Chapter 172
Chapter 172
Iron Emperor — Chapter 172
"Well look at that, pretty good moves! Run!"
Thwack!
"Ouch!"
The training ground was filled with screams and curses. Both the men giving the orders and the men taking them were running on pure spite.
Hailon's voice rose higher and higher as he ground the soldiers into the dirt. It was limit-breaking training, and the soldiers were clinging on for dear life.
"Hailon!"
"Salute!"
The man who approached Hailon as he trained the soldiers was Buyeo Gi-yul. Behind him, around five hundred troops were following.
"Those soldiers behind you, Daesaja Buyeo..."
Hailon hadn't heard anything about new troops being assigned to him, so he was curious.
Buyeo Gi-yul glanced back, patted Hailon on the shoulder, and answered simply.
"Eastern Army. We're training them."
"The Eastern Army?"
Hailon's eyes narrowed in disbelief as he repeated the question, and Giyul nodded, adding a few more words.
"These men are assigned to you personally. Start by building up their guts. Well, they've been through plenty of real battle, so you can probably start them about there."
"Understood. I'll drill them thoroughly."
Hailon shouted it out with a look that said, You can count on me, and Giyul nodded, apparently pleased, and said as he turned to leave,
"Yeah. At the very least, they should be able to swing an axe right under a dragon's nose, don't you think?"
"Ah, come on. Why bring up old stories..."
Watching Giyul walk away, Hailon completely changed the look on his face and slowly swept his eyes over the five hundred new recruits.
"Hm. They look like they might be useful..."
The moment Hailon muttered that, a flash of displeasure crossed the Eastern Army soldiers' faces.
Sure, they'd walked the path of defeat, but weren't they battle-hardened warriors personally raised by the War God of the East?
As if he'd read the look flickering across the Eastern Army men's faces, Hailon let out a snort of laughter and shouted toward the soldiers in training.
"You! Five men, out here now!"
"At once!"
No sooner had Hailon's order fallen than five soldiers flew over and pulled up in front of him. Hailon's brow furrowed.
"All of you except these five were too slow! Log lifts, one thousand reps each. That is all."
"Aaaagh!"
"I knew this was coming!"
Seeing the soldiers wailing and despairing made a light of tension flash across the Eastern Army men's faces. They were starting to feel that this training was going to be rougher than they'd imagined.
But apparently their nerve hadn't completely died. One soldier ran his mouth from the back.
"A dragon, huh. What is it, somebody's pet name or something? A dragon, come on..."
Maybe he'd heard it. One of the five soldiers Hailon had called out clicked his tongue and tossed back a single remark, as if he felt sorry for the guy.
"That one's real."
"What?"
"Commander Ha charging a dragon with an axe in his hands. That one."
The Eastern Army men couldn't decide whether to laugh or not, so they just followed along with puzzled expressions.
"Kkui-eeek!"
"Kkueek kkui-iii!"
The cries of orcs rang out loudly.
Of course, orcs causing trouble inside the city walls would be a massive headache, so they'd been locked up inside iron cages.
And to make matters worse, these particular orcs had only just been captured, so they were overflowing with ferocity.
The problem was...
the new Eastern Army recruits had been put into that orc pen with them.
"You murdererrrrr!"
"Look at those idiots."
The Gauri soldiers clicked their tongues, watching three Eastern Army soldiers flee through the iron-barred cage, cursing Hailon's name while they ran from ten orcs.
"What the—there's three of 'em in there and they're just running?"
"What kind of training is this! Let us out, right now!"
The Eastern Army recruits' eyes were blazing, looking about ready to charge straight at Hailon. He shook his head, opened the pen door, and walked in.
"No, I said get us out, why are you—..."
The instant Hailon stepped inside, the ten orcs that had been chasing the Eastern Army soldiers suddenly began to hesitate.
"Wh-what's going on!"
At the sight, both the Eastern Army soldiers who'd been fleeing and the ones who'd been protesting outside forgot what they were about to say. Every step Hailon took forward, the orcs took a step back.
"This is how you do it. Orcs are creatures of instinct first. Pull yourselves together. We'll keep at it until you get it. Damn. If I told you I'd throw you in the minotaur pen, you'd probably be foaming at the mouth."
After he gave the demonstration himself and stepped back outside the cage, no more soldiers raised any objections toward Hailon.
Watching their training from a distance, Marquis Helios Baikal's eyes went wide with surprise.
"Huh! That fellow, with that presence alone, he's at the Sword Master level."
Marquis Baikal was expressing his admiration when Gye Ung-sam, who was escorting him, smiled faintly and did not forget to add a remark.
"Well, he swung an axe under a dragon's nose and made a scene one time, and that's how he ended up. So I hear."
"..."
Marquis Baikal had heard the stories about the dragon, but he still couldn't manage to picture it at all.
That day became the day the Eastern Army soldiers ran more than they had ever run in their lives. And they ran for their lives, at that...
* * *
Youth is a good thing.
Because you are young, you do not fear failure. Youth is, in and of itself, a challenge.
