The Eleventh Tiger (29 page)

‘You wouldn’t even have considered going if it wasn’t in a just cause.’

‘No, I wouldn’t.’

‘Then the cause is... ?’

‘The woman I spoke of, a friend of my father’s, is being held hostage to force her man to commit murder. I hoped to find her, and free her.’

‘Then if I was selfish enough not to let you go and the man was killed, or the woman died by her captor’s hands, it would be as bad as if I had slit those throats myself. Could you inflict that upon me?’

‘No.’ Fei-Hung was torn. He would be harming her either way. ‘I can’t go, but I can’t not go

‘The man I love wouldn’t put a selfish concern above saving an innocent life. And I doubt he could really love a woman who did that either.’ She smiled, tears in her eyes that made him want to break down into sobs. It wasn’t guilt that made his cheeks wet, but the sheer quantity and strength of his emotions.

‘If I... ?’ He swallowed and looked at the floor. He cursed the fact that he couldn’t control his tongue as well as he could control the rest of himself.

‘When I come back, will you marry me?’

‘I thought I was going to have to wait until our fathers arranged it.’ She kissed him. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘Then I suppose I’ll have to come back alive.’

In his bedchamber Barbara’s words echoed around Qin’s mind, chasing him and snapping at him, and not letting him have a moment’s rest. Madness, she had suggested, an incomplete spell for immortality. Even possession within possession. This was not what the wizard had promised him.

Qin kicked a table over and the noise drew Gao. The general burst in, sword at the ready. He put it away when he saw that there was no-one else in the room.

Qin continued to rage, and tore at the grey hair that had begun to grow again from his borrowed scalp. ‘Who am I?

What am I?’

‘You are the First Emperor of China -’

‘No!’ He whirled on Gao pointing a silencing finger. ‘I have memories of rulership, of passing laws, of ordering executions, of leading my people to battle... but those are the only memories I have. If I founded a dynasty why do I not remember my sons? If I had sons, why do I not remember?’

‘It must be something in the abbot’s mind resisting you.’

‘There is no abbot’s mind!’ Qin stopped and turned to the mirror he had been using to judge his new face in earlier. ‘Or is there?’ He felt a fear that he had never known before. He thought he had been afraid of death, terrified by it, but now he felt something far more disturbing.

‘Am I a fiction - a diseased part of this abbot’s mind? Do I really not exist at all, except in my own imagination, in a head I only think I have taken possession of from its rightful owner?’

‘If that were true, how could you remember your life two thousand years ago?’ Gao asked.

‘How do I know that I do?’ Qin demanded. ‘How do I know that what I remember is a true memory, and not just a dream or a wish that I think is a memory?’

‘The
gwailo
woman must be a sorceress; she has bewitched you. Let me kill her for you,’ Gao pleaded. ‘The pleasure in her suffering will remind you of the truth, and she will no longer poison your mind with her evil. Let those who love you serve you.’

‘She must not die!’

‘Why not?’ Gao asked.

Qin realised that he didn’t know. He wanted to say, ‘Yes, kill her,’ but the words would not come. ‘Because it is not fated,’ he snapped at last.

‘Then it is time to fetch her. We must go tonight. The conjunction is upon us.’

Qin realised he had almost lost track of the time. He nodded. ‘Bring her outside.’

Gao saluted and left. Qin went outside. There, Zhao was waiting. The rage in Qin’s mind had burnt itself out for now, but he knew it would be back and shivered inwardly at the thought.

Gao soon dragged Barbara out to meet them and Qin grabbed her by the wrist. Light blazed from his eyes and mouth and he raised both hands. Zhao and Gao stepped forward, the light from their eyes and mouths joining the light from Qin’s, and raised their hands too. Electric fire crackled around their forearms and fingers, and lashed out like grasping claws.

The lightning merged between the three monks and snatched and tore there, ripping a hole in the air. Through the ragged gap, which was edged with actinic fire, Barbara could see a dusty hillside covered with the stumps of cut-down bushes.

