heard the cheer and glanced back. Wanyan Honglie saw that his face was covered in red grog-blossoms, and his nose, big and round, looked like a red persimmon stuck on his face. Wanyan Honglie thought, That horse is superb. I’ll offer a high price and buy it.

Just then two children chasing each other in play ran across the street right in front of the horse. Caught off guard, the horse started and lifted its feet, and its left hoof was about to strike one of the children when the fat man jerked the reins and sprang up out of the saddle. Lightened of its burden, the horse leapt and flew clean over the two children’s heads, and the fat man floated lightly down on to its back again.

Wanyan Honglie stood stock-still. He thought, What superb horsemanship this little man has. For all the fine riders in our Great Jin, not one is his equal. Truly, you cannot judge a man by his looks. If I could engage him to come back to the capital and train our cavalry, my horsemen would surely carry all before them under heaven. That would be worth ten thousand times more than buying a fine horse.

On this journey south Wanyan Honglie had studied every place where troops could be quartered and every place where the river could be crossed, and committed each one secretly to memory. He had even made careful enquiries into the names and abilities of the officials of every prefecture and county. Now, seeing the fat man’s marvellous horsemanship, he thought, The Southerners’ government is rotten. They cast aside a remarkable man like this and leave him to languish among the common folk. Why not put the talent of Chu to work for Jin?¹ He resolved to offer the man a handsome fee to come to Yanjing as his riding master.

His mind made up, he set off after the man at a run, afraid only that the horse was too swift for him to catch. He was about to shout when he saw the horse reach a bend in the main street and suddenly stop. This astonished Wanyan Honglie afresh. A galloping horse has to slow its pace gradually before it can stop, yet this one had pulled up short in mid-career, a thing he had never seen before. Even a man of great martial ability could hardly stop dead in the middle of a headlong sprint with such composure. The fat man sprang from the saddle and ducked into a shop.

Wanyan Honglie strode over. A great wooden placard stood upright inside the shop, inscribed with four characters: Legacy of Taibai’s Spirit.² It was a wineshop. He raised his eyes further. Above the upper floor hung an enormous signboard with three gilt characters: Drunken Immortal Wineshop.³ The brushwork was bold and lustrous, and beside it, in smaller script, five characters reading Written by the Lay Buddhist Dongpo.⁴ So the inscription was Su Dongpo’s own. Seeing the wineshop’s grandeur, Wanyan Honglie thought, He has come to a wineshop. I shall treat him to a feast, win his friendship over the cups. Nothing could be more fitting.

Just then the fat man came hurrying down the stairs with a wine jar in his hands and went up to his horse. Wanyan Honglie promptly stepped aside.

Standing on the ground, the fat man looked even more grotesque. He stood barely three feet tall, but his shoulders were nearly three feet wide, while the horse’s legs were so long and its back so high that the top of his head barely reached the stirrup. He set the wine jar before the horse and tapped the shoulder of the jar lightly with his palm several times. Then he lifted, and off came the upper part of the jar, a little less than half of it, leaving the rest like a deep earthenware basin. The yellow horse raised its forelegs and let out a long, joyful whinny, then lowered its head to drink. The wine’s fragrance drifted to Wanyan Honglie. It was Daughter Red,⁵ the famous brew of Shaoxing in Zhejiang. From the scent alone, it had been aged at least ten years.

The fat man turned back inside, flicked his wrist, and with a ringing clink hurled a great ingot of silver onto the counter. “Set out three tables of the finest food and wine. Two of meat, one vegetarian.”

The proprietor laughed. “Of course, Third Master Han. We have four-gilled perch from Songjiang today, a better match for wine there never was. Keep your silver, Third Master Han. We’ll settle up later.”

The fat man rolled his eyes and barked in a strange voice, “What? Drinking without paying? Do you take Han Third for some penniless layabout who eats and doesn’t pay?”

The proprietor beamed and took no offence, but called loudly, “Lads, look sharp with Third Master Han’s food and wine!” Inside and out, the serving lads answered him in a chorus.

Wanyan Honglie mused, This fat man dresses plainly but spends lavishly, and everyone defers to him. He must be one of the great powers of Jiaxing Prefecture. Hiring him to go north as a riding master may take some doing. Let me see whom he has invited, and decide from there. He climbed the stairs, chose a seat by the window, ordered a jin⁶ of wine, and picked a few dishes at random.

