The Roar of the Mountain King
Before long, Cha Gyeong-yeon had grown reasonably satisfied with Hong-wi's progress.
The young man still lacked the finely honed killing instinct that only hard experience could forge, but at this level he could easily hold his own against any common band of ruffians.
To think he's come this far in mere months. If only this man had been given enough time, the country would never have been stolen from him so easily.
Cha Gyeong-yeon's musings were cut short by Hong-wi's question.
"By the way, what brings you here? You said you were going out to gather supplies. And to return in such a hurry—did something happen?"
"Yes, indeed."
Cha Gyeong-yeon seemed, uncharacteristically, somewhat uneasy.
"Did you by any chance hear nothing last night?"
The two men stared at each other.
"We heard nothing."
Their dwelling was built to hold out the cold—a frame of logs sealed over with packed mud, the walls a full two ja thick, some sixty centimeters. Openings were rare, and what few existed were less windows than ventilation holes.
Hearing this, Cha Gyeong-yeon's expression eased somewhat.
"What is it, then?"
"A tiger. Yesterday, on the road, I happened to meet two peddlers. They said a man-eating tiger has been prowling this area of late."
A chill ran down the spines of Hong-wi and Ho-in.
A tiger was the kind of beast even seasoned hunters avoided.
"It's winter," Cha Gyeong-yeon said, continuing. "The beast must be starving."
Even the so-called King of the Mountain was no match for the winter cold, and in the depths of that season, prey grew scarce. Tigers were, by nature, fiercely territorial creatures—but when food ran short, they would sometimes slip beyond their boundaries and roam far afield.
Come to think of it, Hong-wi realized he had not seen a single tiger in all the months since his arrival here.
"From what the peddlers said, it seems this place has likely fallen within that beast's territory. That's why I hurried back."
"I see. And what do you intend to do?"
"We must take it."
"Take it? The tiger?"
Hong-wi was astonished. Even for the specially trained soldiers known as tiger-hunting armored guards, bringing down a tiger was no easy undertaking.
"Yes. I have already sent word."
"Sent word? To whom?"
"As it happens—to the master of this very house where you are staying, Your Excellency."
Hong-wi nodded slowly.
The house in which they were staying had been hidden with great care. Vast as the frontier wilds were, they were still lands where people lived, yet this spot was so remote that not a single traveler passed within a dozen li of it.
And yet, house aside, it was stocked amply with provisions to last the winter and firewood to burn. The building itself was well maintained, and looked as though it had been in use until quite recently.
"So that's it... Come to think of it, I haven't so much as laid eyes on my benefactor, let alone offered my thanks."
"Forgive me. He is an exceedingly busy man, and one who shuns company besides."
Cha Gyeong-yeon continued, "He will come calling before long. He'll be bringing preparations for the tiger hunt as well."
"A man who would hunt a tiger in the dead of winter—surely he must be a true warrior."
"No ordinary warrior."
At Cha Gyeong-yeon's words, curiosity stirred in Hong-wi as well. Just who could this man be, to earn praise of that caliber from Cha Gyeong-yeon himself?
"Then all the better. It will be no small trouble, I know, but I should like to pay my respects while we're at it."
"Very good. Now, let's get inside."
Even the great Cha Gyeong-yeon seemed to grow tense at the prospect of the tiger, and the three of them hurried indoors.
The next day, Cha Gyeong-yeon decided to skip the morning training he never otherwise missed. With a tiger prowling about, it was simply too dangerous.
"I'll take a look around the vicinity."
He meant to search for traces of the beast—to see whether it was near.
Hong-wi and Ho-in tried desperately to dissuade him.
"If you must go, then we come with you."
"This hunt is unlike any other."
In truth, they had gone hunting several times since arriving here. The hunts had proven excellent training in themselves.
From the most primitive ages, hunting had been both a means of survival and a forge for tempering strong warriors. It could even serve as superb military drill. A successful hunt demanded that hordes of beaters and hunters armed with spears and bows move in perfect coordination, tracking game as one body. That was why, in Joseon as well, hunting—despite its share of criticisms and burdens—had been carried on steadily as a form of military training.
But the hunts Hong-wi's party had attempted were of the roe deer and wild boar variety.
