The Water Stronghold
Following Yi Tae, chief of the three remaining water bandits, we headed for their so-called water stronghold so we could get the ship repaired.
I was watching our course from the bow when Sister Seol came bursting out of the cabin and asked,
"So-ryong. Now that the hind legs have come in, can't you tell whether it's a frog or a toad?"
Apparently she and Hwa-eun had been cooing over Hwa-yang's newly sprouted hind legs, and now that they were there she fully expected us to pin down what kind of hatchling the little thing was.
A bit early for that, though. I shook my head.
"Not yet."
"Why!? The hind legs are out and you still can't tell frog from toad?"
Why!? Wait—no.
I flinched at her sharp "Why!?" For a second I wondered whether Cho's chronic "Why?" disease had somehow infected her. Then I remembered Sister Seol was well past the age for that sort of thing, gathered myself, and answered properly.
"Yes. Once the front legs come in and the tail shortens, we'll be able to feel what the skin's like. And even if it is a toad, the skin isn't always bumpy—so for now we just have to raise it and see."
"I'm dying of curiosity…"
She had been so sure those tiny, adorable hind legs would give the secret away. My explanation left her looking thoroughly disappointed.
Then the helmsman's voice floated up from behind us.
"Young Master So-ryong, judging by how tall the reeds have grown, our ship can't go any farther. The water's gotten quite shallow. We should ask the water bandits to find another route."
I looked past the gunwale. Ahead of us stretched a festival of reeds as tall as a man. The same dense reed bed ran out far beyond the little boat that was guiding us.
I cupped my hands toward Yi Tae, who was towing that small craft out in front.
"Yi Tae! Our ship's too big—we can't take this way!"
"It's all right, Young Master! Just wait a moment!"
He dug a short bamboo flute from his robes and blew a long, carrying note—a signal for someone out there.
Pee-ee-ee-ek.
The cry rolled away through the reed forest like a duck's call. And the moment it did, something marvelous began to happen.
Down the center of the reed bed, the stalks parted left and right, and a deep water channel opened before our eyes.
"The reeds!?"
"Huh? The reeds are moving!"
The helmsman and Sister Seol, who had been staring at the reed forest beside me, both cried out in surprise. I focused harder, trying to see what sort of trick this was, and caught the way the reeds themselves bobbed up and down with the wake of the boat.
Reeds usually root themselves hard into mudflats or the water's edge. So…
Ah. Just like Inle Lake in Myanmar—they planted reeds on floating mats of aquatic plants.
The instant I saw it, I understood the water bandits' little miracle. They had woven floating mats of water plants, set them adrift, and grown reeds on top of them—camouflaging shallow water until a boat needed passage, then opening a lane only when required.
"You wove water plants into floating mats and planted reeds on them, didn't you?"
"As expected of the young master!"
I had been looking rather smug at the helmsman and Sister Seol's astonishment. Yi Tae flinched at my question.
"So this is how you dodge the government troops?"
"Heh heh. Yes, something like that."
We followed the newly revealed channel deeper in. After a while a small pier appeared between the reeds, and beyond it the outlines of a little village.
Chimneys here and there sent up lazy threads of smoke. With evening coming on, it looked for all the world like any ordinary country hamlet—cooking fires rising in soft columns.
I had pictured a water bandits' stronghold as a den of cutthroats. Instead it felt more like a quiet fishing village. Nets hung drying in places. Sister Seol seemed to share the thought; I heard the same note of surprise in her voice.
"I thought a 'stronghold' meant a nest of vicious brigands. It's just a village."
"Right?"
Yi Tae's voice drifted up from below.
"This is our water stronghold."
"More of a village than a stronghold, isn't it?"
"Well, when people who've been wronged from every corner of the realm start gathering, it turns into a village eventually."
Yi Tae claimed the water bandits here were all men who had suffered injustice. I found that hard to swallow—I'd always heard every criminal says the same. In my past life there were even YouTubers who were ex-cons, and they all said the same thing: even in prison, every last inmate insists he's innocent. They'll turn around and call the next murderer who arrives a real bastard, too.
But as our ship drew closer to the pier, the people who came into view made me reconsider Yi Tae's words.
There were quite a few of them in the stronghold, and their faces were as unexpected as the place itself. Most of the people watching our ship approach from near the pier—with faintly fearful eyes—were women and children.
"So-ryong. They called themselves water bandits with their own mouths, didn't they?"
"They did."
Sister Seol looked startled by the hidden side of these people. Word must already have gone ahead with the bandits we'd sent earlier; the villagers greeted us with taut, anxious faces. With their menfolk captured in the recent suppression, fear was only natural.
When the ship docked, a solidly built man who had been standing at the front of the crowd stepped onto the deck the moment the gangplank came down.
"A Jin-geuk ship on the Yangtze… It's been a long while since I saw one of those. I'm So Sam-rang. I worked as a shipwright in Fuzhou. You said the hull was taking on water?"
He looked to be in his forties, with rolled-up sleeves showing the hard muscle of a man from the murim and a thick, bushy beard. The way he ran his hands over the ship as he spoke inspired real confidence. Even a glance at his callused palms added to that impression.
"I'm So-ryong of the Beast Palace, and son-in-law of the Tang Clan. A pleasure. Helmsman—show him where she's leaking."
I returned the greeting and put him straight in touch with the helmsman. Talking ship business was better left to the man who actually sailed her.
"Yes, Young Master. Understood. That's right. Ever since we hit a tree that came down in the flood a while back, she's been like this. The leak's toward the bow—care to take a look?"
"I will."
