Mantid Maiden - 9
In learning, a rival to strive against is as valuable as the finest of teachers.
Moyong Sang-ah's sword darted for the opening in Cheongun's guard, and Cheongun's blade twisted to deflect her line of attack as though he had seen it coming all along.
One step. It felt within reach, yet never quite close enough. To close that gap she had to pour out everything she had—a goal that seemed attainable, so long as she gave her utmost. To defeat Cheongun, Moyong Sang-ah was swinging her sword harder than she ever had in her life.
"I very nearly lost there."
Cheongun pressed the tip of his training sword to the nape of Moyong Sang-ah's snow-white neck, gasping for breath.
"That was a fascinating use of the Iron Plate Bridge."
Savoring the bitterness of defeat, Moyong Sang-ah commented on his peculiar stance. The Iron Plate Bridge, an evasion technique, was supposed to tip the body straight backward like a great iron plate toppling over—but Cheongun's version was rather different.
"Haha. It has saved my life a time or two."
For instead of leaning back, he kept the soles of his feet planted on the ground, bent his knees, and folded his upper body down at a right angle. Thanks to that, even though Moyong Sang-ah had driven her blade cleanly into an opening, the technique had stolen her target away and left her no choice but to offer up her neck.
"..."
Flexibility so absurd it was hard to believe he was a man. Moyong Sang-ah narrowed her eyes as she watched Cheongun rise to his feet, looking rather sheepish about it.
"Is something the matter?"
Moyong Sang-ah did not answer at once. Crossing blades could, at times, tell you more about a person than any amount of talk. For over a month now she had been conversing with Cheongun through their swords, and because of it she had come to know him a little better than anyone else could.
"It's nothing. Word has it information on Changbai Mountain will arrive tomorrow."
"Truly?"
"I will send someone to you tomorrow."
Leaving behind Cheongun's brightened face, Moyong Sang-ah walked off the training grounds wearing a strange expression.
"You seem in better spirits these days."
The next morning, her maidservant offered the remark as she arranged Moyong Sang-ah's hair.
"Do I?"
"It's as though your worries have grown lighter."
"Perhaps they have."
Moyong Sang-ah gave a small nod. For a while, countless problems had assailed her all at once and her troubles had only kept piling up; she had rushed from one to the next, and now she finally felt something like a lull.
"You know, my lady, even when you were a girl and something troubled you, a good round with the sword always set you right again."
"So it did."
So that was why her mood had lifted—because she had thrown herself into sword training these past weeks. At the maid's nostalgic tone, Moyong Sang-ah sank briefly into thought. It had been only a few years ago. The girl who once swung her sword over petty troubles now worried over matters upon which her whole clan's fate hung. So much had changed. Far, far too much.
"Oh, that reminds me, my lady! That Daoist you spar with so often."
Catching her lady's darkening expression, the maid deftly pivoted to the next subject.
"Young Hero Cheongun?"
"You two seem to get along well... Might you ask him to stop turning the maids away from his room?"
A frivolous request slipped from the maid's lips.
"This is the first I'm hearing of it."
Young Hero Cheongun had refused the maids' assistance? At this novel piece of news, Moyong Sang-ah folded away the gloomy thoughts she had been nursing and pricked up her ears.
"He says that as a Daoist we're nothing but a hindrance to him, but honestly, Young Hero Cheongun is rather handsome. The maids are positively swarming, desperate to manufacture some excuse to cross paths with him."
"Is that so."
"Unlike the usual bearded warriors, he's utterly clean and polished. Up close he's so beautiful you can hardly tell whether he's a man or a woman. A truly once-in-a-lifetime beauty, I tell you."
"Is... that so?"
She had supposed his fine-featured looks might find favor with the maids as well, but enough to set off such a fuss? Moyong Sang-ah drew the words out, vaguely puzzled.
"Awww. Though I suppose to you, my lady, who stands before a mirror every blessed day, all faces—man or woman alike—must look much the same."
"That is not true..."
Moyong Sang-ah offered a halfhearted denial to a remark that was half true. It wasn't as though she had never admired a man's looks before.
Even if it had only ever been one man...
At the love that had suddenly surfaced in her memory, Moyong Sang-ah gave a wry smile.
"Just the other day, a few forward girls marched straight into the bathhouse out of nowhere, announcing they'd come to attend to Young Hero Cheongun's bath."
"And then?"
For Moyong Sang-ah, too, this was a thoroughly entertaining tale.
"He flew into a rage the moment that door opened and threw them all out on their ears. I thought every man loved bath service, but I suppose being a Daoist really does make a difference. Well, the one girl who caught sight of his scarlet face poking out from inside the tub counted it a windfall and was beside herself with joy."
