When the Axe Has Already Been Laid at the Roots of the Tree, Part 1
Im Inson had hurriedly scraped together twenty exorcists—well, company men, if you wanted to call it that. They were all zealous Catholics who had made themselves useful when they seized Jo Gwanseop’s ship on Ganghwado.
Those exorcists—church men, if you preferred—had experience in firefights, and they also knew a thing or two about boarding at sea.
So even with this sudden summons, they had managed to prepare themselves to a certain extent.
“The Dobansu has taken the enemy commander’s head!”
“All of you, charge!”
The sailors, now leaderless, hesitated and began to fall back.
And the exorcists pressed forward by the same amount.
If this had been England instead of France, even the Catholics wouldn’t have been especially fond of them. Catholics were people too, after all.
Besides, the Catholics of the present day were already awake to the realities of international politics, thanks to the foreign intelligence that made its way diligently to the Promised Land.
Revenge was being carried out on behalf of the Irish Catholic brothers persecuted by England.
“The defendant! England! The defendant! The Anglican Church!”
“The sentence! Death! Death! Death! It’s death! Death, death, death!”
“Ha! Just look at those heretics writhing!”
“The only good Protestant is a dead Protestant!”
Once their momentum broke, all that remained was flesh worn thin by hunger and exhaustion. The British sailors were struck down by rifles and blades that, for some reason, seemed to stink deliciously as they came at them.
A wise British petty officer quickly grabbed Yi Hijeang, the commander of Jeolla Right Navy.
His ancestors had fled smartly to Joseon the instant the Ming fell, and yet this worthless descendant, despite such a golden opportunity, still hadn’t managed to escape.
“This man is the commander of the Joseon navy! If you harm us, you won’t get away with it!”
With nothing in his heart but the will to live, Yi Hijeang instantly understood English.
“W-withdraw! People, withdraw! If I die, then even if you drive off the barbarians, I’ll be beheaded anyway!”
It was a splendid translation.
There was, however, one fact beyond the reach of both men’s intelligence.
There was someone here who understood English.
Unfortunately, that someone was a man whose language didn’t quite connect with the rest of humanity.
Taesu just walked over. It felt as though a shout to split the two of them open at once was roaring through every fiber of his body.
Exactly as Cha Un-hong had figured.
Taesu didn’t want to think any harder than this.
What the hell was the point of crossing dimensions if the whole world was still nothing but swindlers and local bullies? Might as well do it the same way he had in Korea.
As had been proven several times today, once a hostage is abandoned, paradoxically, he becomes not worth killing anymore.
When the petty officer hesitated, Taesu raised his axe, as if he would kill the man in his place.
Then the petty officer’s head jerked with a dull thud.
He collapsed in a heap. Yi Hijeang, too, foamed at the mouth and crumpled.
An irritated voice came from behind them.
“If you go rampaging around like a bull in a china shop, how is our lord supposed to present things properly?”
It was Ha Jeongil. Taesu could see the arrow sticking out of the petty officer’s head.
Just as Taesu was about to say something, Ha Jeongil cut him off.
“I know what you’re about to say. You think I haven’t seen your kind before? There are plenty of them in places like the Sword Brotherhood. Men who don’t care what happens after, only that they’ll keep swinging a blade until the day they die.”
As he spoke, Ha Jeongil pointed at the exorcists who had come to fight alongside Taesu.
“You alone are one thing. But what about those men who came here just to save the life of some fellow like you, or the merchants who follow you around? I heard you had a certain air of righteous heroism about you. Was that all empty talk?”
Taesu looked back at the exorcists.
And then he thought of the people who weren’t here, and of others besides them.
He readjusted his grip on the axe.
“I see. That was my mistake.”
Ha Jeongil’s expression changed to one of surprise.
Taesu brushed past him.
Then he knocked away a bayonet thrusting at Ha Jeongil with a swing of his axe.
