Extermination
“Annihilate them.”
As soon as Tang Do-hun gave the order, the five Jeodok Hall men loosed a storm of hidden weapons all at once.
Shu-shu-shu-shuk!
The blades sliced through the air with vicious whistles, and the bandits flinched and raised their shields in panic.
Pu-pu-pu-puk!
“Agh!”
A few bandits who were too slow, or too rattled to think straight, took the blades in their exposed faces and upper bodies and toppled backward.
Most of the rest sank into the bamboo shields instead.
With the momentum of the attack finally turning, the bandit leader bellowed from behind his shield.
“See that? Their hidden weapons are nothing if you’ve got a shield! Don’t be scared, charge! We just need the antidote! They’ve got it on them!”
“Waaah!”
Seeing a way through, the bandits surged down the slope with their bamboo shields held before them as if they’d found their salvation.
The Tang Clan men fell back, drew their swords, and braced themselves against the wagon. The monk, somehow, had vanished without a trace.
The bandits were closing in on our side too. I drew my long saber and stepped forward, and Tang Hye-seo asked, “Do you need help?”
Even with bandits surrounding us, she looked calm, not the least bit afraid.
I didn’t know exactly how good she was, but she seemed skilled enough not to be ashamed of the sword at her hip.
“No. Stay behind me. You have to earn your pay.”
If she was going to falter at this level of rabble, she didn’t deserve three nyang a day.
Won Seo-gang seemed to think the same thing, because he drew his sword and said, “Let’s finish off the ones who came first, one by one.”
“Works for me.”
The dozen-odd bandits had no formation to speak of. They just hacked through the brush in a ragged mess and came barreling down the mountain path.
I didn’t give them time to get organized. I rushed the nearest one.
“Hiiik!”
I swung my saber over my head, and the startled bandit hurriedly raised his shield.
Even if it was made of bamboo, I couldn’t cut through a shield in one blow. If the blade lodged in it, I’d be forced to fight barehanded.
As the shield lifted high into view, I turned my arm sideways, carved a wide arc, and dropped the tip of my blade downward.
I bent my knees, lowered my body, and sliced at the bandit’s legs where they were exposed beneath the shield.
“Aaaagh!”
The shield dropped, and the man’s upper body opened up. I didn’t miss the chance. I drove my blade in. Blood sprayed, and the bandit clutched his throat and crumpled.
These men weren’t complete fools.
As soon as one of their comrades went down dead, the rest spread out in a hurry, trying to surround me.
I aimed for the opening in the man beside me when a sharp whistle cut through the air above my head.
Fiu-woong!
I retreated quickly with footwork, and a beat later an arrow struck the ground where I’d been standing. Another arrow came flying in, but it was slow too. I didn’t even bother dodging, just swung my saber and knocked it aside easily.
“They’re shooting arrows from the mountain!”
I shouted to warn the others, then grabbed the dead man’s shield.
Archery was hard to master, and a proper bow cost more than most swords or spears.
Even with the long arrow shafts, they weren’t moving very fast, which told me they were probably using crude bamboo bows they’d made themselves.
Bows like that might work on rabbits or deer, but they were useless against martial artists with any real skill.
Everyone either batted the arrows away with blades, dodged by listening to the sound, or snatched the bandits’ own shields to block them.
Judging by the number of arrows being fired, there were only three or four archers.
They weren’t hitting much beyond empty ground, shields, and their own comrades, but they were still a nuisance.
Several Jeodok Hall men worked their way around through the brush and climbed the slope, and soon the sound of bowstrings stopped.
I threw the bamboo shield at the bandit in front of me and charged up the hillside.
The men who’d been trying to encircle me and jam blades into my back looked caught off guard and scrambled after me in confusion.
I stepped on a rock, twisted around, and leapt over their heads.
Planting both feet on a shield with my full weight, I crushed one bandit flat.
From a crouched stance, I swept my long saber to the right and cut down one man, then bounced left and drove my shoulder into a shield.
I knocked the bandit backward, and in the same motion I took his neck.
When I turned around, my face splashed with blood, two terrified bandits hurled away their shields and ran for the mountain.
I wiped the blood from my face and looked around. Won Seo-gang was thinning the bandits’ numbers in a more efficient way than I was.
Not only did he exploit every opening to wound and finish them off, he even thrust his sword through the narrow gaps between bamboo slats to pierce their chests.
Watching the technique of an experienced swordsman reminded me of something I’d learned yesterday.
In case my long saber split, I picked up a battered, nicked broad saber from a dead bandit. Then I ran past the corpses toward the wagon.
One of the men the driver was fighting sensed me and looked back. His eyes widened as he whipped his shield around.
I didn’t stop. I charged straight in.
Not at a gap, but at a single point, condensing the blade’s tip to a razor focus.
