The Road to the Underworld Is Better Traveled Together
Ships answered the signal: forty-eight in all.
"Where did the other twelve go?"
"Perhaps they never saw the signal, sir, or they've gone astray somewhere."
"We can't simply sit and wait. Advance, but stay sharp."
Judging that striking first, before the enemy could finish their preparations, was better than twiddling their thumbs, the squadron commander gave the order to move out. From the gaps between the islands, he could still see a great cluster of ships gathered near the distant harbor.
If they'd all made it here, I'd have liked to split the fleet...
Their destination was the port the people of Joseon called Mokpo. He had carried cargo back and forth through it a few times, but never once had he studied the place in detail — and that gap in his knowledge gnawed at a corner of his mind.
Sui still had plenty of ships left at the harbor — moored there in plain sight, yet more than enough to spring a devastating ambush.
Between the sixty vessels originally stationed in port and the roughly three hundred and sixty that had limped back from the battle against the 2nd Squadron, some four hundred and twenty ships now crowded Mokpo.
Of these, about sixty remained tied up at the docks as bait, while the rest split into groups of two hundred and forty and one hundred and twenty, readying themselves for the attack.
"How does it look?"
"They're still lingering outside, General."
"So the man has good instincts, does he?"
A flicker of unease crossed his mind — what if they'd caught on? — but it was far too late now to call off the ambush.
"Let us wait a little longer."
The wait was not long. Daehan's fleet had begun threading its way through the narrow straits between the islands.
"Heh heh heh. Come, come. This place shall be your grave."
Through a stretch of sea barely three jang across, the Daehan ships began filing through in double column. The wind was at their backs; the oars were shipped and the sails only half-unfurled. The 3rd Squadron moved slowly through the narrow channel, weapons primed for battle.
At the top of the mast, the lookout's head swept rapidly from side to side, scanning every direction for signs of an ambush.
"Masts of enemy ships sighted beyond the island on the left!"
"Just as I thought!"
The squadron commander had suspected the enemy would be lying in wait.
"All hands to battle stations! Enemy to port! We'll swing wide and climb north!"
The plan was to trust in the Horned Whale's armor and drive straight through, then wheel about in open water. That was why the sails were only half-set.
But the moment they cleared the island, the Sui ships came surging at them, sails full and oars churning.
"Take out the lead ships! We have to block the channel to stop the ramming!"
"Loose arrows! Fire the slingshots!"
FWA-BOOM — ping! ping-ping!
From the flagship onward, indiscriminate fire rained down upon the port side. In an instant, dozens of Sui ships were burning.
Rattle-rattle-rattle
"Ugh!"
"Gwaargh!"
Arrows flew back from the enemy in kind. The one mercy was that the Sui had nothing resembling Daehan's slingshots.
But there were simply too many enemy ships, and they were far too close. With sails spread and oars driving, the gap would close within minutes, acceleration or no.
"We're going to collide! Brace for impact!"
To stop here would only multiply the damage, so Daehan had no choice but to push forward through gritted teeth. Their objective remained the same: keep moving, wheel around, and break out to the north.
WHAM! CRACK! KABOOM!
They angled obliquely to slip past, but ships charging under full oar were hard to evade. One after another, several Sui vessels slammed into the Horned Whale's flank.
The impact was so tremendous that even the Horned Whale shuddered sideways.
"Cut them loose! The lead ship cannot stop!"
In theory, a dozen narrow-hulled Sui ships could be driven into the side of a single Horned Whale. Some of the attackers shattered themselves on impact and drifted away in pieces — but others lodged their rams fast and held on.
"Waaargh!"
"#$!!@"
The Sui soldiers, determined to close for melee, clambered onto the hulls any way they could. The Daehan ship's speed bled away little by little.
"Full sail! We turn now!"
With the ship slowing, the deck boss ordered the sails unfurled to claw back speed. It seemed they might just manage the turn to the north.
"They're coming up the sides! Bring axes! Smash their hands and cut the lines!"
