The Moon's Shadow
"Father, you've had far too much wine. Uncle Kushinu, I must take Father in now."
Her voice was clear, and it brooked no argument.
Onyan Isiha smiled indulgently.
"So it is. I've gone and made a spectacle of myself, haven't I."
Hong-wi found himself smiling warmly as well—it seemed that even a Grand Chieftain whom all the tribesmen revered was, in the end, nothing more than a father with a daughter.
"May you have a restful night."
Steadied by his daughter's support, Onyan Isiha rose unsteadily to his feet, paused in thought for a moment, and then spoke again.
"In a few days comes the harvest festival, and our people will hold a great celebration. Why not stay until then, as our guest?"
"How could I presume to be such a burden?"
When Hong-wi demurred, Onyan Isiha let out a hearty laugh.
"Burden? What burden? Please, stay and rest a while. Tell me, Lord Temusi'i—do you enjoy the hunt as well?"
"I do, indeed."
It was the truth.
Hong-wi had never cared much for hunting during his days as King of Joseon, but of late he had taken to it with genuine relish.
King Taejo and King Taejong had loved the hunt so ardently that their ministers flooded them with memorials of protest—yet still they had held stubbornly to it. Now, at last, Hong-wi understood why.
"At the autumn festival, our whole clan and every villager joins the hunt in the Sacred Forest north of Anchuunbugu. It is a rite of thanksgiving to the forest spirits—we take only the clean game they permit us, and offer it back as tribute. Would you care to join us, Lord Temusi'i?"
"Elder?"
At those words, the council of elders flinched visibly.
Even Kushinu did.
"You would bring... Lord Temusi'i...?"
"Lord Temusi'i is a man worthy of trust. He is the very man to whom the Sahalcha Chahar themselves sent the black arrow. A man one can rely on—and no reason exists to bar him from the hunt."
Onyan Isiha's face was flushed deep with wine, yet his answer carried a weight no one dared defy.
The elders slowly, one by one, nodded their assent.
He turned back to Hong-wi.
"Well? What say you?"
"When the Chieftain extends such a gracious invitation, how could I refuse?"
"Splendid!"
Onyan Isiha beamed with gentle warmth, then looked around at the gathering.
"This old body has been carried away by tonight's festivities and drunk rather too much, so I shall withdraw and rest."
"Rest well, Elder."
Once Onyan Isiha had taken his leave, Hong-wi found himself longing for a breath of night air.
Just then, Cha Gyeong-yeon came over, nearly carrying the completely insensible Ho-in, who sagged against him like a sack of grain.
"What happened here?"
Cha Gyeong-yeon shrugged and answered.
"This fellow went and passed out on mayuju. I told him time and again to go easy on it... I'll see him to our quarters."
Mayuju was hardly a potent brew, but that was precisely the trouble—one drank it like water and blithely overshot one's limit.
Hong-wi laughed heartily.
"Do that. I think I'd like to walk a while under the night sky."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
Cha Gyeong-yeon nodded, hoisted Ho-in up onto his shoulders, and strode off ahead.
Hong-wi stepped outside as well.
Bonfires burned here and there across the courtyard, and overhead the night sky glittered with a dense field of stars.
They shimmered and swayed, as though the whole sky might come pouring down upon his head.
His chest swelled at the sheer beauty of it, and for a long while he could not tear his eyes away.
It had been a very long time since drink had lifted his spirits so pleasantly.
Then, without warning, his mind drifted far from this land of the tribes, wandering south to the distant soil of Joseon.
Was he dreaming?
It was almost certainly a dream.
For he was looking down upon a woman seated quietly within a thatched cottage, sewing by the faint glow of a lamp.
It was the face he had been parted from so long—yet had never once forgotten, not even for a single hour.
My Queen...
In that instant something tore at a corner of his heart; he lowered his head and shook it slowly.
How long had he stood there, lost in thought?
The surroundings had fallen quiet now.
From behind him came the soft sound of shuffling footsteps.
"You are alone, I see."
Hong-wi turned with a start.
It was the daughter of Grand Chieftain Onyan Isiha, the very woman he had seen only moments before.
"...I was thinking."
She smiled.
Her clear, lovely laughter echoed into the night sky.
"You seemed lost in very deep thought... Everyone has already gone to their beds, you know."
Hong-wi had not realized the hour had grown so late.
The next moment, an unexpected truth startled him again.
She was speaking flawlessly fluent Joseon.
"You speak our tongue... remarkably well."
"My late mother was a woman who came from Joseon."
"I see."
Hong-wi nodded. A question flickered through his mind—why her mother had come all this way—but he did not press it.
She lifted her gaze to the same sky he had been watching.
