Nine Lords Vie for the Throne

Nine lords, each the ruler of his own domain, sat together in a circle. Every one of them had his eye on the throne, and every one had enough men and horses to fight a great battle. Seated right in their midst was the youngest person there, his face still boyish. His name was Thục Phán. He did not draw his sword. He asked just one question, and all nine men raised their heads to look at him: "Why should we fight each other, when we could hold a contest of skill instead?"

This is a legend of Cao Bằng. The Tày and the Nùng there still tell it to one another by the fire, from one generation to the next. The Tày and the Nùng are two peoples of northern Vietnam with closely related languages and similar cultures.

The legend says that long, long ago there was a land called Nam Cương, around what is now Cao Bằng. It was divided into ten domains, set among ranges of rocky mountains, green and hazy, and streams running crystal clear. The domain at the very center was the capital, and its name was Nam Bình. People now say it was the place called Cao Bình. Each of the other nine domains was ruled by a lord. The king in the capital had just died and left the throne to his son, Thục Phán, who was still very young. All nine lords were gifted, all of them were famous, and every one of them wanted to sit on the throne shared by all ten domains.

Everyone assumed that sooner or later there would be a battle that would shake heaven and earth. But the young Thục Phán thought of something entirely different. He set up a contest. The rules went like this. Each lord would do the one thing he did best in all the world. They would have three days and three nights to do it. But the work had to be done before the rooster gave its first crow on the last morning. Whoever finished first, and finished it with real beauty and skill, would become king.

Here lay the cleverness of Thục Phán. A great task rushed through in three days is very hard to finish to perfection. But the nine lords had their blood up, and when they heard there would be a contest, they agreed at once.

The first lord was a gifted blacksmith named Trương Thiết Vận. He chose to forge a needle. For three days he blew the fire to a bright red glow, his hammer rang and rang, and he ground the metal over and over. The needle that took shape was tiny and gleaming, so beautiful that everyone who saw it marveled. But just as the rooster was about to crow, he remembered with a start that the needle still had no eye for the thread. And a needle without an eye cannot sew or mend anything at all. He lost for the want of one hole, no bigger than a grain of broken rice.

The second lord was Lý Kim Đán, the finest archer in the whole region. He took on the task of shooting every leaf off a giant ancient tree. For three days his arrows whistled through the air. The leaves fell like rain, and the tree was left almost bare. But high up at the very top, exactly two leaves still swayed in the wind. They were too far and too high, and no arrow could reach them. Then the rooster crowed. Two leaves cost him the throne.

The third lord was a master at planting rice. In just three days he turned a vast field green with seedlings. The rows were dead straight and perfectly even, as lovely as a painting. Yet in one small corner at the far edge of the field, he had not yet set the last few seedlings when the sky began to grow light.

And so it went, one lord after another. A lord skilled at shaping stone finished a pair of gleaming stone clogs, but forgot to cut the holes for the straps. One built a citadel that towered high, but it still lacked two gates. One built a great boat, but had no time to turn it right side up. A lord who loved letters set out to write a full 100 poems, but when the rooster crowed he was still just short of 100. A lord skilled in the martial arts spent three days and three nights working on a peerless sequence of moves, but when dawn came, he still had not truly mastered it. Every one of them was gifted, and every one came close to the finish. But coming close is not the same as getting there.

Only one lord remained, and everyone held their breath. It was Lord Nông Quang Thạc, the last to try, and the one who kept the contest in suspense until the very last moment. He did not forge, or shoot, or plant. He sent his men to carry back an enormous bronze drum. It was a treasure that could make the mountains and forests ring with a single beat. If that drum had reached the capital before the rooster crowed, perhaps the throne would already have been his.

The men carrying the drum walked on through the whole of the last night. They pushed through forest, waded across streams, and bent their backs to climb and climb a towering mountain pass. The drum was terribly heavy, the road seemed endless, and sleep kept pressing down on their eyelids. At the top of the pass, they set the drum down beside the path. They told themselves they would close their eyes for just a moment and then go on. But as soon as their eyes closed, their hands slackened without their knowing. The bronze drum tipped over, then rolled, rumbling all the way down to the foot of the mountain. It gave a few heavy, hollow booms, then fell silent in the dark.

At that very moment, in the capital of Nam Bình, the first rooster stretched out its neck and crowed out loud.

Day broke. The nine lords looked back at the work they had just done. One was missing the eye of a needle. One was missing two leaves at the top of a tree. One was missing a corner of a field, one was missing two citadel gates, and one had let his drum roll away out of sight. Not a single one of them had finished the work completely. Only Thục Phán, the youngest of them all, won the contest, and he never had to raise a spear. He won with his head. He had turned a struggle that might have spilled blood into a friendly contest of skill. And in the end, when no one had managed to finish the task in full, the throne stayed in his hands.

The nine lords were won over, heart and soul. Together they bowed to the boy and accepted him as king of all ten domains of Nam Cương.

This legend is called Cẩu chủa cheng vùa, which means Nine Lords Vie for the Throne. The Tày and the Nùng of Cao Bằng have kept it alive and retold it for many, many generations. Researchers are still debating, even now, whether the land of Nam Cương truly existed, and exactly where its old capital stood. But a place in Cao Bằng still bears the name Cao Bình. People say it was Nam Bình, the capital in this story. There, among the quiet mountains on every side, the distant wind may still carry the crow of a rooster from that morning long ago.

As for the boy who won the contest that day, later generations say that he became a king who appears in another legend as well. There he goes by the name An Dương Vương.