by Jin Yong
Xu was about to speak when he heard the muffled sound of horses galloping from far off. He lay down with his ear to the ground and listened for a while, then stood up.
"Three horses coming this way," he said.
Zhou waved his hand and they untied their horses and led them behind the boulders. The sound of hooves came gradually closer, and three horses passed heading east. In the moonlight, they could see only that the riders all wore white turbans and long striped gowns, the clothing of Muslims, while sabres hung from their saddles. They waited until the riders were a long way off, then sat down again. Zhou asked why the Manchu court had arrested Wen.
"The authorities have always considered the Red Flower Society to be a thorn in the eye," Luo Bing replied. "But there is another reason for them dispatching so many martial arts masters to catch our Fourth Brother. Last month, Master Yu went to Beijing, and Fourth Brother and I went with him. Master Yu told us that he intended to break into the Imperial Palace and see the Emperor Qian Long. We were very surprised, and asked what he wanted to see the Emperor about, but he wouldn't say. Fourth Brother warned him that the Emperor was very dangerous and cunning and advised him to enlist our best fighters and to get Brother Xu here to devise an absolutely fool-proof plan."
Zhou Qi studied Xu. "Is this dwarf so talented that others come to him for help?" she thought. "I don't believe it!"
"Master Yu said that he had to see the Emperor on a matter of great importance, and that only a small number of people could go with him or there could be problems. So Fourth Brother agreed. That night, the two of them crossed the wall into the palace while I kept watch outside. I was really frightened. More than two hours passed before they came back over the wall. Very early next day, the three of us left Beijing and returned to the south. I asked Fourth Brother if they had seen the Emperor and what it was all about. He said they had seen him, and that it concerned driving out the Manchus and restoring the throne of China to the chinese people. He said he couldn't tell me more, not because he didn't trust me, but because the more people who knew, the greater the danger of the secret getting out."
"After we returned to the south, Master Yu parted from us," Luo Bing continued. "We returned to the Society's headquarters at Tai Lake, while he went on to Haining. When he returned, his whole appearance had changed. It was as if he had suddenly aged more than ten years. He never smiled, and a few days later he contracted the illness from which he never recovered.
"Just before he passed away, he called together the Lords of Incense and said that it was his last wish that Master Chen should succeed him as Great Helmsman. He said this was the key to the restoration of the throne to the Han people. He said it was not possible to explain the reasons then, but said we would all find out one day."
"What was Master Chen's relationship with Master Yu?" Zhou asked.
"He was the old Master's foster son," Luo Bing said. "Master Chen is the son of the Emperor's former Chief Minister Chen from Haining. When he was fifteen, he passed the provincial civil service examination, and soon after that, the old Master took him to the Muslim regions to learn the martial arts from the Strange Knight Of The Heavenly Pool, Master Yuan. As to why the son of a Chief Minister would honour a member of the fighting community as his foster father, we don't know."
"I imagine one of the reasons Master Wen was seized is that he knows something about all this," Zhou said.
"Perhaps," Luo Bing replied. "At the time of old Master's death, there was one important piece of unfinished business on his mind and he wanted very badly to see Master Chen once more. When he first got back from Beijing, he sent a messenger to the Muslim border areas with instructions for Master Chen to go to Anxi and wait there for orders. The Old Master knew he wouldn't last long enough to see his foster son again, so he urged us all to hasten to Anxi to work out a plan of action together with Master Chen. He entrusted all the secret information to Fourth Brother to pass on personally to the Young Helmsman when they met. Who would have guessed that he…" Her voice choked with sobs. "If anything should happen to Fourth Brother…no-one will ever know what the old Master hoped to achieve."
"You mustn't worry," Zhou Qi consoled her. "We'll soon rescue him."
Luo Bing squeezed her hand and smiled sadly.
"How was Master Wen wounded?" Zhou asked.
"We travelled in pairs to Anxi, and Fourth Brother and I were the last pair. When we were in Suzhou, eight Imperial Bodyguards came to our inn and said they had orders from the Emperor to accompany us back to Beijing. Fourth Brother said that he had to see the Young Helmsman before he could comply, and a fight broke out. It was a hard battle, two against eight. Fourth Brother killed two of them with his sword and three more with his bare hands, while I hit two with my throwing knives. The last one sneaked away. But Fourth Brother was badly wounded.
