The Legend of the Condor Heroes Chapter 32 – Part 3

Guo Jing gently patted Huang Rong awake. He felt the hull rock faintly, and hurriedly lifted the awning to look out. A dark figure was leaping from their boat across to the other one. By the build, it was the mute boatman. Guo Jing said, “I’ll go over and have a look. You stay here.” Huang Rong nodded. Guo Jing crouched low and crept on tiptoe to the bow. The other boat was still rocking from the jump. He sprang up and landed on the crossbeam of its mast, his feet touching down squarely amidships. The hull dipped slightly but did not heel, and no one aboard noticed a thing.

He pressed his eye to a gap in the awning and peered into the cabin below. Three men in black stood inside, all dressed in the garb of the Iron Palm Keep.¹ One of them was tall, with a dark blue cloth wound about his head, and he looked to be their leader.

Guo Jing had moved very fast. Though the man playing the mute boatman had leapt across before him, he had only just stepped into the cabin, and was now bowing to the big man and saying, “Chief Qiao.”²

Chief Qiao asked, “Are the two little thieves both aboard?”

The boatman said, “They are.”

Chief Qiao asked again, “Have they grown suspicious at all?”

The boatman replied, “No, no suspicion. Only the two little thieves won’t eat or drink on the boat, so I can’t get at their food.”

Chief Qiao gave a snort. “Either way, they’ll die at Azure Dragon Shallows.³ The day after tomorrow at noon, when your boat is going through to the shallows, you’ll come to Qinglongji,⁴ three li⁵ short of them. Break the rudder there. We’ll be waiting at that spot to pick you up.”

The mute boatman assented.

Chief Qiao went on, “Those two little thieves are formidable fighters. Take every care. When the deed is done, the Chief will reward you handsomely. Go back through the water. Don’t rock the boat and wake them.”

The boatman said, “Yes. Does Chief Qiao have any further orders?”

Chief Qiao waved a hand. “That’s all.”

The boatman bowed and withdrew. He slipped over the side into the water and swam quietly back.

Guo Jing pushed off from the mast with both feet and sprang back to their own boat. In a low voice he told Huang Rong everything he had heard.

Huang Rong gave a cold laugh. “We made it up rapids just as fierce at Great Master Yideng’s place. Why should we fear any Azure Dragon Shallows or White Tiger Shallows? Let’s sleep.”

Now that they knew the enemy’s plot, both of them felt easier in mind. They spent the next day enjoying the scenery from the boat and resting at their ease, not even bothering to keep watch that night.

On the morning of the third day, the boatman was about to weigh anchor and set off when Huang Rong said, “Wait a moment. Let’s put the horses ashore first. We don’t want to capsize at Azure Dragon Shallows and lose our lives.”

The boatman’s face changed colour slightly, and he pretended not to understand.

Huang Rong raised both hands, unable to resist “saying” a few coarse words to curse him. The mute servants on Peach Blossom Island were vicious and cruel to a man, and the “language” they cursed in was out of the ordinary too. Huang Rong had picked it up as a child without really understanding what it meant. Now, just as she had made a circle of two fingers of her left hand, she felt it was unseemly after all. She giggled softly, let her hands fall, and led the horses ashore with Guo Jing.

Guo Jing said suddenly, “Rong-er, stop playing games with them. Let’s just leave the boat here and ride.”

Huang Rong asked, “Why?”

“The Iron Palm Keep are sly, low people. Why bother squaring accounts with them? So long as the two of us can be together in peace, that’s better than anything.”

Huang Rong said, “Do you think we really can be together in peace all our lives?”

Guo Jing fell silent. He watched Huang Rong let go of the little red horse’s⁶ reins and point to the road north. The little red horse was very clever. It had been parted from its master several times, and knew now that its master was leaving it again for a while, so it set off at full stride to the north, and in moments it was out of sight.

Huang Rong clapped her hands. “Let’s go aboard.”

Guo Jing said, “You haven’t fully recovered. Why go looking for danger?”

“Don’t come, then.” She walked down the slope to the river’s edge by herself and boarded the bamboo-canopied boat.

Guo Jing had no choice but to follow.

Huang Rong laughed. “Silly gege, if we gather a few more strange adventures now, then when we’re parted someday, we’ll have all the more to look back on. Wouldn’t that be good?”

Guo Jing said, “Do we really… really have to part one day? I… I refuse to be parted from you, no matter what!”

Huang Rong gazed at his face and did not answer.

Guo Jing’s heart was a blank, as though a great iron hammer were battering against his chest. Back at Niu Family Village, on a moment’s hot-headed impulse, he had promised Tolui⁷ that he would marry Huazheng.⁸ Only since then had he come to feel how painful and cruel a promise it was.

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They sailed on for more than a shichen.⁹ The sun was nearing its zenith, and the mountains on either bank of the Yuan River¹⁰ grew ever more precipitous. Azure Dragon Shallows, they judged, could not be far off.

