The Legend of the Condor Heroes Chapter 40 – Part 5

One day Mu Nianci was gathering firewood in the forest with her child when Elder Peng¹ happened past. Seeing her beauty, he approached with intent to assault her. Though Mu Nianci’s martial arts were no trifling matter, Elder Peng was one of the Beggars’ Guild’s four great elders, a man who stood on equal footing with the likes of Lu Youjiao, and to make matters worse he practised a mind-clouding art² that could bewitch a person with his gaze. Mu Nianci was no match for him, and before long his eyes had stupefied her and he had tied her up. Overcome by shock and fury, she fainted. Had Guo Jing and Huang Rong not arrived at that very moment, and had the twin eagles not spotted the villain from the air with their piercing eyes, Mu Nianci, ill-starred all her life, would surely have been dishonoured by a villain once again.

That evening Guo Jing and Huang Rong rested at Mu Nianci’s home. Huang Rong told her that Yang Kang had died in the Iron Spear Temple in Jiaxing. Seeing Mu Nianci’s tears pour down like rain, plainly unable to forget her old love, she dared not relate the full truth. She said only that Yang Kang had been poisoned by Ouyang Feng, and thought, That’s no lie either. Didn’t he die of Old Venom’s snake poison?

Guo Jing looked at the child’s handsome face and recalled his sworn brotherhood with Yang Kang. He sighed deeply.

Mu Nianci said through her tears, “Big Brother Guo, please give this child a name.”

Guo Jing considered for a moment. “His father and I swore a golden-orchid brotherhood,³ but sadly it came to a bad end. I failed in my duty as a friend, and that is the great regret of my life. I only hope that when the boy grows up he will mend his faults and devote himself to benevolence and righteousness. Rong-er, I was never much good with letters. You choose the name.”

Huang Rong looked to Mu Nianci for her wishes.

Mu Nianci said, “Rong meimei, please name the child according to what Big Brother Guo said.”

Huang Rong said, “I shall call him Yang Guo,⁴ with the courtesy name Gaizhi.⁵ What do you think?”

Mu Nianci thanked her. “Wonderful! May he turn out as Big Brother Guo and Rong meimei hope.”

Huang Rong invited Mu Nianci to come with them to Peach Blossom Island. Guo Jing volunteered to take Yang Guo as his disciple and teach him martial arts. Mu Nianci saw the deep affection between Guo Jing and Huang Rong, and their sincere kindness towards her. But thinking of her own bitter lot, she said, “If Big Brother Guo is willing to take this child as his disciple, it is his great fortune. Let us bow to the shifu⁶ first!” Holding Yang Guo in her arms, she bowed several times to Guo Jing, then said, “The child is too young for Peach Blossom Island to be easy just now. But one day we will certainly come and put ourselves in the care of his shifu and shiniang.”⁷

The next morning Guo Jing and Huang Rong invited Mu Nianci again to join them for Peach Blossom Island. Mu Nianci said only that she must go to her old family home in Lin’an. Guo Jing had once received a gift of a thousand liang⁸ of gold from Tolui, and he gave Mu Nianci a good deal of silver. Mu Nianci thanked him and said softly, “My child and I must first go to the Iron Spear Temple in Jiaxing, to visit his father’s grave.” The three of them wished one another well and parted sadly.

That evening, after stopping for the night, the two sat talking by lamplight after their meal.

Guo Jing carried in his bosom the piece of leather on which Huazheng⁹ had carved her message. He thought of their childhood games in the great desert with Huazheng and Tolui, every scene as vivid as though it were before his eyes. He had never loved Huazheng as a man loves a woman, but in the flower of her youth she was now living alone in the Western Regions under Jochi’s protection. She must be lonely and miserable, and the thought cast a shadow over his heart. Then he thought of the Mongol army’s southward invasion, of a Song emperor who was benighted and ministers who were mediocre, of generals and soldiers too rotten to hold. Countless common people were bound to suffer. If he went to warn the court of the invasion, the court would have no plan for it either. He feared it would only hasten a surrender to the Mongols, doing more harm than good. Huang Rong let him sit lost in thought, and busied herself mending a shirt under the lamp.

Suddenly Guo Jing said, “Rong-er, Huazheng said she had brought about my mother’s tragic death and could not bear to face me. What did she mean by that?”

