The Legend of the Condor Heroes Chapter 37 – Part 4

Lu Youjiao was about to protest, but Guo Jing turned and ordered his bodyguard, “Tomorrow at the hour of Wu,¹ have a hundred executioners with daos and axes standing ready in the tent.” The guardsman answered in a loud voice. Lu Youjiao’s face creased with worry as he turned and left the tent.

At dawn the next day a heavy snow was falling. The battlements were glazed with ice as slick as oil. How was anyone to climb them? Genghis Khan called off the assault. He reflected that they had only just entered winter, and the cold would deepen with each passing day. It would not warm again until the second or third month of the following year. If he abandoned the siege now and marched west, this garrison of over a hundred thousand elite troops would remain behind his lines, ready to sever his retreat at any moment and catch him between two fires. Yet if he camped his army beneath the walls, reinforcements would surely swarm to the defence. Should he have the ill luck to be outnumbered, a single defeat would mean the ruin of his host in a foreign land, not a single horse returning home.

He clasped his hands behind his back and paced before the tent, at his wits’ end. He gazed at the snow peak beside the city walls that soared into the clouds, and stood lost in thought, his brow furrowed.

The peak was very strange to look at. It shot up sheer from the flat ground and stood alone on the grassland like a great tree trunk with neither branch nor leaf. The local people called it Bare Trunk Peak. The city of Samarkand² had been built against it, its western wall incorporating one entire face of the rock, which saved on the cost of building and made the wall strong beyond measure. The master builder who had planned it was clearly a man of great ingenuity. The peak was extraordinarily steep, solid rock on which neither grass nor tree grew. Not even an ape could have climbed it. With Bare Trunk Peak as its bulwark, Samarkand was impregnable.

Genghis Khan thought, Since I bound my hair and rose to battle, I have fought hundreds of engagements, great and small. Never have I been so hard-pressed. Has Heaven forsaken me after all? The snow fell thicker. Camels, horses and tents had all turned white, while from within the city columns of cooking smoke rose everywhere, and his gloom deepened.

Guo Jing, however, had other matters on his mind. He feared that Huang Rong would undo this heavy-handed plan with a single light touch. And even if Lu Youjiao held out and said nothing, Guo Jing could never truly bring himself to behead the man. In a contest of wits with Huang Rong he had always lost and never won. He did not stand the slightest chance.

As noon approached, he sat in the tent with a dark expression. The guardsmen with axes and daos stood to either side. Then the army horn sounded, and the hour of Wu had come. Lu Youjiao walked into the tent and said, “This lowly one has thought of a plan, sir, but I fear you will find it hard to carry out.”

Guo Jing was overjoyed. “Tell me, quickly. Even if it takes my life, so be it. What could be too hard?”

Lu Youjiao pointed to the summit of Bare Trunk Peak. “Tonight, at the third quarter of the hour of Zi, Guild Chief Huang will be waiting for you on the summit.”

Guo Jing was stunned. “How could she get up there? You are not trying to fool me, are you?”

Lu Youjiao said, “I said all along that you would not do as I said, sir. Even a brilliant plan is wasted that way.” He bowed and turned and left the tent.

Guo Jing thought, So one offhand remark from Rong-er is enough to leave me helpless. This Bare Trunk Peak is several times higher than Middle Finger Peak on Iron Palm Mountain, and the cliff in Mongolia is nothing beside it. Is there some immortal up there who will let down a rope and haul me up?

Dejectedly he dismissed the guardsmen, then rode alone to the foot of Bare Trunk Peak to inspect it. The peak rose like a round pillar, the same girth from top to bottom. A thick coat of ice encased its surface, smooth and glittering, much like the great ice pillar that had trapped Ouyang Feng. Bare Trunk Peak was aptly named, for the peak truly did look like a bare, dead tree, and he supposed that since the beginning of heaven and earth no man or beast, only the birds, had ever reached its summit.

He tipped his head back to look up at the peak, and suddenly, with a soft smack, his fur cap fell from his head into the snow. In that instant his mind was made up. If I cannot see Rong-er, life is not worth living. The peak is perilous, but I will climb it if it costs my life. Even if I slip and fall to my death, it will be for the love I bear her. At the thought, his heart lightened at once.

That evening he ate his fill and made ready. His golden dao was at his belt, a long rope across his back. Before full dark he stepped from the tent. Lu Youjiao, Elder Jian and Elder Liang were waiting outside.

“We will see you up the peak, sir,” they said.

