by Jin Yong
The warhorse’s coat hardens into ice, hiding the clipped pattern,
Inside the tent the writing ink freezes on the inkstone.
The fighting spirit of enemy soldiers soars to the sky,
White bones on the battlefield twine with roots of weeds.
In Jianhe, the wind urgent, the snow falls fast,
In Shakou, the stones cold, the horses’ hooves split.
The piercing cold did not affect Guo Jing much, since he had grown up in the northern deserts, but how could Lotus—if she really was with the army—endure the bitter weather, when she had only known the mild climate of the South? The thought of her discomfort ate away at the young General, so, the day after the surprise attack, when the march was halted for the night, he went in secret around the whole camp, checking every ger, but he did not find a single sign of her presence.
With a heavy heart, Guo Jing went back to his tent, and was surprised to find his men digging a pit, under Surefoot Lu’s supervision.
“Surely Viper Ouyang is too cunning to fall for the same trick twice?”
“Well, the Venom will expect us to come up with a different ploy, so we’re giving him another taste of what he enjoyed so much.” The Beggar Clan Elder then added mysteriously, “In artifice there is substance, in substance there is artifice. Whether artifice or substance, it cannot be augured.”
Guo Jing shot Surefoot Lu a sideways glance. The man who said he had no need of military tactics to lead beggars was now quoting battlefield wisdom.
“But, if we try to catch him out with sand again, he will find a way around it,” Surefoot Lu went on, paying Guo Jing’s reaction no heed. “So, this time, we’ll use boiling water.”
Guo Jing recalled passing a cluster of cauldrons when he had entered the ger. He stepped outside again. The Beggar Clan Elders had arranged for twenty large iron pots to be set up outside. Dozens of soldiers were bustling around them. Some were building fires, while others broke large mounds of packed snow into smaller chunks with axes and shoveled them into the cauldrons.
“Wouldn’t that kill him?”
“You promised to spare his life the next three times he falls into your hands. If he’s boiled alive by scalding water, he didn’t exactly fall into your hands, and no one could accuse you of breaking your word.”
When the pit was ready, it was masked by the rug, on which a wooden chair was placed, just as before. Outside, fires were lit and the snow started to melt in the cauldrons, though the air was so cold that thin layers of ice would form on the surface if the fuel was not replenished fast enough.
“More firewood here! Quick!” Surefoot Lu shouted as a dark figure flashed across the white landscape.
Viper Ouyang parted the ger’s flaps with the Serpent Staff and strode onto the rug, crying, “I don’t fear your traps!” Then he plunged, rug, chair and all, uttering a string of curses.
The Beggar Clan Elders listened in alarm to the commotion inside the tent. They had not anticipated the Venom would come so early in the night. The snow in the pots had only just melted; it was not even warm enough to use as bathwater. There were no sandbags close at hand. And they knew the martial Master could leap out of the pit with the same ease as he might turn his palm upside down.
“Guo Jing, run!” the Elders cried, just as a voice from behind them hissed, “Pour!”
Surefoot Lu caught the command and bellowed the word out loud: “Pour!”
The soldiers grabbed the cauldrons and rushed into the ger.
Viper Ouyang was already midair, halfway up the shaft, when several potfuls of water crashed onto him. The shock caused him to gasp, letting out the breath he had been holding. In free fall, he struck the butt of his staff against the base of the pit, sucked air into his lungs and pushed, propelling himself once more toward the opening.
A second wave of water lashed down onto him, but he was prepared this time, and it did not arrest his explosive upward motion. Yet, in this numbing cold, much of the water froze the moment it left the cauldron, and the Venom found himself hurtling painfully into fragments of ice as they rained down on his head.
And little did he know that the water at the bottom of the pit was also freezing fast. Having fallen short with his second leap, Viper was about to launch himself a third time when he sensed something pulling at his feet—they were trapped in a block of ice. Howling, he channeled his inner strength along his legs to the tip of his toes and broke through with a violent burst of energy, but, seconds later, more water cascaded down, solidifying around his upper body. In panic, he flung a sleeve over his face and managed to trap a pocket of air before his whole person was encased in ice. He then slowed his breathing using the Resting Tortoise technique, in the hope of preserving his life.