"My mother, too, used to gaze up at the southern sky on every night... She was always a woman of many thoughts. Much as you are, my lord, at this very moment."
Hong-wi nodded quietly.
"In a land ten thousand miles from home, whenever the memory of my birthplace rises, only idle longings come with it."
"Compared to your homeland... what is this place like?"
"Very different. And yet this land has its own beauty. Rugged and bold, with a charm it cannot hide no matter how it tries. Much like the one standing before me, in fact."
The moment the words left his mouth, Hong-wi winced inwardly—he had said too much.
But the maiden seemed delighted by it.
Her unguarded, ringing laughter scattered through the night air like an echo.
"Do you truly see me so?"
"...It is my honest impression."
Hong-wi gave an awkward smile.
Her beauty had stolen the words from his lips, and worse, it had made him babble whatever came to mind, like some artless country boy.
"If it is no imposition, might I ask your name?"
"What a bold one you are."
The maiden smiled, her eyes crinkling with amusement.
That pristine, refreshing smile made even Hong-wi set down every worry he had carried these many months and smile in return.
"My name is Wolyeong—moonshadow. My mother gave it to me."
"Wolyeong... the shadow of the moon. A beautiful name."
Instead of answering, Wolyeong simply nodded with a smile.
"I have heard much of Lord Temusi'i's name. I pray we meet again."
Before Hong-wi could even respond, she vanished into the shadows like a spirit of the night.
The next morning, Ho-in's head ached so badly he felt near death.
Water—he needed water, desperately.
Barely dragging himself upright in the quarters the tribesmen had provided, he shuffled on unsteady legs out over the threshold.
Cha Gyeong-yeon was sitting in the doorway, eating dried fish.
Seeing Ho-in, he spoke up with a mischievous air.
"Sleep well last night? I hear you made quite the blunder."
"What blunder? Me?"
Ho-in managed to ask, barely holding down the churning nausea in his gut. He reached, practically begging, for the leather waterskin lying at Cha Gyeong-yeon's feet.
Cha Gyeong-yeon took a bite of dried fish and went on.
"Blunder doesn't cover it... You can't hold your liquor half as well as you look, friend. Mayuju isn't even liquor to these tribesmen—they drink it like water."
"Curse you—never mind that, just tell me what blunder I made."
Scowling, Ho-in grabbed the waterskin and poured the water straight over his head.
Cha Gyeong-yeon swallowed his fish and continued with a sly grin.
"You nearly had your head lopped off last night before the wine had even worn off. You don't go pawing at people just because you're drunk, friend."
"What?"
At that, Ho-in choked outright.
After a long bout of coughing and sputtering, he spoke in a trembling voice.
Cha Gyeong-yeon grinned slyly, then deliberately put on the gravest expression he could manage.
"You truly don't remember? Then we have a serious problem..."
That was enough to terrify Ho-in.
"No—just tell me plainly! What did I... what did I actually do?"
"Well, you see, yesterday you—what was his name, Kushinu?—you went at the chieftain elder's wife..."
"Nothing of the sort happened. You downed too much mayuju and collapsed flat on the spot. It was quite a struggle hauling you back to the quarters."
Hong-wi cut in, walking up and interrupting Cha Gyeong-yeon's taunt.
Ho-in stood dazed for a moment, but the instant he grasped the situation his eyes blazed, and he drove a fist into Cha Gyeong-yeon's solar plexus.
"I truly thought I'd committed some catastrophe!"
"Oh, you committed something all right... You should have seen the scolding I got for dragging you in here."
Brushing off Cha Gyeong-yeon's needling, Ho-in looked up at Hong-wi.
"And you, Your Majesty—was all well with you last night?"
At that, Hong-wi gave a noncommittal grunt and shrugged.
"Whether it counts as anything, I can't say."
He told them of his encounter with Wolyeong the night before.
Ho-in, still wracked by his hangover, wore a half-dazed expression, while Cha Gyeong-yeon set down his half-eaten fish and fell deep into thought.
"How very interesting."
"Interesting... how so?"
Ho-in tilted his head.
"You blockhead, are your wits addled? The daughter of Onyan Isiha himself spoke with His Majesty—alone, just the two of them. And she approached him first, no less. How could that possibly not be interesting?"
Ho-in stared blankly, uncomprehending.
Cha Gyeong-yeon beamed.
"The Onyan clan is a house of true lineage, revered by every tribe on this frontier. This is a good omen, Your Majesty."
"Is it, now."
Hong-wi smiled a lonely smile and turned his gaze toward the far southern horizon.
Somewhere beneath that sky, his wife—the wife he had been forced to leave behind in Joseon—must surely be asleep.
At almost that very hour, Song Hyo-bin too stood at Naksan's Dongmang Pavilion, gazing up at the northern sky and praying for Hong-wi's safety.
