The End of the War
In the year 2353 of Daehan, war had begun with the Han Dynasty the previous autumn.
Winter had passed, and spring had arrived, stirring life back into the land.
And yet, in both nations, the flame of life was being snuffed out even today.
By Daehan's count, some seventy thousand dead. Estimated Han losses: 1.2 million.
Even for Daehan, the toll would have been catastrophically higher without the Holy Water — in Han territory, people were dying in droves to tetanus and sepsis.
"Are you really going to do this?"
"Yes."
Through espionage, they had obtained a map of Han territory and pinpointed the location of the capital: Wuchang, along the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River.
They would mobilize a massive force and burn everything, starting from the lower Yangtze on up.
So many people had already died, and yet the enemy showed no intention of ending it.
"Seize the river and send in the army in earnest."
Looks like there's no escaping my fate of being recorded in history as a slaughterer.
Well — if that's what I want, that's what I get.
"I'll have to grow a lot of soybeans for a while..."
"Yes..."
It's spring already, and that Emperor Wu clearly hasn't thought this through. Does he not look at the state of the war and see there's no hope?
And if we drag this out, it won't be good for us either. They'll be throwing bodies at their efforts to copy our weapons.
The scorched-earth campaign across the Han heartland began in earnest. It was a tactic that should have belonged to the defenders.
For us — hauling endless supplies to the front by sea — it did not apply.
Summer, 2354. The rainy season briefly halted the soldiers' advance, and the war slipped into a lull.
By then, we had burned some twenty major cities — and counting the smaller towns and villages, the number was beyond reckoning.
Now the trebuchets were hurling jars of flaming oil. Why bother closing to arrow range when all we'd get in return was a shower of arrows?
"How many people do you think have died?"
"More than can be counted, Your Holiness..."
"I'll probably be punished someday."
"Even you, Haneul-nim?"
"Who knows."
Maybe I'm being punished already. My heart hurts so much.
More people will starve and freeze to death in the days ahead than have died so far. Too many fields and forests have burned.
Would this war claim ten million lives? Twenty million? The numbers were so vast they had lost all meaning.
"Have we pushed up to the middle reaches by now?"
"By total distance, we've advanced halfway up the river."
"Guard the mid-river strongholds well. Send more soldiers if needed."
This was enemy territory — they couldn't just send troops en masse. An army without supply was already a dead one.
"We've already surpassed four hundred thousand. It should be enough."
"Incredible..."
Just keeping them fed and supplied was a staggering feat. The Holy Water had done enormous work there, too, easing the burden of water.
"It's hard to feed them all something tasty, isn't it?"
"Yes. Once the war ends, I'll see that they eat their fill, without limits."
They were being considerate in their own way, but given the distance, the best they could manage was potato porridge with strips of jerky, or rice porridge.
"I wish it would end soon."
"As do I. I never knew war was like this..."
"That's why I told you — big or small, war is best left unfought."
"You're right. I was shortsighted."
Whether many died or few, to the families who lost a son or a husband, it was as if they had lost everything.
In the side hall of the imperial palace in China's capital, the rain fell in sheets.
"Your Majesty, I beg of you..."
"Is there truly no other way?"
"If the army consumes any more grain, half the realm will starve or freeze before this winter is out. I implore you to reconsider, Your Majesty."
The Emperor Wu, who had forged the greatest golden age in Han history, was no fool.
He knew it too — that once this rainy season ended, they would reach the capital before long.
Burning everything in their path, taking not a single slave — from such an advance, it was obvious they had no intention of occupying the land.
"What must we give them to make them withdraw?"
"Might I suggest, as with the Xiongnu of old, sending a princess and tribute..."
"Hoo..."
He despised himself — for the arrogance bred by victory after victory in his endless campaigns. He should have studied his enemy thoroughly before fighting.
That inexorable advance, even as they burned his countless soldiers, his every field and city.
There was no way it was the small, measly kingdom his wretched ministers had drawn on their maps.
