The Price of Mercy
"Your chief committed the crime of daring to refuse the tribute owed to the Dudu of the Jianzhou Guard. That is the price he pays now — that is what became of him. Those who defy the Elder Dudu can never escape annihilation, whenever it may come."
The people could not bring themselves to look where Biriherimdon was pointing.
None of them had the courage to gaze upon their former chief, frozen forever atop that tall pole.
"Since you ask for my story, I will tell you this much: I have never once shown mercy to tribes that stood against the Elder Dudu. I only savor watching them die in exquisite agony. That is all."
It was a cruel pronouncement devoid of even a whisper of compassion.
Somewhere in the crowd, someone broke into sobs.
The weight of having one's fate callously pronounced upon them was more than any could bear.
"But I intend to test you."
A test...?
The shoulders of the village men twitched, one after another.
So it was true — even in moments like this, people strained to find some sliver of hope.
"I wish to know whether there is anyone here brave enough to offer up a single life for the sake of the tribe."
Someone who would give his life for the tribe...?
The people swallowed dryly.
Biriherimdon abruptly stopped pacing, then bellowed like a thunderclap.
"Is there no one?"
Silence. All of them darted nervous glances at one another.
Biriherimdon looked upon them as a man looks upon insects.
"Is there truly no one?"
Then someone rose to his feet with an unsteady motion.
Recognizing him, the corner of Biriherimdon's mouth curved up ever so slightly.
I knew it would be you.
"Ho-ho."
Biriherimdon strode forward with measured steps.
Stopping before Ban Da-hong, he squared his shoulders and stood his ground against the youth, the sun blazing at his back.
Ban Da-hong had not yet entirely shed the last traces of boyhood, and though his frame was hardly frail for his years, his opponent was a mountain of a man — and so the youth found himself swallowed whole, cast entirely into the man's shadow.
Biriherimdon gazed down at the young man in silence, his eyes bleak and joyless.
A suffocating stillness settled over them.
No one — not a single soul — could manage so much as a word.
It was Biriherimdon who finally broke the quiet, after a long while.
"I knew it would be you who stepped forward. Ban Da-hong..."
"If I come forward — will you spare the villagers?"
The youth strained to force his voice into something resolute, but he could not keep it from trembling thin as a reed.
Biriherimdon did not answer.
His gaze traveled down the length of Ban Da-hong, from crown to foot.
Having taken his measure of the sturdy, lean, well-wrought body, Biriherimdon grinned.
"And do you have the courage for such a thing? It means bearing agony until the moment you die."
Ban Da-hong turned and looked back at his terror-stricken kinsmen.
Biriherimdon gazed down at him with an air of leisurely amusement.
He had witnessed this scene countless times before.
What manner of pleasure will this one bring me...?
However bravely a man stepped forward, in the final moment he almost always failed to master his fear and thrashed about in ugly, unseemly despair.
Only the rarest few...
"Yes. I will."
"Hm? What was that?"
Biriherimdon asked with deliberate languor, as though to lash the young man's resolve one more time, to test whether it would hold.
But Ban Da-hong seemed to have hardened his heart completely.
"Do as you wish with me. Only, show mercy to them."
"Mercy, you say!"
Biriherimdon repeated the word as though he scarcely understood its meaning.
"I know nothing of this thing called mercy... but still, I admire your spirit. I had thought Ban Village held nothing but cowards — and here I find a man among them!"
A dry, grating laugh descended heavily upon the heads of the people.
"Very well. I grant you your mercy!"
The chieftains, who until then had watched in silence, stared at one another in astonishment.
Biriherimdon — that Biriherimdon — had granted mercy!
It was an astonishing thing.
Only two people, Chahar and Hong-wi, remained utterly motionless.
They still could not make sense of it. What in the world...
Then Ban Da-hong spoke.
"Do you swear it?"
"I, Biriherimdon, do not speak twice. You there — Danganmilsu!"
"Yes, Zhihui."
The broad-shouldered warrior called Danganmilsu bowed his head.
"Take this one with us."
"And the rest of them?"
At Danganmilsu's question, Biriherimdon gave a careless shrug, as if to say, why ask what you already know?
"Kill them."
Ban Da-hong's face froze chalk-white.
"But... the promise...!"
"I said I would show mercy. I never said I would spare their lives."
Biriherimdon smiled darkly.
"By nature I take pleasure in slaughtering those who deserve death slowly, granting them the fullest measure of pain. So consider this my mercy — I will let them end quickly, without suffering."
Before Ban Da-hong could cry out anything more, the massacre had begun.
Biriherimdon's men drove their blades straight into the bodies of the bound villagers.
Long practice had made such work routine, and their movements were mechanical.
