It Was There! And Then It Wasn't!
"Swiiiik... CREEEEAK."
The soldier easing the door open froze at the sound that rang out, cold sweat beading on his forehead as he strained to survey the room beyond. Apparently these people had never once oiled their doors.
"Fwip, fwip."
He signaled to his comrades with a flurry of hand gestures — they had spotted the Sui soldiers sleeping inside.
"Pat. Pat. Creeeak— creeeak—"
They should have moved in silence, but who knew how the Sui managed their building maintenance — the floorboards were shrieking up a storm.
"Snnnrrk. Phooo..."
"Snnrrrk. Gack—"
The one mercy was that some of the snorers were loud enough to drown everything else out.
"Srrk."
The soldiers, spaced out at even intervals, raised the weapons in their hands, and at a single man's signal brought them all down at once.
"THUD-THUD-THUD."
With what sounded like a single man swinging, the twenty snores echoing through the room vanished in an instant. Then the shadows moved on, silent, toward the next room.
Swiftly clearing room after room, they finished off the entire building within half an hour. There had been a soldier awake at the very top, but with his comrades below already dead, there was no one left to come to his aid.
"We've wasted too much time. Pick up the pace!"
"Yes, sir!"
By the time the soldiers racing along the wall reached the next gate tower, it was broad daylight — and their numbers had swollen considerably. This was the special task force, the unit that simply broke in and cleared things out.
"Leave a rear guard to tend to the wounded. The rest of you, advance at speed!"
They had Holy Water, yes, but wounds did not simply close on the spot — someone had to look after the injured for a while. So they left a portion of their number behind and pressed doggedly onward.
And a little past noon, their allies finally came into view in the distance.
"Everyone, throw away anything you don't need!"
"Yes, sir!"
"Clatter-clatter, splash."
Soldiers discarding the ropes and water pouches they no longer needed.
"Leave any rear-guard defense to the troops following behind us. Half the archers stay at the rear — the rest come with us toward the wall!"
The soldiers sorted out who would stay and who would go entirely on their own, then started running again. The siege weapons sitting idle meant a battle was already raging.
"Enemies in sight! Archers, find your spacing and open fire at will!"
"Skreek— twang— WHOOOSH."
The moment they halted, the soldiers began loosing arrows without a moment's hesitation. Every last target was within range anyway. Priority went to the generals on horseback in their flashy armor.
Plenty of them would be decoys, but so what? Every enemy that fell was one fewer.
Before long, the Sui archers atop the wall, sensing that something was off, began shooting back.
"Twang-twang-twang, THUNK."
"Guaaagh!"
"Ugh!"
The task force had lightened their load, carrying only small shields barely wide enough to guard their torsos, and over the short stretch of a two-minute run, countless of them dropped where they stood.
But the moment they waded into the enemy's ranks, arrows no longer frightened them. Unless the enemy fancied killing their own men, they could hardly fire at will.
"Kill them all!"
"Our turn now, you bastards!"
"That one's mine! He put an arrow in my calf!"
Not a single one of them had made it this far unscathed. These were the hardened veterans who had run the whole way with several arrows jutting from their bodies.
Smeared with blood from head to toe and howling as they came, they sent a creeping terror through the Sui soldiers.
"!#$!!"
"$!&#%"
Men broke and fled one after another. But there was nowhere for them to go — the end of that path was a sheer drop, for the wall had collapsed into ruin.
"Uwaaaaagh!"
Some simply leapt straight off the wall. Had the sight of blood-smeared men running at them with grotesque grins truly been that terrifying?
"Legion Commander, the special task force appears to have arrived."
"They've been through hell, those lads. Send our own troops forward quickly. They'll be in the thick of it!"
The Doraesol Legion launched its full assault. The advance of a full 800,000 soldiers was enough to turn the stomach of the Sui army watching from atop the wall.
What was more, the men at the very front were already climbing over the wall.
The Sui soldiers tried to surround them and hold them back with spears, but Daehan's shield bearers were not the sort of men to be driven back by such measures.
"KRA-KRA-SHUNK."