Having learned from their earlier defeat, the Sui had come prepared with planks to bridge the height difference and ropes to climb.
Small planks stretched from the clinging ships to the Horned Whale's rail, along with a forest of cords. Loose arrows at them, hurl fire at them — the Sui clung on with the tenacity of devils all the same.
"They keep coming!"
"Hah! Nothing to be done about it — kill every last one, then!"
"Let's go, you bastards!"
There were simply too many ships. The five vessels at the head of the column were finally snagged and brought to a halt. The ships following behind shoved past them, loosing arrows and slingshot, but it wasn't enough.
"Commander! What do we do?"
"If we stop to save them, the losses will only grow. No — we wheel and strike the enemy's rear. That's how we take the weight off their backs!"
The commander chafed at the thought of abandoning his own men, but there was no other way. He had a duty to save the greater number.
Gritting his teeth hard enough to crack them, he ordered the advance to continue.
"Enemy ships ahead!"
"What did you say?"
So this was what it felt like for the sky to fall. Even as hundreds of ships seemed to be clawing into their flank, a matching host came pouring out of the distance ahead.
Enemy ships converging right at our turning point.
The commander's dilemma deepened. There was only one way forward — and now his trapped men were all but unreachable.
"Hold course and keep fighting!"
"Sir! That water is blocked off!"
"There's no other way! We cut down as many as we can and punch through!"
"Yes, sir!"
In the chaos of battle there was no time for detailed orders. Decisions were made in advance; after that, you simply followed the flagship and fought. That was how war was waged in this ancient age.
One by one, ships fell behind the receding flagship, snagged and stopped dead in the water.
CLANG! CLANG-KRANG! THUD!
"Kill everyone who comes over the rail!"
"Hah! You bastards think you know where you are? Come up here, then!"
The advantage of the high ground was real enough. But hemmed in on all sides, two hundred men could not hold a thirty-one-meter ship against what felt like the world.
"Hah. Looks like these bastards finally got their teeth into us."
"Damn it. So this is the end, huh."
"Can't say I fancy going out like this."
There was no help for it — some thirty Sui ships had tangled themselves around their one vessel, and men were swarming across from hull to hull.
"Hey. Let's do it. That thing."
"What? You bastard! I'm still older than you, in case you forgot!"
"Who cares at a time like this, hah hah hah. Three months, that's all — calling yourself my elder over three months was never right anyway!"
Apparently, facing the end, he'd finally dropped the pretense.
"So what's this thing you want to do?"
"Down there. That stuff."
"Eh? You mean it?"
"Well. We'll figure something out, one way or another."
"I'll go down first and buy you time. Hold the way as long as you can."
Apart from a dozen or so men on the deck, nothing but Sui soldiers met the eye. With the ship about to be overrun, they were clearly planning to pull something desperate.
"Our ship's done for either way. But the sail and the flag — we can't hand those over, can we?"
"Heh heh. No. Those are gifts from Haneul-nim. Those, we don't surrender."
The masts and sails of their ships had been sent down by Haneul himself. It was thanks to them that the vessels had never once caught fire from the enemy's flaming arrows through all their battles.
"Then I'll go down. Get there first and wait for me!"
"If you don't show up, you're dead, you hear me? You'll be calling me hyung again before it's over!"
"Then I'll follow you even into death!"
"HAH HAH HAH! You bastards! Come and get me!"
The elder-by-three-months threw himself across the entrance to the lower deck, barring the way, while the other man hurried down the ladder.
CLANG! CLANG! THUD!
"Hah hah hah! You think this puts me down? Not yet, you bastards!"
At the foot of the hatchway, he took spear-thrust after spear-thrust — dozens of them — and held the line until his last breath. For every extra heartbeat he could buy.
Datta-dak
"Agh! Damn it, that hurts like hell."
Arrows bristled from his body in half a dozen places as he descended into the lower hold. He was bleeding heavily, and one of the wounds had landed somewhere bad.
BANG
"Heh heh heh. There you are, my pretties!"
When he flung the door open, what met his eyes was a forest of crates.
