The Return of the Condor Heroes Chapter 21 – Part 6

Kublai said with a smile, “I’m sure Uncle Guo knew nothing of his two worthy disciples coming to assassinate me.” Guo Jing nodded. “I knew nothing of it beforehand. Young fellows like these have no idea how high heaven is or how deep the earth.¹ It was a piece of utter foolishness.” Kublai said, “Of course. Our families have been friends for three generations, and Uncle Guo, mindful of old friendship, would never do such a thing.” Guo Jing’s face grew stern. “That is not so. When the public good is at stake, private friendship weighs less. Years ago, when my anda Tolui led his army against Qingzhou, I made up my mind to assassinate my sworn brother to turn his army back. As it happened, Genghis Khan fell gravely ill and the Mongol army withdrew, and only so was my sworn brotherhood kept whole. The ancients would destroy even their own kin for the greater good. If kin may be destroyed, how much more friends?”

He said it all frankly and without a pause, and the State Preceptor, Yin Kexi and the others turned pale and looked at one another. Yang Guo felt a jolt in his chest. So that’s it, he thought. Murdering his sworn brothers is his speciality. I wonder what mistake my father made, to fall foul of his deadly hand. Guo Jing, oh, Guo Jing, have you never done one wrong thing in all your life? At the thought, the venom of hatred slowly rose in his breast once more.

Kublai, though, showed no sign of displeasure. “In that case,” he said, smiling, “why does Uncle Guo say his two worthy disciples were foolish?” Guo Jing said, “Their training isn’t finished, and they’ve no idea of their own limits. Rushing in to assassinate you like that, how could they succeed? It doesn’t matter that they were caught, but now they’ve put you more on your guard, and it will be all the harder for anyone who comes after them.” Kublai roared with laughter. I’d long heard that Guo Jing was honest and plain, and slow of tongue, he thought. Who would have guessed his words could be so sharp? In truth Guo Jing simply said whatever came into his head. It was only because his thinking was clear that his words had such an edge. The State Preceptor and the others saw him alone, carrying no weapon, bare-handed in the midst of the Mongols’ tens of thousands of horse and foot, and not in the least afraid. That kind of spirit was beyond any of them, and every one of them was won over.

Kublai saw Guo Jing’s noble bearing and was drawn to him in spite of himself. If I could win this man to my side, he thought, it would be worth more than ten cities like Xiangyang. He said, “Uncle Guo, the Zhao house of Song has lost the Way. The ruler is benighted and the people suffer. Traitors hold the court and the loyal and good are wronged. Am I not right?” Guo Jing said, “You are. The Chunyou Emperor² is a benighted ruler who has lost the Way, and the Chancellor, Jia Sidao, is a traitor of the first water.” Again everyone was taken aback. No one had dreamed he would denounce the Song emperor and his ministers so bluntly. Kublai said, “Just so. Uncle Guo is a hero and a brave man of the very first rank in our time. Why toil yourself to death for a benighted ruler and treacherous ministers?”

Guo Jing rose to his feet and said in a ringing voice, “Unworthy as I am, could I let myself be used by a benighted ruler and treacherous ministers? It is only that I am outraged at the Mongols’ cruelty, invading our land and slaughtering our people. All the hot blood in my breast is spilled for the tens of millions of common folk of our Divine Land.”³

Kublai slapped the table. “Well said. Let us all drink a bowl to Uncle Guo.” He raised his bowl and drained his mare’s-milk wine at a draught. His followers were secretly uneasy. They all feared that Kublai, mindful of the old friendship between their fathers and moved by Guo Jing’s words, might actually let him go home, and then it would be hard indeed to catch him again. But when they saw Kublai raise his bowl, they had no choice but to drink a bowl each with him. The guards on either side filled everyone’s bowl again.

Kublai said, “In your noble country there was an old sage who said, ‘The people matter most, the altars of the land come next, and the ruler least.’⁴ There is real truth in that. All under heaven belongs to all the people under heaven, and only the virtuous should hold it. In our Great Mongol Empire the government is clean and just, and the people live in peace and work in contentment, each in his proper place. Our Great Khan could not bear to see the people of the Southern Court sunk in deep waters and scorching fires, with no one to deliver them from their misery, and so he has sent his armies south to console the people and punish the guilty, sparing no toil. In this our hearts are one with Uncle Guo’s: heroes, as they say, see alike. Come, let us drain another bowl.” And he raised his bowl and emptied it again.