"We knew we couldn't stay in Suzhou, so with difficulty we made our way through the Jiayu Gate. But Fourth Brother's wounds were serious and it was really impossible for us to go much further, so we stopped at an inn to give him a chance to recover quickly. Little did we guess that the Eagles's Claws would find us again. What happened afterwards, you already know."
"The more the Emperor fears and hates Fourth Brother, the less his life is in danger in the immediate future," Xu said. "The officials and the Eagles's Claws know he's important so they won't dare to harm him."
"That's very shrewd, Brother," Zhou said.
"It would have been better if you'd gone to meet a bit earlier," Zhou Qi suddenly said to Xu. "Then Master Wen wouldn't be in any trouble, and you wouldn't have had to go venting your anger on Iron Gall Manor…"
"You stupid girl!" Zhou shouted. "What are you talking about?"
"Brother Wen's and Sister Luo Bing's kung fu is excellent, so who would have guessed that anyone would dare to attack them?" Xu replied.
"You're the 'Kung Fu Mastermind'," Zhou Qi said. "How could you have failed to guess it?"
"If Seventh Brother had guessed it, we wouldn't have become acquainted with these good friends from the Red Flower Society." Zhou told her. He turned to Luo Bing. " By the way, who is Master Chen's wife? Is she the daughter of some great family perhaps, or a famous martial arts fighter?"
"Master Chen hasn't married yet," Luo Bing replied. "But Lord Zhou, when are we going to be invited to your daughter's wedding reception?"
"This girl is crazy, who would want her?" Zhou answered with a smile. "She might as well stay with me for the rest of her life."
"Wait until we've rescued Fourth Brother, then I'll become her match-maker," Luo Bing said. "You're sure to be very satisfied with my choice."
"If you're going to keep on talking about me, I'm leaving," Zhou Qi said quickly, deeply embarrassed. The other three smiled.
A moment passed, then Xu suddenly stifled a laugh.
"What are you laughing at now?" Zhou Qi asked him angrily.
"Something personal. What business is it of yours?" he countered.
"Huh," she replied. "Do you think I don't know what you're laughing at? You want to marry me to that Master Chen. But he's the son of a chief minister; how could we possibly be matched? You all treat him like some precious treasure, but I don't see anything special about him."
Both angry and amused, Zhou shouting at her to be quiet. "This stupid girl talks without thinking," he said. "All right, everyone sleep now. As soon as it gets light, we'll be starting out again."
They took their blankets off the horses' backs, and lay down beneath the trees.
"Father," Zhou Qi whispered. "Did you bring anything to eat? I'm starving."
No, I didn't," Zhou replied. "But we'll make a move a little earlier tomorrow and stop when we get to Twin Wells."
Not long after, he began snoring lightly. Zhou Qi tossed and turned, unable to sleep due to her hunger. Suddenly, she noticed Xu stealthily get up and walk over to the horses. She saw him take something out of his bag, then return and sit down. He wrapped the blanket around himself, and st
arted eating noisily and with relish. She turned over away from him and shut her eyes, but finally, she could bear it no longer, and glanced over out of the corner of her eye. It would have been better if she hadn't. She saw a pile next to him of what were obviously the famous Suzhou roasted cakes. But having spent the whole time arguing with him, how could she now beg him for food?
"Go to sleep and stop thinking about eating," she told herself. But the more she tried to sleep, the less she was able to. Then the fragrant smell of wine hit her nostrils as Xu took a swig from a drinking gourd and she could suppress her anger no longer.
"What are you doing drinking wine at two o'clock in the morning?" she demanded. "If you have to drink, don't do it here!"
"All right," said Xu. He put down the gourd without re-corking it and settled down to sleep, letting the fragrance of the wine drift over towards her.
She angrily buried her face in the blanket, but after a while, it became too stuffy. She turned over again, and in the moonlight, she saw her father's two Iron Gallstones glistening beside his pillow. She quietly stretched her hand over, picked one of them up and threw it at the wine gourd. It shattered and the wine spilled out over Xu's blanket.
