<img class="alignnone" title="Mens Timberland Roll-Top Boots Chestnut" src="http://www.shoessaleonline.org/images/timberland/New%20Mens%20Timberland%20Roll-Top%20Chestnut90ds.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="375" />Tight back: but fight clean! Fight properly! Dirty fighting will just make  people   laugh at you and despise you as a little street urchin! That kind of  thing may   have been all right in timberland roll top boots the whorehouse: but  you're with me now!'    Trinket was thinking to himself: 'It's all very well for you to talk  about fighting   clean—but I'm just a kid, no one's ever taught me anything. All I know is  a few   tricks. Without them I wouldn't stand a chance.'    'Since the olden days the Martial Arts have been transmitted from teacher  to   disciple,' continued Whiskers, as if reading the boy's thoughts. They are  skills   that have to be learned. No one's born with them. You're still young.  It's not too   late to start training. Get down on your knees, kowtow to me, and I'll  take you   on    as my disciple. I've been a wanderer all my life, I've never stopped in  one place   long enough to have a proper disciple, someone I could hand down my  skills to.   You're in the right place at the right time—   your luck is in! Just do as I say, try   hard, train hard, and one day you'll be a real fighter too! One day  you'll be one   of us!'    He was looking Trinket straight in the eyes, obviously taking it for  granted that   the boy would say yes. Trinket shook his head.    'Sorry. I thought we were supposed to be friends: you know, on the same  level.     If I have to start calling you Master, I'll be putting myself down. I'm  not having   that! You're just trying to pull a fast one on me, that's what you're  doing!'    This was too much for Whiskers. Coundess people had asked to be his   disciple—otiier members of the oudaw fraternity, men who wished to learn  his   dazzling sword technique, moves such as the famous Five Tigers Breaking  the   Door, for which he was so widely renowned. Somehow it had never happened:    the young men had either had the wrong motive, or were not of the right   calibre, or else the time had not been right, and he'd been too busy with  other   things. And now he'd made the offer of passing something on, as a token  of   gratitude to this boy who'd saved his life. And the little brat had gone  and   turned him down! He was angry enough to hit him, and even raised his hand  to   do so, but thought better of it.    'I tell you boy, I offered to do this for you on an impulse. Take it  while it's there.   Come back tomorrow and beg me a hundred times, go down on your knees and   knock your head on the ground and I swear I'll not repeat the offer!'    'You come back tomorrow and beg me to be your disciple three hundred  times,   ' returned Trinket, 'and I swear I'll still say no. If I'm to be your  disciple, diat   means I'll have to do everything you say. Where's the fun in diat?  Anyway, who   wants to learn all your measly sword tricks.'    'Very well,' said Whiskers, huffily. 'Don't learn from me then. But when  you're   pinned to the ground and death's staring you in the face, don't start  wishing   you'd said yes. It'll be too late!'    'Don't worry, I won't. Why should I? Why should I want to be only as good  as   you, anyway? Old Black Dragon had you pinned to a tree. And when that  cissy   of Duke Mu's turned up, Pooh or Boo, or whatever his name was, you just  went   to pieces. You ended up licking his arse when he wouldn't even give you  the   time of day. I may not be as good a fighter as you, but at least I—'    Whiskers could control his rage no longer, and clouted the boy on the  side of   the head. Trinket had been expecting it, and this time instead of bawling  he   burst out laughing:    That's it, isn't it? It really upset you, didn't it? You're taking it out  on me. You   were greasing up to him, and he cut you dead—'    Whiskers was beside himself. This boy was incorrigible. It was no good  hitting   h<a style="color: black; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.shoessaleonline.org/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #000000;"><strong> cheap timberlands </strong></span></a>im, or  shouting at him, or threatening to dump him on the roadside. He   struggled to contain his rage, humphing and snorting and puffing his  cheeks   out angrily. Then he jerked at the reins of Trinket's horse, which he was  still     holding, and cried histrionically:    'Dear horse! Do me a favour, will you? Rear for me, buck for me, dance  like a   tiger timberland earthkeepers chukka for me! Throw this little devil on  the ground and smash in his skull for   me!'    Of his three conditions for taking Trinket to Peking with him, the second  (clean   fighting) had fallen flat on its face. And the third—   why, he could<a style="color: black; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.shoessaleonline.org/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #000000;"><strong> timberland shoes </strong></span></a>n't even   remember what it was.    