He hadn’t stuck with the training long because other interests had caught his attention, and he had found an aptitude for calculating the motions of the stars and planets. His father had apprenticed him to an astrologer, with the intent that this would prove more satisfying for the young Ko and more profitable for himself.
So far his father had been proved right, and Ko was one of the most respected men in the little town. Until this group of Black Flag troops had come. He wasn’t sure how holding the town was supposed to hurt the Chings in the government, but politics had never been Ko’s strong suit.
Ko knew there were guards who would try to stop him going outside the building, but he also knew, from his time training in the monastery, that there was a trap door through which he would be able to get up on to the roof, and then he could climb down a pillar to an exercise court.
First he had to go through the kitchen. A small serving hatch in a wall near his room led straight to this part of the building and, although he wasn’t a teenager any more, at forty he was the youngest of the astrologers, and he had little difficulty in climbing through the hatch.
He padded through the deserted kitchen and up some steps, and reached what used to be a store room. He was not alone. One of the two aides to the abbot - the muscle-bound one - was sitting on a stool, alone in the dark.
To the astrologer’s eyes, the monk would be asleep in a matter of moments. Ko held his breath, desperately hoping not to do anything that might disturb him and wake him up.
He watched carefully, waiting for the moment when Zhao’s attention was well and truly gone. Slowly, the monk’s eyes became unfocused, his eyelids drooping slightly. They didn’t close all the way. As Zhao’s consciousness faded, Ko discerned the beginning of a faint sulphurous glow emanating from his dilated pupils.
In a few seconds Zhao’s breathing was shallow and steady, and he was beginning to snore, but his eyes projected beams of light. Then he got up and walked to the centre of the room.
Ko had never seen anything like it. He certainly never expected to see such a thing again.
The doors at the end of the room swung open, and Gao and the abbot entered. Both of them were projecting beams of fiery light from their eyes. They moved to the centre of the room and stood next to Zhao. The three monks were a few feet apart from each other, facing a spot in between them.
The beams of light met there, in the centre of the group, and instead of projecting on to the walls they stopped there and began to swirl. The light churned inwards, forming an amorphous cloud. The air began to taste strange, and there was a faint discordant sound. It was like a whimpered song, lamenting lost souls.
Ko watched in horror, and suddenly had one of those moments when a man realises that the silhouetted candlestick he is looking at is actually a pair of faces. He no longer saw light streaming from the trio’s eyes - and their mouths - to create a bizarre mass of light. Instead, he couldn’t help but see tendrils of glowing fire from the hellish thing in the centre insinuating their way into the heads of the three monks.
Kei-Ying sniffed suspiciously at a mug of British army tea. It smelt ridiculously overdone and over sweetened. Calling it tea was, Kei-Ying thought, like calling a man-eating lion a cat.
He, Cheng, Anderson, Logan and Major Chesterton were sitting around a table in an otherwise deserted mess hall.
The room was as large as Po Chi Lam’s training hall, but was filled with simple tables and benches. A long counter separated it from the kitchen, but not from the smell of dull, stolid, flavourless food.
Kei-Ying took in the tale that Cheng had told. ‘I think we should contact the other Tigers.’
‘The Tigers?’ Cheng grinned. ‘Yes, they’ll get you out of this barbarian hole in no time.’
The three British men glared at him.
‘No offence,’ he added.
Kei-Ying ignored him. ‘If a Black Flag group has gone rogue under this warlord and started raiding and killing indiscrim-inately, it’s going to come to the Tigers’ attention anyway. In fact, it will almost certainly have done so already. If they’re going to find themselves fighting against the Black Flag, they ought to know why.’
‘The Ten Tigers of Kwantung?’ Logan asked. He sounded impressed in a patronising sort of way.
‘Eight Tigers,’ Kei-Ying corrected him. ‘Dr Leung Jon was murdered at dinner recently and my sifu, Luk Ah Choi, died a few years ago.’