Qin reached a hand back and grabbed her wrist. Then he stepped through the hole, pulling her with him.

Beggar Soh and Vicki had described their journey back to Guangzhou in great detail. It was simple enough for Fei-Hung to follow it in reverse. He had taken a small sailing dinghy, leaving a few coins on the jetty at the docks where it had been moored. The tide was coming in and had given the boat a much-needed boost upstream. He had beached the dinghy as soon as he saw the tops of the junk’s masts in the distance and gone the rest of the way on foot.

The town was deserted. He had expected at least some of the guards the abbot had lured from the Black Flag still to be around, or maybe some prisoners, but there was no-one. The town was completely empty.

Next, Fei-Hung slipped down to the lone jetty. The junk was still afloat. A couple of guards patrolled the deck, so he felt confident that the town wasn’t permanently abandoned.

The junk was being kept ready for use.

Fei-Hung slipped quietly aboard and put both guards down with rapid punches and kicks to the head. He tied them up quickly so that he could search the junk in peace. It was empty. No-one was aboard except for the guards, and Fei-hung left them bound and gagged when he left. They would be able to talk to his father and the others when they arrived.

The old monastery was his ultimate destination. This was where Vicki had said she and Barbara were held prisoner.

Fei-Hung’s confidence about finding Barbara was fading. He had found the place easily enough, but the absence of people suggested she might already have been killed or removed. He began to hope that he would find nothing, and therefore that she had been taken away somewhere else. He didn’t want to find her body lying alone in the abandoned building.

The main doors of the monastery were ajar, and Fei-Hung didn’t touch them as he squeezed past in case they squeaked and alerted anyone within. A short corridor led him to the main hall. There was a dais and a few stools, but no statue of the Buddha, no incense burners, no religious paraphernalia of any kind. Fei-Hung didn’t like it at all. Whoever had removed all this had turned a sacred space into just a space.

He looked for a door that would lead deeper into the monastery. It would probably be behind the dais, he thought.

He spotted it quickly and pulled it open.

Two men blocked his path. One was lean and carried a staff. He matched the description of the one Ian had seen, called Gao. The other, whom Vicki had called Zhao, was like an ox standing on its hind legs. On any other day Fei-Hung might have been afraid as well as wary, but not today. Today he was simply relieved, because they were indeed men and not whatever that thing near the temple had been.

Gao lunged forward with the staff while Zhao circled round to stop Fei-Hung from getting away. Fei-Hung was happy enough with that; if the pair were wrong about what he wanted to do, their tactics might also be wrong.

He dodged back from the whirling staff, pretending not to notice Zhao closing in behind him. When the muscular general was close enough, and about to attack, Fei-Hung hit him in the gut with a tiger-tail kick, without looking round.

Zhao doubled over and toppled, but Gao redoubled his attack. Fei-Hung blocked as best he could, careful to block against the man’s forearms rather than the wood itself. If he could stay in close enough, Gao wouldn’t be able to swing the staff well enough to use it with enough momentum to do real damage.

Then Gao unexpectedly swung the staff down, sweeping Fei-Hung off his feet. Fei-Hung rolled immediately, narrowly getting out from under the edge of Zhao’s foot as it slashed towards his neck.

He sprang back to his feet to engage the unarmed Zhao again, keeping the man-mountain between himself and Gao.

Fei-Hung was faster with his kicks and punches, but Zhao’s muscles were like iron. All Fei-Hung’s punches rebounded from Zhao’s forearms, all his kicks from the outsides of Zhao’s calves. Suddenly the tip of Gao’s staff was jabbing past either side of Zhao’s head, and Fei-Hung had to dart his head aside like a pigeon to avoid it.

He needed a breathing space to assess his strategy and acquire a useful weapon. He stunned Zhao with one of his father’s speciality no-shadow kicks, then push-kicked him back into Gao. Both men tumbled in a heap crushing the black wooden throne.