Even the wild boar was nothing to take lightly. It was a beast of prey in its own right, and the large ones weighed a good hundred gwan—some three hundred eighty kilograms. The creature could kick with its hooves, and, true to the very word for reckless headlong charge, could bolt forward like lightning. Worst of all were its dreadful tusks.
"And yet even such a boar is nothing before a tiger."
Cha Gyeong-yeon declared it flatly.
But Hong-wi would not yield.
"Three are better than one."
"Even so—"
In the end, Cha Gyeong-yeon gave in.
They made their preparations thoroughly.
"First, you must bathe."
Bathing before a hunt carried a superstitious meaning—warding off misfortune—but it was also because the senses of beasts were so keen. Where a tiger was concerned in particular, it could not be neglected. They bathed clean and changed into fresh clothes.
Breakfast was nothing grand—just roasted barley flour stirred into water. Food without any wafting scent, again by design. Having eaten lightly, they dressed in fur-lined hides and smeared charcoal dust over mud-painted skin for camouflage. From a distance, they looked scarcely different from beasts themselves.
The preparations did not end there. They wound hempen cloth tight around both arms and legs and bound it fast with ropes woven from kudzu vine. The hemp was steeped in oil and acorn extract, offering at least some protection against the sharp fangs of savage beasts—and above all against the terrible strength of their forepaws.
Preparations complete, they entered the mountains.
Snow lay deep on the slopes, and Hong-wi felt a shiver crawl over him. For the past several months these mountains had grown as familiar as his own front yard. Now they seemed bleak and menacing.
They pressed on, planning to circle back after roughly twenty or thirty li. Having walked enough to warm their blood, the cold felt less biting than they had feared. By midday, their tension had begun, little by little, to loosen.
"Look at this."
Cha Gyeong-yeon, walking ahead, suddenly stopped. He bent carefully at the waist and pointed a finger at what he had found.
Faint and half-faded, yet unmistakable: a round, plum-blossom patterned paw print pressed into the snow.
"A tiger."
"That's right. Must be fifty gwan or so in weight. A young one, I'd say—which is why the fool had the nerve to wander all the way into these parts."
Had the nerve...?
And just whom, pray, was the tiger supposed to be afraid of?
Cha Gyeong-yeon sprang to his feet and swept his eyes across the surroundings. The very moment he turned to look back at Hong-wi's party, a dreadful roar tore through the air.
The sound erupted like an explosion, and the old saying that mountains and rivers, grass and trees all trembled at it proved painfully accurate. Ho-in clapped his hands over his ears before he knew what he was doing.
"We should turn back now."
Cha Gyeong-yeon spoke through a grimace.
"We've entered its territory. That roar just now was a warning."
"Lucky it deigns to warn us at all."
muttered Ho-in, half his soul fled from his body.
They hurried back to the log house. But the real trouble came after.
The first problem was that the tiger's mournful cries could be heard from afar all through the night. The second was that the snow had begun to fall.
"No matter how bold a tiger may be, it rarely attacks a house where people live. But that beast has a fierce temper—it's decided our house has trespassed into its territory."
And it was no doubt starving besides.
"If it comes to this," Cha Gyeong-yeon went on, "we have a choice between two paths: either we take the beast, or we run. The trouble is..."
Hong-wi's party hung on his every word.
"...with snow falling like this, fleeing won't be so easy either. And even if we did run, there's nowhere in particular to go."
"Then we must take it."
Hong-wi was calm, almost matter-of-fact.
Ho-in was startled. "You fled all the way here, and now you'd speak of running somewhere else? If heaven meant for me to become tiger fodder in this place, it would never have brought me this far in the first place."
At some point, Hong-wi had come to regard the tiger as one and the same with those who hunted him—the very men who had driven him from his throne. Ho-in and Cha Gyeong-yeon said nothing.
They greeted the second day in low, cowed spirits. The horses were kept in the stable attached to the house, but a tiger could easily stage a surprise attack. Fortunately the stable was built as stoutly as the house itself, yet there was nothing to be done about the sound. At every distant roar, the sensitive creatures went mad with fear, thrashing about and even fouling themselves in terror.
Cha Gyeong-yeon spent the morning scouting around the house and discovered the tiger's tracks creeping steadily closer, though he said nothing of it. The other two, too, could clearly feel the killing intent thickening around them. Ho-in—far from timid, a man who belonged squarely among the bold—found his nerves growing tauter by the hour.