"...Just as I thought."
Moyong Sang-ah narrowed her eyes and nodded.
"Pardon?"
"Nothing. Since Young Hero Cheongun has no wish for it, tell them to stop pushing bath service on him—and no more sneaking into his room at night, either."
The maid's shoulders sagged as she reflected that she had brought the whole thing up for nothing and was bound to catch an earful from her friends for it.
"Moyong Pyeong, Commander of the Changbong Corps, presents himself to his Lord."
Returned after a long absence, the corps commander announced himself before his lord.
"Did the recruiting of new corps members go well?"
"I screened out anyone whose background might pose a problem and sent the rest to Chuseondang. Whether they will prove chicks or phoenixes, I'm afraid only time will tell."
To face her elder brother and his alliance with the Demonic Cult, she had to strengthen her forces without cease. Moyong Sang-ah had resolved to raise up not only warriors of established name, but also those with talent who had never been given the chance to learn. To sort the jade from the stone and forge them into the Changbong Corps, she had created a training organization known as Chuseondang.
"And the cadet branches?"
"Their training is in its final stages. They will be attached to the Changbong Corps shortly, together with those who complete selection at Chuseondang."
Moyong Sang-ah had been folding in warriors of the collateral branches as well—those with no taint upon their names—alongside the talent recruited from outside, swelling her strength by the day.
"You have my thanks. You carry a heavy load, Commander."
With an apologetic look, Moyong Sang-ah praised her loyal retainer. Her organization had grown faster than her pool of people she could trust; the mounting burden on the corps commander was simply unavoidable.
"It is only my duty. Though I hear that while I was away, an assassin was allowed into your very bedchamber, my Lord."
To think they would let an assassin reach their lord's chambers. His face dark with fury, the corps commander shot a glare at the unit captains.
"That was a burden I was bound to bear."
"I will see to further instruction until the unit captains set their minds right."
"Gah!"
"Urk."
At the commander's declaration, dismayed cries broke from the unit captains.
"Do go easy on them."
Moyong Sang-ah said with a wry smile.
"Would I do any less, my Lord?"
"My Lord."
Once the corps commander's report had run its course, one of the unit captains who had been waiting at the side spoke up.
"What is it?"
"The matter of the Daoist of Changbai Mountain, as you ordered us to look into. We found a man who claims to know the mountain and asks for an audience, so I have brought him here."
"Summon Young Hero Cheongun. He should hear this as well."
At Moyong Sang-ah's gesture, Cheongun entered together with a man whose coat was worn through at the elbows, mended and stitched over so many times it had lost count.
"M-my name is Mu-sik, milady. An herb gatherer, that's me, it is."
Dwarfed by a room packed with warriors, the herb gatherer was too cowed to even lift his head.
"I hear you know of the Daoist on Changbai Mountain."
"Sometimes I go up Changbai Mountain digging for good herbs, you see, milady. The Daoist masters, they have a place where they dwell, and I know where to go to meet them, I do."
"Is that true?!"
Cheongun asked, his face blooming with color.
"Excellent. Then you will guide Young Hero Cheongun there. See the job done well, and your payment will be made in gold."
"G-g-g-gold, did you say, milady?"
The herb gatherer stammered, astonished, yet somehow uneasy.
"Is the offer not to your liking?"
"W-well..."
Glancing nervously about the room again and again, the herb gatherer could not get a word out.
"If there is something else you desire, speak it."
Perhaps it was not money he was after. To the man who simply could not bring himself to speak, Moyong Sang-ah offered an easier air. At that, the herb gatherer seemed to reach some kind of decision: he screwed his eyes shut, and out came the wish he carried.
"Please, I'm begging you—save us!"
"You want us to destroy a band of horse bandits?"
Nothing the herb gatherer said was a request anyone in that room had anticipated.
Horse bandits. In the Manchu lands, the Jurchens were not the only danger to be wary of; there were fouler packs besides. Unlike mountain bandits, who preyed within a fixed territory, the horse bands that raided merchant caravans and villages to fatten themselves roamed like a plague of locusts—and so they were the very terror of the people of Liaodong Province. The herb gatherer had come to the Moyong Clan to beg for the destruction of the band that periodically descended upon his village.
"Please, save us! The Jurchens are no friends of ours and neither are the officials! Forget the gold—just save us, I beg of you!"
"You wretch! What do you take the Moyong Clan for, some pack of masterless rogues?!"
"Nobody knows the lay of Changbai Mountain better than I do! Please! If you will only help us, I will serve you with all the heart and sincerity I have!"
Dead either way, so far as he could see—and with that thought, the herb gatherer threw himself flat before Moyong Sang-ah.