Guo Jing was taken aback. “See me up the peak?”

Lu Youjiao said, “Just so. Did you not arrange to meet Guild Chief Huang on the summit, sir?”

Guo Jing was astonished, and thought, So Rong-er was not deceiving me after all? Startled and delighted, he followed the three elders to the foot of the peak.

At the base of the peak several dozen guards stood waiting with as many head of cattle and sheep. Elder Lu said, “Kill them!” A guardsman raised a sharp knife and cut the hind leg off a goat, and while the blood was still hot he pressed the leg against the rock face. In moments the blood froze, binding the leg to the stone more firmly than an iron nail.

Guo Jing had not yet grasped the purpose when another guardsman hewed down a second leg and stuck it to the cliff above the first, roughly four feet higher. Guo Jing understood at last, and his spirits soared. The three elders were building a ladder of goat legs. In this bitter cold, no better method existed. Lu Youjiao sprang aloft and planted himself squarely on the second leg. Elder Jian hacked off another leg and flung it upward, and Lu Youjiao caught it and set it in place.

Before long the goat ladder stood over a hundred feet high. Below, the goats were slaughtered and passed up, but before a leg could be pressed to the rock it was already frozen stiff. Guo Jing and the three elders let down their long rope and hauled live goats up, killing and setting as they went. By the time the ladder reached the mountain’s midriff, the gale at that height was many times fiercer than on the ground. Luckily all four were masters of martial arts, and though their bodies swayed, their feet found firm purchase on each leg. Even so, they feared a slip, and bound their ropes about their waists, belaying one another. They laboured until the dead of night before the goat ladder reached the summit. The three elders were utterly spent, and Guo Jing himself had broken into a heavy sweat several times over.

Lu Youjiao gasped for breath several times, then laughed. “Sir, will you spare this lowly one now?”

Guo Jing felt both contrition and gratitude. He cupped his fists and said, “I do not know how I could ever repay the three of you.”

Lu Youjiao bowed in return. “It was the Guild Chief’s order. However difficult the task, it had to be done. What else can we do, with such a crafty, contrary Guild Chief?”

The three elders laughed loudly, then turned to the peak and began their slow descent.

Guo Jing watched them climb safely down to the midriff of the mountain before turning back. The summit was a scene of surpassing beauty. Ten thousand years of ice had fused into a world of glazed crystal. Some formations resembled flowers and herbs of jade, others strange beasts and fantastic birds. Here a crag of jagged rock, there a tangle of frozen branches. The longer Guo Jing gazed, the more he marvelled. He imagined Huang Rong would soon climb the goat ladder, and in an instant his blood seemed to boil and his face flushed red. He was lost in thought when a soft laugh sounded behind him.

That laugh struck him like a thunderclap. He spun round, and there in the moonlight stood a girl, half-smiling, watching him. If it was not Huang Rong, who could it be?

Though he had known he would see her, the meeting still left him startled and joyful by turns, as though he were dreaming. They stared at each other for a long moment, then ran forward. The ice beneath their feet was treacherous, and in their rush of joy and sorrow neither took heed. With two soft swishes they both slipped and fell. Guo Jing, afraid Huang Rong would be hurt, flung himself forward even as he fell, gathering her into his arms before they hit the ice. They had been apart for over a year, longing for each other to the point of madness. Now they were together again, and once in each other’s arms, how could they let go?

After a long while Huang Rong freed herself gently and sat on a block of ice that rose like a stone stool. “If I hadn’t seen how badly you missed me, I would never have come,” she said.

Guo Jing stared at her, unable to form a single word. After a long silence he said, “Rong-er.”

Huang Rong answered him.

Guo Jing’s joy was beyond measure. He called again, “Rong-er.”

She laughed. “Haven’t you called enough? All these days, though I was not before your eyes, didn’t you call my name dozens of times every day?”

“How do you know that?”

Huang Rong smiled. “You cannot see me, but I see you often.”

“You have been in my army all along. Why wouldn’t you let me see you?”

Huang Rong said crossly, “You have the nerve to ask? The moment you knew I was safe and well, you would go off and marry that Princess Huazheng. I thought it better you never learned where I was. Do you take me for a fool?”

At the name Huazheng, Guo Jing’s rapture dimmed, and a shadow of melancholy crept in.

Huang Rong looked about her. “That crystal palace is beautiful. Let us go inside and sit.” Guo Jing followed her gaze to a great mass of ice in which a hollow had formed, dim and shadowy under the moon, light and shade playing over it so beautifully that it truly looked like a palace carved from a single great block of crystal.