‘How would you propose to contact them?’ Chesterton asked.
‘I can write letters to them. Cheng can arrange for messengers to find them.’ He looked questioningly at Chesterton.
‘Does this mean I’m released?’
‘Partly,’ Chesterton said. ‘I’d like to keep you here until we have more proof, but we won’t lock your cell door and you can use our facilities to write your letters.’
Kei-Ying grimaced inwardly. He wouldn’t be free in time to stop Jiang’s duel with the Doctor, and he felt shame at having dropped the old man into such trouble.
‘I suppose I have no choice.’
Ko started to back away, feeling backwards with his foot to find the steps. He wanted to look away from the bizarre sight in front of him, but daren’t. It was fascinating in a horrible way - and he didn’t want to risk one of the monks noticing him while his back was turned.
He started to put his foot down, but he hadn’t judged the width of the step correctly. The foot caught briefly on the edge of the top step and slid off it on to the next one with a thud. The light in the room snapped off immediately.
Ko fled, but behind him he could hear footsteps in pursuit.
He dashed downstairs and through several empty rooms.
At a side door he knocked over a dozing guard, totally by chance rather than with any martial skill. He knew he had to get as far away from here as he could. Not just away from the monastery, but away from the town.
He leapt off the edge of one terrace, then another. This was a fishing town, so there would be boats on the river.
Breathless, his lungs burning as much as his thighs were, he pelted down several streets dodging the occasional guard.
The sounds of footsteps behind him increased as more troops joined the chase. At one point a shot blew chips off a wall several feet away. It was a hopeless shot on the part of whichever guard had fired it, but it woke other troops up to the fact that something was happening.
Ko’s legs felt heavier than mountains, his head swam and he fully expected his heart to burst. Instead, he heard wood booming hollowly under his feet and realised he had reached the jetty.
All the fishing boats were broken and shattered. He wanted to cry, but couldn’t spare the breath. At the end of the jetty a gangplank led up to the junk. It was too large a ship to operate on his own, even if he had known anything about sailing, but he could see a small rowing boat in a cradle on the deck. If he could get it into the water, maybe he could still escape with his life.
Then the deck swung up to meet him, smacking him across the face with the sickening crack that only solid planks can deliver. Ko rolled over, stunned. Above him, Zhao pulled back the leg with which he had tripped him and prepared to drive the edge of his foot down on to his neck.
Half-remembering his martial training at the monastery thirty years ago, Ko managed to grab Zhao’s ankle and twist it. Zhao went down, and Ko knew he couldn’t let the muscle-bound ape get back up again. He grabbed the man’s neck in a lock and gripped more tightly, applying pressure to Zhao’s windpipe. Gradually, the bigger man’s struggles became more feeble. Ko shook with relief and strain as he felt consciousness leave the monk’s muscles.
A faint patch of light brightened on the wall of the wheelhouse beyond them, as if someone was shining a torch on it.
Two torches, in fact. Ko looked over his shoulder without letting go of Zhao, to see if there was someone with a candle or lantern. There was no-one there. The light was brighter now, and it looked almost as if it was being projected from Zhao’s head
.
Zhao went limp at last. But instead of flopping on to the deck his arm lashed back. Pain and blurring rippled out from the bridge of Ko’s nose. Stunned, his grip weakened and Zhao tossed him aside.
To Ko’s horror the light was coming from Zhao, beaming out of his eyes as it had back in the monastery. When the monk grinned, more light escaped through the gaps in his teeth and Ko realised that he’d made a huge error of judgement.
Then there was a flash of pure light and sound and Ko knew nothing else, ever again.
5
Sunrise brought morning exercise for Wong Fei-Hung and his students. Vicki watched from a cosy corner of the courtyard, trying her best to copy their movements. It was difficult, but something about doing this made her feel just a little stronger, a little healthier and a little better.
