BW C46

Chapter 46

“…”

But Gilsang gave no answer. Thinking he hadn’t heard, Hoeun turned his gaze to him. Yet Gilsang was staring ahead. The other soldiers around them were likewise looking straight ahead.

In that instant, a chill ran down Hoeun’s spine.

They weren’t simply looking ahead. They were looking at Taemuk. It was a pattern he had seen before. And from that experience, when everyone looked to Taemuk, it meant something had happened.

Only then did Hoeun realize that Jeokudae had come to a halt.

“…”

At the head, Taemuk was staring into the village beyond the wall, as Hoeun had been a moment before. His expression was more set than ever.

Unconsciously, Hoeun gripped his reins tight. A bad feeling came over him. He already found himself worrying about the villagers whose faces he had never even seen.

Then Taemuk gave his mount a light nudge at its flank. At his lead, Jeokudae began to move again. But this time, instead of skirting the village as before, they crossed the fields and headed for a side gate joined to one edge of the settlement.

The wooden side gate stood wide open. The hinges were broken; whether smashed by someone or simply rotted with age, it was impossible to tell.

Soon, all of Jeokudae’s soldiers, including Hoeun, entered the village. From within, the place was far more silent than it had seemed from outside. As the sun began to drop in earnest, a dry, chill wind blew. Dead leaves rolled helplessly this way and that.

And… there was a strange smell. By now, it was a smell Hoeun had become quite used to. Fishy, a little sour, and heavy—leaving a dullness on the tongue.

The smell of blood.

Yet there was no blood to be seen anywhere. No monsters, no corpses, no people—so how could there be the smell of blood? It made no sense. Hoeun told himself he must have scented it wrong. Even so, his hands on the reins were slick with sweat.

Jeokudae pressed deeper into the village. On the flat ground, hoofbeats rang out crisp and clear—tok-tok, tak-tak.

The village was small. Counting the thatched houses that looked like storehouses, there were barely a dozen or so. Each one was small and shabby.

It was strange. In a world where food was scarce, and from the fields they had passed alone the value must be considerable—how could it be so run-down? Did the villagers consume all that produce themselves?

While Hoeun was frowning, pondering gravely—

“Save… me…”

A strange voice reached them. Hoeun whipped his head toward it. In the center of the village, in a bare clearing faced by several thatched houses, a man lay prone.

His hair was wild, but the silk clothes he wore and the bound topknot marked him unambiguously as a yangban.

Seeing Jeokudae, he dragged himself along the ground toward them. A line of blood traced the path he crawled. Hoeun followed the blood with his eyes, wondering where he was hurt that he could not stand—

“Ah…”

The man’s ankles were gone. Both ankles. The flesh hung in ragged strips, the bone shattered; it looked like the work of a monster’s bite. Hoeun searched the line where the blood began—but saw no monster. That, at least, was fortunate. This time, saving the man would not be difficult.

“Sergeant, there’s someone there. We must help him.”

Hoeun moved to turn his reins at once. But—

“…”

Gilsang made no move. He only looked at the man, quietly. There was a distance in that gaze that words could not explain. It was not, unmistakably, the look one turns on the wounded.

“…Sergeant?”

“…”

Even under Hoeun’s urging, Gilsang did not stir. Hoeun looked again to the man. Face wet with sweat—or was it tears—he clawed toward them, desperate.

Hoeun bit his lower lip, anxious.

They had to help him. He wanted to help him. He should be treated at once. It was urgent.

But however much it was a matter of saving someone, he could not break from the unit at will. There was a Captain here. All had to follow his command. Hoeun as well.

He looked to Taemuk, standing out front. Taemuk would surely save him. He had saved Jeokudae’s soldiers—and Hoeun himself—many times. So that man too, naturally…

“…”

But at the sight of Taemuk, Hoeun froze, dry and taut. Because Taemuk… was smiling. Not brightly, not cheerfully—but a smile nonetheless. A smile that seemed to mock the man, the same sneer he had worn when he first laid eyes on Hoeun.

