The Legend of the Condor Heroes Chapter 38 – Part 5

Guo Jing said, “I told the Princess plainly long ago that with Rong-er dead, I shall never marry as long as I live.”

Li Ping sighed. “The Princess may forgive that, but I have been thinking about the Khan’s intentions, and I am deeply worried.”

“What about the Khan?”

“These past few days the Khan has been lavishing honours on us beyond measure: gold, silver, jewels, gifts without end. He says it is to reward your merit in the western campaign, but I have lived in the northern desert for twenty years and I know the Khan’s temperament fairly well. There is something else behind it.”

“Mother, what do you think it is?”

“I am only a woman. What insight can I have? But when I think it through carefully, I believe the Khan means to force us into something.”

“Ah. He must be pressing me to marry the Princess.”

“Marriage is a happy thing, and the Khan most likely doesn’t know your heart is unwilling, so there would be no need to force you. No, the way I see it, you are leading the great army south, and the Khan is afraid you may suddenly turn against him.”

Guo Jing shook his head. “The Khan knows well enough that I care nothing for wealth or rank. Why would I rebel?”

“I have thought of a way to learn his true intentions. Tell him I am homesick and wish to return south with you. Go to the Khan and see what he says.”

Guo Jing was delighted. “Mother, why didn’t you say so sooner? Returning to our homeland together is a wonderful thing. The Khan is sure to agree.”

He pushed aside the tent flap and stepped out. Huazheng was nowhere in sight. She must have grown tired of waiting and gone away disappointed.

A good while later Guo Jing came back, crestfallen.

“The Khan refused, didn’t he?” Li Ping said.

“That I cannot understand. Why must the Khan keep you here?”

Li Ping was silent.

“The Khan says that after the Jin are defeated, he will let me take you home in glory, that it would be far more honourable to return thus. I told him my mother was homesick and eager to go south at once, but a look of anger came over the Khan’s face, and he only shook his head and refused.”

Li Ping mused, “What else did the Khan say to you today?”

Guo Jing told her how the Khan had pointed out strategy inside the tent and handed him the brocade pouch.¹

Li Ping sighed. “If only your Second Shifu and Rong-er were still alive, they would surely have guessed it. I am only a foolish country woman. The more I think, the more uneasy I grow, and I cannot tell why.”

Guo Jing turned the brocade pouch over in his hands. “When the Khan gave me this pouch, his expression was most peculiar. Perhaps it has something to do with it.”

Li Ping took the pouch and examined it closely, then sent the maidservants away. “Let us open it and see.”

Guo Jing was alarmed. “No! Breaking the gold seal on the wax is a capital offence.”

Li Ping smiled. “The brocade-weaving of Lin’an is famed throughout the world. Your mother is a Lin’an woman and learned the craft as a girl. There is no need to damage the wax seal. I need only unpick the pouch itself, and I can reweave it afterwards without the slightest trace.”

Guo Jing was overjoyed. Li Ping took a fine needle and gently picked apart the silk threads of the brocade, and drew a sheet of paper out through the opening. Mother and son spread it out together and read it, then stared at each other, and both went cold to the bone.

The paper bore a secret order from Genghis Khan, commanding Ögedei,² Tolui³ and Guo Jing that once the Jin were defeated, the three armies were to wheel south at once and take Lin’an by a blow so swift that no defence could be mounted, annihilating the Song and so uniting the world under Mongol rule. The order went on to say that if Guo Jing performed this great service, he would be enfeoffed forthwith as King of Song in the Great Mongol State, with Lin’an as his capital, to govern the Song lands. But if he harboured treachery, disobeyed the edict, or deserted his post and fled, Ögedei and Tolui already held a sealed warrant to behead him on the spot, and his mother would be put to death by lingchi.⁴ The secret order was written in the new Mongol script, which Guo Jing had learned during his long years among the Mongols.

Guo Jing stood stunned for a long while before he spoke. “Mother, if you had not opened the pouch and found this order, our lives would not have been worth a day’s purchase. I am a subject of the Great Song. How could I betray my country for glory?”

“What do you mean to do?”

“Mother, you must endure the hardship. We flee south tonight, the two of us.”

“Yes. Go quickly and make ready, but don’t let anything give us away.”