"Lady Moyong. Is this a difficult matter?"
Cheongun asked, looking upon the terrified herb gatherer with pity.
"Not difficult, no—only poorly timed."
Moyong Sang-ah answered, one brow knitting. Her reaction was only to be expected.
"My Lord! The Horse Market you are to preside over yourself opens before long. Beyond that there is the investigation team, the merchant caravans, Chuseondang, Changbong Hall herself—we are short of hands as it is."
"And it is too far! They are not even Jurchens, my Lord—horse bandits. No one knows where they bed down, so merely hunting them out is a chore in itself."
They had too many ventures in motion and too few people to run them. And horse bandits were as gifted at flight as they were at plunder. Eradicating a bandit band demanded time and manpower, and Changbong Hall, in the thick of preparing a great Horse Market with the Jurchen tribes, had neither to spare.
"Please, save us! If those bandits come again, our village will not last the winter!"
No one in Changbong Hall could find an answer to the herb gatherer's plea.
"Then I will go."
One voice alone—everyone's, that is, except the single warrior present who did not belong to Changbong Hall.
"Young Hero Cheongun."
Moyong Sang-ah looked at him, her face gone stiff.
"I understand the Moyong Clan's position. You have found me my guide; the rest is my work to do. Rise, good sir. I will help you."
Cheongun strode over to the herb gatherer and held out his hand.
He would help, however many bands of horse bandits there might be. To some it would look reckless—and that was precisely what made the hand so steadfast.
"Young hero! D-do you mean it truly?"
"To face a bandit band alone is suicide!"
"Then it is a thing someone must do."
Cheongun looked upon the Changbong Corps with an unyielding face.
"Wait, at the very least, until the Horse Market has concluded."
"Then I will go on ahead and see that no innocent people come to harm."
Despite the unit captain's pleading, Cheongun shook his head with finality.
"Mm."
At the sight of such stolid virtue, a strange low groaning rose from the lips of the Changbong Corps' officers.
There is nothing in this for us.
They all knew it. The Horse Market, the merchant caravans, the investigation team—stripping people from posts where they were desperately needed for an expedition to a place that took better than ten days merely to reach and return from was out of the question. In truth, offering a small fortune for a mere guide was already generosity enough. If you're going, then go. It's no concern of ours. It was the sort of thing anyone might have said. Yet not one of them could force the words past his lips.
The Nine Sects and One Alliance. A warrior of the great Wudang Sect. Cheongun. A warrior barely past his twentieth year was now holding up the very exemplar of an orthodoxy the sects themselves had let fade from memory.
To the Changbong Corps, which stirred itself only barely, and only to guard what it already possessed, this man called Cheongun awakened a peculiar sting of inferiority.
"Young Hero Cheongun."
Moyong Sang-ah let her gaze sweep over her subordinates—each of them nursing that small defeat before the young Wudang warrior—before she called out to him.
"It's quite all right. What you have done for me already is more than enough—"
Seeing that Moyong Sang-ah meant to dissuade him, Cheongun waved the words away with a smile.
"I said only that the timing was inconvenient. Never once did I say no."
"Pardon?"
Moyong Sang-ah gave a small smile to the bewildered young Daoist.
"Commander."
"Yes, my Lord."
Moyong Sang-ah nodded as she watched the corps commander sink at once to one knee and look up at her, as though he had been waiting for precisely this.
There is no profit in it. Even if it meant repaying her lordship's benefactor, dragging troops off in an overextended hour was too much by half. That was what they would all think. Moyong Sang-ah looked upon her men—upon the subordinates nursing a small defeat before this hero called Cheongun. Had the great Moyong Clan fallen so low? In contending with the Demonic Cult, had they somehow lost their banner as an orthodox faction without ever noticing it slip?
Moyong Sang-ah resolved to give the Changbong Corps back its pride as keepers of the orthodox way.
"The chicks, too, ought to get some practice at flight, ought they not?"
She was handing them the smallest of reasons, that was all.
"...Of course, my Lord."
A smile touched the corner of the corps commander's mouth.
"Commander. Arm the chicks. Tell them the final exercise of their training will carry them a little farther than usual."
"Would I do any less, my Lord?"
"Lady Moyong?"
Gathering up her sword, Moyong Sang-ah brushed past Cheongun. It was true he had set out a step ahead of her—but she looked at him with eyes full of conviction, as though to say that if she simply pushed herself harder, she would overtake him yet.
"Young Hero Cheongun. You will simply have to lend the Moyong Clan a hand with its field training."
Liaodong Province was the domain of the Moyong Clan. And Moyong Sang-ah resolved to show the Daoist of Wudang that the pillars of the orthodox way still stood straight and true.