by Jin Yong
“What do you think, Guo Jing? The two of us together, happy and carefree. Isn’t this how life should be?”
* * *
BEFORE THEY set off, Guo Jing purchased a horse for himself, so Lotus could ride alone on Ulaan. The first half of the trip took them through Jin territory, but, since the Jurchens had been crushed by the Mongolians at every turn in recent years, they had lost control of much of the land to the east of Tong Pass that Lotus was interested in exploring. The young lovers were able to make their way in peace, without being troubled by Jin soldiers along the way.
As they approached Guangde, in East Jiangnan, a familiar caw sounded in the air. Guo Jing looked up to see the white condors winging their way south. He had fled Mongolia in such a frantic state that he had given up hope of ever seeing them again. Thrilled, he whistled for the birds’ attention. They swooped down and greeted their masters with affectionate nuzzles. As Guo Jing stroked their backs, he noticed a small roll of leather fastened to the male condor’s foot. He untied it. A few lines in Mongolian had been scratched onto its surface with the point of a dagger.
Our armies are marching to conquer the Great Song. My father knows that you have returned to the South, but has not changed his mind about the campaign. I know you are loyal to your country and would brave death to defend it. I have been the cause of your mother’s tragic end, and I am too ashamed to see you again. I have traveled to the extreme west to seek my eldest brother’s protection and will not return to this land of old for the rest of my days. As the proverb says, the camel may be strong, but it cannot carry a thousand men—to bear such a weight is to die in vain. I hope you will cherish yourself and live a long life with infinite blessings.
The note was not addressed to anyone and it contained no signature, but it was clear that Princess Khojin had intended it for Guo Jing. He translated the message for Lotus.
“‘The camel cannot carry a thousand men.’ What an odd thing to say!”
“It’s a Mongolian saying, similar to the Chinese phrase, ‘A single log cannot support a tall tower.’”
Lotus nodded. “It’s always been clear the Mongolians would invade the Song, but, for her to put it in writing, she must be very fond of you indeed.”
* * *
AFTER A few more days on the road, Guo Jing and Lotus crossed into western Two Zhes and rode into Changxing, on the southern shore of Lake Tai. Surrounded by fertile farmland, it should have been a prosperous town, but its proximity to the border between the Jin and the Song in the Huainan and Jiangnan regions had convinced many of its inhabitants to flee south, abandoning their fields and their homes.
The young couple passed through the desolated town and its outlying villages, taking a path that led them up a mountain. The grass and weeds along the trail were so overgrown that they reached the horses’ bellies. Ahead of them was a dense and dark forest that betrayed no sign of human activity.
All of a sudden, the condors screeched in anger. They plunged straight down from on high and vanished into the trees.
Knowing that something must have provoked the birds, Guo Jing and Lotus spurred their mounts into the woods. Soon, they found the raptors wheeling aggressively over a man who was trying to ward them off with a steel saber. Lotus was first to recognize him. Elder Peng, the disgraced Beggar Clan member! They had not expected to chance upon him here, of all places.
He was hacking viciously at the air with the blade, but the birds were not deterred. The female condor dived, snatched up Peng’s headscarf with her talons and pecked at the crown of his head. Peng swung his weapon again, and a cloud of white feathers rained down on him.
The hairless patch on his head reminded Lotus of the bloody scalp torn off by the female condor after the wreck at Blue Dragon Shoal. She remembered the wound to the condor’s breast, which they had found when the two birds returned to Uncle Sole Light’s mountain sanctuary from Peach Blossom Island. Perhaps Elder Peng fired the arrow? That would explain their hostility toward him.
“Hey! Look over here!” she cried.
The sudden appearance of the Beggar Clan Chief sent Elder Peng’s quaking spirits beyond the highest heavens. He turned and bolted. The male condor swooped down and pecked at his head. Peng swung the saber into the air to protect himself. Spotting that he had left his flank undefended, the female condor flew in from the side and struck his left eye with her beak.