Guo Jing nodded and returned to his own tent, where he gathered what he needed for the road. Besides the little red horse⁵ he chose eight more swift steeds, so that if the Khan sent riders after them, he and his mother could ride in relays and keep the horses’ strength for a longer escape.

Of all the gold and jewels the Khan had given him he took not a single piece. Even the golden dao with the tiger’s head⁶ he left behind in the tent. He took off his marshal’s robes of a noyan and put on an ordinary fur coat instead. He had grown up in the desert since childhood, and today he was leaving it for the last time, never to return. The thought grieved him. He stood staring at the old tent where he had lived so long, lost in memory, until the sky darkened. Then he went back to his mother’s tent.

He lifted the flap, and his heart lurched. Two bundles lay on the ground, but his mother was gone.

“Mother!” he called twice. No answer. He sensed that something was wrong, and he was about to rush out in search when the tent flap flew open in a blaze of torchlight. The great general Tchila’un⁷ stood in the entrance.

“The Khan summons the Golden Dao Prince Consort!”⁸

Behind him stood a multitude of soldiers, each clutching a long spear. Guo Jing’s mind raced. With his martial arts he could surely burst through Tchila’un and escape, but then he thought, If the Khan has already taken my mother captive, how can I flee alone?

He followed Tchila’un towards the Golden Tent. Outside it the Khan’s quiver-guards stood ranked in lines, brandishing long spears and great halberds, the formation stretching far into the distance.

Tchila’un said, “The Khan has ordered you bound. I must ask your pardon, Prince Consort. Do not hold it against me.”

Guo Jing nodded. He put his hands behind his back to be bound and walked into the tent.

Dozens of great ox-fat candles blazed within, bright as day. Genghis Khan’s face was dark with fury. He slammed his hand down on the table and roared, “I have treated you well. I raised you from a child and gave you my own daughter in marriage. You little wretch, you dare rebel against me?”

Guo Jing saw the opened brocade pouch lying on the Khan’s table and knew there was no escape from death this day. He held his head high. “I am a subject of the Great Song. How can I take orders from you to attack my own country?”

Genghis Khan, stung by his defiance, was more furious still. “Take him out and behead him.”

Guo Jing’s hands were lashed fast with thick cord. Eight axemen stood guard about him with blades raised. He could not resist, and he shouted, “You allied with the Great Song to attack the Jin, and now you break the pact mid-campaign, faithless and without honour. What sort of hero is that?”

Genghis Khan’s rage redoubled. He kicked the golden table over with a savage boot and bellowed, “Once I have broken the Jin, my pact with the Zhao Song is fulfilled. If I march south against the Song then, how is that breaking faith? Kill him, quickly!”

Many of the generals were on good terms with Guo Jing, but the Khan was beside himself, and none dared plead for him.

Guo Jing said no more. He strode out of the tent at a great pace.

Suddenly Tolui came galloping across the grassland, shouting, “Stay the blade!” He was bare-chested, wearing nothing below but leather trousers. He must have been roused from sleep and ridden hard to intercede. He burst straight into the tent.

“Khan, my father, my anda Guo Jing has won great merit. He saved your life and mine. Even if he has committed a capital crime, he must not be put to death.”

Genghis Khan, remembering Guo Jing’s services, called out, “Bring him back.” The axemen led Guo Jing in again.

The Khan was silent for a long while. “Your heart is with Zhao Song, but what good has Zhao Song ever done you? You once told me the story of Yue Fei.⁹ He served his country with utter loyalty, and in the end they put him to death all the same. If you conquer Zhao Song for me, I will before this assembly pledge to enfeoff you as King of Song, and give you the governance of the southern court’s lands. You are a man of the south. As king of the south you can treat the southern people well, and that is no betrayal of your country, nor of your own kin.”

Guo Jing held his head high. “I do not dare disobey the Khan’s orders. But to make me attack my own country, though you cut me with a thousand blades and pierced me with ten thousand arrows, still I could not obey.”

Genghis Khan said, “Bring in his mother.”

Two guards led Li Ping out from behind the tent.

Guo Jing cried, “Mother!” He took two steps towards her, but the axemen raised their blades to bar his way. He thought, Only the two of us knew this secret. How can it have leaked out?

Genghis Khan said, “Obey my word and you and your mother will both enjoy honour and wealth. Refuse, and I shall cut your mother in two with a single blade. That will be your doing. You will have killed your own mother, and become an unfilial son before anything else.”