Trinket meanwhile took a firm hold of his own reins, and his horse  trotted   obediently forward. It certainly didn't try anything on. The boy secretly    rejoiced:    'See, he wouldn't teach me to ride—and I've taught myself!'    His thoughts rambled on:    'From now on, wherever we go, I'll just watch Whiskers when he fights. I  don't   need him to teach me—I've got eyes, haven't I? And I'll watch the people  he   fights against, and learn from them too. That way I can put together my  own   style. I'll probably end up a better fighter than he is—why shouldn't I?  That   chopstick-flicking trick, for example, now there's something worth  learning! I   wouldn't mind being his disciple—if he ever asked me, which of course he   won't!'    He chuckled to himself.    'What do you find so amusing?' asked Whiskers.    'I was just thinking about that pooh-faced Aladdin from Duke Mu's—'    'Paladin!' objected Whiskers.    'Whatever.'    'And his name is Bo, not Pooh. That gentleman is very highly thought of  by the   Mu family. He is descended from one of the Four Paladins. So please mind   what you say about him!'    'Who gives a stuff about Old Duke Mu and his Merry Men?'    'Please!' protested Whiskers. 'Show a little respect! Let me try and  explain a   thing or two. When the first Emperor of the Ming dynasty drove the  Mongols     out of China, Old Duke Mu Ying was one of his right-hand men. Later he  took   charge of things in Yunnan Province, and his sons and grandsons have  ruled   there for generations.'    Trinket slapped his saddle. This rang a bell. He had listened many a time  to the   tale of the founding of the Ming dynasty.    'Now you tell me! You mean we're talking about the Old Duke Mu, the great    hero? Why on earth didn't you say so? That explains everything. But he's  been   dead and gone for thousands of years. Weren't you overdoing the respect  thing   a bit?'    'You don't know anything about anything!' expostulated Whiskers. The Old   Duke hasn't been dead that long—more like three hundred years actually.  And   anyway, he's not the only hero in that family; there's the one we call  the Young   Duke—Mu Tianbo. He was with the Ming Prince Gui when he had to flee to   Yunnan. That was only a few years ago, when Satrap Wu and his Tartar  friends   chased Prince Gui right down into the south-west, through Yunnan and into    Burma. The Burmese cowards tried to murder our Prince, and Young Duke Mu   died fighting them. He was a true hero.'    'You should've told me!' protested Trinket. 'If I'd known your Aladdin  was   connected with that lot, I'd have been a bit more respectful myself.'    'I should think so. As I told you, he's descended from one of the four  loyal   generals, the original Four Paladins, that fell with the Old Duke. That's  one of   the reasons I look up to him. And then of course he saved my life—'    'So did I, remember,' put in Trinket. 'B<a style="color: black; text-decoration: none;" href="http://www.shoessaleonline.org/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #000000;"><strong> timberland sale uk </strong></span></a>ut I don't see you doing much looking up   in my direction . . .'    Trinket the Storyteller    'Of course we all know about Old Duke Mu,' continued Trinket. 'Everyone's    heard the story of how he blew the horn on the Mongol rear, and drove  back   the Elephant Rocket Brigade—'    'He what?'    Trinket had a good laugh.    'See! All you know is how to lick Aladdin's arse! You don'treally know  the first   thing about Old Duke Mu, the real hero! What position he held under the   Founder of the Ming, for example?'     'He was one of his top generals. Everyone knows that.'    'Obviously—he's hardly likely to have been a foot-soldier, is he?  timberland outlet store locations The Founder   had six top generals: Duke Xu, Duke Chang—do you know who the other four   were?'    Whiskers was just an ordinary peasant turned outlaw and swordsman, and   knew nothing but the bare bones of the story. Trinket, on the other hand,  had   heard it told so many times in the Yangzhou tea-houses that he knew the  whole   thing off pat. The Ming dynasty had not long been overthrown, and there  was   widespread nostalgia for the 'good old days' before the Manchu   conquest—though no one dared speak openly of a Ming restoration. The   tea-house storytellers found that their historical accounts of the  founding of the   Ming, in particular the defeat of the Mongol Tartars, went down extremely  well:   their audience found it easy to substitute Manchu for Mongol and thereby  to   obtain a vicarious patriotic thrill. Every Chinese victory and every  Mongol   defeat gave them a special pleasure. And the Ming Founder's leading  generals   became objects of veneration for the tea-house habitues. The storytellers    always laid it on thick when describing the slaughter of the Mongols. It  worked   every time. The audience loved it.    Trinket was delighted to have exposed Whiskers' ignorance. He now reeled  off   the names of the four 'other generals', while agreeing to spare him the  details of   their full tides (which he had himself forgotten). Whiskers breathed a  sigh of   relief.    What about blowing the horn to drive back the Elephant Rocket Brigade?  What   was that all about?' he asked.