Peng shrieked, tossed his blade aside and dived into a bush. He crawled deep into the spiky shrubbery, caring little for his torn skin so long as the thorns kept the birds at bay. The condors circled overhead, refusing to let him out of their sight.
Guo Jing whistled a command, calling the birds off. “Let him be. He’s blind in one eye.” Then he heard a mewling sound coming from a thicket behind him. He dismounted and waded through the undergrowth. A baby was lying on its back on the ground, and, next to it, a pair of feet were poking out from the bushes. He parted the vegetation to find an unconscious young woman, her wrists and ankles bound.
“Mercy!” Lotus helped her friend into a sitting position and cut the ropes restraining her. Then she massaged Mercy’s acupoints and pressed a finger to her philtrum to bring her around.
Guo Jing, meanwhile, had plucked up the child. The infant gazed at him with bright eyes, not at all afraid of the stranger.
Mercy gradually came to and tried to focus on the concerned faces before her. “Big Brother Guo … Sister Huang…?” A distinct tremor in her feeble voice.
“Sister Mu, why are you here? Are you hurt?” Guo Jing asked.
Realizing she was not dreaming, Mercy pushed herself up higher and reached out for her babe. Holding him close, she collected herself and began to recount all that had happened to her since they had last seen each other in Peach Spring.
Mercy had already told the story of how she had lost her honor to Yang Kang in a moment of weakness on Iron Palm Mountain. Not long after they had parted, she discovered that she was with child, and her only wish at that moment was to return to Ox Village in Lin’an. She attempted the journey alone, dragging her increasingly cumbersome body thousands of li east from Hunan, all the way to the outskirts of Changxing, where she found she could go no farther. Taking shelter in an abandoned forester’s hut, she gave birth to her son. She had no desire to mix with other people, so she lived off the land, hunting and foraging for sustenance. Fortunately, the baby was healthy and well behaved. He gave her great comfort and brought joy into her otherwise lonely and miserable existence.
She had been gathering firewood, just now, when she came across Elder Peng. He was taken by her looks and tried to force himself upon her. She fought back, but, though her kung fu was advanced enough to keep her safe in most situations, it was of little use against Peng. After all, he had once been one of the Four Elders of the Beggar Clan, and his martial skills were considerable, on a par with those of Surefoot Lu and Elder Jian. On top of that, he was a master of the dark art of mind entrapment, capable of controlling another simply by staring into their eyes.
The last thing Mercy remembered was being overpowered and tied up, before she passed out from fear and fury at the horrors that she was about to endure. It was fortuitous that Guo Jing and Lotus happened to be in the area, and that Peng had somehow drawn the ire of the condors, otherwise she would not have been able to escape the ordeal.
Guo Jing and Lotus spent that night in Mercy’s hut. When Lotus mentioned what had happened to Yang Kang, Mercy’s tears fell like rain. Her reaction was testament to the deep affection she still had for the faithless Prince, and Lotus decided to withhold from her the whole truth. She dreaded to think how Mercy would feel if she knew that Yang Kang had remained loyal to the Jin Empire to the bitter end and never stopped thinking of Wanyan Honglie as his father, or that he had played a part in the murder of five of Guo Jing’s shifus.
And so Lotus just told her that Yang Kang had been poisoned by Viper Ouyang at Iron Spear Temple in Jiaxing. When she uttered those words, a voice cried
inside her: I’m not lying, it was the Venom’s poison that killed him … She could not bring herself to admit that he had come into contact with such a lethal substance only because of her—for she had revealed his crimes, including the killing of Gallant Ouyang, and, when he had tried to silence her, he had struck a part of the Hedgehog Chainmail that was tainted by the toxin.
The child’s features reminded Guo Jing of Yang Kang, and he sighed as he recalled his failure to live up to the pledge of brotherhood he had made with the infant’s father.
“Brother Guo, may I ask you to name my boy?” Mercy said, drying her tears.
Guo Jing considered her request. “His father and I swore we would be brothers,” he said at last, “but things did not turn out as we had hoped, in part because I did not fulfill my duty as a friend. This is my deepest regret. I hope this child, when he grows up, will make good his father’s mistakes, and act with compassion and integrity. Lotus, I’m not good with words—help me, please?”