The two of them stood at the bow and looked ahead. Every upstream boat was being towed by trackers. The larger vessels needed dozens of men, and even the smallest craft required three or four. Each tracker bent double at the waist, dragging himself forward step by step, his forehead nearly brushing the ground. Under the pounding of the current, the boats seemed nailed in place. Every tracker had white cloth wound round his head and was stripped to the waist. Their bronze skin was beaded with sweat that glittered in the blazing sun, and they shouted as they hauled, the cries rising and falling without end for li after li along the valley. The boats going downstream, though, raced with the current and swept past gang after gang of trackers in an instant.

Guo Jing could not help feeling a secret alarm at the sight. He said in a low voice to Huang Rong, “Rong-er, I thought the Yuan River’s current, however fierce, would be nothing to us. But looking at this, I fear the rapids stretch a long way. If the boat capsizes and you’re not fully recovered, there could be real danger.”

“What do you suggest, then?”

“Knock down the mute boatman and bring the boat in to shore.”

Huang Rong shook her head. “That’s no fun.”

Guo Jing said urgently, “Is this a time for fun?”

Huang Rong pressed her lips together and smiled. “I just like fun!”

Guo Jing watched the muddy river squeezed between the steep peaks on either side, rushing at a furious pace. He tried to think out a plan, but his mind was slow, and what plan could it arrive at?

The river bent, and far ahead they could make out several dozen houses along the bank, built at all manner of heights against the mountainside. The current bore the boat on faster than a galloping horse, and in moments they were beside the houses. On the bank dozens of sturdy men stood waiting by the water’s edge. The mute boatman flung two cables ashore. The men caught them and looped them about a great capstan. A dozen or more heaved at the capstan and hauled the boat to the bank.

Just then another bamboo-canopied boat came up from downstream. Its thirty-odd trackers were gasping for breath by the time they reached this point. Some of them simply collapsed on the riverbank, utterly spent, unable to stir another limb.

Guo Jing thought, It looks as though the water below is a good deal fiercer than here. He noticed that among the trackers were several grey-haired old men and a few boys of fourteen or fifteen, all sallow and thin, every rib standing out on their chests. Suddenly he felt that everyone in the world was suffering, and something seemed to catch in his throat.

When the boat was in to the bank, the boatman dropped the iron anchor. Guo Jing saw that over twenty other boats were tied up along the cliff.

Huang Rong asked a man nearby, “Big Brother, what place is this?”

The man said, “Qinglongji.”

Huang Rong nodded and kept her eyes on the mute boatman. She watched him exchange a few hand-signals with a man on the slope above, then suddenly produce an axe and with two savage blows cut through the cables. Then he reached down and hauled up the iron anchor. Struck by the racing current, the boat suddenly slewed sideways, spun round in a circle and flew off downstream. The men on the bank cried out in alarm.

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Past Qinglongji the riverbed fell away steeply, and the water spouted and poured. The mute boatman gripped the rudder with both hands, his eyes fixed without blinking on the river’s surface. Two young men stood on either side of him with long punting-poles, as though braced for any emergency in the rapids, or perhaps guarding the boatman, for fear that Guo Jing and Huang Rong might come at him.

Guo Jing saw the current grow ever swifter. The boat was falling as though from a cliff-face, plunging madly downstream. At any instant it might shatter against the rocks. He shouted, “Rong-er, seize the rudder!” With that he dashed for the stern.

The two young men heard the cry and raised their poles, each covering one side of the boat. Guo Jing paid them no mind at all and charged for the starboard rail.

Huang Rong called out, “Wait!”

Guo Jing stopped and turned. “What is it?”

Huang Rong said in a low voice, “Have you forgotten the eagles? When the boat smashes up, we’ll fly off on their backs. Let’s see what they do then.”

Guo Jing was overjoyed, thinking, So that’s why Rong-er has no fear of these rapids. She thought of this long ago. He beckoned the two eagles to his side.

The mute boatman saw him about to spring forward, then stop short. He had no idea the two had a way of escape. He supposed the two wet-behind-the-ears children were so frightened by the raging water that they did not know what to do with their hands and feet, and he was secretly delighted.

Amid the thunder of the water, a distant chant rose, trackers bellowing in unison. In moments a bamboo-canopied boat came into sight, driving upstream towards them, a black banner streaming from its mast.

When the mute boatman saw this boat, he raised his axe and with a few sharp cracks chopped through the tiller. He stood at the port rail, waiting for the black-bannered boat to pass within leaping distance.

Guo Jing laid his hand on the female eagle’s back and called, “Rong-er, you go first!”

Huang Rong said, “No rush!” A thought struck her, and she cried, “Jing gege, throw the anchor and smash the oncoming boat.”