The front rank tilted their shields and swept every spearpoint upward in one motion, and the ranks behind shoved the entire mass of men back at once.
"Aaaaah!"
"!#$!#"
Outmatched in raw strength and shoved by a wall of coordinated force, the Sui formation had no choice but to crumble, helpless.
"Punch through!"
"Kill them all!"
"Wahahaha!"
The moment they closed to arm's length, the soldiers tore through the enemy like wolves loosed among a flock, sweeping everything before them.
The Sui had clearly been forming encirclement formations, yet their lines kept falling back. And once the vanguard punched a hole, the rear had it even easier.
"Rumble-rumble-rumble."
Cavalry came charging at full speed through the gaps torn open in the formation.
Riding out beyond the enemy's rear, the horsemen rained arrows into the backs of the Sui soldiers' heads from a safe distance — enough to drive anyone facing them out of their mind.
The Sui archers and cavalry tried desperately to catch them, but the riders loosed their arrows on the run and simply galloped out of reach every time.
And so the enemy lines split apart again, another band of horsemen slipped through the widening gap, and the vicious cycle repeated itself over and over.
On June 3rd, the twenty-third day of the siege, the Great Wall — built and reinforced over 2,600 years since the age of the Xia Dynasty — stood half-collapsed and breached.
"They breached the wall on June 3rd, I hear."
"Your side must have taken the worst of it..."
"Yes. A hundred thousand casualties — twenty thousand dead, and thirty thousand wounded sent back home..."
So many dead. And it was all because those Joseon lot wouldn't listen.
"And this is only the beginning. How many more will die..."
"Still, they say the Sui lost three hundred thousand in the siege, with around two hundred thousand taken prisoner."
"Chain them up and send the lot to work on the wall..."
"Yes..."
Haneul-nim was in a wretched mood...
Holy Water or not, so many had died — and even those who made it back were gravely crippled, weren't they?
They hadn't even been attacked directly. Had she started a pointless war for nothing?
"Should I have just left them alone?"
"They wouldn't have sat still over there for long, Your Holiness."
She had built the nation up this far and simply assumed they'd be too frightened to touch it — far too complacent, that was the trouble. With no spies of their own, nobody out there had any idea how strong Daehan really was.
"The refugees got out all right?"
"Yes. They passed by at a distance while the trebuchets and ballistae were still pounding the wall to pieces — I doubt they'd dare raise a hand against us."
"There had better not be any direct invasions."
"..."
Somehow it all just irritated her. Was this how it always went — resentments piling up like this until someone decided to start exterminating whole peoples?
Calm down. There were things even a god shouldn't do, right?
"How are the soldiers taking it?"
They had decided to mobilize the many soldiers on standby to keep order in the cities and rotate out the wall garrisons.
"Anyone who would defy your word, Haneul-nim, was locked in the Temple's prayer cells to begin with."
What is that place, a brainwashing facility? I keep hearing about it...
"Ask them for help. We ought to wrap this war up quickly, don't you think?"
"Shall we call up the civilians?"
"No. They're not soldiers."
"But is this not a holy war?"
I knew these fanatics would come out with something like this someday.
"It is not. Absolutely not."
"Ought we not sweep away, sooner or later, all those who refuse to follow Haneul-nim's word?"
Oh... no. There really was a lunatic running this country.
"You don't need to do any such thing. No holy wars! Everyone out there is just living their lives as best they can, you know?"
"Hmm..."
What was the problem here? It wasn't as if she had ever demanded they worship her and her alone?
"Let's not have those frightening thoughts, alright? Hmm?"
"But does it not sadden Haneul-nim?"
"No. I'm just in a bad mood because our kids got hurt, that's all."
"Only for a moment?"
"Yeah. Hey! Everyone's fit and fighting again!"
She'd better not go around moping anywhere, either.
Daehan's army was run in two parts: the 4.2 million men garrisoning the walls, and roughly 2 million regular troops on standby near the capital.
Then there were the 9.4 million or so you might call the reserves — or perhaps soldiers simply on leave.
