The Return of the Condor Heroes Chapter 22 – Part 9

At that Li Mochou could not help laughing. She had kept herself unwed and chaste, passing her whole life among blades, and of rearing an infant she knew nothing whatever. “But where are we to find milk?” she said slowly. “Would rice do for her?” “Look and see if she has any teeth,” said Yang Guo. Li Mochou peered into the baby’s mouth and shook her head. “Not half a one.” “Let’s go to a village and find a woman who’s nursing a child,” said Yang Guo, “and have her feed this baby till she’s full. Wouldn’t that be best?” Li Mochou was delighted. “You really are full of schemes.”

The two of them climbed a hill and looked about, and far off to the west they saw cooking smoke rising from a fold in the mountains. They were both swift of foot, and in moments they were close to a little village. The country round Xiangyang had long been ravaged by war, and the villages and market towns along the highroads had all been trampled into waste by the Mongol horse. Only in remote valleys and backwaters like this did a few mountain folk still live together.

Li Mochou pushed open door after door to look inside. At the fourth farmhouse she found a young woman nursing a child of a year or more. Li Mochou was overjoyed. She snatched the child from the woman’s arms, tossed it onto the kang, and thrust the baby girl into her arms instead. “The baby’s hungry. Feed her till she’s full.”

The young woman’s son, flung onto the kang, flailed his arms and legs and howled. The mother loved her son and hurriedly reached out to pick him up. Seeing the young woman’s breast bare, Yang Guo turned at once to face the door, but he heard Li Mochou shout, “I told you to feed my baby. Didn’t you hear me? Who told you to pick up your own son?” There was a thud. Yang Guo jumped and looked round, and saw the farmer’s child lying where he had been flung at the foot of the wall, his head streaming with blood, whether dead or alive there was no telling. Wild with grief, the young woman put down Guo Jing’s daughter and threw herself on her own son, weeping and wailing. Li Mochou flew into a rage. Up went her whisk, and down it came at the young woman’s back.

Yang Guo hastily put out his jian and parried it. Was there ever such a savage woman under heaven? he thought. But aloud he said, “Li shibo,¹ if you beat her to death, a dead woman won’t have any milk.” “I’m doing this for your child’s good,” said Li Mochou angrily, “and you go meddling!” Yang Guo thought, She’s plainly not my child, yet you keep calling her mine. And if she really were mine, how could you call it meddling? He smiled to placate her. “The child is starving. The thing that matters is to get her fed quickly.” As he spoke he reached toward the kang to pick up the baby. Li Mochou raised her whisk to bar his hand. “Would you dare snatch the child?” she cried. Yang Guo stepped back with a laugh. “All right, all right! I won’t pick her up, then.”

Li Mochou picked up the baby girl and turned to put her back in the young woman’s arms, but the woman had gone. While the two of them argued, she had picked up her son and slipped quietly out by the back door. Li Mochou’s fury boiled over. She dashed out of the door and saw the young woman running for her life with her baby in her arms. Li Mochou gave a snort and sprang into the air, bringing her whisk down on the woman’s head. The wind of it swept past, and mother and son fell dead on the spot with their skulls broken. Li Mochou went looking for someone else to nurse the baby, but there were only men in the village. Angrier than ever, she killed several of them at random, took fire from a kitchen stove and set the thatched farmhouses alight, starting several fires before she strode quickly out of the village.

Yang Guo sighed to himself to see how savage she was, and followed behind her, neither too close nor too far. They walked several dozen li² through the hills and wilds. The baby cried herself out and fell fast asleep in Li Mochou’s arms.

As they went along, Li Mochou suddenly gave a little “Oh?” and stopped. Two spotted leopard cubs were tumbling and playing in front of them. She stepped forward to kick the cubs out of the way, when there was a great roar from the long grass beside them, something blurred before her eyes, and a huge leopard with coin-shaped spots came springing out. Startled, she checked her step and leapt away to the left. The leopard turned at once and sprang again, a paw raised to claw her. Li Mochou raised her whisk, and with a swish it struck the leopard between the eyes. The leopard roared with pain and grew fiercer than ever. It bared a mouthful of gleaming white fangs and crouched low, its two glinting green eyes fixed on its enemy, waiting its chance to strike.

Li Mochou flicked her left hand, and two silver needles flashed out at the leopard’s eyes. “Wait!” cried Yang Guo, and swung his long jian to knock the needles down. At that moment the leopard sprang, leaping more than ten feet high and swooping down from midair. Yang Guo flew up too. First he struck aside two more of Li Mochou’s silver needles with his long jian, then his right fist came down with a thud on the bones at the back of the leopard’s neck. The leopard roared with pain, landed and at once sprang at Yang Guo. Yang Guo turned aside and struck out with his left palm, putting half his neili into the blow, and the leopard went tumbling head over heels backward.

Li Mochou was puzzled. Her two silver needles would long since have killed the leopard. Why had he saved it, only to go to so much trouble fighting it? She watched him strike it with his left palm and his right, so that it fell and scrambled up, scrambled up and fell, utterly wretched, and yet every blow he struck avoided its vital points. The beast’s roars grew fainter and fainter, and after a dozen or more blows it could bear no more. It turned and bounded up the hillside. Yang Guo had been ready for it to run, meaning to catch it by the tail and haul it back. But the leopard had lost all its fight, and its tail hung down tucked between its hind legs, so that his grab closed on empty air. He was about to give chase with his qinggong when he saw the leopard, several dozen feet off, turn round with a whining cry to call its two cubs to run. A thought came to Yang Guo. He put out both hands and seized the two cubs by the scruff of the neck, one in each hand, and held them high.