Huang Rong said, “Her father forced your mother to her death. Naturally she felt guilty.”

Guo Jing murmured an assent and bent his head, recalling the circumstances of his mother’s death. Then he leapt to his feet and slammed his palm down on the table with all his strength, crying, “I see it now, so that’s how it was!”

Huang Rong started at his outburst. The needle pricked her finger and a drop of blood appeared. She laughed and asked, “What is it? Such a fuss. What have you found out?”

Guo Jing said, “My mother and I secretly opened the Great Khan’s sealed orders and resolved to go south. There was no one else in the tent at the time, yet the Great Khan knew of it at once and had us seized, and in the end my mother cut her own throat for the sake of righteousness. How the news got out has puzzled me ever since. So it was, it was her.”

Huang Rong shook her head. “Princess Huazheng loved you truly. She would never have informed against you.”

Guo Jing said, “She did not mean to harm me. She meant to keep me. From outside the tent she saw my mother secretly open the brocade pouch and draw out the Great Khan’s sealed orders, and she saw my mother and me packing to slip quietly away. So she went and told her father, thinking the Great Khan would surely keep me in the desert and not let me go, and that would serve her purpose. She did not know that secretly opening the pouch was a grave crime. How could she foresee such a catastrophe?” He sighed again and again as he spoke.

Huang Rong said, “If it was an innocent mistake on her part, then you ought to go to the Western Regions and find her!”

Guo Jing said, “She and I are no more than brother and sister. She lives under her elder brother’s roof now and holds a position of the highest honour in the Western Regions. What business would I have seeking her out?”

Huang Rong smiled brightly, and her heart was glad.

The next morning they rode south. That evening they lodged at a large inn in Huzhou called the Merchant-Welcoming Inn.¹⁰ At dusk, as they ate in the main hall, they overheard a table of seven or eight burly fellows drinking and talking loudly, all with Shandong accents. They were talking of how the Loyalty Army¹¹ of Qingzhou, in Yidu Prefecture, Shandong, was resisting the Jin and killing the enemy. Guo Jing listened with keen interest. He ordered five jin¹² of wine and eight great bowls of food for them, and moved over to their table to ask for news.

These men were merchants who had fled south from Qingzhou. They had long traded in silk in the Liangzhe circuit, but with Qingzhou now in danger they had fled to Zhexi to escape the fighting for a while. Seeing Guo Jing treat them to wine and food so courteously, they told him of conditions in Shandong.

Qingzhou, in Yidu Prefecture, was a place of great importance in southern Lu. In recent years the Jin army had suffered repeated defeats at the hands of the Mongols, and its power had waned. Local Han had raised spears and banners, seized much territory, and formed the Loyalty Army under the leadership of Li Quan of Weizhou. Li Quan was a capable man, but his wife Yang Miaozhen¹³ was more formidable still. In those days it was said of her, “Twenty years of the pear-blossom spear,¹⁴ and no match under heaven.” With Li Quan’s elder brother Li Fu, the three of them had beaten the Jin forces into utter rout, righteous folk all over Shandong had flocked to them, and their strength had grown mighty. In the past few months they had won victory after victory, driving the Jin troops in Huainan and Shandong back westward. Since the days of Yue Fei, Liu Qi,¹⁵ and Yu Yunwen, the Song people had not seen so great a triumph over the Jin.

When the court at Lin’an heard the news it was greatly pleased. The chancellor Shi Miyuan was then in power, and he appointed Li Quan Commander-in-Chief of the Jingdong Circuit (though the eastern and western circuits of Jingdong had long been under Jin administration, the Song court continued to appoint officials to the post), and the Loyalty Army was formally recognised as such, with its headquarters at Chuzhou, modern Huai’an. Now the Song had an army north of the Yangtze, and it seemed to be rousing itself. Yet although the court sent the Loyalty Army some grain and pay, it was deeply suspicious of them. When the Jin army later crossed the Huai and advanced towards the Yangtze, Li Quan led his forces to beat them back again and again, until the Jin could not recover. The court promoted Li Quan to Military Governor of Baoning Army and Deputy Pacification Commissioner of the Jingdong Circuit, so that he held rank as a great general indeed. But over Li Quan’s head the court appointed another great general, Xu Guo, as Supreme Commander of Huaidong, to serve as a check. Xu Guo had distinguished himself in past campaigns at Xiangfan and Zaoyang, but he was a muddle-headed and violent man, and showed no courtesy to Li Quan and Yang Miaozhen. Whenever friction arose between the Loyalty Army and the regular Song forces, Xu Guo invariably punished the Loyalty Army, and his judgements were grossly unfair. Li Quan was then fighting the Jin on the front line at Qingzhou. Behind the lines the Loyalty Army’s men were enraged, and they mutinied, killing Xu Guo’s entire household. Xu Guo took his own life. By then the Mongol army had beaten the Jin and reached Shandong, and begun their assault on Qingzhou.