The State Preceptor and the others had their bowls at their lips when Guo Jing swept out with his great sleeve. A blast of wind went before it, there was a clattering crash, and every bowl in the company fell to the ground and smashed to pieces. “Your Highness,” said Guo Jing in a great rage, “you say the people matter most, and not one word of that is wrong. But since your Mongol soldiers invaded the Song, they have revelled in butchering the people, till the bleached bones lie in heaps of ruin and the blood runs in rivers. Our people of the Great Song have lost homes and families, and who knows how many lives have been lost to your Mongol dao and spears. What is this talk of consoling the people and punishing the guilty, of delivering the people from their misery?”

Abrupt and unexpected as the sweep of his sleeve had been, the State Preceptor and the others were all men of peerless skill, and to have had their bowls knocked from their hands left every one of them burning with shame. They all rose together, waiting only for Kublai to give the word to fall upon him.

Kublai threw back his head and laughed long. “Uncle Guo is a hero without equal. There is no officer or man in our Mongol army who does not speak of you with admiration, and today I have seen with my own eyes that your fame is well deserved. I am a man of little talent, but I would not dare do wrong by my late father’s friendship. Today let us talk only of old times, and not of affairs of state. What do you say?” Guo Jing saluted with clasped hands. “Tolui has a son of broad mind and generous spirit, unmatched by any of the Mongol princes, who will surely bear great burdens of state one day. I have a word of good counsel for you. Will you deign to hear it?” Kublai said, “I would gladly hear Uncle’s teaching.”

Guo Jing folded his hands before him and said, “Our Southern Court is vast in land and people, and prizes integrity. Men of talent are to be found everywhere, and never since ancient times have we bowed the knee to a foreign race. The Mongols may have their way on the battlefield for a while, but one day they will surely be driven back north of the desert, their strength grievously wasted, and regret will come too late. I beg Your Highness to think on it.” Kublai smiled. “Thank you for enlightening me.” Guo Jing could hear that he did not mean a word of it. “I take my leave, then,” he said. “We shall meet again.” Kublai saluted with clasped hands. “See our guest out.”

The State Preceptor and the others looked at one another in astonishment and turned as one to Kublai, all thinking the same. The fish is in the net at last. How can we let the tiger go back to its mountain? But Kublai was seeing Guo Jing courteously out of the tent, and none of them could very well make a move.

Guo Jing strode out of the tent. This Kublai is no ordinary man in what he does, he thought to himself. He really is a formidable enemy. He gave Yang Guo a look and quickened his pace towards their horses.

Suddenly eight huge Mongols rushed out from one side, and the one at their head said, “Are you Guo Jing? You hurt a good many of our brothers on the wall at Xiangyang, and now you have the gall to come and show off your might in our camp. The Prince may let you go, but we won’t stand for it.” With a shout the eight of them closed in together, each using the Mongol wrestler’s grips, and sixteen hands grabbed at Guo Jing. Kublai, as it turned out, had not wanted to give the order to seize Guo Jing himself and hurt the friendship of old, so he had laid men in ambush outside the tent, to take him only after they had said their farewells.

In wrestling the Mongols had no equal under heaven, and these eight were among the very best in the Mongol army, placed outside the tent by Kublai expressly to take Guo Jing. But Guo Jing had grown up in Mongolia and had been at home in the saddle, with the bow and in the wrestling ring since he was a boy. As the eight men grabbed for him, his hands shot out again and again and his right leg hooked and swept, and in an instant four of them had been seized and thrown more than ten feet and the other four hooked off their feet. It was true Mongol wrestling he was using, only with supreme martial skill beneath it, so that the strength in his hands and feet was beyond all ordinary measure. How could the eight of them stand against him? A thousand of Kublai’s own guards were stationed outside the royal tent, every man of them an accomplished wrestler, and when they saw how cleanly Guo Jing had thrown eight of the army’s best at once, with the Mongols’ own holds, with a speed and a mastery they had never seen before, they burst into cheers as one.

Guo Jing saluted the soldiers with fist in palm, then took off his cap and turned it round in a circle, the courtesy a Mongol wrestler pays the crowd after a win, and the soldiers cheered louder than ever. The eight men picked themselves up and stood gaping at Guo Jing, not knowing whether to go for him again or leave it there.