More horrifying still was their expression — utterly bored, as though they were nothing but dull laborers at their task...
Chunk. Chunk. Chunk...
The death-screams of the slaughtered dragged on and on, long and lingering.
The old were not spared, nor the women — not even the little children.
The chieftains trembled where they stood.
Hong-wi, caught in the very theater of that slaughter, could not tear his eyes away, his lips bitten white.
His two fists were clenched tight.
Suddenly Ban Da-hong swayed, as though the strength had drained from both his legs, and Biriherimdon's thick arm shot out to seize him.
"There, there. You mustn't buckle so soon... You haven't forgotten, have you?"
Ban Da-hong stared at Biriherimdon with hollow, empty eyes.
"From this moment on, you will serve me until the day you die. Let us see... it may prove amusing to watch just how far that courage of yours carries you. Watching spineless wretches topple like scattered straw is one sort of diversion — but breaking a strong, hale man is a pleasure without equal!"
Biriherimdon laughed, bleak and cold.
His men laughed along with him.
There was not the faintest trace of hesitation or remorse in that laughter.
Then Biriherimdon wiped the smile from his face and turned to Temusi'i.
"Ho there, Temusi'i. You've seen it all. I've made certain of it with these corpses, so pay the agreed price and take them away. We lodge here tonight; tomorrow we burn the village and move on. Settle accounts before then."
"I have nothing to dispute."
Hong-wi answered quietly.
His clenched fists trembled, thin and fine, at his sides.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
The threat to erase every trace of Ban Village — a warning meant for the chieftains of Sahalcha — had been made in earnest.
The household goods of the slaughtered villagers, men and women, old and young alike, were thrown into the fire and used by the warriors to warm themselves by its side flames.
It was already spring, but after nightfall the cold came on deeper than one would expect.
The livestock, too, were all put to the knife.
Lee Go-nap-hap eyed the cattle and horses with a look of covetous regret, but the warriors were in high spirits.
These creatures were also things to be 'burned and destroyed' — but how much to burn, and in what manner to destroy them, was a matter on which neither Lee Man-ju nor Biriherimdon felt any pressing strictness.
So long as they were destroyed, surely that was enough?
The meat, roasted evenly to a turn, found its way into the warriors' bellies.
Hong-wi said nothing at all.
The screams of those who had died before his eyes would not leave his mind.
The image of the young mother, skewered on a spear while cradling her infant; the image of the baby, crawling toward its fallen mother, likewise impaled.
The blank faces of Lee Man-ju's men, who had carried it all out with mechanical precision, rose before him as well.
Hong-wi shuddered.
"Your Highness."
Ho-in came close and spoke to him.
"I won't say I'm sorry. There was no other way."
"No, there was not, Your Highness."
Ho-in shook his head.
"You did well."
Hong-wi turned his head and looked at him.
The shock had not yet faded from Ho-in's eyes either.
"I was on edge the whole time, wondering what that butcher would do to Your Highness... but you showed courage, and you did well."
Hong-wi gazed at Ho-in for a long moment, then turned his eyes away.
"I could not save them."
"If that butcher weren't such a madman... none of this is Your Highness's fault. The fault lies with Lee Man-ju, and with that lunatic Biriherimdon! Whatever else is true, they were resolved to kill every soul in this village."
Ho-in spoke with firm conviction.
Even so, Hong-wi's heart would not settle.
Just then Cha Gyeong-yeon entered.
"Your Highness, you should rise."
There was something strangely excited in his voice.
"What is it?"
"The chieftains are asking for you."
"The chieftains?"
Hong-wi echoed in puzzlement.
For a moment he wondered which chieftains they meant, then quickly realized — the chieftains of Sahalcha.
Hong-wi and Ho-in hurried out of their quarters.
The chieftains were seated in a circle around the bonfire.
Chahar recognized Hong-wi and offered him a greeting.
"Lord Temusi'i."
When Hong-wi's party reached the fireside, a remarkable sight unfolded before them.
Every chieftain, Chahar at their head, was paying him formal respects.
Hong-wi waved his hands in alarm.
"What is the meaning of this? Please, stop."
"Not a chance. You have earned the right to be treated so."
Chahar said quietly.
"Not one of us could step forward for the people of Ban Village. You alone, Temusi'i, stood up for them with courage — a man you had never met, no kin of yours, not even of the same blood-stock. And here, in this very place, I ask your forgiveness for having kept you at a distance in my heart, calling you a Joseon man."
"Please, don't. After all, I—"
Hong-wi answered in a subdued voice.
The screams still had not left his ears.
Ah — the chubby little fingers of that baby, reaching out toward its dying mother...