The two of them went down into the forward hold and came back up a short while later to stand in front of me and discuss the repairs.
"To stop the leak we'll need ramie, lime, and tung oil. The ramie we can have these water bandits pull from the hills, but there's no lime or tung oil here. Do you happen to have any?"
"Of course we do. Will that be enough?"
"Yes, that will do."
"How long will it take?"
"Hmm… First thing tomorrow at first light we'll have to haul her out and dry her. Ah—one moment. Yi Tae! Have the men pull plenty of ramie! Plenty, mind you!"
"Understood!"
After shouting the order over the side to Yi Tae, the shipwright picked up where he'd left off.
"Where was I? Ah—hauling her out to dry. Once she's dry…"
According to him, the repairs would take a full ten days. After drying the hull they would have to re-oil the wood with tung oil, seal the cracks with a mix of lime and fibers drawn from the ramie, and then dry everything all over again. That was what the time was for.
When they finished, the helmsman looked my way.
"Shall we proceed as the shipwright says?"
"All right. We'll leave the repairs to Master So. And Shipwright—could I speak with you a moment?"
"With me, Young Master?"
"I'm not sure how much you've already heard…"
He tilted his head when I asked for a private word. The moment I mentioned the Purple-Clawed Spider, his face twisted into something between disbelief and irritation.
"Yi Tae. That bastard's selling me out to save his own skin. The Tang Clan, is it… Well, I've already kept every scrap of righteousness I owed him. But are you sure about this? That one's a man-killer."
"He beat a man to death?"
If I hadn't just seen the faces of the village, I might have fixed the ship and sailed away at that. But Yi Tae's line about "people wronged from every corner of the realm" was still lingering. I asked again.
"Would you tell me the whole story?"
He nodded, dropped heavily onto the deck, and said,
"But this isn't the sort of thing you just spit out sober. Mind if I have a drink?"
Needing liquor meant it was a story he couldn't tell with a clear head. Sister Seol, who had been watching him in silence, sent a deckhand for wine. The shipwright took a long, grateful pull from the bottle, and the injustice he had suffered began to spill from his mouth.
"So it went like this…"
Tssrrt.
Bin's startled cry came from the doorway as she tried to head out onto the deck. Beyond her, outside the cabin, the predawn river mist had risen so thick around the water bandits' stronghold that you couldn't see a single pace ahead.
"The fog's awfully dense, Bin. Shall we wait until it thins a little before we go out?"
Tssrrt!
Bin never cared for high humidity, and I hated the way heavy fog made clothes clammy, so I shut the door and stepped back into the cabin—only to find the shipwright and Yi Tae crumpled on the floor. I pulled the scattered bedding over both of them.
They were still here because last night's talk with the shipwright, begun over wine, had run far longer than expected, and then the drink had gotten the better of them. Yi Tae, who had been matching him cup for cup, had of course gone down with him.
I lit the cabin lantern. From the corner came a soft splashing.
Splash. Splash.
Hwa-yang's way of demanding food. I set the lantern down near her.
Then I found myself staring at the sleeping shipwright again, replaying the story he had poured out last night while deep in his cups.
He really was a man who'd been wronged…
After hearing him out, there was no doubt. In Fuzhou he had worked as a shipwright alongside his older brother, continuing the family trade. He had beaten a man to death—someone who tried to force himself on his beautiful sister-in-law—only to learn the attacker was the son of a high official. Overnight he became a wanted murderer and a fugitive. He had wandered the Central Plains to escape the fallout and finally slipped into this place. That had been ten years ago.
His character, as far as the story went, seemed sound. The problem was that the warrant on him had never been lifted. In this era wanted sketches were called "likeness descriptions," and they were anything but accurate—especially one from a decade past. No one would recognize him from it. Even so, I couldn't just decide on the spot. Taking in a wanted man meant I ought to ask my father-in-law first.
Best to go back to the Tang Clan and ask Father-in-law…
I was still looking at the sleeping shipwright and settling that decision in my mind when a clamor rose outside.
"Chief! Chief!"
"Chief! Where are you!? Get up!"
Other water bandits were calling for Yi Tae.
"What's going on? Yi Tae. Yi Tae."
"Don't poke me, you bastards… Mmph…"
Tssrrrt!
"Hiiiek!"
Bin, who clearly found the sight of him unpleasant, screeched right into his ear. Yi Tae shot upright as if it were still the dead of night. I herded the thoroughly rattled man up onto the deck.
"Your men are looking for you. Go on, Yi Tae."
"My men?"
He rubbed his eyes and went out toward the deck. A moment later he came rushing back, face pale with shock.
"Y-Young Master. You'll keep the promise, of course?"
"Promise?"
"The promise that you wouldn't feed us to your spirit beasts."
I nodded at his sudden need to reconfirm that particular vow. That business was already settled.
"Of course I will. Why bring it up all of a sudden?"
"Th-then… one of your spirit beasts must have gotten hungry in the night…"
"What? What are you talking about?"
I followed him out. The fog was slowly lifting now. Hwa-eun had reached the deck ahead of us, drawn by the noise, and was examining something laid out there. She pulled back a straw mat, stared, and cried out in a voice that refused to believe what it was seeing.
"This is—!? A mummy!?"
Curious what a "mummy" was supposed to be, I lifted the mat myself—and found a thoroughly dried corpse lying there.
Mummy meant a desiccated corpse!?
A faint scent of cilantro brushed my nose, stirred up by the flapping mat. Only then did Yi Tae's words make sense. They thought one of our beasts had done this.
Hey now. Our kids don't eat junk food like this.
There was no way any of mine would touch garbage like that.