Every single day, she offered up that same fervent prayer.
While Hong-wi was away at Anchuunbugu, Lee Go-nap-hap spent his nights of pleasure at Hwangseongpyeong, hosted lavishly by Pushan Hadaru.
He was well past his thirties—hardly a callow youth—yet he was handsome, and blessed with a natural vigor he now unleashed without restraint.
Truly, never in his life had he been so drunk on power as he was in these days.
And Pushan Hadaru did not let the opportunity slip away.
As a merchant he was mediocre at best, but in the art of clinging to power he had inherited a rare talent indeed.
He flung open the accumulated coffers of his trading house and poured them out in lavish entertainment for Lee Go-nap-hap.
Wumubin, his chief accountant, pointed out that spending on this scale would send the already tottering finances of the house into an unrecoverable collapse—but Pushan Hadaru paid him no heed.
And why should he? What did it matter? Win Lee Go-nap-hap's favor, and the road ahead would be paved with gold.
"When I succeed my father as Dudu of the Jianzhou Guard, I shall see to it that you are honored and exalted, Pushan Hadaru!"
"Oh, my deepest gratitude, my lord!"
At the drunk man's empty promise, Pushan Hadaru's dreams swelled as grand as his own bearing.
A Jurchen to the marrow, Pushan Hadaru had amassed wealth as a merchant, yet he had always chafed bitterly at the very station of merchant.
Now is the moment to stake everything and rise to the summit.
If it came to pass, the Pushan clan would leap from a lowly merchant house into a genuine house of nobility.
For his part, Lee Go-nap-hap was utterly immersed in the feasting and revelry that Pushan Hadaru poured out before him—a match made in heaven, each pleased with the other.
But all pleasures, in the end, must run their course.
"My lord... my lord Dudu!"
"...Eh? What is it, Olanggamokya?"
Lee Go-nap-hap, half-asleep in his cups, cracked his eyes open.
Beside him, a courtesan from Shenyang lay sleeping, unclothed.
Lee Go-nap-hap, naturally, was every bit as bare.
Slumberous and irritated, he answered lazily.
"What is it now?"
"A man has come from Sorobirada."
"From Sorobirada?"
Lee Go-nap-hap felt the fog of wine lift a little.
"Dudu Lee Man-ju has—"
At that moment,
slow, ominous footsteps came trudging down the corridor.
The instant Lee Go-nap-hap recognized that tread, the last of his drunkenness fled entirely.
He half groaned the name under his breath.
"Biriherimdon...!"
"Dress yourself and come out at once."
Biriherimdon glared at Lee Go-nap-hap with cold eyes, then wheeled around sharply.
"The Dudu summons you."
Lee Go-nap-hap felt like a child caught mid-mischief—and the feeling sat with him sourly, and for no good reason.
Had Biriherimdon not looked upon him as though he were some vermin?
He grumbled under his breath.
Damned wretch. We shall see who has the last word.
Ignoring the flustered Pushan Hadaru, they made haste for Sorobirada.
For the entire journey, Biriherimdon offered no word as to why Lee Man-ju had so suddenly summoned his son.
Within Lee Go-nap-hap's breast, an unease churned that he could not master.
Arriving at Sorobirada, Lee Go-nap-hap prostrated himself before Lee Man-ju.
Even in the act, he did not fail to notice his younger brother Lee Du-ri standing at their father's side.
Apparently just returned from Hanyang.
Beside him stood another man, one he had never seen before.
Before he could wonder who the stranger might be, Lee Man-ju spoke first.
"So you finally deign to arrive."
Lee Man-ju's voice was grating and curt.
"I entrusted a task to you, and now not a word of news. What came of it?"
"Y-yes... well, you see..."
Lee Go-nap-hap's answer stalled in his throat.
He grumbled inwardly.
What in blazes am I supposed to do about it? The ironmongers in Hwangseongpyeong can barely scrape together even common nails as it is.
Of course, Lee Go-nap-hap himself had made little effort to seek out any iron, his head lost entirely in wine and women—so he had no room to complain. But people are, by nature, ever indulgent with their own failings.
Lee Man-ju fixed him with a blunt, unblinking stare.
"You spent a full month lingering in Hwangseongpyeong... and you found nothing at all?"
"Y-yes... the iron, you see, is simply so very hard to come by..."
"Hmph."
Lee Man-ju gave a scornful snort.
"But wine and women, I gather, were easy enough to find."
Lee Go-nap-hap's face burned crimson.
"Father! That is not—"
"Enough. I expected nothing from the start."
Lee Man-ju spat the words out coldly.
Lee Go-nap-hap could barely stomach the humiliation.
But the true blow was yet to come.