Although the water had failed to reach boiling point, the way in which the twenty cauldrons had been deployed was well planned out and rehearsed. Each vessel was manned by four soldiers, whose faces and forearms were wrapped in layers of cloth to protect against what would have been scalding splashes. The teams moved as one and stepped smartly aside once the load was discharged, to make way for the next group, sending down an all but constant stream of water. In no time at all, the pit was entirely filled.
The freezing water turned out to be an effective deterrent, securing Viper Ouyang in an ice pillar nearly five zhang in height and seven chi in diameter. Thrilled by their unintended success, the Beggar Clan Elders ordered men to dig around the block of ice and loop thick ropes around it, then had it dragged out of the ground by a team of twenty horses.
The news of this unusual sight spread like wildfire and soldiers from all over the camp gathered outside their commander’s ger to marvel at it, lending a hand to help pivot the giant block of ice upright. By torchlight, it was apparent that Viper Ouyang had been frozen mid-action, one arm and one foot raised, his lips curled in a snarl and his eyes blazing. The crowd cheered at the spectacle, but Surefoot Lu feared that the martial Master might use his neigong to melt the ice and ordered more water to be brought to strengthen it.
But Guo Jing would not allow it. “I promised to spare him three times,” he said. “Break the ice. Let him go!”
Though the Beggar Elders felt it would be a pity to set the Venom loose, they understood it was important for martial men to abide by their word. Surefoot Lu fetched a hammer, but, just as he was about to swing it down, Elder Jian held him back and turned to Guo Jing. “How long can Viper Ouyang survive like this?”
“Perhaps two hours? Not much longer than that.”
“In that case, I suggest we free him then. I don’t think it would be amiss to subject him to a little hardship before we spare his life.”
Guo Jing nodded. He had not forgotten that this man was responsible for the deaths of five of his shifus.
By now, word had spread to nearby camps and soldiers from other parts of the army were coming to see the man in the ice for themselves. Surveying the growing mass of onlookers, Guo Jing turned to the beggars. “As the saying goes, ‘A man would sooner be killed than be mocked.’ The Venom may be a villain, but he is also a grandmaster of the martial arts. He should not be reduced to a laughing stock.” With that, he sent soldiers to set up a ger over the ice pillar and assigned men to keep watch, with firm orders that absolutely no one was allowed inside.
The three Elders released Viper Ouyang two hours later. Although the Venom had managed to survive on a small amount of air, thanks to the Resting Tortoise method of breathing, his primal qi was badly damaged. He sat cross-legged on the ground and channeled his energy around his body. Eventually, he coughed out three mouthfuls of blackened blood and left without a word, his countenance waxen but his movements unaffected by the ordeal. Guo Jing and the beggars watched in awe, impressed by the depth of his kung fu.
For the whole duration of Viper Ouyang’s imprisonment, Guo Jing had felt unsettled. At first, he thought it was because he was threatened by the Martial Great’s presence, but the agitation did not diminish when he was gone. He m
ade a conscious effort to gather his spirit and quiet his mind, and, in the time it takes to drink a pot of tea, he managed to silence his emotions and empty his head. Then it dawned on him. The reason he had been so restless. The voice that had prompted Surefoot Lu to pour the ice-cold water on Viper Ouyang was one Guo Jing knew very well. It was Lotus’s. He was almost certain of it. The Venom might have had his full attention at the time, but he could still hear that one word—“Pour!”—lingering in his ears … Only, he could not quite catch it in his heart. It was not possible for Guo Jing to sit still any longer. “Lotus is in the camp,” he said aloud to himself. “I’ll summon all my troops for inspection. That way, she’ll have nowhere to hide … But I shouldn’t force her to reveal herself to me if she doesn’t want to…” He unrolled the painting Surefoot Lu had given him. The sight of the young woman in the picture filled him with a bittersweet longing.