Lotus turned to Mercy to see what she thought of this idea.
“Sister, please give my child a name that will express what Brother Guo has said.”
A moment later, Lotus said, “What if his given name was Penance, and his courtesy name Amend, as a reminder to repent and change his ways when he errs?”
“Thank you. I pray he will live up to your hopes for him.”
Lotus invited Mercy to come with them to Peach Blossom Island, while Guo Jing suggested that he take little Penance on as his disciple, so the boy could learn kung fu.
Mercy was moved by their offers, and she knew that Guo Jing and Lotus truly meant well, but being in their presence never failed to shine a light on her own misfortunes and solitude, bringing a dull ache to her heart and making it hard for her to accept their kindness.
She tried to smile. “My boy is blessed to have Brother Guo for his shifu. Please accept our obeisance.” With baby Penance in her arms, she kowtowed to Guo Jing. “He is still too young to travel, but, one day, he shall present himself to his shifu and shimu.”
The next morning, Guo Jing and Lotus once more asked Mercy to join them on their journey, but she insisted that she would make her own way back to her village in Lin’an. Before they left the hut, Guo Jing took out the gold ingots Tolui had given him and pressed most of them onto her.
Thanking him for his generosity, Mercy then accompanied the young couple as far as the edge of the forest. “I will take Penance to Iron Spear Temple,” she said as they parted, “so he can visit his father’s grave.”
5
One night, after Lotus had made them supper in their guest house, Guo Jing fell into a particularly somber mood. His mind kept straying back to Khojin’s letter, which he carried in his inside shirt pocket, and to his childhood with Tolui and Khojin, filling him with nostalgia for all the games they had played on the Mongolian steppe. He had never had romantic feelings for the young woman, but he could not shake a lingering sense of guilt. After all, he was the reason she was spending the best years of her youth in a self-imposed exile in the far west, away from all that she had known and loved, and with only her brother Jochi for company.
The thought of the inevitable Mongol invasion dragged Guo Jing’s spirits down even further. Hundreds of thousands of common people would suffer the brutality of war because the Song Emperor was unworldly, his officials incapable, his soldiers and generals corrupt and unwarlike. The Song had no hope of holding back Genghis Khan’s riders, and, if he informed the court of the invasion, they would likely surrender without putting up even a show of a fight.
Lotus sat quietly beside Guo Jing, mending clothes by lamplight, and left him to his brooding.
“What do you think Khojin meant by this?” Guo Jing said, out of the blue. He read from her letter: “‘I have been the cause of your mother’s tragic end, and I am too ashamed to see you again.’”
“Well, it was her father who…” Lotus’s voice trailed off.
Guo Jing’s only response was a guttural Mm. He was running through the events of that terrible day in his head. Suddenly, he leaped to his feet, striking the table. “It all makes sense now!”
His abrupt movement made Lotus jump and she pricked herself with the sewing needle. A bead of blood formed on her fingertip. “What do you mean?”
“Mother and I were alone in the ger when we unpicked the Great Khan’s silk pouch and made the decision to go home. I never understood how Genghis Khan discovered our plans. Now I do—it was Khojin!”
“Why would she do that? Wasn’t she devoted to you?”
“She wanted to make me stay. She must have seen us picking apart the silk pouch and packing our things. So, she told her father, thinking he would find some way to convince me not to leave. She had no idea that we were committing a capital crime…” He heaved a weary sigh.
“Why don’t you go and find her?”
“Why would I want to do that? I only ever cared for her as my little sister.”
Satisfied with his answer, Lotus gave Guo Jing a sweet smile.
* * *
THE NEXT morning, Guo Jing and Lotus headed south, with the intention of stopping in Huzhou for the night. They stayed in the city’s grandest inn, the Merchant’s Guesthouse, and, at dusk, they joined the other guests in the dining hall for supper. At the table next to theirs were seven or eight men who spoke with Shandong accents, sharing tales of the Qingzhou Patriotic Army’s struggle against the Jin. Guo Jing was fascinated by their conversation, and called for five jin of wine and eight dishes to be sent to their table, so he could approach the men to find out more.