Using every line of the saber form that had been built into my swordsmanship, I unleashed the thrust with all my strength.
The tip of the broad saber split through the bamboo of the shield and drove in.
The jolt was enough to make the hairs on my body stand up, but after forcing its way in about a handspan, it stopped. The blade was too wide, and the shield was sturdier than I’d expected.
The bandit, who’d somehow blocked the strike, stared at the saber lodged in his shield and his eyes flashed.
“Die, you bastard!”
He swung his own blade downward over the top of the shield.
I lowered my body to avoid the cut and grabbed the broad saber with both hands. Driving my weight forward, I forced it through, and only then did the bamboo finally crack, letting the blade sink in at last.
The tip sliced through the bandit’s flesh and bone and ripped a scream from his throat.
When he collapsed, the driver quickly finished him off and gave me a grateful look. I nodded back, still holding my long saber.
Won Seo-gang, slaughtering bandits with detached ease, clicked his tongue and narrowed his eyes.
I thought he was going to bark at us to get our heads on straight, but all he did was shake his head.
They outnumbered us, but that didn’t make this a bad position.
The bandits were crude as hell.
I’d heard that there were real experts even in the mountains, but if you wanted to see them, you had to go to one of the big Green Forest strongholds.
These nameless hill bandits from some backwater were worse than street thugs.
If these men had been regular soldiers, with shields and spears in tight formation blocking the entire body while they surrounded the path front and back, the outcome would have been completely different.
Giving them shields to block the hidden weapons had been smart enough, but since they couldn’t use them properly, the shields only restricted their movements and kept them from using their swords well.
“You son of a bitch!”
A huge bandit roared and flung his shield away.
I stepped lightly aside with footwork, and he swung his broad saber around wildly, fighting like a man trying to kill or be killed.
The swordplay was brutal, all force and intimidation, like a beast’s lunge, but the wider the motion, the more openings it created.
I used the decisive strike from the Nameless Saber Technique to let his slash slide off along the grain, and the big man lost his balance and lurched forward. I slipped inside and drew a long cut across his chest.
Fwoosh!
Blood burst from the gash, wide enough to show bone. The bitter spray ran down my hair in dripping red beads like rain.
I backed away and checked the surroundings. Not a single bandit was left standing near me.
Won Seo-gang moved among the bandits like a wolf, easy and unhurried. The two drivers were also swinging their sabers with grim determination, cutting down limbs and splitting skulls.
Tang Hye-seo and her retainers were doing the same, one bandit at a time, meeting the men charging in with swords drawn. It wasn’t impressive martial power, but it was enough to keep themselves alive.
Clearly, they hadn’t hired me and Won Seo-gang merely as bodyguards.
The Jeodok Hall men were even more one-sided.
As if proving that the Tang Clan was not just poison and hidden weapons, they moved their swords with practiced skill and tossed hidden blades in the spaces between.
In less than half a quarter hour, the bodies had piled up around us.
Once even the bandit leader had been crippled in the leg and fallen, the rest lost all will to fight and started fleeing in a panic.
Every one of them got cut down by hidden weapons in the back or the skull as they ran.
Even among the men who’d ambushed us, three or four were scrambling up the slope in blind terror.
I didn’t bother chasing them. We’d killed enough, and if they really had been poisoned, they were dead men anyway.
The stench of blood was nauseating. Flies were already buzzing over the dozens of corpses, severed heads, and limbs strewn across the path and slope.
My shadow flickered faintly on the ground. I tipped my head back and looked up.
Blue sky, white clouds. Beneath the fierce summer sun, a flock of crows had gathered and was circling overhead, waiting for their turn.
I wiped the blood from my saber on a dead man’s clothes and slid it back into the scabbard.
My face was slick with blood and sweat, and it itched. Sweat ran down my brows. I squinted and headed back to the wagon.
I took a towel from my bundle and wiped my hands. The worn cotton cloth turned red almost at once. I pulled out a few more and wiped my face and hair as well.
While I was drinking from a bamboo water flask, Won Seo-gang came over.
“If you’ve got a towel to spare, give me one too.”
I handed him a couple and drank more water.
The wounded bandit leader was dragged out in front of Tang Do-hun and questioned.
I couldn’t hear what they were saying from this distance, but it wasn’t hard to guess.
Won Seo-gang sat on the wagon and drank water while looking over the field of slaughter.
“Bringing bamboo shields too. These guys really came prepared.”
“Looks like the traitor poisoned the bandits.”
Once the leader started going on about an antidote, I had a rough idea of what was going on.
Bandits rarely risk their lives to ambush travelers. If you want them charging like lunatics with no regard for danger, you need something enough to turn their eyes red.
A huge sum of money, or their lives.
Won Seo-gang nodded.
“A borrowed knife killing a man isn’t exactly rare. Someone skilled in poison arts just used poison. Miss Tang, you seem to know a thing or two.”