4
Galloping horses broke the silence of the night. Their hurried approach was greeted by shouts from Guo Jing’s guards. Presently, a herald entered his ger with orders from Genghis Khan.
The Mongolian army had been divided into four smaller forces when they had embarked on their western campaign, each riding unimpeded and victorious along a different route into Khwarazm. But now the Great Khan’s sights were set on Samarkand, a new city that had replaced Gurganj as the capital. It was garrisoned by more than a hundred thousand Khwarazmians, their artillery primed, their grain stores full. The city’s fortifications were sound: no defensive wall under the heavens was known to be thicker or better equipped. When his reconnaissance units had returned with their findings, Genghis Khan issued an urgent summons, recalling his men from different parts of the country to mount an assault on the city with the full might of the Mongol cavalry.
Guo Jing led his division south the next morning, following the Sughd River. Ten days later, they reached Samarkand, the first Mongols to arrive. The city gates opened and out poured the entire garrison. The Khwarazmians thought they could crush this little Mongolian detachment with ease, but, within half a day, more than five thousand of their soldiers had fallen to the Rising Wind and Hanging Cloud formations employed by Guo Jing’s riders. The battle-weary defenders scuttled back behind their city walls, their fighting spirit crushed.
On the third day, Genghis Khan, Jochi and Chagatai arrived with their armies. The full Mongolian force of more than a hundred thousand men had come together to put Samarkand under siege. Several days of intense attacks did little to damage the sturdy city walls or force the defenders from their ramparts. The casualties mounted and still the Mongols failed to make a breach.
The sun rose on another day. Chagatai’s eldest son, Mutukan, led the charge this time, eager to secure honor on the field. An arrow flew from the battlements and pierced his skull. Genghis Khan, overwhelmed by grief and fury, sent his personal guards to retrieve the body. With tears streaming down his cheeks, he clasped his favorite grandson to his chest and plucked the arrow from the boy’s head. A barb shaped like a wolf’s fang, fletching made from condor feathers, and the shaft—gilded in gold—had words inscribed on it. An officer recognized the characters as Jurchen script and relayed their meaning:
PRINCE ZHAO OF THE GREAT JIN
“Wanyan Honglie!” the Great Khan howled as he leaped onto his steed’s back. “Hark, my brothers-in-arms! Whosoever breaches this city and captures Wanyan Honglie to avenge my grandson will be rewarded with all the silks and jade and men and women behind these walls.”
A hundred riders of Genghis Khan’s personal guard stood on the backs of their horses and echoed his words in one voice, rallying the army into action. Arrows buzzed through the air like swarms of locusts. War cries shook the heavens. Some units worked together to scale the walls, heaping mounds of earth, raising cloud ladders and throwing grapnels. Other teams brought a battering ram to bear upon the city gates. From the ramparts, the Khwarazmians worked tirelessly to repel the invaders, and, by sundown, Genghis Khan had lost more than four thousand soldiers, yet Samarkand stood as firm as a mountain. The Mongolians had not suffered such a thorough defeat since they had first marched into the country. When the Great Khan returned to his ger that night, his rage erupted like a burst of thunder, fueled by the pain of bereavement.
* * *
GUO JING consulted The Secret to Defeating the Jin, hoping to find a way to take the city, but the fortifications of Samarkand were very different from those of the great cities of the Central Plains, so the methods of siegecraft set down by General Yue Fei were of little use to him.
He understood that, when an army besieged a city, their food and fodder would dwindle with time, and that the quickest way to replenish one’s provisions was to take the city and plunder its stores, but that did not seem likely in the current situation. If the defenders sallied out, he was confident that the Mongolians would crush them with the ease with which one snaps a wilted twig or crumbles rotten wood, but there was nothing they could do if their enemies stayed behind their thick walls. As time wore on, they would soon be plunged into the depths of winter, and with the cold would come anxiety and impatience—the first signs of an army disintegrating from within.
Frustrated, Guo Jing called Surefoot Lu into his ger and explained his concerns, knowing the beggar would go straight to Lotus for guidance. Once Lu took his leave, Guo Jing tiptoed after him, but his plan was thwarted the moment he left the tent. Surefoot Lu was surrounded by a great mass of his clansmen, and they greeted Guo Jing as loudly as their voices would allow.