He appeared to be asleep, and paid no heed to what had happened. Zhou Qi saw her father and Luo Bing were sleeping peacefully and crept over to retrieve the Iron Gallstone. But just as she was about to pick it up, Xu suddenly turned over, trapping it beneath his body, and then proceed to snore noisily.
She jumped in fright and pulled back her hand, not daring to try again. Despite her bold character, she was still a young lady, and could not possibly put her hand beneath a man's body. There was nothing she could do, so she went back and settled down to sleep. Just then, she heard a laugh escape from Luo Bing. Completely flustered, she didn't sleep well all night.
6
Next day, she woke early, and curled up into a ball hoping that the dawn would never come. But before long, Zhou and Luo Bing got up. A moment later, Xu awoke, and she heard him exclaim in surprise.
"What's this?" he said.
Zhou Qi pulled the blanket over her head.
"Ah, Lord Zhou!" she heard him say. "Your Iron Gallstone has rolled all the way over here! Oh, no! The wine gourd has been smashed! That's it, a monkey in the hills must have smelt the wine and come down to have a drink. Then it saw your Iron Gallstone and took it to play with. One careless slip and the gourd was smashed to pieces. What a naughty monkey!"
Zhou laughed heartily. "You love to jest, Brother," he said. "There are no monkeys in this area."
"Well then, maybe it was a fairy from heaven," Luo Bing suggested with a smile.
With Xu having called her a monkey, Zhou Qi was even more furious than before. Xu pulled out the roasted cakes for everyone to eat, but out of spite, she refused to eat even one.
They got to the town of Twin Wells, and had a quick meal of noodles. Then, as they were leaving, Xu and Luo Bing suddenly stopped and began closely examining some confused charcoal markings at the foot of a wall that looked to Zhou Qi like the scribblings of an urchin.
"The Twin Knights have found out where Fourth Brother is and are following him," Luo Bing announced joyfully.
"How do you know? What are these signs?" Zhou Qi asked.
"They are a code used by our Society," she said, rubbing the marks off the wall with her foot. "Let's go!"
Knowing that Wen had been found, Luo Bing's face was suddenly wreathed in smiles. Their spirits rose and they covered nearly fifteen miles at one go. At noon the next day in the town of Qidaogou, they came across markings left by 'Scholar' Yu saying he had caught up with the Twin Knights. The wound on Luo Bing's thigh was now just about healed, and she no longer had to use a walking stick. Thinking about her husband, she found it increasingly hard to control her impatience.
Towards evening, they arrived at the town of Willow Springs. Luo Bing wanted to keep going, but Xu remembered Chen's orders. "Even if we weren't tired, the horses just can't do it!" he pointed out.
Luo Bing reluctantly agreed, and they found rooms in an inn for the night, but she tossed and turned unable to sleep. In the middle of the night, she heard a pitter-patter sound outside the windows as it started to rain and suddenly remembered how she and Wen had received an order from the old Master soon after their marriage to go to Jiaxing to save a widow who was being persecuted by a local ruffian. They completed the assignment, and spent the evening at the Misty Rain Tavern on the South Lake, drinking wine and enjoying the rain. Wen held his new wife's hand and sung songs at the top of his voice as he tapped out the rhythm with his sword on the severed head of the ruffian. Her memories of the scene flooded back as she listened to the rain on the window.
"Brother Xu does not want to travel fast because of Lord Zhou and his daughter," she thought. "Perhaps I should go on ahead first?"
Once the idea had occurred to her, it was impossible to ignore and she immediately got up, picked up her swords and left a message to Xu in charcoal on the table. Zhou Qi was sleeping in the same room and, afraid that opening the door would awaken her, she quietly opened the window and jumped out. She went to the stables and found her horse, then threw on an oil-skin raincoat and galloped off eastwards. She hardly noticed the raindrops as they struck her hot cheeks.