Small wonder. Even Cha Gyeong-yeon himself, the seasoned hunter, was tense without quite admitting it.
Hong-wi sat quietly in meditation, composed and unmoving.
From the second night into the small hours of the third, the tiger's cries grew fiercer and wilder still. Hunger was part of it, no doubt—but it sounded, too, like a final warning to the humans who, despite all this threatening, had not fled.
The three men were eating their meal in silence when a visitor arrived.
"What is that?"
At Hong-wi's words, the other two turned—and there was a pigeon fluttering in through the ventilation window. Cha Gyeong-yeon sprang up and drew the bird inside.
"A carrier pigeon."
Muttering, he pulled loose the small message bound to its leg. When he had finished reading, his face had brightened noticeably.
"They arrive tomorrow."
Fresh hope blazed alight in the three men's hearts. One day—just one more day, and deliverance would come.
That night was eerie. Had the tiger somehow sensed that reinforcements were coming? It seemed unlikely—yet the tiger was, after all, the wise spirit they called the Mountain Lord, and nothing about it would have been surprising.
Cha Gyeong-yeon told the other two, "All the better, really. Sleep deeply. Tomorrow, we fight."
With that, he lay down and was asleep at once. Hong-wi followed, and Ho-in, heart uneasy, sought his rest as well.
That night, truly, was silent.
The next morning, they rose early and readied themselves. There was no chance to heat water in peace, so they bathed in the cold and fortified themselves with the usual roasted grain porridge. Today, of all days, they would have to stand against the tiger that had tormented them for three days running, so they were meticulous about their protective gear.
Stepping into the yard, they loosened their bodies with light exercise. Suddenly, Cha Gyeong-yeon knelt and pressed his ear to the ground. Hong-wi and Ho-in exchanged puzzled looks, unable to fathom what he was doing—and then he rose to his feet and spoke.
"They're coming now."
Nothing could be heard. Nothing could be seen. Hong-wi and Ho-in tilted their heads in bewilderment. But after a short wait, a distant crunching of snow reached their ears.
Several men in fur hats were advancing through the drifts, leading three or four dogs. They halted some fifty paces from the stone wall that enclosed Hong-wi's house. No one spoke. Cha Gyeong-yeon called out.
"Are you Malyak, he who approaches?"
He, half-hidden behind the stone wall, still kept himself concealed from the strangers' sight—a bow in one hand, arrows slung in the other.
The men gave no answer, only stared steadily at Hong-wi's little band. It was a taut, breathless moment. Every one of them was tall past six cheok, broad and imposing; the man at their head was thick-boned, broad-chested, with shoulders squared wide and a weathered, granite look about him.
A little apart, at the rear, was another man wearing a horsehair hat pushed low over his brow. His face could not be made out clearly, yet somehow Hong-wi felt he had seen it before.
At length one of the men stepped forward and shouted back in a rough voice.
"Aye, I am. And by that voice—Gyeong-yeon, is it?"
His speech carried a trace of the northern Gwanbuk dialect, yet was nonetheless clean and refined.
Hong-wi was inwardly astonished. Since coming here he had often heard the wild folk speak Joseon's tongue, but their accents were so thick as to be utterly unlike the speech of the south—Hanyang speech above all. This man's, however, was reasonably polished.
Hong-wi looked him up and down. Most striking of all were his bright, gleaming eyes—sharp as a hawk's.
The man strode forward, step by deliberate step, both hands extended ahead of him, as if to show he bore no intention of fighting.
"It is so."
Cha Gyeong-yeon lowered his bow, rose, and came forward in turn. The two men stopped barely half a pace apart—and in the next instant, flung their arms around each other.
"You rascal—well, it's been far too long! Must be two, three years."
"And has Malyak been well in all the time since we parted?"
"Ha! None of that stiff talk—it spoils the fun."
"Forgive me, but... I gather Lord Sechang has not come with you?"
"The boy wanted to come, of course. But someone has to look after the Daehyeong."
The two were plainly old and trusted friends. The man called Malyak turned his gaze toward Hong-wi.
"That one—he's the man, isn't he? Am I right?"
"He is."
Cha Gyeong-yeon answered. But the man made no reply. He simply fixed Hong-wi with a long, hard stare.
It was a gaze like a drawn bowstring—and yet those eyes were as calm and cold as winter ice.