The mother leopard loved her young, and seeing them caught she forgot her own life and sprang at Yang Guo again. Yang Guo tossed the two cubs to Li Mochou. “Hold on to them, and don’t kill them.” He rose as he spoke and leapt higher than the leopard, using the high leap of “Sky-soaring Azure”. He judged his fall from midair and came down squarely astride the leopard’s back, seized its ears and forced its head down hard. The leopard struggled with all its strength, but with its vital points in his grip its great jaws went down into the sand.

“Li shibo,” Yang Guo called, “quick, twist two ropes out of bark and tie its four legs.” Li Mochou snorted. “I’ve no time to play games with you.” And she turned to go. “Who’s playing?” said Yang Guo urgently. “This leopard has milk!” Li Mochou saw it at once, and she was delighted. “Trust you to think of that,” she laughed. At once she tore off a dozen strips of bark and hastily twisted them into several ropes. First she bound the leopard’s great jaws tight, then tied its forelegs and its hind legs.

Yang Guo got up, brushing the dust off himself with a smile. The leopard could not stir, and there was fear in its eyes. Yang Guo stroked the top of its head. “We only want you to be a wet nurse for a little while,” he said with a laugh. “We won’t hurt you.” Li Mochou picked up the baby and put her to the leopard’s teat. The baby was long past starving and opened her little mouth and sucked. The mother leopard had plenty of milk, and before long the baby had had her fill, closed her eyes and fallen asleep. Li Mochou and Yang Guo watched her feed and fall asleep, their eyes never leaving her pretty little face, and when they saw a faint smile come over her face as she slept, they were both so glad that they looked at each other and smiled.

With that smile, more than half the wariness each had kept against the other fell away. Li Mochou’s face was full of tenderness. She hummed a soft little song, patting the baby gently as she held her. Yang Guo found some soft grass and made a little nest on a big rock in the shade of a tree. “Put her down here to sleep!” Li Mochou quickly made a sign to him not to wake the child with his loud voice. Yang Guo stuck out his tongue and pulled a face. Seeing the child sleeping so peacefully, he let out a long breath. He looked round and saw the two leopard cubs burrowing against their mother, sucking.

All about them the scent of flowers drifted, and a gentle breeze stirred their clothes. The air of slaughter had melted away, and man and beast were at peace.

In these few days Yang Guo had been through more upheavals than he could count, and only now did he feel his heart a little at ease. Yet on one side of him was a she-devil who killed without blinking, and on the other a ferocious great beast, so that it was a strange scene indeed.

Li Mochou sat beside the baby, slowly waving her horsetail whisk to keep off the insects of the forest. That whisk had killed more people than could be counted, and the very sight of it struck terror into the hearts of the wulin.³ Yet now, for the first time in her life, she was using it for a loving, kindly act. Yang Guo saw her gazing at the baby with her face now smiling, now sorrowful, now stirred and now calm, and he supposed that a tide of thoughts was rising in her heart as she remembered her past. Yang Guo did not know her story. He had heard only a little of it from Cheng Ying⁴ and Lu Wushuang.⁵ For her to act so cruelly and so wildly, he thought, she must have been through some terrible suffering. He had always hated her and resented her, but now, in spite of himself, a little sympathy and pity stirred in him.

After a long while Li Mochou raised her head. Her eyes met Yang Guo’s, and she started a little. “It’ll soon be dark,” she said softly. “What shall we do tonight?” Yang Guo looked about. “We can’t take our great wet nurse along the road with us. Let’s find a cave to spend the night in, and decide tomorrow what to do.” Li Mochou nodded.

Yang Guo searched all around and found a cave just big enough to hold them. He gathered soft grass and made two beds in it, a big one and a small one. “Li shibo,” he said, “rest a while. I’ll go and get something to eat.” He went round the hillside to look for game, and in less than half a shichen⁶ he was back with three hill hares and an armful of a dozen or more wild fruits. He loosened the rope round the leopard’s jaws and fed it one hare. Then he gathered dry grass and dead branches, made a fire and roasted the other two hares to share with Li Mochou. “Li shibo,” he said, “sleep well. I’ll keep watch for you outside the cave.” He took out a long rope, tied it between two big trees, and lay down on it in midair.

This was a way of training in the Ancient Tomb School, so Li Mochou thought nothing of it. Apart from the times she had travelled with her disciple Hong Lingbo,⁷ she had gone her way alone all her life. Tonight she had Yang Guo for company, and he had seen to it that she was perfectly comfortable. It was so unlike the nights she had spent alone in the wilds that she could not help sighing quietly to herself once more.

Footnotes

1. 师伯 – shībó. Senior lineage uncle. Shixiong or shijie of one’s shifu. Shī means teacher. Bó means father’s elder brother. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

2. 里 – lǐ. Traditional Chinese unit of distance, approximately 500 metres or a third of a mile. ↩

3. 武林 – wǔlín. Literally martial forest. Those who actually practise, teach or study martial arts. Wulin sits inside the jianghu and is narrower than it: every member of the wulin belongs to the jianghu, but a pedlar or physician of the jianghu who never trained is no part of the wulin. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

4. 程英 – Chéng Yīng. Her name means “heroine” or “outstanding”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

5. 陆无双 – Lù Wúshuāng. Her name means “peerless” or “without equal”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩

6. 时辰 – shíchen. Traditional Chinese double hour; one twelfth of a day, equal to two modern hours. ↩

7. 洪凌波 – Hóng Língbō. Her name means “treading the waves”. See Wuxia Wiki. ↩