BW C48

Chapter 48

Yet Hoeun could do nothing. Truly, there was nothing he could do. Before a being that could not be killed even by a gun, he was utterly powerless.

Kaaaaaak!

With something like rage, the monster bared its teeth at Hoeun and growled. But in that instant, its blood-red eyes seemed to roll half over, its neck tipped forward with a soft slide—and then thud, it dropped to the ground. Its body, however, remained standing.

Gilsang had cut its neck with his sword. He did not stop there: reversing his grip, he raised the blade high and thrust it down, thunk, into the crown of the monster’s head.

Hoeun saw Gilsang’s hands whiten with the force he poured into the blow. It seemed that only such power could pierce a monster’s helmet-bone.

“Are you all right?”

It was what Hoeun should have asked, but Gilsang asked it instead. He had done the fighting; Hoeun had only been perched on the horse like a piece of baggage.

“…”

Hoeun could not answer. He was too ashamed, too embarrassed, to say he was fine. Gilsang looked him over slowly, shook the blood from his sword, then took his stance again, eyes front. Watching his back, Hoeun spoke in a sunken voice.

“Is it… all right for me to be like this?”

“What do you mean, sir?”

Still facing forward, Gilsang asked back. Hoeun continued, addressing his words to the back of his head.

“While everyone is fighting—was I asking if it’s acceptable for me alone to stand here uselessly.”

He asked in earnest—but Gilsang’s shoulders suddenly shook. He seemed to be laughing.

“It was a full ten days to Hanyang.”

“Sir?”

“’Bout the same coming back, so together, near twenty days.”

“…Sir?”

“There was only one reason to run all that way, and press on and on.”

Gilsang turned his head a little and looked at Hoeun.

“You, young master.”

“…”

“We came to find you—that’s why. The Captain, and all of us—that one reason’s why we ran the long road.”

Gilsang faced forward again. Lowering his stance a touch more, he spoke in a low voice.

“If I die here guarding you, another lad will come. If he dies, another will come after him. Even if all of us die that way—you must remain where you are.”

“…Sergeant.”

“Don’t be hurt, don’t die, and stay a long, long time by our Captain’s side.”

“…”

Hoeun was at a loss for words. He could not begin to measure a resolve that would cast away life to protect him. And at the same time, he thought of Taemuk, for whom they showed such devotion.

He scanned the field. But Taemuk was nowhere to be seen.

His heart dropped with a thud.

Not seeing him meant—he had been eaten.

No—that couldn’t be. Taemuk was—Taemuk.

Wide-eyed, Hoeun searched the field again. Far off, he saw monsters piled like a mountain. Living monsters, not dead ones. Beneath them, blood poured in cataracts like a waterfall. The blood-sodden earth was as sloughy as mud. Each time a monster planted its hind feet, the ground hollowed and buckled; the hollows filled at once with red puddles. It was as if red rain had fallen on that place alone.

“…”

Hoeun’s eyes creased faintly. Could Taemuk be within that mass… He found himself turning the reins that way—

Kaaaaaak…

A monster went whirling through the air. And between them appeared Taemuk, painted head to toe in blood.

Hoeun stopped where he was.

Entangled thick with monsters, Taemuk seized them at random and began to squeeze with his hands. Before, he had thrust his hand between head and mouth and torn off the helmet-bone; hemmed in by monsters charging from all sides, his movement constrained, he now simply used brute force on whatever he could grasp. Under his tremendous grip, the turtle-shell hide of the creatures cracked, shattered, burst.

Then, at a moment, he shouldered a monster in front of him and flung it away. It sprawled on its back. Planting a foot on its chest, Taemuk ripped its helmet-bone free like a crab shell.

Tududududuk—

The grotesque sound rang out with a strange cheer. Just then, a monster rushing his back sank its teeth into his shoulder. Taemuk neither groaned nor grimaced; he simply smashed the creature’s jaw away with an elbow.

Worming free of the monsters’ tangle, Taemuk sprang into a run and began slaughtering with speed.

He slammed into a creature full-body, then set the helmet-bone he’d torn off upright on the neck of a fallen one. In a flash, the neck lopped clean. Even so, it did not die, clacking and snapping—but Taemuk did not stop to finish each one. There was no time. They could not move anyway—no matter.

Then he used a monster as a springboard, leapt high, and, falling, drove the helmet-bone into the crown of another.

Kwagagagak— The sound ripped out, and the monster split in two from head to foot. Then he wrenched off its arm and rammed it into the mouth of another charging creature; after that, he crushed its neck with the strength of his jaws. Under that immense force, blood didn’t so much spatter as spray into a mist.

Taemuk fairly strode rampant across the field. Dozens of monsters clung to him with persistence—as if they knew who led this company.

Because of it, teeth tore his nape, ripped into his forearm, sank into his flank. And yet he felt no fear. Rather… he looked as if he enjoyed it. A bitter smile shadowed his lips.

It was a smile he had seen before—when he had butchered monsters in the bamboo forest. And just earlier, when he had shot the arrow into the nobleman’s brow—he had worn that same smile.

“…”

Hoeun thought:

Perhaps it was true—Taemuk was addicted to killing, as rumor had it. Perhaps he had become a general not to save lives, but to sate a warped desire of his own.

While all were staking their lives in battle, to be the only one thinking such a thing—he felt a little sickened with himself. But he could not banish the thought that had come.

His hands on the reins tightened hard.

Under the endless press of monsters, the fight only ended after night had run its course and the dawn grew bluish. Standing in the heart of the field, Taemuk dropped the monster’s head he had just wrenched free. It fell upside down, and the trident feeler crunched flat under it.

The last one, which seemed the leader of the pack, had not been particularly strong. Unlike the others, it had not left so much as a scratch on Taemuk. Perhaps, realizing it could never eat him however it tried, it had given up everything.

When the battle was over, the soldiers were badly hurt. Taemuk also had taken no few wounds. With each step, drops of blood fell—tap, tap. In his flank, the tooth of a monster, all gum and no flesh, was lodged.

Irritably, he tore it out. The tooth, buried deep in flesh, came free with a sticky rip.

“…”

From a short distance away, Hoeun watched Taemuk with an unreadable look. It had been a hard battle. It was the first time he had seen Taemuk hurt. In the fight in the bamboo forest, he hadn’t had a single wound; now his uniform was no better than a rag. Smeared all over with blood and flesh, it was impossible to tell how deep the wounds ran—but surely they were serious.

So hurt—he might even die.

Then naturally he ought to worry, to go and ask after him, to ask what he could do, what he should do—yet somehow neither his feet nor his mouth would move.

While he hesitated, Taemuk moved among the soldiers and gave orders.

“Mount up. We tend wounds when we get back. They might scent the blood and more will come, kuh—”

He broke off with a dull cough. Blood gushed from his mouth. At that, Hoeun went to dismount without a thought for anything else.

But then—suddenly, Taemuk stopped dead. His gaze was on the ground. Following it, Hoeun looked down.

There lay… the man’s corpse. The nobleman Taemuk had killed with the bow.

It was so trampled underfoot that it was hard to tell its shape. At the same time, perhaps the monsters had taken bites—its back and buttocks were scooped out. And yet the arrow Taemuk had shot still pierced his head.

“Save me… please…”

For an instant, the man’s voice begging for life brushed Hoeun’s mind. No—that wasn’t the point now—Hoeun shook his head, trying to throw it off.

Taemuk gave the body a hard kick. The man, less than half a body left, slid along the pooled blood.

At that, Hoeun’s face went entirely pale.

In the end, he could not bring himself to dismount.