Black Dragon, Black Cat

by Brian Edwards

  The battle began with the giant lumbering toward Mao, who easily stepped aside to dodge his attack. As he plodded past her, she struck him in the back of the head several times in rapid succession, first with each hand and then with a spinning kick that caught him on the right ear. The man only shrugged, and turned around to face Mao again. She had guessed correctly that her strikes alone could not beat this opponent.

  The giant lunged at her a second time, but she ducked under his outstretched arms and again came up behind him. This time, however, she knew that she must bring him down to her level, and then beat him using his great bulk as her ally. From behind him, she sent a strong sidekick into the back of his knee, which caused him to drop that knee to the ground. She then swept her legs up and around the thigh of his other bent leg, and in an upside down position, she wrapped her arms tightly around his calf. From this position, she could apply a great amount of leverage with little strength to bend this knee also to the ground. Still using her quickness to her advantage, she twisted herself around and over his leg until she was sitting on top it with her arms still tightly wound around his lower leg. She then slipped one arm over his ankle so that his foot was pressed under her arm and shoulder. From this position, it took little strength to lever him over onto his stomach, in much the same way that her master had done to the rock he had thrown into the green pond so many years ago. She then sat down quickly on his backside, wrapped her hands around his knee, and pulled his thigh off the ground at the hip. As Mao applied the pressure, the man began to grimace in pain. He held out as long as he could, but eventually the pain made him slam his fist on the ground to stop the fight.

  Again Mao had won the match easily, and this time against a seemingly invincible opponent. The defeated man rubbed his thigh and knee where she had struck him. He hefted his great bulk with some difficulty off of the ground, and hobbled toward Mao. She stepped back as he approached, wondering if she would have to defend herself from another attack, when he stopped and bowed before her. She returned the bow, and then turned in her winner’s chip to the official and went back to her wall to await her next match. She now realized with full appreciation the debt that she owed Jai-tien for forcing her to learn the art of grappling: instead of an easy victory, her battle with this giant would have been much more difficult had she not learned the principles of joint locks and pressure points.

  Mao watched as the giant of a man hobbled toward the arena exit. She felt fresh sadness at the departure of this proud man, who had also traveled many months to compete in the tournament. Although he had displayed great honor in his defeat, it was evident from his comportment that he was ashamed at being bested so easily at such an early stage of the tournament. She wished that she could do something or say something to the man to raise his spirits, but she knew not what that would be. This was the one aspect of the tournament that had never before entered her imagination as she dreamed of the day that she would compete: the agony of those who were defeated. She turned her eyes downward as the lumbering giant exited the arena.

  The third time that Mao’s name was called, she found herself standing before a little man with red skin and a strange mustache that flowed down the sides of his mouth like long droopy cat whiskers. His arms and legs were very long, giving him the general skeletal features of a forest monkey. He wore only pantaloons, and rippling muscles flashed in this chest at his slightest movements. Mao could tell that he would be very quick and very strong. His strikes would be lightning fast and from a great distance, and with much more power than hers. The best strategy would be for her to take him to the ground as quickly as possible, where his powerful strikes would not harm her and his long limbs would make it difficult for him to maneuver around her.

  The referee signaled the start of the fight, and the two contestants bowed to each other. The red man stepped backward and sideways, to put distance between himself and Mao so that he could use his longs arms and legs from a range that her shorter limbs could not match. This was what Mao had expected, and as he stepped back she rushed forward and wrapped her arms around his waist with her head on one side. As he staggered back from her rush, she reached one leg around his ankle from behind, causing him to trip backward over it. He fell to the hard ground, and Mao quickly slid around to cover his chest with her own. From this position, the red man tried to push her face back toward her shoulder, which was exactly what she was hoping for. She reached up and snagged the back of his hand with her palm, and twisted it backward and down to the ground. The man let out a gasp of pain. From this position, Mao reached under his arm at the elbow with her other arm and locked it in place by grasping her own wrist. This created an unbreakable lock that required little force to lever up into a painful position, and, if necessary, to dislocate the shoulder.

  The two struggled on the ground as the red man tried to break the hold and Mao tried to lever the man’s arm ever higher at his elbow. Each time she gained a fraction of a centimeter, a howl of pain would escape from his lips, but he would not submit to end the fight. Mao kept gaining traction, despite the man’s efforts to escape, and found herself at the point where she knew that any further movement would pop open his shoulder. She hesitated to do this, even when she had the opportunity. The man howled in pain, but still would not submit.

  “Honorable Sir,” Mao whispered to him in a tone that she tried to make more masculine, “You shoulder is about to break! Please ask to stop the fight!”

  The man just shook his head.

  “Please, Sir, do not make me do it!”, she pleaded.

  But still the man would not submit, and only howled in pain.