This must be another one of Lotus’s ploys, Guo Jing thought with a sigh. She anticipates my every move and she can always come up with new ways to avoid me.
Surefoot Lu returned two hours later. “Such a large city cannot be taken in a rush,” he said. “I can’t think of any good strategies at present. Let’s observe the defenders for a few more days. Perhaps they’ll reveal a weakness.”
Guo Jing nodded and the Beggar Elder took his leave. The young man’s mind drifted back to Lotus again, and to the verses on the scroll painting. When he had left Mongolia for the South, more than a year ago, he had been a simple, unworldly boy, but the adventures and hardships along the way had made him more perceptive. Tonight, he felt he could almost grasp the affection that flowed through the poems and he grew more certain that Lotus still had feelings for him.
She’s probably waiting for me to apologize. What can I do to make it up to her? he asked himself, wishing that he were not so dull-witted.
The question continued to plague him, keeping him awake well past midnight. When he at last dozed off, to fitful dreams of Lotus, he grabbed the chance to ask her what he should do. She gave her reply in hushed tones in his ear; yet, when he woke up, he had no memory of the words exchanged. No matter how hard he tried, nothing she said would come back to him. Joy turned to exasperation. He thought perhaps Lotus would appear in his dreams again, but sleep would not return to him. Knocking himself on the head in frustration, he suddenly had an idea.
I can’t recall what she told me in the dream, but I can ask her! With that thought, he cried, “Send for Elder Lu!”
Surefoot Lu threw on a sheepskin and ran into Guo Jing’s ger barefooted, thinking there had been urgent developments on the frontline, only to be greeted with a startling request.
“Elder Lu, I need to meet with Lotus tomorrow night. I’m giving you until noon to tell me where to find her.”
“How … how’s that possible? Chief Huang isn’t here.”
“You’re smart and you’ll find a way. If I don’t get the answer I expect by noon, you’ll be sorry.” Guo Jing laughed silently at his unreasonable demand and turned to call in a guard before Surefoot Lu could argue back. “I want a team of executioners outside my ger at noon tomorrow,” he told the man.
With the soldier’s affirmative reply ringing loudly in his ears, the beggar left the tent, his face a picture of misery.
5
Heavy snowfall arrived with the new
day. The city walls, now coated in ice, were extremely slippery, as though they had been greased with oil. With no hope of scaling them until it thawed, Genghis Khan had the troops stay in the camp. The impasse weighed on him. Winter would soon be upon them. It would only grow colder in the coming months, and the temperature would not start to climb until the arrival of spring, in the second or third moon after the turn of the year. If they gave up on capturing Samarkand and continued to march west, they would leave their rear open to a hundred thousand enemy soldiers who could cut off their route home. If they stayed in the field and maintained the siege, they might end up trapped between the city walls and Khwarazmian reinforcements, horribly outnumbered. The likely outcome of either scenario was the complete destruction of the Mongolian army—not a single horse could hope to escape.
Genghis Khan paced back and forth outside his ger, his hands clasped behind his back. For once, he had no idea what to do. He stared with a frown at the towering snow-capped mountain that anchored the city’s fortifications. It was a curious sight, rising up from the flat grassland like a tree trunk with neither branches nor leaves. The sheer craggy surfaces were of the hardest, most impenetrable rock; no vegetation could take root; not even monkeys or apes could find a foothold. The local people called it Bald Tree Peak.
It had been a masterstroke to build the city against this mountain, making use of the unusual terrain to form the western side of the city walls. This effective natural defense was not only impregnable, it had also lightened the burden of the capital’s construction on the Shah’s coffers.
Outside the walls, the Mongolian camp, its tents, horses and camels, were covered in a blanket of snow; within the city, cooking smoke rose from every household, curling up into the sky. The sight fueled the conqueror’s black mood. Through all the hundreds of battles I have fought, never have I been in such a desperate situation. Is this the end the heavens have in store for me?