They maintained order in the cities and rotated wall duty on a fixed cycle.
About half of those soldiers were at that very moment sweeping across central China.
"The Emperor abandoned the capital and fled?"
"They entered the capital and found it empty."
"Can't stand the sight of it? Then smash it to pieces."
In just four months they had scoured the entire Central Plains and pushed all the way to the capital itself — and yet the Emperor was gone.
Now the soldiers fanned out in every direction to round up people, and those people were put to building walls.
Put them to work, and if any fled off into the mountains beyond, she would simply let them go. Live like beasts out there, and they wouldn't be nibbling away at anyone's grain stores, would they?
"And the Indians? Tell those people they're next — hand over your land and clear out."
"Yes. If they ignore us, shall I send the sea lot?"
Those ones were terrifying precisely because they had no shred of mercy. Wouldn't that just make them bitter blood enemies?
"Ah, right — tell them to stay merciless until the land is handed over."
"Oh, they'll be delighted."
Yeah, they were exactly the sort who enjoyed that kind of thing.
"And tell them there's no need to trouble themselves coming ashore in person."
"These days they're lobbing fire bombs all over the place. They hated it at first, but I think they've developed a taste for it."
How much gunpowder were they planning to burn through, already? It felt like any day now they'd be inventing napalm and throwing a fit about it...
They really did love themselves a sea of fire.
Gunpowder, though... maybe she ought to look into something in advance?
"The friends making the gunpowder are having a rough time of it?"
"Yes — apparently the smell is rather something. But they've put their heads together and now make it quite comfortably, actually."
What was there to put their heads together about?
"Did what, exactly?"
"They built privies along the busy roads and started collecting only the urine? These days they spread it out to dry, gather it up, boil it down, and make it that way, apparently?"
"Er... is that so?"
What? This was news to her? So maybe the hard-to-find stuff wasn't necessary after all? Still, she ought to have them look for other sources.
"If all that's too much trouble, tell them to go comb the desert."
If they searched the desert here too, surely a saltpeter mine would turn up near some salt lake or other?
"Isn't the desert awfully vast, though?"
"Better than rummaging through chamber pots, no? And just have the Mongol friends guide them around."
Though apparently it didn't crop up in any great quantity anywhere in India...
"And tell them you'll buy up anything they bring back from the sea, made on board ship."
They said you could just dig and sieve it straight out of the ground — what on earth kind of soil was that, anyway?
How was any of this supposed to work? What on earth did you do when a country you were at war with simply fell apart?
"So Yang Guang of the Sui — the one we were fighting — is dead, and now they're in the middle of a civil war?"
What was wrong with this country? You looked away for a single second and suddenly there was a rebellion, a civil war, and the nation's name had changed — utter chaos?
"What do we do?"
"Good question. What do we do?"
What were you supposed to do when the enemy you'd been fighting simply ceased to exist?
"Just flatten everything?"
"What would we tell the soldiers?"
Even her most devoted soldiers deserved a proper justification.
"Is the picture a little off?"
"Very off."
"Let's just build the wall first and sort the rest out later..."
"Yes. That seems best."
What an absurd situation this was. The ones who had picked the fight had vanished? And now, of all things, they were apparently busy with a rebellion-driven civil war.
The one who'd crushed them all would surely be in touch before long.
After waiting all these years for absolutely nothing, the whole thing circled back around in the most ridiculous way imaginable.
Amid the cracks of the civil war, the Han Chinese friends Daehan had sent westward had founded a nation in Chengdu, while in the southeast the Tang Dynasty had risen.
Those people had been keeping quiet, so Daehan sent envoys to ask whether they meant to fight — and back came the answer:
"They insist they have nothing whatsoever to do with the Sui, and swear never to so much as glance northward."
"Good. Get their seal on it. Not a single step near anywhere our wall can be seen."
"Understood."
"Might tribute be asking a bit much?"
"This wasn't reparations won in battle, so what more would there even be for them to give?"
Aww. What a letdown. The Tang had supposedly moved their capital up to the top of some mountain or other — apparently they didn't care for the sea or the plains.