No Longer Your Highness
Hong-wi bowed his head.
Now she would remain here forever.
"And yet, those who lost their lives because of that man's betrayal are a different matter. Unlike me, they were people who deserved to live on into tomorrow."
At Hong-wi's words, Ho-in's eyes flared open as he stared down at Gongsaeng. In the darkness, his eyes seemed to blaze a cold blue, and yet at the same time they had settled into an icy stillness.
Gongsaeng barely managed to move his tongue, which was sizzling away to nothing.
"M-my lor-d…!"
Hong-wi snatched up the fallen blade and stepped toward Gongsaeng. Standing tall before him in the shadows, Hong-wi no longer showed the youthful face of a sixteen-year-old boy — only a cold, crushing pressure hung about him.
And yet the hand that gripped the sword trembled faintly.
He could not easily bring the blade down.
"My lord."
It was Ho-in's voice. Somewhere along the way, it had grown calm.
"If it pleases you to grant permission, might I be the one to strike this man down?"
Hoin glared at Gongsaeng.
"I beg you — grant a son the chance to avenge his father."
Hong-wi gave a slow nod.
"You have my leave."
"My lor-d…!"
Before Gongsaeng could force out another word, the blade in Ho-in's hand swept through the air in one smooth half-arc. For a single instant, time seemed to freeze in a chill silence.
Gongsaeng looked up at Hong-wi with hollow, empty eyes, but then, with the wet sound of blood rushing free, he pitched forward and collapsed.
With a dry, heavy thud. Hong-wi did not take his eyes off the fallen man for a long moment.
At last, he lowered his gaze.
"So this is how it ends."
"This is not the end, my lord. It is the beginning," said Ho-in.
He turned to Hong-wi with eyes hardened by resolve, then threw himself down upon the ground.
"My lord! My father commanded me to serve you to the very end. Now that he has fallen, from this day forward it is I, the unworthy son, who shall attend you."
"I am grateful. But before that—"
Hong-wi looked down at the body of the old man Jeon Jung-jae.
"A loyal servant's body cannot be left like this. He was your father, and to me, a loyal retainer for the ages."
At those words, Ho-in turned toward his fallen father. For an instant his eyes wavered violently, but the next moment, he clenched his jaw.
"The road to the northern frontier is long, and our pursuers will not give up. My father would never forgive me for wasting time grieving over his body."
Ho-in's voice was resolute, but Hong-wi could feel the sorrow and guilt churning thickly beneath it.
How much it must weigh on the man, to flee without even being able to tend his own father's remains!
Hong-wi lowered his head as well. What else could be said?
"I am sorry… But even so, I cannot leave your father behind like this. Now then — Master Han Ga-ryeong."
Hong-wi turned to Han Ga-ryeong, who had not spoken a single word until that moment.
"I do not know why you helped me. Perhaps I never will. But since you saw fit to aid me, might I ask one more favor?"
In answer, Han Ga-ryeong gave a wordless nod, turned, and pointed to a single spot. When Hong-wi looked, he saw a deep pit dug into the earth there.
Seeing it, Ho-in gave a bitter smile.
"It seems they dug the pit to bury us in, ahead of time."
"So it would appear."
The three men laid Jeon Jung-jae's body into the pit without a word. How wretched a grave it was, for all the honor the old man deserved.
Emotion welled up in Hong-wi.
"Rest well, my loyal servant… Thanks to you, I was able to press on toward tomorrow. Ah, if only you could walk that road beside me! But now you must stay here and rest, while only this foolish man must hurry on his way. Sleep in peace… Ah, how unworthy a resting place this is for a loyal retainer of the ages! The day I return, I shall bury you with the rites of a great minister."
When his lament was done, tears were streaming down Hong-wi's cheeks.
Ho-in too prostrated himself before his father's grave. He spoke no words and shed no cries of grief — he only bowed his head. And yet his whole body was sobbing.
At length, Ho-in rose to his feet.
"My lord, the road is long."
"Mm."
Hong-wi nodded — but one matter remained to be settled. The two men turned to Han Ga-ryeong.
Han Ga-ryeong pulled his straw hat down low over his eyes.
"My road ends here. This is where you and I part ways, my lord."
"I see."
There was nothing else Hong-wi could possibly have said.
"I cannot say how long you will manage to throw off your pursuers… but I pray you stay vigilant on your way. And one more thing."
Han Ga-ryeong drew something from the breast of his robe.
"Take this with you. It will be of more use to you, my lord, than it ever would be to me."
Hong-wi accepted what he offered. It was a paejjok — an official tally — with something inscribed upon it, but in the darkness it was hard to make out.