King Alsein sat before Go Jin-cheon with a solemn, earnest resolve.
"Kingcraft?"
"Yes, Your Majesty."
King Alsein had shown up without warning, stopped Jin-cheon, and said, "Please teach me kingcraft!"
He was so deadly serious that Jin-cheon said nothing at all in response and simply sat there with his brow furrowed. Go Jin-cheon, too, was of imperial blood, so he had received sufficient education in the virtues a sovereign must possess.
The problem was... he'd been roughly five to seven years old at the time. Was he supposed to remember any of it?
After a long silence, Jin-cheon slowly opened his mouth.
"You cannot become me."
His tone was final.
He'd known for a long time that King Alsein wanted to model himself after Jin-cheon. That was precisely why he had spoken so decisively.
King Alsein answered.
"I know."
"...I am not, by nature, the sort of person who explains this and that."
Even at Jin-cheon's words, King Alsein looked straight at him and showed no change in his will.
"I only wish to watch."
King Alsein's will was firm.
Jin-cheon looked into his eyes for a moment, then pointed his fingers at his own head and chest as he spoke.
"Your head must be cold, and your heart must be hot."
King Alsein's eyes glinted. Cool judgment and burning passion. Jin-cheon's finger moved to point at his ears.
"Keep your ears open, but do not let yourself be swayed."
He meant, listen widely to the opinions of your vassals, but do not lean too far in any single direction. The finger that had pointed at his ears now pointed at the ground.
"Lastly, kingcraft is completed on the ground. That is the foundation. Do not commit the folly of trying to complete it while looking only at the sky."
It was almost like a Zen riddle.
Even King Alsein, who had understood everything preceding it, looked at Jin-cheon with eyes that showed he hadn't quite grasped the meaning.
"Why do you seek to learn kingcraft from me?"
King Alsein answered Jin-cheon's question carefully.
"It is for my country. To reclaim Roselin."
"The reason?"
At Jin-cheon's follow-up question, King Alsein momentarily forgot what he was going to say. Did there need to be yet another reason to recover one's nation?
After King Alsein had been lost in thought for a long while, Jin-cheon rose from his seat and looked at him as though he were looking at a fool.
"You are looking only at the sky. That is the difference between you and me, right now."
Leaving only those words behind, Jin-cheon vanished from King Alsein's sight. King Alsein was struggling to understand the meaning of the words Jin-cheon had left.
What on earth was it?
As King Alsein left the palace and was strolling through the city, his eyes caught sight of an old man stumbling over a stone and falling. Then a child, apparently a grandchild, came running and helped him up, and the two disappeared. The scene hit King Alsein like a hammer to the head.
The people who had followed him.
The old man who had collapsed on the long road, and the child who had wept.
Only then did he finally understand the meaning of Jin-cheon's words.
The sky he spoke of meant the will of the ancestors. It meant the nation built up by the kings who had come before. But the ground—that meant the nation cultivated by the people...
It meant the people who had followed him.
King Alsein stood there, blank and slightly empty.
Ever since coming to Gauri, he had not once properly looked at the lives of the people who had left with him, who had followed him.
On the day Altareng Fortress was attacked, those people had fought, too, throwing in everything they had at their disposal. Their sweat and their blood were not things to be forgotten.
The smiles of the people here, the ones he'd noticed when he first came to Gauri.
That image of Go Jin-cheon in South Roselin, standing before the Gauri soldiers, hoisting a bottle of liquor high and shouting in front of his troops. That image of a man who held the sky in his heart and cradled the ground in his embrace.
He had been captivated by that image—and then he had forgotten it.
King Alsein's feet began to carry him forward before he realized it.
The slow steps turned into quick steps, and the quick steps soon became a sprint.
"Your Majesty!"
Behind him, his escort knights were calling out, flustered as they chased after him. But Alsein's legs did not stop. As he ran, he asked the soldiers he passed where the people from Roselin were—asked and asked—and kept running.
"Huff, huff, huff!"
King Alsein's shoulders heaved for breath by the time his escort knights caught up behind him.
Lines of people, apparently in the middle of receiving food rations. He could see his people. He could see the ground.
"Y-Your Majesty!"
An old man off to one side who'd just received his food and was bringing it to his mouth recognized King Alsein's face. The food distribution stopped. The eating stopped. One by one, the people all prostrated themselves. King Alsein cried out.
"I will surely bring you back to your homeland!"
It was a wail.
"I will surely make it so that you can close your eyes for the last time on your homeland's soil!"
It was a desperate shout.
"I will surely become a true king to you!"
His heart felt full, near to bursting. Only now did he feel that he had begun to understand, even a little, what Go Jin-cheon had meant.
That was when a deep voice came from behind him.
"That is kingcraft. King Alsein's own kingcraft."
Go Jin-cheon. He had been watching King Alsein's actions. King Alsein bowed at the waist toward Go Jin-cheon and spoke.
"Please continue to be the teacher of my heart, who shows me the path I must walk from now on."
"You're already doing well enough. A teacher..."
