Eagle Shooting Hero 2(10)
They tilted their heads to listen. The sound was coming fast and sounded like it was more than one horse.
“Three horses in front, pursued by more than ten people,” Huang Rong guessed. Guo Jing literally grew up on horseback; he knew exactly the number of the horses.
“There are sixteen pursuers altogether,” he said. ”Well, well, well … what do you know?”
“What?” Huang Rong asked.
“The three at the front are on Mongolian horses, but the pursuers are not,” Guo Jing answered.
“What in the world are Mongolian horses doing in this area?” he wondered.
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Huang Rong tugged Guo Jing’s hand and they walked outside the temple gate. Suddenly a swishing sound was heard as an arrow flew above their heads. The three riders rushed towards the temple. An arrow flew from the pursuers and hit the last horse’s thigh. The horse uttered a sad neigh as its leg buckled. The rider’s equestrian skill was superb; he managed to leap clear just before the horse hit the ground. It seemed the rider did not know any lightness kungfu and his steps were heavy. The other two riders stopped their horses and turned back.
“I am all right,” shouted the one now on foot. “Quickly, go! I’ll try to slow the enemy!”
“I will help you with the enemy. Fourth Prince, you go ahead,” shouted one of the other two.
“How can you do that?” asked the Fourth Prince.
Those three were speaking Mongolian. Guo Jing, as he listened, thought he knew those voices.
They sounded like Tolui, Jebeh, and Borchu. He was really surprised. “What are they doing here?”
he thought. He wanted to go nearer, but the pursuers had already surrounded the three riders. The three Mongolians were experts at shooting arrows, so the pursuers did not dare to come too close and shot their own arrows from a distance.
“Let’s go up!” one of the Mongolians shouted, his hand pointing to a flagpole. The three scurried to the flagpole and climbed up. They were trying to gain a better position.
The pursuers dismounted and surrounded the flagpole on all sides. Somebody shouted an order and four soldiers lifted high their shields, came near the flagpole and tried to chop it down with their swords.
“You are wrong,” Huang Rong whispered, “There are only fifteen pursuers.”
“No, I can’t be wrong,” Guo Jing countered. “Maybe one of them was killed.” He’d just closed his mouth when a horse came wandering in. There was a rider with it but he was dead with an arrow sticking out from his chest; his foot was stuck in the stirrup so the horse was dragging him along.
Guo Jing crawled towards the corpse and pulled the arrow out. As soon as he felt the arrow with his fingers he could feel that it was made of wrought iron and had the engraving of a leopard’s head. It was an arrow used by the Master Archer Jebeh and was heavier than average arrows. His suspicion was gone; he called out, “You on the flagpole, are you Master Jebeh, Brother Tolui and Master Borchu? This is Guo Jing!”
The three were delighted. “How can you be here?” they asked.
“Who pursues you?” Guo Jing asked.
“Jin soldiers!” Tolui answered.
Guo Jing grabbed the dead Jin soldier’s body, lifted it up, and rushed forward. He threw the corpse toward the soldiers at the foot of the flagpole. The corpse did knock down two soldiers and the other two were frightened and ran away.
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Eagle Shooting Hero
Out of the blue two white shadows swooped down to Guo Jing. He recognized his two eagles, which he and Hua Zheng raised back in Mongolia. The two birds recognized their master even in the dark night; they uttered a loud cry and came down on Guo Jing’s shoulders.
Huang Rong had heard Guo Jing’s story of how he had shot two eagles and how he raised a pair of eagles as his playmates. Now, suddenly seeing the white eagles, she ignored the surrounding soldiers. She came running towards Guo Jing and called out, “Let me play with them!” She held out her hand to stroke one eagle’s feathers. But the eagle did not know Huang Rong, so it moved its head to hit Huang Rong’s hand with its beak. Luckily Huang Rong was quick; if not, the back of her hand would’ve been injured.
Guo Jing hurriedly pulled the birds away. Huang Rong sulked, “Your pet birds are bad!” But actually she was happy, she bent her head to take a closer look at them.
“Rong’er, watch out!” Guo Jing shouted suddenly. Two fast arrows flew toward Huang Rong’s chest. She ignored the arrows and nonchalantly reached towards the dead soldier’s pocket. The arrows were right on target, but they hit the soft hedgehog armor and simply fell down near her foot. Huang Rong continued groping in the pocket until she found some dried meat and fed it to the birds.