Clunk
Inside the crates, row upon row of pottery jars. The ships had closed with the enemy so quickly that barely any had been used — they sat there untouched. And not just in this hold. Every compartment in the ship would be full to bursting.
Fwoooosh
"Heh heh heh. Let's all go together!"
Torch in hand, he went from crate to crate, prying them open and setting the contents alight with cheerful diligence.
"*cough, cough* — ah, can't... breathe..."
Choking on the smoke, he collapsed in agony. Then again, suffocation was probably a kinder end than burning.
CRASH-crash! Fwoooosh
The work he couldn't finish began completing itself. Jars shattered, oil spilled, and the fire spread in creeping rivers in every direction.
RUMBLE-rumble
"$^!#!$"
"!!@$#"
With clattering footsteps, Sui soldiers came pouring down into the hold.
BANG
The lower deck was primed to blow the instant it got air. And the Sui soldiers, flinging open the door, handed the fire exactly what it needed.
KABOOOOOM!
The blaze that had been sleeping in the hold, waiting for its moment, erupted outward in a thunderous explosion. The Horned Whale — that ship of impossible sturdiness — blew apart into splinters, its hull shredding in every direction, with a shower of burning oil thrown in for good measure.
It was precisely because the ship was so solid that the explosion had been that much more catastrophic.
The thousands of men packed around the vessel took the shrapnel and the flaming oil full in the face. For those struck down by debris without even time to scream, perhaps that was mercy.
"Gyaargh! It burns! It burns!"
"Save me! Somebody, save me!"
"Run! Get away!"
SPLOOSH
With dozens of ships knotted together, there was no pulling free and fleeing. Some men, drenched in oil, threw themselves overboard; others simply abandoned ship and plunged into the water.
FWHOOOOSH
Fire rode the spilled oil and swallowed the surrounding sea in an eyeblink. For those in the water, survival looked like a hopeless cause.
Only the fireproof sails and flags of the Horned Whale rode the updraft the inferno had conjured, fluttering skyward into the high heavens.
KABOOOM
Plenty of others had reached the same conclusion, it seemed. One after another, the Horned Whales locked in melee combat began to detonate.
Not long before the battle erupted — the ships that had scattered that morning to search the islands.
"Ugh. Where the hell are we?"
"Beats me."
"We can still link up if we go this way, right?"
They had entered these waters believing there'd be a passage around the islands — only to find no way out.
"By the way, why the hell are all those rotten bastards following us?"
"Maybe they got lost too?"
Eleven ships, circling far above and behind, were trailing them like ducklings.
The twelve ships that had missed the rally signal were skirting around the north side of the islands.
"Oh! There's the way down! Come on, let's move!"
At last the sea was widening, and off in the distance they could make out open water leading downward.
And so they were rounding the final island.
KABOOOOOM!
"What was that?"
A colossal roar — and beyond it, far in the distance, a pillar of black smoke climbing into the sky. It was the smoke made when the very thing they used every single day went up in flames.
"That's a battle!"
"Get the oars out! Full speed ahead!"
"Oars out! NOW!"
One body of men threw themselves onto the oars in perfect unison.
"The rest of you — grab your weapons, you idiots! What are you standing around for?"
And the others scrambled for their arms. Beyond that hill, a great battle was unmistakably underway.
"Move it! HURRY!"
The sailors were frantic. They had missed the signal — which meant the battle had started without them.
"Let's hope it's nothing serious..."
"It'll be a small skirmish, surely."
"Right? Has to be."
They prayed it was nothing — but hadn't the rally signal sounded? It didn't feel like a small skirmish at all.
KWAAAANG!
Another explosion rolled across the water, and black smoke billowed as if to blot out the sky. Most likely, someone had set fire to their own ship and gone down with it.
One thing was certain: the situation was desperate.
"Row harder! There's a battle on!"
"YES, SIR!"
Men gritted their teeth and drove their arms into the oars. If they were too late — if they missed their moment because they'd been too slow — it was a regret they'd carry forever.