Some of the people in those parts had served in the Loyalty Army, others were friends or kin of those who had, and the merchants from Qingzhou praised Li Quan and Yang Miaozhen to the skies. Huang Rong, hearing how formidable this woman general was, said, “Jing gege, I want to see for myself just how good this pear-blossom spear is that has had no match under heaven for twenty years!”

Guo Jing said, “Good! This is territory our great Song has recovered. Though it lies north of the river, every inch of it is Song land. Now that we’ve come upon it, we must lend Li Quan and his wife a hand.” They discussed the matter for a while and set out north towards Yidu Prefecture in Shandong.

When they met Li Quan and Yang Miaozhen and explained their purpose, Li Quan had become a great official with the airs to match. His string of victories over the Jin had made him somewhat proud, and with the mutiny in his ranks not yet put down, he was anxious and troubled. Seeing Guo Jing and Huang Rong so young, the man honest and artless, the woman beautiful, he judged them unlikely to possess any extraordinary talent. He thanked them in a few words and ordered his subordinates to show them to wine and food, saying that when the enemy came, if he and his wife could not drive them off, he would ask the two of them to help defend the city.

Li Quan then began issuing orders, but not for the city’s defence. He was sending troops to hunt down the rebellious commanders within the Loyalty Army, and to drive the regular Song soldiers who had seized the pay stores out of the city. Guo Jing and Huang Rong saw that although Li Quan was bold and martial, his command was chaotic. His subordinates fought one another, his ranks were in grave disorder, split and divided. There was plainly a bitter struggle still to be settled among his own people.

Guo Jing had been through many campaigns, and he knew that the first duty of war was to scout the enemy’s movements. Yet Li Quan was merely asking at random, “How many enemy are there? Are they Mongols or Jin? They cannot be Mongols, surely? Where has the enemy vanguard reached?” His officers answered at random, and there was no knowing whether they spoke truth. Guo Jing and Huang Rong had no appetite for their meal. After whispering together briefly, Huang Rong volunteered to ride the little red horse and reconnoitre.

At dusk Guo Jing stood outside the north gate, gazing into the distance. He saw the little red horse approaching in a cloud of dust and hastened to meet it. Huang Rong pulled up, her face pale with fright. She said in a trembling voice, “The Mongol army numbers a hundred thousand or more. How can we possibly withstand them?”

Guo Jing was startled. “So many?”

Huang Rong said, “Last time Genghis Khan had you split your army three ways, meaning to destroy the Song in one stroke. You refused. Others, it seems, were willing.”

Guo Jing said, “We’d need Zhuge Liang¹⁶ to come up with a brilliant scheme.”

Huang Rong shook her head. “I have been thinking on it a long while. Jing gege, if it came to single combat, there are only two or three in the world who could best you. Even ten or a hundred of the enemy would be no great matter to the pair of us. But now the enemy is here in thousands, in tens of thousands, in a hundred thousand. What can we do?”

Guo Jing sighed. “Our Song soldiers and people outnumber the Mongols dozens of times over. If we could only stand as one, why should we fear the Mongols’ fine troops? The pity of it is that the Emperor is timid and foolish, that he tyrannises his people and leads the realm astray, and that the Loyalty Army is torn by internal strife. With a great enemy at the gates, they are still murdering one another.”

Huang Rong said, “If the Mongols do not come, well and good. If they do, we kill every one we can. And if it comes to the worst, we still have the little red horse to rely on. The affairs of this world are not worth so much worry.”