Hong-wi closed his eyes.
"I could change... nothing. Not one thing."
"And yet you stepped forward."
Chahar said.
"You could not save the lives of the people of Ban Village, it is true... but you saw to it that their bodies would not be abandoned to the dirt, that their souls would not be left to wander the nine heavens without rest. That alone is a thing worth thanking."
It had strayed far from his original intent, but because Hong-wi had offered to buy even the corpses of Ban Village's people, they were at least able to hold a funeral.
The frontier tribes were no different in this — when a person died, they too believed the dead should be laid to rest with care, and that leaving a body to rot was the gravest of desecrations.
"Whatever you spent, we chieftains will gather it among ourselves and repay you."
"That will not be necessary, Elder."
Hong-wi replied.
Chahar and the chieftains all looked at him with wide eyes.
"What I did, I did as a human being. It was not done in hopes of any price."
For a while, no one spoke.
At length, Chahar opened his mouth.
"Then let me be honest with you. Why hide it? I mistrusted you — because you were a Joseon man, and above all because you were a merchant. Now I ask your forgiveness a second time. I misjudged you."
Chahar continued in a low voice, weighing each word with care.
"From this day forward, you are one of us — a man of Sahalcha. Never again will anyone of Sahalcha look upon you as a stranger, and whenever you come to this land, you will be welcomed always with the honors due a brother. All of you, give your consent."
The chieftains nodded, one and all, as if in full agreement.
Cha Gyeong-yeon could only stare in open disbelief.
The frontier folk of Sahalcha were a markedly insular people.
Most border tribes were, but these men opened their hearts to none outside a tight circle of blood kin — and to a Joseon man, of all things...
Even that Chahar would never have taken Hong-wi in so readily had the village not been short of grain.
Yet Hong-wi, more than any hundred words, could feel in his chest the sincerity of the chieftains, carried in their very eyes.
He bowed his head.
"I am grateful that you would say so. I, in turn, will spare nothing for the sake of Sahalcha."
"That's a strange thing for a merchant to say."
One of the elder chieftains laughed heartily.
Thanks to him, the mood loosened at once.
"I am called Basita. My mukun is Xilin."
"Temusi'i."
It went without saying, but the tribes scattered across Sahalcha shared the same hala among themselves, bound together by loose ties of common blood.
In other words, these were the old natives of the land — dwelling here since long before Lee Man-ju's Hurigai or the Tung clan's Odoli had come down from the distant northern Ilan hala.
For that reason, their bonds with one another were extraordinarily strong.
Which was another way of saying they were intensely exclusive toward outsiders.
"What the Hurigai did today — heaven and earth alike will rage at it."
The chieftains all nodded.
Hong-wi's party agreed as well.
Whether the heaven-and-earth spirits the Jurchens served and the native gods the people of Joseon worshiped were one and the same, he could not say — but even if they differed, surely no god would look upon today's atrocity and rejoice.
Even the great compassionate Buddha Himself would consent to send these asuras down into the Avici hell.
"The moon is fated to wane once it waxes, and even the darkest night must see the sun rise. The Hurigai cannot lord their tyranny over this land forever. But until that day comes, every one of us must stay vigilant. They can conjure a second Ban Village, and a third, whenever it pleases them."
"And yet — can we simply sit and do nothing?"
Botai, was it?
One of the younger chieftains spoke.
"Sahalcha's strength alone will never be enough. And Lee Man-ju is a cunning one. Even now he cleverly divides the wealth he squeezes from us — he makes us afraid, he parcels out blame while never quite granting plenty. That is how the man rules the Jianzhou Guard."
The chieftains nodded.
Lee Man-ju was no mere tyrant who ruled by terror alone.
With an instinct for guile bred in his very bones, he had a gift for drawing the powerful chieftains to his side while simultaneously sealing off every motive they might have to betray him.
Basita spoke.
"What of the other two guards of Jianzhou? The Tung clan?"
"They will hardly stir, either. If anything, of late they've been careful not to cross Lee Man-ju at all. Things in the Jianzhou Right Guard are in poor shape. Pan-chya is old now and forever ailing; his son Bokhato creaks and groans with every ailment under the sun. There is the grandson Naranghap, but he's hardly chieftain timber. Tungshan means to seize on this opening and swallow the Right Guard whole, to unify the Odoli at last. With matters so, neither Pan-chya nor Tungshan can afford to do anything but watch Lee Man-ju's every move."
Botai sighed in despair.
"Then what are we to do? Lie beneath the Hurigai's heel forever?"
"Not everyone is so. Have we not Lord Onyan Isiha at Anchuunbugu?"
And so it comes around to Onyan Isiha again...