The Drunken Immortal Wineshop stood beside South Lake. A thin mist hung over the water, a few small boats rocked gently on it, and half the lake was carpeted with glossy green water-chestnut leaves. He gazed out and felt his spirits lift. Jiaxing was an ancient city of Yue, famed for its plums, so sweet and fragrant they rivalled wine, hence its old name of Zuili in the Spring and Autumn period. It was here that King Goujian of Yue had once routed King Helü of Wu,⁷ for this was the place anyone travelling between Wu and Yue had to pass.

South Lake itself yielded a local delicacy: the hornless green water-chestnut, its flesh sweet, tender and smooth, fragrant and crisp, the finest in the realm. The lake was thick with them, and deep spring had come, emerald leaves upon blue water, like a pool of green glass strewn with pieces of jade.

He was savouring the view when suddenly a fishing boat came skimming across the lake as though in flight. The hull was narrow and the bow curved high. At first Wanyan Honglie paid it no mind, but in the blink of an eye it had overtaken a small boat far ahead of it, moving at astonishing speed. As it drew nearer, he saw a single figure seated within. At the stern, a woman in a straw raincoat worked the oar. She dipped the oar into the water and pulled, lightly and deftly, and the boat shot forward like an arrow, the hull all but leaping clear of the water. The force of each stroke must have been a hundred jin or more. That a woman should possess such strength was strange enough, but how could a wooden oar withstand it?

Several more strokes, and the boat was alongside the wineshop. Sunlight caught the oar and it gleamed bright. It was an iron oar sheathed in brass. The fishing woman tied her boat to a post beneath the stone steps of the wineshop and leapt lightly ashore. The man seated in the cabin picked up a pole-load of rough firewood and came up after her. The two went straight up into the wineshop. The fishing woman called to the fat man, “Third Brother!” and sat down beside him.

“Fourth Brother, Seventh Sister, you’ve arrived early!” said the fat man.

Wanyan Honglie stole a glance at the pair. The woman looked seventeen or eighteen, willowy and slim, with large eyes and long lashes, her skin white as snow, a beauty of the Jiangnan waterways. In her left hand she held the iron oar upside down, and in her right her straw hat, revealing a cascade of cloud-black hair. Wanyan Honglie thought, This girl may not be as lovely as my Madam Bao, but she has a natural charm all her own.

The man with the firewood was twenty-eight or nine, dressed in rough blue cloth, a thick grass rope at his waist and grass sandals on his feet, with coarse hands and large feet and a slow, stolid manner. He set down his load, leant the carrying pole against the table, and with a few creaks the Eight Immortals table⁸ was pushed several inches by the pole. Wanyan Honglie started. The pole looked unremarkable, black and gleaming all over, slightly curved in the middle, with a raised stop at each end. For it to be so heavy, he reckoned, it must be made of fine steel. A short chopping axe hung at the man’s belt, its blade notched in places.

The two had barely sat down when footsteps sounded on the stairs. Two more men appeared. The fishing woman called out, “Fifth Brother, Sixth Brother, you’ve come together.”

The first was a giant of a man, easily two hundred and thirty or forty jin, wearing a long apron and greasy all over. He wore his jacket open to reveal a shaggy chest, his sleeves rolled high to show arms covered in black hair an inch long. A pointed knife about a foot long was stuck in his leather belt. To look at him, he was a butcher who slaughtered pigs and sheep.

The man behind him was short and small-limbed, with a little felt cap on his head and a fair, clean-shaven face. He carried a steelyard and a bamboo basket, and looked like a petty hawker.

Wanyan Honglie marvelled to himself. He thought, The first three are all plainly skilled in the martial arts. So how is it these two tradesmen call them brothers?

Then from the street came a thud, thud, thud, like iron striking flagstones, and the thudding came on up the stairs. A ragged man appeared, gripping a thick iron staff in his right hand. He looked thirty or thereabouts, with a sharp mouth, sunken cheeks, a face the colour of dust, and white, sightless eyes. A blind man.

The five seated at the table all rose and called as one, “Big Brother.”

The fishing woman tapped a chair lightly with her hand. “Big Brother, your seat is here.”

The blind man said, “Good. Has Second Brother not come yet?”

The one who looked like a butcher said, “Second Brother is already in Jiaxing. He should be here any moment.”

The fishing woman laughed. “Isn’t that him now?” From the stairs came the clack, clack, clack of trodden-down shoes.

Wanyan Honglie was taken aback. First there poked up through the stairwell a battered, grime-stained oil-paper fan, fanning a few lazy strokes, and then a shabby scholar came strolling up, wagging his head from side to side, the very man Wanyan Honglie had encountered at the inn. Wanyan Honglie thought, My silver must have been stolen by this fellow… Anger was rising in him when the man grinned at him, stuck out his tongue, pulled a face, then turned and greeted the others. So this was their Second Brother.