Tang Hye-seo was inspecting the corpses of the dead bandits with her retainers. She drew up the chin of one body to check the tongue, then took out a needle and tested here and there before coming over to the wagon.
“The bandits were poisoned, then?”
“By Severing Soul Acid.”
“Was it really such a vicious poison that they’d throw their lives away like that?”
I’d figured she’d answer easily once I gave her the name of the poison, and sure enough Tang Hye-seo did not hesitate.
“Once poisoned, they’d bleed from the seven orifices and die within the quarter hour.”
“These guys don’t look like they were poisoned less than a quarter hour ago.”
“They must’ve been given an antidote. If they take it once a day, it can suppress the poison’s eruption. Once the medicine wears off, though, they’ll still be swallowed by it in the end.”
I could see how the traitor from the Tang Clan, the one we were chasing, had used the bandits.
He’d probably grabbed one of them, fed him Severing Soul Acid, and let him die spurting blood from his seven orifices, then poisoned the rest of the bandits and given them a suppressant that would last for a few days.
He’d tell them the antidote was waiting for them and leave.
After watching a companion die horribly, the bandits wouldn’t have had a choice.
“Does the antidote actually exist?”
“It does.”
Tang Hye-seo nodded, then frowned at the bloodstained towel in my hand. My stomach tightened a little.
“I’m covered in their blood. Don’t tell me I’ve been poisoned too.”
“You’ll be fine unless you drank a large amount of it. There’s poison left in the blood of a poisoned person, but it’s diluted by the suppressant. A little on your hands or face won’t matter.”
I let out a quiet breath of relief and looked over. Won Seo-gang was calm as ever.
“You knew?”
“Obvious, wasn’t it? If blood itself turned into poison, neither men nor beasts would be able to walk around normally.”
Once the slaughter was over, the horses tied to the wagon stamped and snorted at the dirt as if urging us to move.
The drivers were busy rummaging through the dead bandits’ clothes.
In my experience, you could strip a bandit down to his underwear and still not get a single coin out of him. Even if he’d hidden gold under his balls, I had no interest in touching a poisoned corpse.
While Tang Do-hun was interrogating the bandit leader, the monk who had vanished earlier came down from the mountain.
Anyone could tell he’d hidden himself out of fear once the fighting broke out, then slipped back out afterward, but a man of that level couldn’t really be a coward.
He didn’t look embarrassed or even the least bit concerned about our opinions.
So where had he gone, and what had he been doing?
As I watched him closely, Won Seo-gang spoke up.
“Looks like he went to the stronghold.”
“Why? Don’t tell me he went to rob them.”
“Who knows. He never says a damn thing. He did something like this once before too. Thanks to him, the rest of us had to suffer for it. Get it now? This is why I hate traveling with that bald fraud.”
Apparently having heard everything he needed to hear, the bandit leader begging for his life had his head taken off.
“Clear the corpses blocking the road and get out of the mountain as fast as we can.”
“Yes, sir!”
The Tang Clan men put on leather gloves and moved the bodies into the brush. Tang Do-hun walked over here.
Seeing that Tang Hye-seo was unharmed, he let out a sigh.
“You’re all right? Not hurt anywhere?”
“I’m fine. Not a scratch.”
“The bandits were poisoned with Severing Soul Acid.”
“So it seems. They reacted to the lateral needles.”
Tang Do-hun looked like he had something he wanted to say, but he shut his mouth and turned his eyes to Won Seo-gang and me.
“Everyone seems all right, so let’s move immediately. You there, that’s enough of that. Let’s set off.”
At his urging, the drivers finally peeled themselves away from the corpses. They loaded the useful swords, broken blades, and the like onto the roof of the wagon and climbed up to the driver’s seat.
Once everyone had boarded, we set off at once. As the wagon rattled away along the dusty mountain road, crows settled onto the corpses.
We passed through the brush and out of the valley. Fresh air heavy with the scent of grass rolled in.
It was fairly refreshing, but whenever the wind died down, the smell of blood rose from my body. The wet patches on my clothes dried stiff.
This wasn’t something you fixed by washing alone. I was glad I’d brought a few extra sets of clothes, just in case.
By the time we left the mountain, evening had already settled in and the sun was dipping behind the western ridge.
A small village and an inn came into view in the distance.
“We’ll stay there tonight.”
At Won Seo-gang’s words, I stared at the inn and slowly nodded.
I needed to wash off the blood, change clothes, and recover my strength.
The bandits hadn’t been much, but killing people was still hard labor.
Once the feverish tension wore off, fatigue and muscle pain would come crashing down. Probably a few of us would have a rough night’s sleep too.
If we were going to resume the chase properly tomorrow, we needed rest and repairs.
Tang Do-hun seemed to think the same thing, because the wagon headed straight for the inn.