  Mao could not bring herself to break the man’s arm. She unlocked her arms and jumped back up to her feet, setting him free of her grasp. He slowly rose to his feet, rubbing his aching shoulder with his opposite hand. Only for a moment did he hesitate before launching into another attack. He regained his fighting posture, and then leapt forward sweeping his right knee upward so that his left foot could deliver a powerful kick that carried him fully across the long distance between him and his opponent. Mao stepped aside to block the kick, but the force behind it was so strong that her attempt only deflected the blow somewhat without lessening its power. She fell sideways onto the hard ground, and her head hit the cord that marked the edge of the ring. The red man pushed his advantage and followed his first kick up with a second one that was meant to land atop Mao’s head, knocking her unconscious. He leapt in the air and swung his foot in a sweeping arc toward her face, but she spun quickly into a crouching stance, and was able to roll upright and deliver her own foot right into his side, just as she had done to Xieng-gui in their battle by the village fountain years ago. The blow momentarily stunned the man, which was long enough for Mao to wrap her arms around his neck and roll backward, throwing his body over hers with her feet. The red man flew out of the ring, ending the fight.

  Mao returned to her wall. She had won again, but she had taken a great risk to avoid injuring her opponent. It had almost caused her to lose the match. “Was it worth it?”, she wondered to herself.

  As she sat on the wall pondering this question for many minutes, she watched as some of the defeated contestants hobbled away or were carried out of the arena with broken bones and bloodied faces. She had not imagined this aspect of the tournament either, the suffering and sometimes permanent physical consequences of the matches themselves. The tournament was a serious and violent event, and entering it could have lasting repercussions. Mao again recalled her master’s teachings of the virtues of kung fu. There was nothing specific in Jai-tien’s teachings to dictate a course of action, but her heart told her what was right. She decided that the refusal to injure an opponent seriously, if possible, was a risk she that was willing to take.

  The final match of the day pitted Mao against a frail looking young boy, probably no more than fourteen or fifteen years of age. He had thin, bony arms and legs, and his feet and hands seemed disproportionally small. He had a pale,
sickly complexion, and looked as if at death’s door, but Mao realized that he must possess some measure of talent to have made it into the fourth round of competition. She did not know how to read his body type, however, and knew that she must figure it out as the fight progressed. Surely he could not possess much strength in his limbs, but also he did not look quick and agile.

  The fight began in the usual manner with a countdown from three and a bow by each contestant. Mao allowed the boy to strike first so that she could analyze his style and form a counter strategy. After deflecting a series of fist and kick attacks that looked exceedingly amateurish, Mao struck back with an opening back-fisted jab to his face followed by a sidekick straight into his abdomen and a spinning crescent-shaped kick intended to propel the boy from the ring. The first two movements worked perfectly, but a strange thing happened during the spinning kick. The boy ducked under her foot with unnatural speed and came up behind her when her body turned around during the technique. The boy then jumped onto her back, wrapped his legs around her upper thighs, and threw his arms tightly around her neck, digging his fingers into his own tunic to reinforce his grip and burying his face in his crossed arms to protect his head and face.

  Mao knew that this was a very difficult technique to escape. With his legs wrapped around her waist, there was no way to throw him over her shoulder or hip to disengage him. In ten or twelve seconds, she would be unconscious and lose the match. She now realized how this sickly looking boy had managed to advance this far in the tournament: he had relied upon this one trick to subdue his opponents quickly. He would pretend to be completely inept, and then when the opponent became overly confident and let down his guard, the boy would pounce on his back and choke him into unconsciousness.

  Mao’s heart raced, and the black mask across her face felt suffocating. She had to do something fast, as she could feel herself getting light-headed. She could not pry his fingers from his tunic, or reach his eyes to apply pressure. The only exposed part of his body was the right side of his head, and she had to exploit this weakness. With all the strength she had left in her body, she brought her right arm up and slapped the boy’s ear with her open palm.

  The concussion from this strike left the boy momentarily dazed and he loosened his grip slightly. Mao shoved both hands up between her neck and his forearm, allowing her to take a few gasps of air to fill her lungs. Then she felt the boy’s arms start to tighten again around her neck, but with her hands between them, she was in a much better position to escape. As the boy was very light, she put her head downward and jumped upward, somersaulting both her and the boy. They landed on the ground with a jolt, which the boy took the brunt of as he was on the bottom. His arms relaxed at the impact, and Mao was able to twist out of his grasp and stand upright again in the ring.

  She took a step back from him to catch her breath, gasping heavily through the enshrouding black mask. However, she knew that the fight was now hers. The boy had exhausted his one trick, and she could not be fooled again into turning her back on him.

  The boy did not get up for a few moments. He knew that he had lost the fight. He looked up at Mao and she could see tears start to swell up from the corners of his eyes. She felt great sympathy for him, and did not want to crush his spirit. She beckoned to him to arise, and he timidly arose fearing the beating he was sure to get now that his trick had been exposed.

  For the next fifteen minutes, Mao sparred with the boy, allowing him to strike her mildly on occasion to build up his confidence. She would occasionally strike him back very lightly so that the fight would maintain a semblance of realism. The boy’s spirit returned, and he began to smile as they fought, even though he must know that he would eventually lose. At the end, Mao grabbed the boy and carefully threw him out of the ring to take the match.

  The two bowed to each other afterwards, and Hei Mao whispered to the boy, “This was a great battle, Honorable Sir! It was only by luck that I won.”