Wanyan Honglie reflected, It looks as though every one of them has some remarkable skill. If I could take them into my service, they would be an immense help. That shabby scholar stealing my gold and silver is a small matter, not worth quarrelling over. I’ll watch how things go first.

The shabby scholar took a mouthful of wine and, wagging his head, chanted, “Ill-gotten gains… let them go by… and the Jade Emperor… will fly into a rage!” Still chanting, he reached into his robe and drew out ingot after ingot, arranging them neatly on the table: eight ingots of silver and two of gold in all.

Wanyan Honglie saw from their colour and shape that the gold and silver were the very pieces he had lost. Far from angry, he was intrigued. He thought, Getting into my room to steal my gold and silver was easy enough. But with nothing more than a tap of his fan on my shoulder he lifted every ingot from inside my robe, and I never felt a thing. Light fingers like these are rare indeed.

It appeared the seven were hosting the meal, and had invited guests to fill two tables. As the guests had not yet arrived, the seven were drinking wine on its own, and no dishes had been brought to the table. But each of the other two tables was laid with only a single cup and pair of chopsticks, so there could be only two guests. Wanyan Honglie wondered, These seven eccentrics are hosting. What manner of eccentric guests are they expecting?

After about as long as it takes to drink a cup of tea, someone downstairs intoned the Buddha’s name, “Amitabha!”

The blind man said, “Great Master Jiaomu is here!” He rose to his feet, and the other six all stood respectfully to receive him.

Another “Amitabha!” and a monk as gaunt as dead wood came up the stairs. He looked fifty or thereabouts, in a monk’s robe of yellow hemp, a piece of firewood in his hand, one end charred black, its purpose unclear.

The monk greeted the seven with joined palms, and the shabby scholar led him to a seat at one of the empty tables. The monk bowed slightly and said, “That man came to my door. Knowing I was no match for him, I owe a great deal to the Seven Xias of Jiangnan⁹ for so chivalrously coming to my aid. I am more grateful than I can say.”

The blind man said, “Great Master Jiaomu, there is no need for ceremony. We seven brothers have long benefited from your kindness. If you are in trouble, how could we stand by? Besides, the man boasts of his martial arts and picks a fight with you for no reason, without the slightest regard for anyone in the Jiangnan wulin. Even had you not come to tell us, we would not have let it rest once we heard…”

He had not finished speaking when the stairs began to groan, as though some enormous beast were climbing them, something so heavy that it must be either an elephant or a water buffalo weighing several hundred jin.

Downstairs the proprietor and the serving lads set up a chorus of cries. “Hey, you can’t take that great thing up there!” “You’ll go straight through the floor.” “Quick, quick, stop him and make him come down!”

But the groaning grew louder still.

Footnotes

1. 楚材晋用 — Chǔ cái Jìn yòng. Literally the talent of Chu in the service of Jin, a saying from the Zuozhuan. It describes able men of one state employed by another. ↩

2. 太白遗风 — Tàibái yífēng. Literally the lingering spirit of Taibai. Taibai is the courtesy name of the Tang poet Li Bai (701—762), famed for his love of wine, and the phrase was a common wineshop sign. ↩

3. 醉仙楼 — Zuìxiān Lóu. The Drunken Immortal Wineshop, on the shore of South Lake in Jiaxing. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

4. 东坡居士 — Dōngpō Jūshì. Literally lay Buddhist of the Eastern Slope. The literary name of Su Shi (苏轼, 1037—1101), Song dynasty poet, calligrapher and statesman. See Wikipedia. ↩

5. 女儿红 — Nǚ’ér hóng. Literally daughter red. A celebrated Shaoxing rice wine, traditionally brewed when a daughter was born and opened at her wedding. ↩

6. 斤 — jīn. A unit of weight, about 590 grams in the Song dynasty. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

7. 越王勾践大破吴王阖闾 — Yuè Wáng Gōujiàn dà pò Wú Wáng Hélǘ. Literally Goujian, King of Yue, routed Helü, King of Wu. The battle of Zuili in 496 BCE, fought near present-day Jiaxing, in which Helü was mortally wounded. ↩

8. 八仙桌 — bāxiānzhuō. Literally Eight Immortals table. A large square table seating eight, named after the Eight Immortals of Daoist legend. ↩

9. 江南七侠 — Jiāngnán Qī Xiá. Literally seven xia of Jiangnan. ↩