Clang! As the gun was shoved downward, Taesu spun once, flicking the axe out as though shaking off water. The clean arc severed the top half of a sailor’s nose in a single stroke.
* * *
Kim Deukseong’s Gangsang suffered more damage than expected.
As the late O Chihyeon had suspected, the Joseon army was infinitely fierce when it came to its own civilians. And this time, they had the added burden of a grievance that admitted no excuse.
The saving grace was that most of these men were not directly under O Chihyeon’s command.
The ships realized their overall commander had vanished and began peeling away one by one.
Given the chance to catch his breath, Kim Deukseong ground his teeth.
The losses were enormous. He would have to make up for them somehow.
He would have to pressure the military garrison—by whatever means necessary—into buying this rice back at double, no, triple the price.
If only those barbarians don’t all die first...
Kim Deukseong turned at that thought and was horrified.
Even with those stupid barbarians helping them so much, it looked like they were going to die anyway.
Then all of this would be for nothing.
“What the hell are those guys? Why are they climbing aboard the barbarian ship and killing everyone? They don’t look like sailors to me.”
His subordinates had no way of knowing either.
Kim Deukseong studied the man closely.
Taesu was easy to spot even from far away. The sight of him chopping up Westerners with a single axe was so absurd it almost seemed unreal.
“Ganghwa Axe Taesu! I’ve heard the rumors, but that’s him!”
The Promised Land and Kaesong lay outside the sphere of the gangsang’s influence.
But it was a region closely tied to the Han River, and so the gangsang had known of Park Axe for some time.
He’d even heard recent rumors that the man had come to Gangjin.
But why he was trying to play militia here, in a place where he had no ties, the way he had on Ganghwado, was beyond him.
At that moment, an old memory flashed through Kim Deukseong’s mind.
During the reign of the previous king, Sunjo, a gangsang vessel carrying twenty thousand nyang had once been robbed by a pirate named Kim Suwon.
Fourteen companions had been bound with thorny vine ropes, their eyes gouged out and their teeth ripped away before being thrown into the sea.
Right there in Tongjinbu, Gimpo, practically at the capital’s doorstep. At the time, Sunjo had shuddered at the shadow of the encroaching Hong Gyeongnae trauma.
And who could blame him?
Kim Suwon was less a mere pirate than a warlord.
He amassed funds through banditry and smuggling, stockpiling weapons and ships, and like the man people thought of whenever they heard the word “warlord,” he held rites with his gang and forged brotherhood with them in sworn allegiance. They really did die on the same day, the lot of them.
More than anything, he differed from ordinary pirates because his goal was to overthrow the state.
Among Kim Suwon’s gear were military banners and even Qing army uniforms.
The plan was to disguise themselves as Qing troops, set fire to Yukjo Street and Namdaemun, and then seize Seoul. They had even been secretly colluding with palace attendants who would open the gates for them.
It wasn’t widely known, but if Kim Suwon had been just a little more thorough, he might well have changed history.
Back then, the man who petitioned the court and sent the Ganghwa navy into action had been a young Kim Deukseong.
Even for Gangsang, who had lived through every trial imaginable, that incident had remained a trauma.
And Kim Deukseong now smelled Kim Suwon on Park Axe.
The man’s intentions were no small matter. He clearly had some vicious purpose in mind.
More than anyone in the royal family or the court, who knew nothing at all, he could claim to have understood Taesu accurately.
“...We’re going that way!”
“Yes? Really?”
“And what, you expect me to just stand by and let some bastard piss in the rice we’ve already cooked? Those men are on the right, so we’ll take the left!”
That would make them look like they were helping the Westerners, but the matter had already gone that far.
It wasn’t only because of the ominous feeling Park Axe gave him. In any case, for the sake of silence afterward, those men had to be killed here.
* * *
The miserable truth was that the Royalists’ situation was so dire there was no way to receive Gangsang’s spontaneous international solidarity with any open-mindedness.