Guo Jing seized the iron anchor as she bade him. Their own boat, rudderless now, surged towards the oncoming vessel with the full force of the current. The gap between the two boats closed to little more than ten feet. The oncoming boat swung its rudder to dodge, and boatmen along the river and trackers on the bank cried out as one. Guo Jing swung the anchor and hurled it with all his strength, and into the throw he put Riding Six Dragons,¹¹ a move from the Eighteen Palms of Dragon Subduing.¹² His right palm flung out its force, his whole body seeming to lift from the deck. The iron anchor shot through the air and struck the towing-mast at the bow of the oncoming boat.

The mast was drawn taut by seven or eight bamboo cables, each a thousand feet long, bent into the curve of a bow. The anchor struck it square in the middle with a great crack, and the mast snapped in two. The dozens of trackers, still pulling with their full weight on suddenly slackened cables, sprawled face-down along the bank. The boat reeled like a paper kite whose string has snapped, spinning in swift circles on the water before it went careening downstream, stern first. The cries of alarm redoubled. In moments the clamour of voices and the roar of water echoed back and forth through the gorge.

The mute boatman, utterly unprepared for this, went white as ash and bellowed, “Hey, hey! Help, help!”

Huang Rong laughed. “The mute can talk. That really is the wonder of the age.”

Guo Jing had thrown one anchor, and another still lay to hand. Their boat and the other were now racing downstream side by side, close together. He drew a breath and used Dragon Appears in the Field.¹³ Raising the anchor in both hands, he swung it a few times and spun round three times, half with his own strength and half with the momentum, then let it fly at the rudder at the stern of the boat ahead.

It looked certain that the tiller would be smashed to splinters and both boats wrecked, when suddenly someone leapt from the cabin of the boat ahead. A long punting-pole shot out, its tip quivering, and pinned itself against the anchor’s haft. As the man’s strength flowed into it, the bamboo bent into an arc. With a sharp crack the pole snapped in two, but that glancing touch had turned the anchor aside. Water sprayed up, and anchor and broken pole both fell into the middle of the river.

The man with the pole wore a short yellow tunic of kudzu cloth, and his grizzled beard was blown back to his ears by the rushing wind. He stood firm and unmoving on the pitching stern, a commanding figure. It was Qiu Qianren,¹⁴ Chief of the Iron Palm Keep.

Guo Jing and Huang Rong were startled to see him appear so suddenly on this boat. Before the thought had fully formed, a tremendous crash rang out: their own boat’s bow had struck a reef head-on. The shock flung both of them through the air, and their backs slammed against the cabin door. The river came in fast, and in moments it was over their ankles. It was too late now to mount the eagles.

In that extremity there was no time for thought. Guo Jing sprang up and cried, “Follow me!” With Flying Dragon in the Sky¹⁵ he hurled his whole body forward, straight at Qiu Qianren. He knew that in this instant between life and death there was no margin for error. If he landed anywhere else upon the enemy boat, Qiu Qianren would surely strike at him from the side before he had found his footing, and against neili¹⁶ like his he could never hold out. But if he attacked head-on and forced Qiu Qianren onto the defensive first, he would have the gap he needed to gain a footing on the enemy boat.

Footnotes

1. 铁掌帮 — Tiězhǎng Bāng. Literally iron palm guild. Qiu Qianren’s sect, renowned for its palm techniques. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

2. 乔寨主 — Qiáo Zhàizhǔ. Literally Stockade Chief Qiao. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

3. 青龙滩 — Qīnglóng Tān. Literally Green Dragon shoal. Rapids on the river route to Hunan. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

4. 青龙集 — Qīnglóng Jí. Literally Green Dragon market. A market town three li from the Azure Dragon Shallows. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

5. 里 — lǐ. A traditional unit of distance, about 500 metres or one-third of a mile. ↩

6. 小红马 — xiǎo hóng mǎ. The red horse Guo Jing tames on the steppe, a sweat-blood steed. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

7. 拖雷 — Tuōléi. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

8. 华筝 — Huázhēng. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

9. 时辰 — shíchén. Traditional Chinese unit of time equal to two hours; the day was divided into twelve shichen. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

10. 沅江 — Yuán Jiāng. The Yuan River, a major river of Hunan. ↩

11. 时乘六龙 — Shí Chéng Liù Lóng. Literally riding the six dragons in season, from the Book of Changes. A move of the Eighteen Palms of Dragon Subduing. ↩

12. 降龙十八掌 — Xiánglóng Shíbā Zhǎng. Literally eighteen dragon-subduing palms. Hong Qigong’s palm technique. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

13. 见龙在田 — Xiàn Lóng Zài Tián. Literally the dragon appears in the field. A move of the Eighteen Palms of Dragon Subduing, named from a line of the Book of Changes. ↩

14. 裘千仞 — Qiú Qiānrèn. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

15. 飞龙在天 — Fēi Lóng Zài Tiān. Literally flying dragon in the sky, a line of the Book of Changes. A move of the Eighteen Palms of Dragon Subduing. ↩

16. 内力 — nèilì. Literally internal force. The kinetic manifestation of cultivated qi. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