Hong-wi looked up at Han Ga-ryeong. A thin smile crossed the man's lips.
"Read it when day breaks. Now go. The road is long, and the pursuit has only just begun. Your road, my lord, is not ending now — it is beginning."
"Thank you."
Paying Hong-wi's answer no mind, Han Ga-ryeong slipped away between the shadows and vanished without a trace. Hong-wi watched his retreating figure for a moment, then turned away.
Ho-in asked, "Who in the world was that man? You said he was one of Han Myeong-hoe's people — why on earth would he go this far?"
"I could not tell you. An enigma of a man. Perhaps someday we will learn — but at the very least, one thing he said was true. The road is long, and we must go as far as we can before the night is out."
"Yes, my lord."
The two men quickened their pace in silence. Only a single wisp of graceful wind lingered behind them, gently caressing the abandoned bodies of the dead.
The northward road was a path of suffering. They had no horses, so they had to travel on foot, and the burdens they could carry had their limits. Beyond that, the roads themselves were no comfort — they had to avoid the main routes and keep to secluded, rugged mountain trails.
With an anxious heart, Ho-in tallied in his head what remained of their provisions. Five days at most, if that? Time was a problem too. Autumn had already arrived, and in the mountains the cold would descend all the sooner. If they did not simply wander the wilderness until they dropped dead of exhaustion or starvation, freezing to death was all but certain.
They decided to rest briefly on the slope of a ridge. There was no leisure to leisurely build a fire, so they tipped raw rice straight from their hands into their mouths, chewing it down little by little, softened with a few swallows of water.
"Where must we go from here?" Hong-wi asked.
"For now, we must hide in the foothills of Chiaksan. That was my father's plan," Ho-in answered.
Chiaksan lay to the northwest of Yeongwol. Hong-wi nodded.
"Chiaksan… and after that?"
A rather troubled look came over Ho-in's face.
"The truth is, my father never saw fit to tell me in detail what we were to do afterward. But he did say we were to go to Wonju."
"Wonju? Did you say Wonju?"
It was an unexpected answer. Wonju was the seat of the Gangwon Provincial Office — from Hong-wi's standpoint, it was nothing short of walking into the tiger's den.
Ho-in answered slowly, as if he were not entirely convinced himself.
"Yes… we were meant to meet a collaborator there. It was to be that man who would arrange our way to the northern frontier."
That made sense. Hong-wi could see it. Neither Ho-in nor the old man Jeon Jung-jae had any connection to the north — they were Gyeongsang men through and through. And the old man was never one to move without a plan. The collaborator, no doubt, had ties to the northern frontier.
"I see. Then who is this collaborator?"
"That alone, he never told me."
Hong-wi's shoulders sagged. The most important piece was missing.
Even supposing they somehow made it into Wonju, how were they supposed to find this man? By the time they reached the town, the whole place would have been stirred up into a hornet's nest.
Hong-wi sank into thought.
"What do you think we ought to do?"
"If I only knew who this collaborator was, I would not hesitate to deliver you to Wonju, my lord."
Ho-in's face was plainly clouded with vexation.
"I beg your forgiveness, my lord."
"This is not your fault. Nor your father's. Countless people staked their lives on risings for my sake, and every time, the secret leaked out and they all met with ghastly ends. How could I ever fault your father for his caution?"
Even with Hong-wi's consolation, Ho-in could not suppress his gloom. If only they had at least learned the man's name…
"For now, let us simply think about what must be done. Listening to you, it sounds as though you are not keen on going to Wonju at all."
"No, my lord. It is far too dangerous."
Ho-in answered without hesitation. Well, anyone would have answered the same way. What kind of fugitives walk straight into a government office crawling with soldiers?
"Fair enough. Were our circumstances different, I would think the same. But right now, Wonju is the only road left to us."
"My lord?"
Ho-in looked as though he had been struck by lightning.
"I mean exactly what I said. Look at our state. No matter how sparingly we eat, this rations will not last more than a few days. We have no winter clothes. We have nothing. And we have no guide. There is no way we survive more than a month in these mountains. If so, then even the thinnest thread of hope — the only way we survive — is to go to Wonju and search for the collaborator. Besides."
Unbelievable as it seemed, Hong-wi allowed himself a faint smile at this point.
"Wonju may turn out to be safer than we think."
"My lord? What do you mean…?"
"Think about it. Do you imagine that anyone would expect a man on the run to come strolling right up to the Governor of Gangwon's own front door?"
Ah — what sheer audacity…
Ho-in stood with his mouth agape, unable to speak.
"Perhaps that is the very reason your father and this collaborator chose to meet in Wonju of all places."