Jin-cheon, face expressionless, brusquely tossed out the one remark and then slowly faded from sight.
* * *
Go Jin-cheon and his ministers were busy analyzing intelligence, working through the reports that streamed in day after day. On top of that, the soldiers were moving with taut nerves, reinforcing the defensive posture across all of Gauri.
But the people's firm faith in their leadership, and their confidence in the strength they possessed, was more than enough to keep any shadow from falling over their faces.
"As you all know, war does not wait for us to be ready."
Go Jin-cheon's weighty voice reached every one of the high and petty officials gathered in the great hall. King Alsein, who was in attendance, was likewise concentrating as though determined not to miss a single word Jin-cheon spoke.
Marquis Baikal and Baron Bels were also seated to one side.
"From the intelligence we have gathered up to this point, and from the battles we have fought either directly or indirectly, each of you will have formed certain impressions. Right now, the continent is in a state of saturation warfare. If the existence of our Gauri is revealed at this juncture, it will be only natural for the empires to view us as a choice piece of prey. Although, of course, who ends up being eaten remains to be seen."
At Jin-cheon's meaningful words, the Gauri high and petty officials each wore an odd little smile.
It was an expression of confidence.
To King Alsein, Marquis Baikal, and the others, this kind of atmosphere among the Gauri was nothing short of fascinating.
Where did that faith come from?
It wasn't that they didn't know about Gauri's military strength. But war was not something that could be decided by a small number of overwhelmingly powerful warriors.
Still, Marquis Baikal simply watched quietly. At the very least, he was convinced that the nation called Gauri and its commanders—whom he had been observing all this time—would never commit the folly of arrogance born from the strength they held.
Entirely regardless of whatever Marquis Baikal was thinking, Jin-cheon and his commanders were tossing words back and forth as if sharing jokes.
"Anyone lacking confidence?"
"Every last one of 'em that comes stormin' in, I'll bury 'em!"
"I'll drill a wind-hole clean through their skulls!"
"Bwa-ha-ha-ha!"
In an instant, the great hall was filled with laughter.
"An urgent report!"
Just then, Hailon strode into the laughter-shaken hall with hurried steps, raised a military salute, and shouted.
Buyeo Gi-yul looked at Hailon with a curious expression and asked,
"What is it?"
At Giyul's question, Hailon shouted with a slightly tense expression.
"News has arrived that a force of five thousand troops from the Haian Kingdom is standing by at the entrance to the Reganza Mountains, fully prepared to march."
At Hailon's report, the commanders nodded as if what they'd been expecting had finally come, and they rushed out.
"It's begun."
Watching his ministers rush off to their assigned duties, Jin-cheon leaned back into the Throne of Yeolje and murmured in a relaxed voice.
* * *
Massive quantities of supplies and troops had begun arriving at the city situated at the entrance to the Reganza Mountains.
The Haian Kingdom had possessed a representative armed force in the Hawk Corps, but the corps itself had evaporated, and outside of the units assigned to border defense, the kingdom had no spare legions.
For the Haian Kingdom, which had amassed colossal wealth through intermediary trade, it was a rather shabby situation. They'd newly recruited, gathered mercenaries together, and run them through a short bout of training. How strong could the discipline of such a unit possibly be?
"Damn. Can't help but think we're marching off to die."
A slender man spat phlegm onto the ground and grumbled, and a muscular man who'd been tending to his bow off to the side spoke to him curtly.
"If you feel that way, Mister, then what'd you come here for?"
The man who'd been cursing and complaining glanced at the muscular man, seemed a bit cowed, and answered with a somewhat subdued voice.
"Got dragged in because I couldn't pay my debts."
"Tch. That's too bad. Me, I volunteered. Figured I could make a good score as a guide..."
It wasn't just this one man. A great number of the troops had been filled out this way, forcibly packing in whoever they could find to scrape together a force of five thousand.
The name "expeditionary reconnaissance unit" sounded plausible, but wasn't the Reganza Mountain Range a monster heaven that the nations of the continent hesitated to even approach? In the end, calling it a combat unit headed off to war wouldn't have been far off the mark.
"All troops, assemble!"
"Fall in!"
The knights assigned to control the soldiers began moving about in every direction and forming them into ranks. It was a fine display of the limits of troops that moved passively—a long while passed before they finally stood in proper formation.
"Everyone will move according to your training. Advance party, to the front!"
The knight's command rang out, and the five hundred-man advance party, composed of hunters, set out. With that, the entire force of five thousand began to march into the Reganza Mountains—a place called both a monster heaven and the Dragon Mountains.
The advance party, which had departed in the morning, started scouting out a location where all five thousand troops could bivouac once evening came. Perhaps because they were still only at the entrance, there was little danger aside from small animals.
"How about setting up camp around here?"
A middle-aged hunter asked while examining the surrounding trees, and a fellow hunter who'd come with him nodded in agreement.
"This area's reasonably open on all sides, and it should work well enough for sentry duty."
"Then my squad and I will run back and report what we've seen."
"Stay careful."
A dozen or so hunters took off down the mountain path with practiced skill.