Guo Jing said to Yang Guo, “Let’s go!” Horn calls were sounding now, one answering another, and thousand-strong troops were galloping to and fro on every side: Kublai had moved his forces and ringed the two of them round completely. Guo Jing was secretly alarmed. Even if the two of us had powers to reach the sky, how could we break out of a ring like this? Who would have thought Kublai would put so great an army in motion against me alone? Afraid that Yang Guo would lose heart, he kept his face calm. “Our horses are fast,” he said. “We just charge straight through. First we’ll go and seize two shields, in case they loose a storm of arrows at the horses.” And he added in a low voice in Yang Guo’s ear, “Charge south first, then turn your horse and go north.”

Yang Guo was puzzled. Xiangyang lies to the south. Why go north? Then he understood. Ah, of course. Kublai will mass his troops to the south, to stop him getting back to Xiangyang, so the north is sure to be thin. South first and then north, to catch them off guard and unprepared, and he can seize the chance to break out. How am I to stop him?

The thought had barely formed when several figures shot out of Kublai’s royal tent and in a few bounds were blocking the way. Then came a loud humming drone, and a bronze wheel and an iron wheel came flying at the two horses: the State Preceptor was moving to stop them getting away. Guo Jing saw how fiercely the two wheels were coming and dared not try to catch them. He ducked his head and pressed down on the necks of both horses, and the horses dropped to their knees. The bronze and iron wheels skimmed just over their heads, turned in the air, and went back into the State Preceptor’s hands. That little delay was enough. Nimoxing and Yin Kexi were already in front of them, with the State Preceptor and Xiaoxiangzi close behind, and the four of them closed round.

State Preceptor Jinlun, Xiaoxiangzi and the others were all first-rate masters, and in a fight none of them would ever lower himself by ganging up on one man. But Guo Jing’s martial skill was simply too great, and besides, each of them wanted the title of First Warrior of Mongolia and feared that someone else would win the first honours. Bare blades flashed and yellow light dazzled: all four now had weapons in their hands. Yin Kexi held a soft whip of gold inlaid with pearls and jade, and Xiaoxiangzi a cudgel shaped like a mourning staff. Nimoxing’s weapon was the strangest of all, a short iron whip cast in the shape of a spirit snake, which coiled about his arm and struck and drew back, rolling up and down, for all the world like a living snake. The State Preceptor held a golden wheel. His first golden wheel had been taken by Yang Guo at the Heroes’ Gathering at Dasheng Pass, and feeling that without one he did not live up to his name, he had ordered master craftsmen to cast another, identical in shape and weight.

Guo Jing watched how the four of them ran and how they drew their weapons, and judged Yin Kexi the weakest of them. At once he struck out with both palms at Xiaoxiangzi’s face. Xiaoxiangzi stood his staff upright and jabbed its end at Guo Jing’s palm. Guo Jing saw that white cord was wound round the staff and a hemp rope trailed from its head, just like the mourning staff a filial son carries at a funeral. This man’s martial skill runs deep, he thought, and his weapon is so freakish it must have something special about it. At once he swung his right hand back with a move called “The Divine Dragon Sweeps Its Tail” and seized Yin Kexi’s golden whip. Yin Kexi meant to shake the whip and strike back, but its tip was already in the enemy’s grip, so he went with the pull and hurled himself bodily at Guo Jing, a gleaming dagger suddenly in his left hand. It was attack as defence, a deadly move from the Eighteen Small Grasping Hands.

“Good!” cried Guo Jing, and he used grappling holds with both hands at once, his right hand still keeping hold of the golden whip, his left going straight for the dagger. His right hand was seizing the weapon in Yin Kexi’s right hand and his left the weapon in Yin Kexi’s left, so that his arms were crossed. Yin Kexi had been sure his dagger thrust would force his enemy to let go of the whip to dodge it. How could he have known that Guo Jing could strike with each hand separately and take the dagger as well?

Footnotes

1. 不知天高地厚 – bù zhī tiān gāo dì hòu. Literally not knowing how high heaven is or how thick the earth: ignorant of one’s own limits, recklessly overconfident. ↩

2. 淳佑皇帝 – Chúnyòu Huángdì. The Chunyou Emperor: Emperor Lizong of Song (宋理宗), named here for his reign era Chunyou (1241–1252). He reigned from 1224 to 1264, a period of Song decline. ↩

3. 神州 – Shénzhōu. Poetic name for China, literally “Divine Land” or “Land of the Gods,” carrying deep cultural and patriotic connotations. ↩

4. 民为贵，社稷次之，君为轻 – “The people are most important…”. From Mencius (《孟子》), one of the Four Books of Confucianism. This is one of the most radical statements in classical Chinese political philosophy, placing the welfare of the common people above the state and the ruler. Kublai is deploying classical Chinese learning to argue that the Mongol conquest is legitimate. ↩