Fei-Hung used the rebound from the kick to flip backwards, and snatched an umbrella from a stand near the door. He would have preferred a proper sabre or broadsword, but the main shaft of the umbrella felt as solid in his hand as any staff would.

His breath burnt his lungs, but he was excited by this rather than pained. He felt he had the measure of the two generals and, while he respected their skill and refused to feel comfortable enough to underestimate them, he was satisfied they did not outclass him. All that mattered was that he did his best. Live or die, he would be doing his best for his friends, his country and his beliefs.

Zhao and Gao were back on their feet and advancing on him from either side. Gao twirled his staff ominously, while Zhao held a leg from the broken throne in each hand in a double guarding block.

Fei-Hung didn’t smile, but he relaxed and let his expression clear. Let the enemy wonder whether he was angry or afraid, excited or overconfident. Let them not know who their enemy was.

He was Wong Fei-Hung: healer, teacher and defender of the people he cared about, whether he knew them or not, and whether they were Han or not. Zhao and Gao were warriors who sought to elevate one man above all others. It didn’t matter whether they were crazy men or possessed by ghosts, because either way they were servants of oppression who valued force over thought. That was all they were, and it was all he needed to know.

Fei-Hung rolled the umbrella shaft around his wrist, testing its weight and balance. It didn’t move the same way a sword would, but he knew he could adjust for that. He twisted the shaft in his hand, resting it on his left arm which was outstretched behind him. With his right hand, he smoothed down the front of his rumpled tunic and beckoned his opponents towards him.

They rushed him together. Fei-Hung bounded forward a couple of steps and leapt into the air between them. One foot hit the middle of Gao’s staff as if it was a ladder rung, and prevented him from swinging the weapon. The other caught Zhao’s shoulder, making him stagger aside.

Then Fei-Hung was on the balls of his feet, blocking and parrying Gao’s staff with the umbrella. The umbrella jarred painfully against the heel of his hand with each block, but it didn’t break.

Then Zhao was upon him as well, and Fei-Hung found himself blocking the staff with side kicks to Gao’s hands and fencing against the two impromptu batons Zhao was trying to drum on his head with. The trio danced around the room like this for a moment, each seeking an advantage, until Fei-Hung managed to hook the staff with the umbrella shaft and slam it into Zhao’s fists.

Before either general could recover, Fei-Hung stabbed backwards for Gao’s groin with the point of the umbrella and snapped a no-shadow kick at Zhao’s face. Both generals staggered back, allowing Fei-Hung to slip a toe under the fallen staff and flick it up into his hand.

He twirled the staff, thrusting it forward and back, aiming for the chests, groins and faces of both opponents. Their arms swung and shifted rapidly, blocking the attempted blows. Zhao managed to catch the end of the staff in a cross block, then lashed out with a foot and snapped it in half in the middle. He immediately lunged forward with the half he now held, fencing with Fei-Hung who still held the other half.

Fei-Hung circled desperately, trying to keep Zhao between himself and Gao so that the leaner man couldn’t flank him and attack. Finally, he saw an opportunity as Zhao lunged with his half of the staff at his stomach. A strong enough impact could rupture the younger man’s spleen and kill him.

At the last second Fei-Hung switched the piece of staff to his left hand, turned it behind the arm and launched his right foot on a roundhouse kick towards the inside of Zhao’s elbow.

Zhao’s right arm snapped and crumpled inwards, the piece of staff falling to the floor with a clatter. Not yet certain that Zhao was quite out of the fight, Fei-Hung let the momentum of his movement carry him round into a spin, and hit him on the side of the head with another tiger-tail kick from his left foot.

Zhao toppled sideways revealing the other man, who looked from Fei-Hung to the fallen man. ‘Brother!’ Gao cried.

Something in his tone told Fei-Hung he meant the word in its literal sense. Fei-Hung almost gave up then, because he knew that if it was a matter of family honour a brother would always seek to avenge a brother. Defeating one would merely redouble the efforts of the other.