"…Now that you say it, that may well be so. But even so, what chance do we truly have of crossing paths with this collaborator? We do not even know what he looks like or where he might be."
"No, of course we don't."
Hong-wi agreed grimly.
"But whatever happens, without that collaborator we cannot reach the northern frontier on our own strength — and even if we did arrive there, what then? Whatever hardships stand in our way, we must meet this man. On him rests every hope we have."
Reluctant as he was, Ho-in could not ultimately refuse to concede that Hong-wi was right. Like his father, Ho-in was a stubborn, hardy warrior, and above all his loyalty to Hong-wi was genuine. But he was by no means adept at long-term survival in the wilderness — and when it came to the ways and customs of the northern frontier, he knew scarcely more than Hong-wi did.
"Prince Geumseong must have prepared for the chance that things went wrong. Raising the rising was something only the Vice Minister could set in motion, and looking back, his manner was always strangely lukewarm about it. My father likely sensed it too. When the report came from Sunheung, he had every preparation for flight already in hand — as though he had known in advance."
Hong-wi listened in silence to Ho-in's explanations as the man walked ahead. They had to keep moving, so there was no time to sit at leisure and talk.
"But we cannot know what preparations this collaborator may have made."
"One thing is certain, though — he has connections in the north," Hong-wi answered, breathing hard.
"That's right. Take care, my lord — the path is slippery here," Ho-in warned.
The going was rough even for him; for Hong-wi, who had spent most of his life within palace walls, it went without saying. In truth, the remarkable thing was that he had managed to keep up at all.
"But Uncle Geumseong can have had no such connections. When the rising was raised, was there truly no sign that those northern men took part in it?"
In Hong-wi's memory, there was nothing of his uncle Prince Geumseong traveling to the northern frontier, or befriending the people there.
"None, my lord. But there was one unusual man."
"An unusual man?"
"While we were at Sunheung, I ran a few errands for him — there was a certain scholar. A man who used the surname Jeong."
"The surname Jeong… you never learned his name?"
Hong-wi suddenly recalled the scholar Jeong Ho-chan, whom he had met on the road to Yeongwol and who had read his fortune.
"I do not know. Keeping the secret mattered above all else, so he generally went by Master Jeong. Thinking back on it now, he was a rather strange man."
"Strange how?"
"Yes… he never revealed what lay beneath the surface. I half wondered whether he was a spy sent by Suyang, yet he also came and went freely at the residence where Prince Geumseong dwelled."
"Hmm."
Hong-wi found himself picturing Jeong Ho-chan's face again. Could it be the same man? Of course, there was no way to know.
And yet — had it not been Jeong Ho-chan who handed him that letter, as if he had somehow foreseen that all of this would come to pass?
Attend to the strategy of the surroundings. Travel north. A sudden chill spread through his belly.
Did he foresee, too, that Uncle Geumseong's undertaking would fail? If so…
Hong-wi shook his head. Come to think of it, the odds of Uncle Geumseong's rising ever succeeding had been slim from the start. Even as a free man, his uncle had possessed no real power beyond his standing as a royal kinsman. Even if Magistrate Yi Bo-heum of Sunheung had been a steadfast supporter, what could a single provincial magistrate, so far from Hanyang, possibly have accomplished?
Seen that way, there was nothing strange at all about preparing for the chance that things went wrong.
Whatever the case, this plan to travel north was surely touched by that man Jeong Ho-chan. Someday, I will learn the truth of it.
Hong-wi walked on in silence.
Ho-in's voice reached him.
"Mind yourself, my lord. This stretch is steeper still."
"Wait — there is something I should have said long ago."
Ho-in, climbing up by grasping at tree roots, turned back in puzzlement.
"I ought to have said this long since, but it kept slipping my mind. Am I not now a man who has turned his back on the past? The title 'Your Highness' no longer suits me. So when you address me — do not call me that!"
"My lord, this is madness!"
Hoin scrambled back down in alarm, nearly sliding the rest of the way to the bottom of the slope. Hong-wi caught his arm. Barely steadying himself, Ho-in threw himself flat to the ground.
"How can you say such a thing, my lord! How could a lowly wretch like me—"
Ho-in bowed his head. Hong-wi smiled warmly.
"It is quite all right. Were it not for you and your father, my life would have ended long ago. And look at what I am now. 'Your Highness,' of what? I could not even hold my throne, and could I not even protect the loyal men who rose to follow me? As of this moment, I have no right to be called 'Your Highness' any longer — and I do not wish to be. At least, not now!"
Hong-wi clenched his fist.
It was the conclusion he had reached after long, painful thought.