From the Royalists’ point of view, the newly boarded Joseon men could only be seen as reinforcements for the enemy.
The officer candidate Frank Marryat, who had the highest rank among the survivors and had taken command, cursed loudly.
“There are still a couple of guns alive on the port side! Fire them! If those men get aboard too, we won’t be able to handle it!”
Even though the Royalists were already on the brink of total annihilation and the soldiers were exhausted, cannon didn’t care about such things.
Two carronades roared and sent the supporting ship to the bottom.
That was the end of the fool who had done a favor for the English.
As Kim Deukseong was sent flying while feeling betrayal in every bone of his body, Marryat panted and got himself back into position.
The question that visits everyone at least once in life came crashing over him.
What am I doing here?
Marryat wasn’t even part of the Royalists to begin with.
He had originally been a painter and soldier in Samarang, but just before the grounding the Royalists had gone out in advance, and he had briefly transferred aboard to make sketches. That was how he ended up in this mess.
Back then he had thought he was lucky. He hadn’t been left behind on the grounded ship, after all.
But it turned out he was horribly unlucky.
Excluding the gunners who seemed unwilling to climb back up from below, the remaining sailors could be counted on one hand.
Whenever that giant who looked like the Devil’s own bastard took a step, the deck gave an eerie creak.
His shoes—European, though Marryat couldn’t quite tell by what design—left a ghastly imprint on the deck.
The tread pattern on the boots, stamped in the blood of slain Royal Navy men, looked like some unfathomable pagan curse.
Blood mixed with grease dripped from the axe.
A thick stench spread through the air. It was the smell of blood, yes, but not the rich fishy smell of a harbor. This was the reek of slaughter on a battlefield.
As his comrades died around him, Marryat looked back at the sailors who had finished loading in a panic.
“Fire! What are you waiting for? Shoot him!”
The soldiers all thrust out their guns at once.
The Mountain Spirit, who valued Taesu’s life most of all—because it was his life too—let out a shriek.
[Have you gone mad, stepping out in front of guns like that!]
But Taesu had recovered somewhat from his earlier frenzy.
He had a plan.
As he had once thought when making heavy bags, raw strength was useless if you couldn’t control it.
He needed training to master the power that had, wanted or not, kept growing inside him.
The instant the soldiers’ fingers twitched, Taesu kicked off the deck.
His figure vanished all at once, and the soldiers panicked.
Most of them wasted the one round they would never have time to reload in this kind of close combat.
Bang-bang-bang! Amid the useless thunder of shots tearing through empty air, someone shouted.
“Above!”
Above? Marryat looked up.
And then Marryat and the soldiers screamed inwardly to the one man England would forever boast of.
Sweet Jesus, Isaac Newton!
This couldn’t be happening.
How could a human being leap nearly ten feet straight up from a standing start?
But fortunately, Newton saved them. Taesu came falling back down under the law of gravity, a law not even the Mountain Spirit could ignore.
He was like a gargoyle dropping from a church roof. Even with an automatic rifle, no human could have raised the muzzle in that tiny instant and fired.
The giant landed precisely in the spot of the soldier who had been in the middle of taking aim at Marryat.
And as for what happened to the soldier who had been standing there, well, he politely gave the spot up.
He did seem to have had great difficulty deciding whether to move right or left, though. The fact that his upper body and lower body drifted apart in opposite directions made that fairly clear.
“Aaaagh!”
“Is that Frankenstein’s monster?”
Nothing else made sense. That wasn’t one of the Lord’s creations.
Though, to be fair, he was a man from another world, so the feeling wasn’t entirely wrong.
Instead of agonizing over his alien identity, Taesu swung his axe.
Strength is agility. To Taesu’s intensely focused eyes, the sailors’ flailing movements looked almost like slow motion.
That made it easy to drive the axe into the gaps.
Until now, Taesu had preferred to split armor and weapon together with a single blow.