The fortresses to the north held more men than the entire Han army, and yet they never crossed the walls. Had we never provoked them, none of this would have happened.
"Then we shall sue for peace."
"Your grace is boundless, Your Majesty..."
While we waited for the rainy season to end and the river waters to recede, an envoy from the Han Dynasty arrived.
The Chancellor had gone to meet the envoy at Gunpo and returned.
"Peace and friendship? What's that supposed to mean?"
"When I asked, they said it means making peace and living on friendly terms."
"Friendly terms, my foot. A truce is about all it amounts to."
"They wish to send a princess and tribute. What shall we do?"
Tribute I understand, but what am I supposed to do with a princess?
"We don't need people. Gather gold and silver, quick as you like, and tell them to hand it over!"
"Understood."
It's not as if I'm going to take their princess and marry her off to some dead soldier's family. What use would she even be?
"Shall we say a hundred gwan of gold apiece?"
"I'd say two hundred at least. It ought to be more than what the kids bring in, shouldn't it?"
"Huh?"
One gwan is my body weight, you know? No wonder the warehouses were bursting at the seams.
"Count silver at one-twentieth the value of gold."
"Understood."
Late in the year 2354, just after the rains ended and autumn began, peace was made with the Han Dynasty.
The terms: an annual tribute of two hundred gwan of gold.
Daehan had swallowed the loss of one hundred seventy thousand grown men. For the Han, the dead were beyond counting.
Nearly half the central plains of Han territory had burned, and a third of their cities were gone.
Ironically, back home, the number of registered newborns during the war had been staggering.
Daehan was now in a period of mourning. It had been decided that the young men fallen on the battlefield would be honored until the year's end.
A park had been made in the mountains east of Sinsi.
There the belongings and remains of the dead were enshrined, and fifty-three great monuments bore the names of all one hundred seventy thousand, carved one by one — ragged and mismatched in size, for the largest stones on the mountain had simply been chosen and hauled down.
Then they were raised in neat rows, facing Sinsi.
Glug... glug... glug...
Harsh soju soaked into the monuments. It was so fierce that the air all around was thick with the smell of alcohol.
"Watch over it well, all of you."
A thousand years. And another thousand after that. Because this is the country you gave everything to protect.
The cold wind blew, and until the very last day of that winter, I came around every single day to pour the drink.
The Han Dynasty had been dutifully selling everything they could along the Silk Road, and paying their gold tribute on the dot, year after year.
Impressive, really. Two hundred gwan of gold is nobody's pet dog. At fifty kilograms a gwan, that's a full ten tons. Wow!
This year marked the twenty-second since the war's end. Emperor Wu — the man who had started a war against us — had died.
The deathbed testament he left behind was a masterpiece: "Never, under any circumstance, invade Daehan."
Apparently it was the regret of his lifetime.
"They're asking to reduce the gold?"
"Yes. It seems to be a strain."
They paid so faithfully at first — why is it suddenly too much?
"Should we let them reduce it?"
"Their revenue likely isn't what it used to be."
"That figures."
The kids had finally quit banditry — well, not quit exactly, but scaled it back — and gone into trade.
Starting from southern China and stretching all the way to Southeast Asia, they'd opened up an enormous network of ports.
And now they were trading with a multitude of nations — the small kingdoms of southern India, the Kushan dynasty in the north, and everything coming and going through the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea.
They absorbed the cultures of the Mediterranean and the Middle East, had been weaving all manner of textiles since early on, and their dye-work and metalwork were nothing to sneeze at, were they?
Cloth, garments, ornaments — right down to paper, they had nothing they couldn't sell.
"Shall we bring it down to a hundred and fifty gwan or so?"
"Yes. That seems wise."
Didn't the Second World War break out partly because of those ridiculous war reparations?
"Ease it down gradually, and keep an eye on things. It's not as if we're going to milk them for all eternity."