  The boy grinned happily, bowed to her once more, and then ran away with a smile on his face. It felt much better to end the match this way than in the manner of her first three matches, all of which had left a disheartened and demoralized opponent. For the first time, she felt no guilt in vanquishing an opponent.

  Having finished her matches for the day, Mao retreated back to the palace square for the night. She crept back under her bushes and changed her clothes. She was famished and tired after the long day of fighting, and ate heartily of her remaining rations. Tomorrow, she would have to go to the market to restock her supply before the tournament resumed in the morning, but she had no idea how she would barter for them. Perhaps she could arrange a deal to work for one of the vendors for a short time each day in exchange for enough rice to survive on during the tournament. There was not much time for this during the first few days of the tournament: as there were several fights during each day, it was impossible to know when one’s name would be called and she needed to be present at all times. Mao lay down on her blanket, and finally fell asleep long after the moon had disappeared behind the palace.

  When she awoke just before sunrise the next morning, she could feel the ache in most of the muscles and joints in her body. She awoke famished, but knew that she did not have anything to eat and must just ignore her hunger. She forced herself up into a sitting position and tried to stretch her arm muscles over her head, in spite of the sharp sensation of pain that she felt. In the process of stretching, she swept her arms downward to the ground in a wide arc. Her left hand abruptly struck something, which Mao instinctively knew should not be there. She looked at the object, and it appeared to be a simple shopping bag that women used to carry food from the market. She opened the pouch and strained her eyes to see its contents in the predawn glow, but could not. She reached in a hand and pulled out a large bag of rice. With a gasp of surprise, she dumped out the bag to find several more large bags of rice and two loaves of bread. She was utterly amazed! How had this bag come to be here? Had somebody dropped it while passing by? This could not be. Surely they would have noticed her. She slept so lightly that she could not imagine that someone could come that close to her without wakening her.

  Mao stood up and searched the bushes around her sleeping area, but she could find nobody in the vicinity. The only sign she could find of the presence of anyone else were a few small footprints pressed faintly into the soil about twenty feet away behind a bush, but she had not noticed if they had been there yesterday. However this gift had arrived, she was happy to receive it, but wished that she had someone to thank for it. She gratefully devoured the rice and bread until she was full for the first time in months. After donning the black garments of the great Hei Lang, she stuffed the remaining rations of food into her pack and hid them under the bushes. She stood up refreshed and began the march back to the arena on the other side of the city.

  The next several days of the tournament continued at a torrid pace. Mao fought three or four matches each day, and emerged victorious from each one. She had learned well during her years of training how to control her emotions and to pay attention to the subtle cues of her opponents’ bodies. On the first day of the tournament, she had been very nervous and did not know what to expect, and, although she won those matches relatively easily, they provided a good learning experience that helped her on subsequent days. Her nervousness had left her by the third day, and she had become a very strong competitor.

  Many of the matches she could have easily and quickly won, but she prolonged them in order to preserve the honor and dignity of her opponents. This posed a great risk, and several times she got hurt unnecessarily; but only in this way could she make herself feel guiltless in defeating them. Many of her opponents would congratulate her for a great battle afterwards, and she would always return the compliment and profess that it was merely by a stroke of chance that she had won. She found that if she whispered, it was impossible to tell whether she was a man or a woman. In the end, her defeated opponents left the arena with their dignity
intact, and most felt honored to have fought with her.

  By the fourth day of the tournament, the black costume of Hei Mao was not found to be so amusing any more. Indeed, many had begun to fear her, and those she was to face would hang their heads dejectedly when the pairings were announced. People at the arena would gaze at her with respect when she walked by them, some even turning their eyes to the ground deferentially when she looked back at them.

  On the fifth day of the tournament, Mao awoke to find a wicker basket of food lying near to her pack. Again, she did not know who had put it there, and it was extremely strange that someone could move that close to her without her sensing it. Her master had trained her to sleep lightly so that she might minimize the risk, and she found it very odd that anyone could slip up on her during the night. Each night before lying down to sleep, she had carefully brushed over any tracks or footprints around her sleeping area, in case the mystery visitor returned. She searched the area immediately surrounding her sleeping spot, but could find no trace of footprints. Expanding her search area, however, she did find a few faint, small footprints of about the same size as she noticed after the first incident, but these never came closer than ten meters to her sleeping spot.

  Mao ate hurriedly and changed into her black costume. She had spent too much time searching for clues and now needed to hustle to make it to the arena. Fortunately, today the pace of the tournament would slow down. There were relatively few competitors remaining, and she knew that the battles would begin to become longer and more difficult to win. They would also become fiercer, with the increased likelihood of injuries, both serious and minor, as her opponents became more proficient.

  This day, she bested two worthy opponents, but only after taking several blows that brought bruises to her arms and legs when she tried to block them. She had twisted her left wrist throwing an opponent from the ring, and it was aching from that point forward whenever she bent it. Once a backhanded strike had caught her on the cheekbone, and opened a slight gash. Blood oozed out of it for the remainder of the day until it finally scabbed over at night.