He didn’t yet have enough axe-fighting technique to do otherwise. If it came down to pure weapon skill, a beginner like him would lose more often than not.
But the physical enhancements that had continued to build as he fed the axe blood—now, as before—made up for his lack of technique.
Taesu restrained the axe with minimal movement.
After all, once the axe got into someone’s skull, it didn’t matter whether it went in five millimeters or ten centimeters; the result was the same. His blade work, handling a several-kilogram axe as though it were a dagger, soon sent the rest of the sailors to join their god.
Frank Marryat chose the best course available in this situation.
While his men were being slaughtered, he leapt backward with his own gun in hand.
Then he pulled the trigger.
Clang!
The bullet struck Taesu’s axe.
Bullets in this era were heavier and more ponderous than modern ones. No matter how strong Taesu was, he couldn’t stop the axe from being knocked loose from his grip.
The Mountain Spirit’s urgent voice rang out.
[A lucky break. I may have said this before, but surely you don’t think you can dodge bullets, do you? Roll! No—jump into the sea!]
That the standard Joseon army protocol when facing cannon fire came flying out so naturally made it sound like his claim of battlefield experience was no lie.
Ha Jeongil hurriedly lifted his bow.
But the bow stopped there, held at full draw.
Taesu had suddenly closed the distance to Marryat.
Marryat immediately grasped his intent.
Was there someone in Joseon who knew how to box?
Footwork was still a weaker concept in this era than it would be in modern times.
But the technique by which Taesu neutralized the bayonet with just two steps was clearly something that could be recognized as martial arts.
Marryat, as an officer candidate, did have boxing experience.
He quickly dropped his gun and raised his hands. The stance of orthodox British bare-knuckle boxing unfolded.
To modern eyes it looked a little stiff, but without gloves, that was how you defended bare hands against bare hands.
Marryat inwardly cheered the fool who had driven himself into a disadvantageous position.
He should have grabbed the axe or gotten help from those around him. He seemed to have had some exposure to advanced British civilization, but it wouldn’t do him any good.
An inferior Oriental can’t imitate this!
Marryat felt hope.
If he knocked this man down, the rest of the little Orientals might get scared and run away too. Given the way the Joseon soldiers had behaved so far, that wasn’t even a ridiculous hope.
Taesu showed Marryat the full truth of real boxing.
“Guh!”
Taesu’s left mid-kick slammed Marryat into the mast. There had once been a time when even Taesu thought boxing had no leg techniques, but that no longer mattered.
Sadly, Marryat couldn’t even hit the deck.
The left body blow came next.
“Ugh!”
Then the right.
“Agh!”
Then a left knee strike.
“Hk!”
Each blow drove him into the mast like a hammer used to dismantle a ship. It was an anti-Newtonian air combo.
As he was being beaten in such absurdly unphysical fashion, Marryat caught sight of a scene that might have brought back his fleeing consciousness.
The warship’s mast was buckling under bare-handed human strikes.
Even if it was only a temporary mast and had already taken hits in the brutal fighting of the day, it was still unbelievable.
Ha Jeongil and the exorcists, along with Taesu’s allies, had abandoned the fight entirely and were staring dumbly at the impossible sight.
Somehow, the surrounding sailors and the other remaining members of the gangsang were doing the same.
The center of the battlefield was here now.
So when the Royalists’ mainmast fell for the third time, it would have been fair to call the battle over.
Marryat, having failed as a cushion and shared the mast’s fate, rolled across the deck.
From inside his coat, various Western-style drawings of Joseon officials—mostly modeled on Yi Hijeang—scattered through the air like a white flag.
Author’s note
1. The Catholics’ dialogue is a parody of the manga Hellsing.
2. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was published in the early nineteenth century.
3. Frank Marryat, during the first voyage of the Samarang (the second voyage only happened within this story), left behind several drawings of Joseon people in places such as Jeju Island.