Midnight Fireworks Over the Manor
They'd taken plenty, so wasn't it only fair to return the favor a little?
They at least had enough sense to hide, at any rate — the Japanese had withdrawn into the forest.
"What are they even doing, hiding like that?"
"Maybe they're waiting for reinforcements?"
"Judging by how that went, I doubt it'd matter if ten thousand reinforcements showed up."
Yeah, fair enough. We'd only been shooting rifles at long range. If they got up close, what was it we had to use — cannons, was it? The grapeshot hadn't even been brought out yet.
"What about the residents?"
"They've been evacuated inside the walls for now."
"Still, stay careful. There are probably spies from their side inside already."
"Ah! Then we could quietly lower the gates at night. We'll be careful."
From the look of things, they'd have plenty left over even after that. Should we just settle in for a comfortable siege?
I just hoped no residents were left outside. No sense giving them hostages to mistreat.
"Keep a sharp watch on the gates, and make sure the trains carry as many people as they can each trip."
The enemy might try a siege themselves — or worse, what if they went after the trains?
"They could ambush a train, so tell everyone to keep their signal flares on hand at all times."
"Yes, ma'am."
We'd fitted the trains with shovel blades up front so they could shove aside most obstacles, but the moment one of those got stuck, the whole thing would have to slow down and grind forward — that was what worried me.
But no attack came. It had already been more than a week.
"What do you suppose they're playing at?"
"I can't speak to their plans, but unease is spreading among the residents."
"Why? We're feeding them just fine."
If anything, weren't they lounging around without doing a lick of work?
"They're worried about how much we'll charge them for the food, ma'am."
"Oh, come on. What would we even do with their money? Tell them to just mine more silver later."
"Hahaha! Understood."
"Tell them that anyone who works hard eats for free. Better yet, from now on let's provide breakfast and lunch for everyone who works."
Here everyone brought their own rice ball and worked off that single meal. Another one at lunchtime. How were they supposed to get anything done on that?
"Ahh~ I knew it. You're just too kind, ma'am."
"I'm not being kind."
Lead poisoning is going to cut their lives short, you dummy. This place is well on its way to becoming a village of widows, you know?
I'm the most merciless one here, after all.
"If anyone dies on the job, ask whether they have any surviving family, and if they're staying on here, make sure they never go hungry."
"Yes, ma'am!"
This much was the best I could do. It wasn't as though I could take them all in and look after them myself.
"You're keeping the outside watch rotating, right?"
They'd tried to hide, but they'd gone to the forest, and the kids were taking turns observing whatever they were up to. The forest really did have endless places to hide.
"Hirohito..."
"Hrk... Father..."
Yoriyoshi's gaze lingered for a moment on his son's crotch. A wound beyond all recovery.
That wicked woman had snuffed out his line. Four daughters — that was all that remained now.
"I swear I will capture that woman and deliver her to you as your plaything."
"Hhk... hkk..."
What use was a plaything to a eunuch? Hirohito found he had no desire left to live at all.
"Wait. I have sent word to Kyoto — an army will come."
"Then won't our share of the credit shrink?"
"It should still earn us a place in the capital."
The silver involved was said to amount to hundreds of millions. If they mined it themselves, it would surely be even more.
"But how would an army get here from the capital?"
"..."
He didn't know that either. The sea route was blocked by the Daehan devils, and through the mountains, across all that distance?
"I suppose I'd better look into it."
Weren't there no proper roads to the capital at all? What on earth were they going to do?
At that very hour, plans were being laid in the capital as well. The idea was to build a road from the capital toward the northern coast and move the army along the shoreline.
It was going to be one long ordeal for the poor commoners hauling the supplies.
"Hmm? They pulled back?"
"Yes. Apparently they simply withdrew."
"Did you at least scout out their home base?"
"We did. Heh heh heh."
Something was bound to blow up before long.
"Pick some of the villagers and send them out on patrol — far afield — to see if any armies or suspicious characters come through."
"And if one of them turns out to be a spy?"