Hand in hand they stepped into the ice grotto and sat side by side.

Huang Rong said, “Think of how you treated me on Peach Blossom Island. Tell me, should I forgive you?”

Guo Jing rose to his feet. “Rong-er, I will kowtow a hundred times to make amends.” He was in deadly earnest. He really did kneel, and knocked his head hard against the ice, counting aloud, “One, two, three, four…”

Huang Rong smiled brightly and reached down to raise him. “That’s enough. If I weren’t going to forgive you, you could chop off Lu Youjiao’s head a hundred times over and I still wouldn’t bother climbing this peak!”

Guo Jing was delighted. “Rong-er, you are truly good.”

“What is good about it? At first I believed your heart was set on nothing but avenging your shifus, and there was not a shadow of me in it. Of course I was angry! Then I saw you make your pact with Ouyang Feng, that so long as he did not harm me you would spare his life three times, and you were in no hurry for vengeance after all! So it seems you really do think me more important than avenging your shifus.”

Guo Jing shook his head. “Only now do you understand my heart.”

Huang Rong pressed her lips together and smiled. “Look at what I am wearing.”

His eyes had been fixed on her face. At her words he looked down. She wore a gown of black sable, the very coat he had given her when they became friends at Zhangjiakou. His heart stirred, and he took her hand in his.

They sat close together for a while. Then Guo Jing said, “Rong-er, Eldest Shifu told me that in the Iron Spear Temple Ouyang Feng forced you to go with him. How did you escape his grasp later?”

Huang Rong sighed. “It’s only a pity about Lu shige’s³ fine Returning Clouds Manor.⁴ That day the Old Venom⁵ forced me to expound the Nine Yin Manual⁶ for him. I said the exposition was no trouble, but it must be done in a quiet place. The Old Venom said of course, we would find a monastery somewhere secluded. I said monks were tiresome, and I had no taste for vegetarian food. The Old Venom asked what was to be done then. I said there was Returning Clouds Manor beside Lake Tai,⁷ where the scenery was lovely and the food and wine were excellent, only the master of the manor was a friend of mine, which was bound to make him uneasy.”

Guo Jing said, “Yes, of course. He would never agree to go there.”

“No. You know how arrogant he is. He doesn’t think anyone else worth a glance. The more I said it, the more he wanted to go. He said no matter how many friends of yours were in that manor, the Old Venom could handle them all. We arrived at the manor, but Lu shige and his son were both away. They had gone north of the Yangtze to Baoying, to visit their in-laws at the home of Young Mistress Cheng. You know the manor was built according to my father’s arts of the Five Elements and Eight Trigrams. The moment the Old Venom stepped inside, he sensed something was wrong. He tried to pull me back out, but I ducked this way and dodged that, and vanished without a trace. He could not find me anywhere. In his rage, he set fire to Returning Clouds Manor and burned it to the ground.”

Guo Jing gave a cry. “Ah, I went to the manor looking for you. All I found was rubble. I had no idea it was the Old Venom’s doing.”

“I foresaw he would burn it, so I had everyone slip away beforehand. Though the Old Venom could not catch me, he was truly vicious. He guarded the road to Peach Blossom Island and waited for me. More than once I nearly ran into him. In the end I simply went north to Mongolia, and he followed on my heels. Silly gege, it was lucky for me that you are silly yourself. If you had been as quick-witted as the Old Venom and mounted a pincer attack from both front and rear, I do not know where I would have hidden.”

Guo Jing flushed and gave a foolish smile.

Footnotes

1. 午时 — wǔshí. The hour of Wu, about 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., the seventh of the twelve shichen. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

2. 撒麻尔罕 — Sāmá’ěrhǎn. Samarkand, one of the oldest cities of Central Asia and a great centre of the Silk Road. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

3. 师哥 — shīgē. Male senior, the colloquial form of shixiong. Both apprenticed to the same shifu. Shī means teacher. Gē means older brother. ↩

4. 归云庄 — Guīyún Zhuāng. Literally returning clouds manor. The Lu family manor on Lake Tai. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

5. 老毒物 — lǎo dúwù. Literally old venomous thing. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

6. 九阴真经 — Jiǔyīn Zhēnjīng. Literally true scripture of the nine yin. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

7. 太湖 — Tàihú. Literally great lake. Lake Tai, on the border of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. See Wikipedia. ↩