At dawn, she stopped briefly in a town. Her mount was exhausted, and she had no alternative but to rest for an hour. Then she raced on another ten or fifteen miles. Suddenly the horse stumbled on one of its front hooves. She frantically pulled in the reins, and luckily the animal did not fall. But she knew that if she kept up such a pace, it would die from exhaustion, and so she was forced to proceed much more slowly.
She hadn't gone far when she heard the sound of a horse behind her. She turned and saw a white horse which caught up with her almost as soon as she heard it, and flew past. It was so swift, she had no opportunity to even see what it's rider looked like.
Soon after, she arrived in a small village and saw the snow-white horse standing under the eaves of a house as a man brushed its coat, its hoar-frost coloured mane stirring in the wind. It was tall, with long legs and an extraordinary spirit and as Luo Bing approached, it neighed loudly, causing her mount to retreat a few steps in fright.
"If I rode this fine horse," she thought, "I would catch up with Fourth Brother in no time at all. Its master will certainly be unwilling to sell it, so I'll just have to take it."
She slapped her mount and charged forward. A throwing knife flew out of her hand, and severed the white horse's reins, then holding her bag with her left hand, she leapt from her own horse onto the back of the white horse. The magnificent animal started in fright and neighed loudly again, then, like an arrow loosed from a bow, galloped off down the road.
The horse's owner was taken completely by surprise, but after a second's hesitation, he raced after her. Luo Bing had already gone some distance, but seeing him giving chase, she reined in the horse, took a gold ingot out of her bag and threw it at him.
"We've exchanged horses," she shouted. "But yours is better than mine, so I'll compensate you with this gold!" She gave a captivating smile, and with a slight press from her thighs, the white horse shot forward. The wind whistled by her ears and the trees on either side fell behind her row by row. She rode for over an hour, and the horse still showed no signs of fatigue, his hooves prancing high as he galloped along. Soon, fertile fields began to appear along the side of the road, and she arrived in a large town. She dismounted and went to a restaurant to rest for a while, and in reply to her question, she was told the town was called Sandy Wells, and was more than twenty miles from the place where she had stolen the horse.
The more she looked at the animal, the more she liked it. She fed him hay herself and stroked its coat affectionately. As she did so, she saw a cloth bag hanging from the saddle. Opening it up, she found an Iron Pipa inside.
"So the horse belongs to someone from the Iron Pipa School of Luoyang," she thought. "This could cause some troubl
e."
She put her hand into the bag again and pulled out twenty or thirty taels of silver coins and a letter inscribed with the words: "To be opened only by Master Han Wenchong. Sealed by Master Wang." The envelope was open, and as she unfolded the letter, she saw it was signed: "Yours sincerely, Weiyang".
She started slightly in surprise. "So the fellow is connected with Wang Weiyang of the Zhen Yuan Bodyguard Agency," she thought. "We still have to get even with them, so stealing this horse could be considered part payment. If I had known earlier, I wouldn't have given him a gold ingot."
She looked again at the letter and saw it urged Han to meet up as soon as possible with the Zhen Yuan agency's Yan brothers and assist them in protecting an important item being brought back to Beijing. Then Han was to help escort something to south China. It added that Han should suspend his investigation into whether or not 'Guandong Devil' Jiao Wenqi had been killed by the Red Flower Society, and resume it at some future time.
"Jiao Wenqi was also a member of the Iron Pipa School in Luoyang," Luo Bing thought. "It's rumoured that he was killed by the Red Flower Society, but in fact it was not so. I wonder what the important item is that the Zhen Yuan Agency is escorting? After Fourth Brother is rescued, we can go and collect it together."
Very happy at this thought, she finished her noodles, mounted up and sped off again. The rain continued to fall, sometimes light, sometimes heavy. The horse galloped like the wind, and she lost count of how many horses and carts they overtook.
"This horse is going so fast, if the others ahead are resting for a while, I might miss them altogether by just blinking," she thought.
Just then, someone slipped out from the side of the road and waved. The horse stopped instantly in mid-gallop and backed up several paces. The man bowed before her.
"Mistresss Wen," he said. "The Young Master is here." It was Great Helmsman Chen's attendant, Xin Yan.
Xin Yan walked over and took the horse's reins. "Where did you buy such a good horse?" he asked in admiration. "I nearly missed you."