"It's not like that would be such a catastrophe, is it?"
"Ah~"
Ten thousand of them, and I still wouldn't be worried. These people didn't even have a concept of siege warfare. And the moment they touched the walls, they'd get a real taste of hell.
Granted, they were just small cannons, but we had people here who fired them by hand. Two of them, firing together, no less.
That was genuinely a sight to behold. Were they planning to lug machine guns next, one in each hand?
"Let the residents go home too. Let's all take two or three days off."
"Understood."
Everyone had been wound tight, and mental stress was nothing to sneer at. A proper rest was the only way to keep accidents from happening at the mines.
We'd found the enemy's stronghold. Half a day's travel northeast of here, in the mountains not far from the coast, there was a broad stretch of farmland where they'd gathered.
"Why is it always you lot?"
The Ten Duelists had gathered at the gate after lunch. Leave now, and they'd arrive around sundown.
"The spot where the arrow hit me aches every night, ma'am. I can't sleep."
"And you think blowing things up will fix that?"
"Yes!"
Something tells me that's not it — you just like making things go boom?
"Ugh, fine, I don't want to know. We'll work under cover of night and come straight back, so let's move out. No funny business!"
"Yes, ma'am!"
We set off at an easy pace, each of us carrying one of five rather hefty packs on our backs.
Over mountains and along rivers for hours. We passed the odd Japanese village now and then, but they seemed to take us for traveling merchants and barely paid us any mind.
One or two packs tossed into a village that small and the whole place would come crashing down. Haha!
Then, as the sun began to set, the view ahead started to open up.
"Life's hard out here too, huh?"
"Very, ma'am. The taxes are so crushing that people pledge their land and their very bodies to a manor and live like slaves, they say."
Most of the people who'd flocked to the mine had fled from these very parts.
Even in famine years, the taxes were collected all the same, so people bound themselves to the manors established by the local samurai — and apparently those lords were no better.
Feasting while everyone else starved. The peasants working the paddies along the road were gaunt-faced, and not one of them wore a smile.
"Why does everyone live so hard?"
"Poor harvests, maybe?"
"When the harvest is good they take more, and when it's bad they take more anyway."
Same as it ever was, even in the modern age. The ones who had grabbed everything first were the ones who ate well and lived well.
That's exactly why people ended up seduced by communism!
"If they'd just take a little less, these people wouldn't have to live like this."
"Should we burn it all down today, then?"
"They ate well and lived well as nobles, so it's only right they get a taste of being beggars."
The farmers with any sense would scatter on their own. Honestly, hiding deep in the mountains and farming slash-and-burn plots would suit them better anyway.
"There it is, ma'am."
"Whoa..."
Was that a house or a fortress? They'd built the thing in proper style, no question.
"Let's wait a bit and move when the moon is directly overhead."
"Yes, ma'am! One big boom would be glorious, wouldn't it!"
Swish. Tap, tap.
In the dead of night, we were climbing over somebody else's garden wall.
"Just scout the goods and go. These people got greedy over a little silver even living like this — they're clearly poor. Nothing here worth looting."
"Tch. Wouldn't even cover costs."
"We're just here to watch the show, then."
Climbing the wall for a better look, I found the compound laid out almost exactly like a Chinese-style mansion. But it was built entirely of wood — it would burn beautifully and crumble even faster.
"Alright, careful with the setup. Match the fuse lengths exactly — if things go off separately, it turns into a whole hassle."
"Ehehe. We didn't learn this in a day or two, ma'am!"
That's pride, that is! You little rascals.
Our intelligence agents fanned out in every direction.
Thud.
"Hk—"
Yes, a bit noisy, but without witnesses or evidence, it's a perfect crime.
The setup didn't take long. Divide the contents into nine packs roughly, scatter them here and there, lay the fuses, done.
Tap.
Back over the wall, and we huddled together behind it. Time to light the fuse!
Sssslick.
From behind the wall, we shook a little powder onto the fuse and struck the flint.
Tap! Tap! Tap!
Ssshhhhhh.