"Understood. I'll frame it as an act of mercy, then."
"Right, exactly. They started the whole thing in the first place, didn't they? They should be grateful we're letting them off at all."
They'll hold a grudge anyway. Wretched bastards.
"Oh! Take iron and copper off their hands, too."
"Iron I understand, but copper?"
Iron was worth taking in bulk even just to melt down — it was war materiel, after all. The more they paid out, the fewer weapons they could forge.
"Just take whatever they offer, is what you mean."
And how exactly do I explain that copper will be desperately useful later on, even though it's surprisingly hard to find?
"What do you think about luring foreign merchants to Dado?"
"We've already posted notices along the nearby coasts, and they're making their way there on their own."
Because we sold so much abroad, they were coming to us — from Rome, the dynasties of India, even the nations of Southeast Asia — all crammed aboard rickety little ships.
"We're the ones giving and selling — what do they think they're going to get out of coming all this way?"
"Hard to say. Perhaps they believe they have something worth selling to us."
And there's the problem. These people have to sell their goods and sail home, but nothing sells, so they hang around month after month.
They brawled, they turned to thieving — it was nothing but trouble.
"Send plenty of people to Dado. Make sure the natives don't suffer for it."
"Yes. If it comes to that, we can send the kids over to handle things. Heh heh heh."
What? Why are you laughing so sinisterly? What are you planning?!
"Wh-what are you going to do?"
"Well, if their cargo happens to vanish in an unfortunate accident on the way over, that would solve it, wouldn't it?"
Huh? You're going to sink them?!
"Hey. Still, killing them is a bit..."
"Kill them? Kill what? Just the cargo! Only the cargo!"
Oh? So now they're going back to banditry after all?
"But our ships are way too conspicuous, aren't they?"
Search the whole world, and aren't we the only ones sailing proper ocean-going ships? We'd be made in no time.
"We'll copy just about any vessel. Something like one of those Han ships over there would be nice, wouldn't it?"
"Hm. So you're dead set on doing this?"
So they really are going through with it.
"I don't see any other way, Your Holiness."
In other words — stash some ships somewhere along the coast and hop aboard whenever the pirating mood strikes.
The ships would be modeled on other nations' vessels, with a bit of modification — so I suppose there'd be no crime they haven't tried?
If ours are the only ships left on the sea, won't foreign trade ships go extinct?
Barely ten years passed before trade ships began dying out in our waters.
"Is this our fault too?"
"I'd say it is, Your Holiness."
"I'd say," my foot — there's a world of difference between "probably" and "definitely," you rascal!
"You're telling me overland Silk Road trade has grown?"
To turn a profit, you'd need to load ten times the cargo by ship — but out at sea, apparently, all you see is our vessels.
So the story went, they'd started moving their trade back onto land.
The Xiongnu had wrecked the Steppe Road, and the Han had wrecked the sea lanes. Both nations' strategy: sell cheap, in bulk, at low quality.
"Doesn't this just work out even better for us?"
"For now, yes. The two nations seem pleased simply to be making money at the moment. They're not thinking very deeply."
Shipping goods by sea and hauling them overland are worlds apart in difficulty and volume.
They're happy to be selling in a rush right now, but before long, their prices will keep sinking while ours keep climbing — won't they?
"Living for today, are they?"
"Perhaps they have their reasons?"
"Who knows?"
What could they possibly gain from flooding the market with cheap luxury goods?
These aren't household necessities — they're luxuries. Surely they don't imagine we're going to run out of money and fall on hard times?
"Oh! How's that artisan school doing?"
"It's very popular with the women."
A while back, we had gathered skilled craftspeople — the likes of the grandmothers of Dado — and founded a school.
Students learned basic techniques and know-how first; to study a craft in earnest, they had to win an artisan's favor.
Most of them ended up marrying into the trade, joining the family through wedlock.
Well — even a little instruction was enough to make ornaments worth selling, so it was no wonder so many came knocking.