Chapter 180 — Ambush
The road at night felt long.
Going back and forth again between the border and Jineup made it feel even longer.
The feeling of having killed a man added to that weight.
How far had he gone?
From both sides of the official road, more than a dozen men rose like ghosts.
What is this?
Youngwoo stared at them.
It seemed these fellows had been lying in ambush there, unaware that everything was already over.
The message had not reached them properly.
"It is over now."
Youngwoo's words did not seem to reach them.
"Get down from the horse!"
In Liaodong, a horse was his feet and his home.
Here, they first told him to get down.
Spears and swords were thrust forward, and behind them archers had drawn their bowstrings.
They had formed what they considered a battle line.
The one thing missing was shields.
Youngwoo knew why.
They did not carry them because shields were heavy.
Instead of proper shields with real defensive strength, they carried light things that only resembled them.
And soon enough, they stopped carrying even those.
The matter was already finished.
There was no need to kill these men.
That would be a truly unnecessary death.
It would be murder.
Youngwoo tried to persuade them.
"The matter is over.
Kim Baeksu is dead.
He mobilized soldiers for private reasons.
You may return now.
Nothing will happen to you.
But if you fight here under the order of an unqualified bastard, you will regret it."
He laid out the facts in fragments.
But who would be persuaded by such words?
"Get down!
Get down from the horse!"
"You will die if you keep doing that."
"Get down!"
This was a different fellow from Deok earlier.
Youngwoo changed his method.
He swept aside the wind cloak covering his body.
On the metal at his shoulder was the mark of his unit.
The blue and red colors marked him as a commander.
"I am Lee Youngwoo, jungnangjang of the Goryeo army.
I am part of the military advisory force dispatched from Seonchullyeong to Jin."
The soldiers looked at one another.
"I do not know what lie Kim Baeksu told you, but I am not your enemy."
The soldiers murmured among themselves.
"Do not throw away your lives for nothing.
Find the way to live."
"Turn around and return to your unit.
Everyone else has gone back. Why were only you left here?
Have you ever thought that might have been intentional?"
"He killed his subordinate.
When I said I would report that to the Jungbang, he started this nonsense."
Youngwoo continued to persuade them.
It is not easy to persuade those who face you as enemies.
Words do not reach men who believe they can easily win.
"The reason I speak so much is that I do not want you to be hurt or killed.
We are soldiers of the same country.
I became a jungnangjang, but my heart still remains somewhere near the rank of ojang.
Because I passed through the same hard years, I still feel strongly that you are comrades."
"Withdraw.
Otherwise, you may die.
That is not a threat."
The spears and sword tips aimed at Youngwoo slowly lowered.
The movement was slight, but it was a kind of agreement.
Youngwoo deliberately passed straight through their center.
Solid armor.
A shield around his body.
A banner spear longer than their spears.
A bow and a hwan-do.
He truly looked like a man returned from the battlefield.
They were soldiers of the same country, but the difference between him and their hollow forms was as wide as heaven and earth.
After passing those bowed heads and moving two hundred jang farther, So Cheolun came running out in relief.
"Ah, where did you go?
I waited a long time."
"Good. Let us go."
"I asked where you went."
"I killed that bastard."
"Kim Baeksu?"
"Hm."
"Is he dead?"
"Probably."
A bow is not a good tool for assassination.
There is distance, so one cannot confirm the result.
One cannot always strike the exact spot one wishes.
Still, Youngwoo had seen the head burst.
He was probably dead.
He guessed so.
So Cheolun read the gloom in Youngwoo's face.
"Let us go.
Enough."
"Did you pack everything?"
"Yes. I packed it all earlier."
Something was piled high on the packhorse's back.
"Let us go, then."
They stepped into the night road and slowly headed south.
At a deserted hill overlooking the broad field, they rested for a while.
They spread the thick wind cloak over themselves like a tent and lay down briefly.
His body was tired, but sleep did not come.
When he lay down, he usually practiced breathing, but even that would not work.
One event had followed another, and his heart was not free from them.
How had men like that risen again?
To say that the army was still rotten was too easy a thought.
Such a thought might comfort him, but it would not solve the problem.
Only when the concrete cause could be stated in one line would a solution become visible.
If the cause was stated too broadly and vaguely, there would be no solution.
He understood that there was an organized current protecting the rotten commanders of the northern frontier, including Seonchullyeong.
Most of the Goryeo army had joined the expedition, and some had remained behind.
Perhaps there was a sense of debt toward the commanders who had stayed in the north.
His thoughts were many, but what could he do right now?
The road to Gaegyeong did not seem easy.
Without his master's words, he would not have headed for Gaegyeong.
He would have chosen the path of burying himself in some remote countryside and living quietly without a sound.