I. White Marks on the Training Ground
Soldiers had filled the eastern training ground of Daming before the morning was far advanced. Zhou Jin sat mounted beneath the banners. Yang Zhi faced him with a spear. Above them, Governor Liang watched with his officers.
Yang Zhi had once been an officer of the Palace Command. A transport of ornamental stones lost on the river had cost him his post. Later, in Tokyo, he had killed the bully Niu Er while trying to sell his sword, and had been sent to Daming as a branded prisoner. Liang had seen enough of his riding and archery to want him in the garrison. Zhou Jin, who held a regular military appointment, was unwilling to surrender it without a contest.
Wen Da, the military supervisor, had the spearheads removed. Their ends were wrapped in felt and dipped in lime: the fighter whose dark coat bore more white marks would lose. The horses, however, were free to run at full speed.
“After you, Officer Zhou,” Yang Zhi said.
Zhou Jin answered with his spear. Yang leaned aside as the white tip passed his shoulder, then touched Zhou Jin lightly on the chest. A cheer rose. Zhou turned and charged again. For forty or fifty exchanges the two rode beneath the banners. White spots multiplied on Zhou’s coat; Yang carried only one on his left shoulder.
Zhou Jin flushed when Liang called him forward. “We have tried the spears,” he said. “Let us try the bows.”
Liang agreed. Zhou shot three arrows at Yang. Yang avoided the first, knocked the second aside with the end of his bow, and turned to catch the third in his hand. When his own turn came, he drew once without loosing, drawing Zhou’s shield up. Then he sent an arrow into Zhou’s left shoulder. Zhou fell from the saddle; soldiers hurried to lift him.
Yang lowered his bow. He had proved himself, yet he could see that the officers around Liang were not all ready to welcome him. Before he could remove his armor, a voice called from the foot of the platform.
II. The Vanguard
A large man on a white horse had come out from the ranks. His eyes were already fixed on Yang.
“The Impatient Vanguard,” someone murmured. “Suo Chao.”
Suo reined in before the platform. Zhou Jin was his pupil. He had watched the young man fall, and he had heard that his appointment might pass to this newly arrived officer.
“Zhou Jin lost,” he told Liang. “His teacher bears some blame for that. But if his post is to go to Yang Zhi, let me meet Yang myself. If he beats me, I will accept it. If I beat him, I ask you to reconsider.”
Wen Da frowned. “This is a contest among our own men.”
“That is why one bout cannot settle it,” Suo Chao replied.
Yang saw more than a man smarting over his pupil’s defeat. Suo was staking the standing of the Daming officers on what he could do himself.
“What shall we use?” Yang asked.
“Your spear. My axe.”
“Felt around the points again?”
Suo set the butt of his axe against the saddle. “Who wraps your spear when you ride into battle?”
The voices along the ground died away. Liang allowed real weapons, though he warned both men against needless injury. Yang took up an iron-shafted, steel-tipped spear. Liang lent him his chestnut horse. Suo wore a copper lion helmet, an iron-leaf cuirass beneath a crimson patterned robe, and held a gold-dipped axe across his saddle. On the white horse opposite Yang’s chestnut, he looked as ready for a campaign as for a trial.
“You handled my pupil well,” Suo said. “Do not spend this bout only defending.”
“Bring your axe,” Yang answered. “You’ll have your answer.”
Suo laughed and urged the white horse forward.
III. The Spear Beneath the Axe
The first stroke came down from above. Horse and axe drove together. Yang turned his spear obliquely across the blow, let shaft meet haft for an instant, and rode clear. He did not lunge after Suo’s passing shoulder. Both men gave their horses room to turn.
Suo lowered his next cut toward the chestnut’s neck. Yang drew back the point and set the spear shaft across the horse’s front. The blade skimmed past it. His mount swerved; Yang used the change of angle to send his point toward Suo’s ribs. Suo brought the axe back across his body and struck the shaft away.
The soldiers were shouting, but Yang heard the horses more clearly. Every time his point sought a gap, the axe haft closed it. Each time Suo raised the heavy head for a decisive cut, he had to reckon with the spear’s longer reach. Yang could not afford to meet that weight straight on again and again. Suo could not afford a careless advance.
After more exchanges, Yang tried the outside of Suo’s guard. As they passed, he turned the other end of his spear toward him. Suo covered both lines. Yang began to understand the man behind the nickname. Suo was quick to take the attack, but he knew when a pursuit would leave him open.
Suo, too, revised his judgment. The man who had touched Zhou Jin again and again with a padded spear could also put real steel exactly where a rider’s armor opened. Suo kept the axe moving, but no longer supposed that speed alone would drive Yang back.
They swept past each other close enough for Yang to see sweat beneath the copper rim of Suo’s helmet. Yang drove his point low beside his horse’s neck; Suo caught it against the broad side of the axe and rode on. Several strides later he turned in the saddle.
“Fine spear!”
Yang raised the weapon level again. “Fine axe!”
They charged once more. The axe struck with the momentum of a warhorse; the spear tested distance, yielded ground, and came back through the space the axe had just left. Neither man was fighting a name now. They knew the force and timing of the other by the jar in their hands.
More than fifty exchanges passed. Cheers changed from support for one side or the other to cries at every skillful stroke. Neither rider had unseated the other, and neither was ready to stop.
IV. The Gong
Wen Da watched another axe stroke fall toward Yang’s shoulder as Yang’s spear rose toward Suo’s face.
“Governor,” he said, “if one of them is hurt, the garrison loses a good officer. End it here.”
Liang gave the order. The gong sounded while both riders were still moving. A standard bearer rode between them, raised the command flag, and shouted Liang’s decision. Suo hauled his white horse back; Yang lowered his point. The horses stamped, unwilling to settle.
“No winner,” Suo said.
“We were ordered to stop,” said Yang.
Suo looked at him and broke into a grin. “You do know how to keep your ground.”
Before the platform, Liang promoted them both to military commandants. They accepted the orders side by side. A short while ago, each had put his future within reach of the other’s weapon; now they would serve in the same garrison.
When the soldiers dispersed, churned earth remained where the horses had turned. Suo led his horse past Yang.
“Blue-Faced Beast, if we ride into battle together, don’t leave me to collect your spear.”
“And don’t let your axe run so far ahead that I have to fetch you,” Yang said.
Suo went on with a raised brow. Yang loosened the sweat-soaked guard at his wrist. He had won an appointment. He had also met a man who would challenge him to his face and might one day hold the line beside him.
V. What the Bout Shows
The novel records a mounted contest of more than fifty exchanges with real weapons. Wen Da urged a halt; Governor Liang sent a standard bearer to stop the fighters and appointed both men commandants. It records no winner and no injury to either fighter in this bout. Zhou Jin’s earlier spear and archery trials are separate events, not exchanges to add to this count.
Suo’s axe gave his attacks weight and urgency, yet he guarded against Yang’s point instead of simply swinging through it. Yang used the reach of his spear, the movement of his horse, and changes of angle to keep opportunities for a return. Each man forced the other to think. Their shared appointment says something about what Liang saw in them; an interrupted contest does not settle their standing among every fighter in Water Margin.