“Save… me… Please… save me…”

Crawling over the dirt, the man stretched out his frayed hands with all his might. However he reached, he could not span the distance to Jeokudae—yet he reached again, and again. He looked that desperate.

At that moment, Taemuk reached out his hand as well. But not toward the man—toward a soldier behind him. The soldier passed him something. A long, slender body. Strong string tied from end to end.

“…A bow?”

The object seemed out of place; Hoeun’s brows knit. He had never seen Taemuk take up a weapon. He always fought with his bare hands.

What was he going to do with it.

Why would he need it.

There were no monsters, no beasts in sight, so why—

Unable to make sense of it, Hoeun frowned. Taemuk accepted an arrow as well and set it to the string with practiced ease. Then drew the bow long. The big, tough bow bent with a creak under Taemuk’s strength.

“Uh…”

In that instant, a sense of foreboding touched Hoeun. His head creaked around, following the line toward which Taemuk’s arrowhead pointed.

Just as he feared. At the end of the arrowhead was the man. A man—no monster, no predator.

“Why—why—how…”

Confusion swelled in Hoeun’s eyes. Should he ride over and stop him? No—surely Taemuk wouldn’t truly shoot that man. That would be murder.

A wounded man, one plainly wounded by monsters, a living man even if wounded. To shoot him with a bow?

No—no. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t.

Twisting his reins in his hands, Hoeun looked back and forth between the man and Taemuk with nervous eyes. His narrow chest rose and fell rapidly. His heart pounded with a rhythm it had never known.

“Save me… Save—save me…”

The man seemed not in his right mind. He seemed to have no strength. He kept flailing his arms, but did not move forward. It was a futile thrashing.

It was a sight to make one’s nose sting—yet the soldiers only watched it, as if spectators. Their gaze was cold. None pitied the man, none felt sorry. None empathized with his pain or fear.

Gilsang standing by Hoeun, and ahead, Dongja and Mansu were the same. From them, Hoeun felt an estrangement beyond words. They did not seem the people he knew.

“…”

Even so, Taemuk’s bowstring drew tauter and tauter. Until then, Hoeun had stood there, stupidly frozen—No, it can’t be, he wouldn’t—Taemuk must be seeing something Hoeun couldn’t see—some monster, or an animal—or even a ghost—something, anyway—and that was what he was aiming at—that was what he told himself.

Hoeun, who had lived a lifetime straight, could think of nothing else.

And at last—

Taemuk loosed the bowstring.

Shweeeee—

Like the very phrase “an arrow shot,” it flew and thud—pierced the man’s brow. With strength to spare, the shaft passed through and out the back of his head. On the sharp point, blood beaded.

“…”

The man died without so much as a groan. His head, knocked back by the force of the arrow, dropped forward. Yet with the fletching jutting from his forehead, it could not bury itself fully in the ground. Blood trickled down the shaft, pooling in small, round blotches on the dirt.

“W-why…”

Hoeun stared emptily at the nobleman—or rather, at what was now a corpse. His breath tangled in strangled knots. His ears rang dull, his eyes scraped dry.

It wasn’t the first time he had seen someone die. He had seen it in the bamboo forest. There, the man had died far more ghastly, his head torn off.

But that had been death at a monster’s doing. Whereas this—this was murder. A killing done by a human to a human. Not just any human—Taemuk had killed a commoner of the realm.

While Hoeun stood stunned, Taemuk gave an order to the soldiers. They dismounted as one and led the horses aside. Weapons came out. Gilsang, too, dismounted and stood with his back to Hoeun’s horse. Drawing his sword, he spoke.

“Young master, don’t get off your horse. These folk won’t be ordinary clever.”

“…”

Hoeun made no reply. He could not hear Gilsang’s voice. His gaze remained fixed on the man felled by the arrow.

Was he dreaming?

No, this couldn’t be real. Taemuk could not have killed a man.

Hoeun squeezed his eyes shut and opened them. But of course, that did not change the scene. In truth, Hoeun felt with his whole body that this was reality. And the more he realized it, the less he could understand Taemuk.