It turned out they were silk merchants from Qingzhou who had fled south to avoid the chaos of war. They had come to the Two Zhes because they knew the area well, having traveled there frequently to conduct business. Impressed by the generous spread of food that appeared on their table, and by Guo Jing’s courteous manners, they told the young man all they knew about the situation in their hometown.
Qingzhou, in Yidu prefecture, was an important city in Shandong. The Jurchens’ hold on the region had been weakened by the defeats they had suffered at the hands of the Mongolians, and the local Han population had seized the opportunity to rise against them, taking back a sizeable swathe of land. They had called themselves the Patriotic Army, naming Li Quan from Weizhou as their leader.
Li Quan and his wife, Yang Miaozhen, were both formidable warriors. She was known as Pear Blossom Spear, and there was a local saying that described her prowess: “For twenty years unmatched under the heavens.” Li Quan’s older brother, Li Fu, was also a renowned fighter. The Jin troops sent to face them were routed, scattering like fallen petals flushed by spring torrents. Patriots traveled from all over Shandong to pledge their allegiance, and the group’s reputation spread far and wide.
The Patriotic Army secured a string of decisive victories, forcing the Jin armies in Huainan and Shandong to withdraw to the west. The last time the Song people had enjoyed success on this scale against the Jurchens was more than a century ago, in the days of Generals Yue Fei, Liu Qi and Yu Yunwen.
The Imperial Court at Lin’an was thrilled. Chancellor Shi Miyuan named Li Quan Commander-in-Chief of Jingdong. Although the territory was still under the Jin’s jurisdiction, the Song Empire continued to appoint an official to govern the region—in name only. The Song now had an army north of the Yangtze, headquartered in Chuzhou, and its presence was invigorating news for those subjects in the Jin-annexed regions nearby who had remained loyal.
Though it received official recognition, as well as funds and grain from court, the Patriotic Army was not trusted by those in power. After Li Quan quelled a Jin incursion south of the River Huai, threatening the Song’s heartlands along the Yangtze, he was rewarded with two grand titles: Military Commissioner of the Peace Preserving Army and Deputy Commissioner of Frontier Appeasement at Jingdong. But, at the same time, General Xu Guo was appointed Military Commissioner of East Huai, with power over Li Quan and orders to keep the ups
tarts under control.
Xu Guo had won battles against the Jin at the border strongholds of Xiangyang and Zaoyang, but as a commander he was rude and prejudiced. Each time the Patriotic Army fought alongside the Song Empire’s regular army, Xu Guo would favor his own soldiers and mete out harsh punishments to Li’s men.
Ultimately, this sealed his fate. During a battle with Mongolian riders who had come to claim Jin territory around Qingzhou, the rear guard of the Patriotic Army mutinied while Li Quan was leading from the front. They killed Xu Guo’s entire family and forced the General to commit suicide.
* * *
LOTUS WAS intrigued by the tales told by the Qingzhou merchants. “Guo Jing, I’d like to see for myself how unmatched this Pear Blossom Spear really is.”
“Yes! And we should help them reclaim more of our land from the Jin.”
Guo Jing and Lotus altered their travel plans there and then, and headed north for Shandong the next morning. When they arrived in Qingzhou, they sought an audience with the formidable couple to offer their assistance in repelling the Song’s enemies.
Having been a court official for some time now, Li Quan had acquired a haughty manner, putting too much store by his own importance. He did not want to waste his time exchanging pleasantries with a simple youth and a pretty girl who did not seem to have anything concrete to offer. He brushed them off with perfunctory words of thanks and a vague promise that he would summon them if he had trouble holding back the enemy.
Li Quan sent for food and wine for his guests, then turned away to attend to army business at the dining table. For weeks now, he had been plagued by conflicts between elements of his Patriotic Army and the Song court’s regular troops. He issued orders for the arrest of the soldiers who had clashed with men of the Patriotic Army and the expulsion of those who were occupying the treasure house.