Guo Jing said gravely, “Rong-er, that will not do. We have studied the strategies of Wumu’s Art of War.¹⁷ How can we ignore the lesson of Yue Wumu’s four characters, ‘serve the country with utmost loyalty’? What he taught was ‘break the Jin’, but in truth it means ‘break the enemy’, and to use it to ‘break the Mongols’ is no different. Insignificant as we are and small as our strength is, we must give all we have to defend our country against the invader. Even if we lay down our lives on the battlefield, we shall not have wasted the teaching of our parents and shifu.”

Huang Rong knew his heart well. She sighed. “I always knew this day would come. So be it, so be it. If you live, I live. If you die, I die!”

Their minds made up, they felt strangely at ease. They returned to the city, drank together and talked, and with the enemy at the gates and the shadow of parting upon them, they were closer than ever. They drank on until the second watch, when suddenly a great wailing rose from beyond the city walls, coming from afar, terrible to hear.

Huang Rong cried, “They’re here!”

The two ran up to the battlements. Beyond the walls a great flood of refugees had arrived, helping the old and leading the young, an unending stream. Though the Loyalty Army had retaken Qingzhou, the regular Song army had turned on the Loyalty Army instead, and the Loyalty Army’s own generals had mutinied, killing Li Quan’s brother Li Fu. Li Quan and his wife had sent troops to quell the revolt. The common people, afraid of the chaos, dared not enter the city, and had scattered among the hills. Now the Mongols were upon them, and they fled for the walls.

But the city commander ordered his men to bar the gates and admit no refugees. Before long Li Quan sent more soldiers, who drew their bows and aimed at the crowd, ordering them to disperse. The refugees below the walls cried out, “The Mongols are coming!” Still the commander would not open the gates. The refugees wailed beneath the walls, their crying shaking the sky.

Guo Jing and Huang Rong stood on the battlements and gazed into the distance. Far away a line of fire came winding towards them, like a dragon of flame. The Mongol vanguard had arrived. Guo Jing had long served under Genghis Khan and knew the Mongols’ practice in siege warfare. They would often drive enemy captives up the walls ahead of them. Now with tens of thousands of refugees trapped below, the moment the Mongol vanguard arrived, the soldiers and people of Qingzhou, inside and out, would be driven to slaughter one another.

Footnotes

1. 彭长老 — Péng Zhǎnglǎo. Literally Elder Peng. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

2. 慑心术 — Shèxīn Shù. Literally mind-awing art. An art of seizing another’s mind by force of will. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

3. 义结金兰 — yì jié jīn lán. Literally to bind a golden-orchid bond in righteousness. A solemn oath of sworn brotherhood. ↩

4. 杨过 — Yáng Guò. His name meaning “Transgression”. ↩

5. 改之 — Gǎizhī. His name meaning “Mend It”. ↩

6. 师父 — shīfù. Teacher responsible for technical instruction and moral guidance. Shī means teacher. Fù means father. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

7. 师娘 — shīniáng. The wife of one’s shifu. Shī means teacher. Niáng means mother. ↩

8. 两 — liǎng. A traditional unit of weight, one-sixteenth of a jin, and the unit in which silver was reckoned. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

9. 华筝 — Huázhēng. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

10. 招商安寓 — Zhāoshāng Ānyù. Literally merchant-welcoming lodging. An inn in Huzhou. ↩

11. 忠义军 — Zhōngyì Jūn. Literally loyal and righteous army. A Han Chinese resistance force in Shandong during the Southern Song. ↩

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

13. 杨妙真 — Yáng Miàozhēn. Wife of Li Quan, famed for her Pear-Blossom Spear (historical). See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

14. 梨花枪 — líhuā qiāng. Literally pear-blossom spear. A spear technique. ↩

15. 刘锜 — Liú Qí. A Southern Song general famed for his victories over the Jin, notably at Shunchang in 1140. ↩

16. 诸葛亮 — Zhūgě Liàng (181—234). Chancellor and chief strategist of Shu Han in the Three Kingdoms period, known as the Crouching Dragon. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

17. 武穆遗书 — Wǔmù Yíshū. The military treatise left by Yue Fei (1103—1142), the Song general posthumously titled Wumu. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