It never ceased to amaze her that people could do the most astonishing things, and achieve near miracles of balance and movement. She had seen people practise their kata in zero gravity, and beings with more than two arms or legs competing in judo tournaments broadcast on the ship-wide sports channel, but the ability of an ordinary human to do some of these things on Earth was magical to behold.
After a while Fei-Hung told the students to go and get breakfast, and approached Vicki. ‘I saw you joining in. Not many Europeans would do that.’
‘I’m not European,’ she pointed out.
He looked surprised. ‘Where are you from, then? America?’
‘Earth,’ Vicki said. ‘To start with anyway.’
He looked at her as if he was trying to spot a flaw in her reply, and she realised what she had just said.
‘The British Empire may be the most powerful in the world right now,’ Fei-Hung said darkly, ‘but that doesn’t make it the whole of the Earth.’
‘I didn’t mean it that way.’
Vicki stopped talking, as the strangest sensation she had ever experienced buzzed inside her head. It wasn’t so much
deja vu as a sort of jamais vu, or even roman vu. Everything seemed unreal, and she half expected to see stagehands behind the walls, or the sun being taken off a wire that suspended it from the ceiling.
‘Are you all right?’ Fei-Hung asked, taking her arm. ‘Let’s go back into the surgery and brew a -’
‘No.’ Vicki shook her head and forced a smile, which she could feel was more goofy than intended. ‘It’s just the first time I’ve spoken to a fictional character.’
‘Fictional?’
‘Oh, I don’t mean to be rude. It’s just that where I come from there are stories about you, and I didn’t think you were real until now.’
Fei-Hung looked down at himself and patted himself on the chest and stomach. ‘I feel real.’ He paused. ‘You did well this morning. No worse than any newcomer. Do you know gungfu?’
Vicki shook her head. She knew a few basics of self-defence, like aiming a kick at the groin if someone tried to grab her, but that was about the limit of her martial skills.
Nobody had needed to know more than this in a world where fighting was done with the push of a button, if at all. ‘Only what I’ve seen you do - ,’ she bit off, ‘in movies’.
‘Ah. Our styles of boxing are family matters. There are basic moves and styles which are common to everyone, but the more advanced elements are handed down from father to son, or to selected students who are close friends and allies of the family.’ Feng-Hui laughed. ‘My father didn’t want me to learn gungfu! he admitted. ‘Think of it, one of the Ten Tigers, the greatest boxers of them all, and he didn’t want me to carry on this tradition.’
‘He seems all right with it now.’
‘I went to Luk Ah Choi, the master who taught my father, and learnt from him. When he found out why I had gone to him he immediately berated my father for not teaching me.
The family style is supposed to be passed down from father to son, and Ah Choi warned my father that if he didn’t teach me it might be forgotten.’
‘It’s always the fun things parents don’t want you to do,’
Vicki said. ‘They’re happy for you study hard, but they panic if you want to stay out late the way they did when they were your age.’
‘Yes. That’s my father exactly!’
‘I think we have parental influence in common. Your father reminds me very much of mine.’
‘Was your father a healer too?’
Vicki shook her head. ‘He had basic paramedic training for the job he was going to take up on Astra. And it was useful on the ship.’
‘A ship?’
Vicki only nodded, the laughter fading from her heart.
‘He was in the navy, then?’ Fei-Hung asked.
‘Oh no, it was a civilian ship. Passengers and some cargo.’
‘Is this ship here in Guangzhou?’
‘No, it... ran aground, a few months ago.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘There were only two survivors. Myself and one man. I found out, when he died, that he had caused the accident deliberately. He killed my father. But it was already too late to find out whether I’d have the courage to take revenge, or the courage not to. I don’t think I’d have liked myself much either way, so I’m glad I didn’t have to choose.’
Smoke and steam rose from long, low buildings set among the riverside trees. The abbot, flanked by two men from his quartermaster’s staff, stepped into the nearest one. Inside, sweating men and women were grinding black, steel tubes and fitting them against wooden stocks. Once the breeches and locks were added they would be rifles.