“Rong’er, play with the eagles, I am going to kill some Jin soldiers!” Guo Jing said. He jumped to strike an arrow flying towards him, stretched his left palm and with a cracking sound broke a nearby Jin soldier’s arm.
“Where did the dog that creates trouble come from?” a voice called out suddenly in the dark.
Surprisingly, he was speaking Chinese. Guo Jing was startled, “That voice sounds familiar,” he thought. At that time a couple of metal weapons came flashing his way as two short hatchets came chopping down at him, one slashing at his chest, the other slashing towards his lower abdomen.
Guo Jing saw the incoming force was fierce and he knew the attacker was not an ordinary officer.
He immediately shot out his palm using the ‘Divine Dragon Swings its Tail’. His palm hit the man on the shoulder shattering the shoulder blade into pieces and sent the man flying backwards a few feet. The man cried out pitifully. Suddenly Guo Jing remembered, “This is one of the ‘Four Demons of the Yellow River’ [Huang He si gui], the ‘Axe Buries Family’ [sang men fu] Qian Qingjian.”
Guo Jing knew that his martial arts skill had improved tremendously these past several months and of course he was in an entirely different league compared to when he fought the Four Demons of the Yellow River in Mongolia a while back. But to be able to knock the enemy back more than ten feet with only one palm? He was amazed. While he was still thinking about it, more metal objects came flashing toward him. This time it was a saber and a spear.
Guo Jing guessed they must be ‘Saber Breaks Down the Soul’ [duan hu dao] Shen Qinggang and
‘Lance Seizes Life’ [zhui ming qiang] Wu Qinglie. With his right hand forming a hook he caught the spear near its head and pulled it hard. Wu Qinglie tried to resist, but he was pulled along and fell face down in front of Guo Jing. Right at that moment as Guo Jing was stepping back to elude the chopping saber, Shen Qinggang’s blade was hacking toward his martial brother’s skull. Guo Jing’s leg flew up and kicked Shen Qinggang’s right wrist. A streak of blue light flashed in the dark night as his saber flew from his hand; Wu Qinglie’s life was saved. Guo Jing then picked up Wu Qinglie Eagle Shooting Hero
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and whirled him at his martial brother. With a ‘bang’, two brothers collided and both passed out immediately.
Of the Four Demons of the Yellow River, only three were left, since ‘Whip Capture Spirit’ [duo po bian] Ma Qingxiong was killed by Lu Guanying when he was trying to infiltrate the pirate gang of Lake Tai. These three people were the elite fighters of the Jin soldiers who pursued Tolui and his companions. The rest of the Jin soldiers were not aware that their leaders had fallen due to the darkness. They were still engaging Tolui, Jebeh and Borchu in a shooting battle.
“You are not running away, do all of you want to die here?” Guo Jing roared. He rushed towards the enemy soldiers, hitting here and grabbing there, throwing bodies everywhere. Very soon the soldiers panicked and scattered in all directions. Shen Qinggang and Wu Qinglie slowly came to their senses, each with a splitting headache. Their vision was still fuzzy, but they realized that their company had scattered so they also ran away without hesitation. They accidentally stumbled upon Qian Qingjian and woke him up. He mumbled indistinctly, but seeing the rest of the soldiers had run away, he ignored his pain and they ran in different directions.
Jebeh and Borchu were skilled archers; they kept shooting arrows and managed to kill three more Jin soldiers. Tolui looked down and saw that his sworn brother had scattered the enemy. He was delighted and called out, “Anda [Mongolian term for sworn brother]! How are you?” He slid down the flagpole to the ground.
Guo Jing and Tolui held each other’s hands; they were so happy that they were speechless for a while. A moment later Jebeh and Borchu joined them. “Those three Han holding shields blocked our arrows, preventing us from shooting them,” Jebeh said. “If Jing’er had not come to rescue us, we wouldn’t be able to drink the Onon River’s clear water anymore.”
Guo Jing pulled Huang Rong’s hand to let her meet Tolui and company. “This is my sworn sister,”
he introduced her.
“Will you give me these two white eagles?” Huang Rong asked, smiling. Tolui did not understand Chinese and his translator had run away when they were being attacked by the Jin soldiers. He’d noticed that Huang Rong’s voice was clear and sounded pleasant to his ears, but he actually had no idea what she was saying.