It caught well enough, but this thing had a bad habit of going out mid-burn.
"Run! Now!"
"Go, go!"
Rat-a-tat-tat.
Only we knew what was about to happen, so we ran until our soles burned.
"Who goes there!"
Someone behind us — a patrol soldier, or a samurai — had clearly spotted us. We ran. There was no time for scuffles.
Those fuses never burned at a steady rate, after all.
Perhaps out of some noble family's precious dignity, there wasn't a single commoner's house anywhere nearby. Good. I hoped the whole place went sky-high.
"Is this far enough?"
"Should be fine, right?"
"How much fuse did you lay out?"
"Oh, plenty."
"It won't cut out on us, will it?"
Hissssssss.
The fuse hissed and crackled as it burned shorter and shorter. For all its size, the thing put out a remarkable amount of smoke.
"Hm? What's that smoke?"
"It doesn't look like a fire. What on earth is it?"
"Hm. Do you suppose a god is about to appear?"
At a glance, it looked almost like mist rising off the lake at the heart of the compound. The whole estate had an air of mystique, as though some mountain spirit might materialize at any moment.
"Kof, kof."
"Quite spicy, this smoke!"
"This won't do! Wake the elders — everyone outside, now, to see what this is!"
As the smoke began seeping up from beneath the house, unease rippled through the compound. People shook one another awake and began filing out.
"Heh? What in the world is going on?"
"The samurai are searching the estate. They say it doesn't look like a fire, but they don't know what it is."
If there'd been a fire, there would be flames to see, and far more smoke than this. The situation sat in some maddening middle ground.
A bolt from the blue in the dead of night. The faces of everyone roused from sleep were thick with irritation.
"Hurry up! I told you to find out what it is!"
"What is this? Let people sleep!"
"Can't we just go back inside?"
"Our apologies. We'll check on your daughters at once."
The samurai were frustrated too. There was something in the compound making odd little noises, but whenever they followed the sound, it had somehow slipped around to the other side. Impossible to pin down.
Meanwhile, far away, Haneul's party lay flat on a paddy levee, watching and waiting for the show to start.
Hissssssss.
These fuses — some of them burned fast and some burned slow. And it was one of the impatient ones that reached its end first.
KU-KWAAANG!
"AAAGH!"
"What was that!"
"KYAAAA!"
The largest house at the center of the compound went up in a single blast, shards and splinters spinning outward in every direction.
Crash-crash-crash — thud, thud.
Tiles and chunks of wood came screaming through the air and buried themselves in the garden walls. If the wall-side charges had gone off first instead of the center, every last person outside would have died to shrapnel.
"Everyone, take cover!"
"Run!"
"Move, quickly!"
Perhaps something had finally registered, because Yoriyoshi hurried his family along, soothing them as they fled away from the estate.
The Daehan spies had reported that these people turned the very ground over with thunder. He was certain — this was unmistakably that.
"Everyone, run!"
"KYAAAA!"
KWAGWANG! KUGWANG! KUGUNG!
Each blast rang out at a different pitch, but all of them tore through the compound walls as his four houses went up one after another. The place was already little more than rubble.
"There! Into the paddies, get down!"
KUWAAANG!
Had this one been packed with more? The loudest blast yet rolled across the night.
Fudududuk — thud. Thunk.
"Guhh!"
"Hk..."
Two of his daughters, lagging behind in their awkward nightclothes, took the shrapnel.
"Ghk...."
Yoriyoshi glanced back over his shoulder. He didn't need to turn around fully to know. They were almost certainly gone.
How had it come to this? It was all the fault of those Daehan devils. Curse the lot of them.
KUNG! KUKUNG! KUKWANG!
"Whoa..."
"Heh heh heh. What do you think, ma'am?"
This is incredible. Honestly, it's my first time seeing it in person.
"Now I get why you kids are obsessed."
This was genuinely magnificent. Absolutely mind-blowing. It wasn't like there was some colossal fireball or anything — the building just ceased to exist. That's the part that gets you.