The abbot paused for a moment, watching them work.
Then he took a barrel from the nearest woman and examined it closely, inside and out.
‘Acceptable,’ he said, handing it back.
One of the quartermasters made a note.
The abbot moved along the production line and took a barrel from a man who had been working hard on it with a file. Examining it, the abbot could see that the end of the barrel had been filed at a slight angle. Once evened up it would be a fraction short when it was mated with a breech and stock.
He lashed out with the barrel, the steel smashing into the man’s cheek. The worker sprawled, bleeding and spitting teeth.
‘Replace this turd,’ the abbot said.
The quartermaster made another note.
Fei-Hung found the Doctor in the surgery studying one of his father’s medical texts.
‘Most interesting,’ the Doctor said. ‘Most interesting for this time period.’
Fei-Hung smiled, proud of his father and naturally glad to hear him praised. It lasted only an instant as he had brought more serious news. ‘Jiang is at the gates.’
The Doctor frowned as if unsure what the message meant.
Then his face cleared. ‘Oh, this ridiculous and silly duel. I’m rather afraid I had quite forgotten it.’ He sighed wearily. ‘Very well, let’s get on with it, shall we? Let him in.’
‘Sif- Doctor,’ Fei-Hung corrected himself. ‘You cannot mean to fight Jiang-sifu.’
‘Can’t I indeed? And who are you to tell me what I mean?’
Fei-Hung had never seen such courage in a white man before. Or maybe it was stubbornness. ‘Do you not know who he is?’
‘A rival master to your father. Does it really matter?’
‘Two years ago a Japanese master came to challenge Jiang.
The Japanese had heard of his boasts about being a great fighter, and wanted to teach him a lesson. Everyone expected it to be a prodigious bout that would drag on and on.’
‘And wasn’t it?’
‘It took exactly one move. Jiang killed the Japanese master with a single kick to the head.’
All the students were waiting, ranged around the main courtyard. They were whispering among themselves, but Jiang couldn’t hear them clearly enough to make out what they were saying. Perhaps some of them were expressing dismay that one of their own would challenge the man appointed by the master of the school, but this didn’t bother
Jiang. He was sure the majority were excited at the prospect of seeing him humiliate the gwailo.
Once the Doctor was no longer in charge Jiang, as deputy, would take his place. Then he need only ensure that Kei-Ying didn’t return.
As if summoned by Jiang thinking about his father, Fei-Hung appeared through the latticework doors of the hall.
Chesterton, Barbara and Vicki followed. Finally, the Doctor appeared. He hadn’t even bothered to change into more appropriate clothing, Jiang noted.
The Doctor’s clothes weren’t loose enough to perform much in the way of martial arts, so perhaps he was going to forfeit.
That wouldn’t be as much fun, but it would still get Jiang what he wanted, so he would accept it.
The Doctor stepped down on to the courtyard and approached Jiang. He stopped a few feet away. ‘Well, young man,’ he said. ‘Do you still insist on this ridiculous duel?’
‘Unless you are choosing to forfeit. There is no dishonour in acknowledging one’s limitations.’ Jiang waited for the Doctor’s inevitable backing down.
‘So be it,’ the Doctor said. ‘Then let’s get on with it.’ He turned slightly side on, left foot forward, lowering his right hand behind him.
With his left hand, the Doctor beckoned to Jiang.
CHAPTER FOUR
Drunken Master
1
The sun had reached its zenith, and the Doctor and Jiang faced each other in the middle of Po Chi Lam’s courtyard.
Ian, Barbara, Vicki and Fei-Hung were standing on the raised veranda, while the other staff and students in their plain tunics lined the walls on either side. Everyone was giving the combatants plenty of room.
The Doctor, in his shirtsleeves and braces, was beckoning to the lanky Jiang. Ian steeled himself to jump in and take on Jiang himself. Without looking round Fei-Hung reached back to put a hand on his shoulder.
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