Those words struck Guo Jing with such terror that his courage shattered utterly. He hung his head, lost in thought, unable to decide what to do.

Tolui pressed him. “Anda, you have lived among the Mongols since you were a child. You are no different from one of us. The corrupt officials of Zhao Song conspired with the Jin to murder your father and drive your mother from her home. If our father the Khan had not taken you in, where would you be today? You cannot be the man who kills his own mother. I beg you to change your mind and obey the Khan’s decree. Then afterwards you can treat the Song people kindly and let the southern common folk live in peace.”

Guo Jing gazed at his mother. The answer rose to his lips, but then he remembered his mother’s lifelong teaching. He remembered the misery he had seen in the lands of the Western Regions after the Mongol conquest, the common folk with their homes destroyed and their families dead. He was torn in two.

Genghis Khan fixed him with a gaze like a tiger’s, waiting for his word. In the Golden Tent several hundred souls held their breath. Every eye was on Guo Jing.

“I…” Guo Jing took a step forward, and the word died on his lips.

Li Ping spoke suddenly. “Khan, I fear the boy cannot see it clearly just now. What if I talk him round?”

Genghis Khan was greatly pleased. “Good. Go and talk him round, quickly.”

Li Ping stepped forward, took Guo Jing by the arm and led him to the corner of the Golden Tent, where they sat down together. She drew her son into her arms and spoke softly.

“Twenty years ago, in Niu Family Village in Lin’an, I was carrying you. One day, in a great snowfall, Daoist Elder Qiu Chuji¹⁰ made friends with your father and gave him two short jians, one for your father, one for your Uncle Yang.” As she spoke, she drew the short jian from Guo Jing’s breast and pointed to the two characters Guo Jing on the hilt. “Daoist Elder Qiu named you Guo Jing, and he named Uncle Yang’s child Yang Kang. Do you know what the names mean?”

“Daoist Elder Qiu was telling us never to forget the shame of Jingkang.¹¹”

“Indeed. The Yang boy took a thief for a father and ended in ruin and disgrace. There is no need to speak of that. The pity is that Uncle Yang was a man of valour all his life, and his descendants have blackened his name.” She sighed. “Why did I bear humiliation and disgrace all those years, raising you in this bitterly cold northern land? Was it to raise up a traitor who sells his country, so that your father might grieve in the Yellow Springs?”

Guo Jing cried, “Mother!” Tears ran down his cheeks.

Li Ping was speaking the Han tongue. Genghis Khan, Tolui and the generals did not understand her meaning, but seeing Guo Jing weep, they took it that Li Ping feared death and had persuaded her son at last. Each was quietly pleased.

Li Ping said, “A human life lasts but a hundred years, and they pass like a flash. What is life or death, in the end? So long as one’s deeds give no cause for shame, one has not walked this world in vain. If others wrong us, we need not dwell on their faults. Remember what I have said!”

She gazed at Guo Jing for a long while, her expression tender beyond measure.

“Child, take good care of yourself!”

She raised the short jian and cut through the cords on his wrists. Before Guo Jing could turn, she wheeled the blade and drove it into her own breast.

Footnotes

1. 锦囊 — jǐnnáng. Literally brocade bag. A small silk pouch for secret orders or stratagems, recalling Zhuge Liang’s brocade bags in Romance of the Three Kingdoms. ↩

2. 窝阔台 — Wōkuòtái. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

3. 拖雷 — Tuōléi. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

4. 凌迟 — língchí. Death by a thousand cuts, the slowest and most degrading form of execution in imperial Chinese law. See Wikipedia. ↩

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

6. 虎头金刀 — hǔtóu jīndāo. The golden dao with a tiger’s head on its hilt, Genghis Khan’s gift. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

7. 赤老温 — Chìlǎowēn. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

8. 金刀驸马 — Jīndāo Fùmǎ. Literally golden dao prince consort. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

9. 岳飞 — Yuè Fēi (1103—1142). The most celebrated Song general of the wars against the Jin, executed on false charges. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

10. 丘处机 — Qiū Chǔjī. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

11. 靖康之耻 — Jìngkāng zhī Chǐ. Literally the shame of Jingkang. In 1127 Jin forces took the Northern Song capital Kaifeng and carried off the emperors Huizong and Qinzong, ending the Northern Song. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