Chapter 5
Chapter 5
The Iron Emperor — Chapter 5
"......."
Shrrring.
Jin-cheon, who had entered the barracks, quietly drew his Hwandudaedo. Though he meticulously tended the blade, his mind was far from calm.
'What am I meant to do now.......'
He had first taken up the sword at the age of six. While the other Yeolje descendants and kin studied politics, he cut down straw dummies. At sixteen, the age when they were building families, Jin-cheon set foot on the battlefield. While they lived in luxury, Jin-cheon stole sleep on horseback and raced across the land with his blade for company. When they abandoned their burning homeland and fled, Jin-cheon had charged at the very front to fight.
The reason for his existence was the empire's protection. But now, that reason for existence had vanished. When his thoughts reached this point, the hands tending the greatsword stopped.
"What will I raise my sword for now?"
Jin-cheon's expressionless face twisted for the first time.
For a man who had simply fought mindlessly for victory, the current situation was harder than death. What he desired was the leisure of a single drink after battle and triumph. Jin-cheon slowly closed his eyes and murmured.
"Let's sleep first."
In any case, such worries had no answers. Sleep was the best medicine. Jin-cheon was absolutely certain of at least that much.
"Those things look downright suspicious, I tell you."
Eulji Buru stood in front of the pig pen, muttering to himself. Before him, bluish pigs trembled under the gleaming eyes of Buru and Uru.
"He told us not to kill them, so if I could just peel off a little hide and have a drink, I'd die without regrets."
"That's right. If you want to know whether they've gone bad, nothing beats a taste test, eh?"
Uru chimed in on Buru's greed-laced words, but Hwi-garam simply stood there, letting all their muttering go in one ear and out the other.
"Hmm, isn't this strange?"
Buru, who suddenly snapped out of his daydream, rounded his eyes and posed a question to Hwi-garam.
"What do you mean?"
"These rusted armor and animal-skin clothes, and the crude axes and clubs those pigs swung—were they using those?"
"That's right."
Buru nodded. As Yeon Hwi-garam continued to observe with questioning eyes the piled armor and weapons the pigs had supposedly wielded, Uru, who had been off to the side, cut in.
Uru offered a perfectly lucid answer to Hwi-garam's misgivings.
"What's strange about it? Don't we armor our warhorses too? Just think of these pigs here as the same thing."
Neigh~.
"......."
Next to Uru, a warhorse clad entirely in iron armor snorted as if in agreement and whinnied, and Hwi-garam felt another headache coming on.
Thwack!
"Gah! Why'd you hit me!"
"You little prick, such an idiot."
Buru, who had smacked Uru on the back of the head with the flat of his broad axe, stared at him with a pitiful look, visibly sharing Hwi-garam's headache.
"Hwi isn't asking because he doesn't know that. Who wouldn't know something so obvious? Don't go showing off. I already figured it out. Got it? Hwi means it's strange that the armor and axes are rusted from being stored so badly. Look—doesn't our horse armor shine?"
"Ah...... so that's it!"
"......."
As Hwi left the spot, the only thought that recurred was that these two were indeed brothers. As Hwi departed, Buru added one more line.
"See? All you gotta do is keep quiet like me. Got it?"
"Don't go showing off just because you're a little smart."
"Learn something."
"General! Big trouble!"
Just then, a soldier's urgent voice cut into their conversation. Buru and Uru stopped talking and looked to the side; a sentry who had been circling the perimeter was sprinting toward them.
"What is it now? Dogs or cows walking around on two feet this time?"
"......General, how did you know?"
"......."
In the direction the soldier indicated, dogs over 1.8 meters tall and a single cow over 3 meters tall were approaching on two legs. No, they were running.
"This is crazy! What's wrong with this place!"
"Let's move, quick. Those bastards are no joke in size."
Sensing something deeply wrong in the sight of huge dogs and a cow charging on two legs, Buru spat out a voice of exasperation, readjusted the axe on his back, and sprinted out. And as if backing him up, Uru nocked an arrow and shot forward like a bolt.
"Kroooaaaar!"
"Block them!"
"Axemen fall back! Spearmen, advance and hold them in check!"
The numerous wounds on the body of the cow as it crossed the hastily raised palisade and bellowed made it clear it was being pursued. The things that had chased it madly behind it were the pack of dogs Buru mentioned.
But wolves would have been a better description than dogs, and all of them were running on two legs. Though this was the soldiers' first encounter with such enemies, they moved with the speed expected of elite troops.
"Move aside!"
At the sound of Uru's voice, the soldiers split left and right from the direction of his call, and the wounded monster cow swung its huge axe wildly as it fled through the opened gap. But it was only for a moment.
"Good."
Even in the face of the massive charging cow, Uru showed no sign of shrinking; instead, a strange smile played on his lips.
Twang!
WHIZZ!
"Kroooaaargh~!"
An arrow tore through the wind toward the screaming cow.
"Have another one!"
Pshhuk.
Thwack-thwack-thwack!
"Oooaaargh!"
As the arrows loosed from Uru's hands pierced both of its knees, the monster cow collapsed to the ground and screamed madly, and the wolves that had followed behind pounced on the downed monster cow without hesitation.
"Kya-ooo!"
"Oooaaargh!"
SPURT!
Blood sprayed from the giant cow's throat, probably because the carotid artery had been bitten through. In the end, the monster cow's resistance—swinging its huge axe like a mad thing—crumbled in less time than it took to drink a cup of tea.
When the cow collapsed, the wolves ceased their attacks and began aiming wary gazes at their new enemy. But Buru had already taken command of the soldiers and was issuing orders.
"Look here! Spearmen, pull back! Can't you see by looking—whether it's a damned dog or a damned wolf, it's quick! Axemen, what're you doing! Move to the flanks of the shieldbearers, move!"
"Yes, General!"
"Grrrrrr."
"Grrrr."
The pikemen, whose reach made them slow to react, fell back, and the axemen moved to encircle them. Beside them, the shieldbearers raised their shields and prickled with tension toward the wolves.
"Good. Now all they need is some soybean paste."
Once the formation was set, a bizarre smile spread across Buru's lips. At that instant, the wolves pounced.
Thwack-thwack-thwack!
"Yelp."
"Dogs taste best after a good beating! Get in there, quick!"
THUNK!
"Krraaaangh!"
The moment the formation shifted, Uru's arrows flew without hesitation and pierced the brows of the lead wolves, and that was the signal for Buru to charge in, cleaving a wolf far larger than himself clean through the waist.
The shieldbearers, having blocked the wolves' attacks, were knocked flying and slammed down by the force, but in that opening, the axemen's axes tore through the air and buried themselves. Occasionally a wolf dodged the axemen's strikes, only to be skewered on the spears of the spearmen right behind them.
"Done!"
Crunch!
"Kyaaeng~!"
And with the final wolf's dying yelp, Buru's frenzied axe-swinging came to a halt.
"Report."
"Four lightly wounded."
"What in the hell! We were only killing some damn mutts, and so many got hurt! Take them away for treatment, now."
"Yes."
Buru clicked his tongue as he watched the soldiers hurriedly supporting the wounded and dashing off, then surveyed the surroundings. From pigs that walked on two legs, to dogs that hunted men, to a cow that sprinted around swinging an axe—this was a place where only incomprehensible things kept happening.
As he looked around, Buru noticed that the cow's head, which had still been attached just moments ago, had vanished without a trace. His eyes went round as he asked a nearby soldier.
"Eh? Where'd that cow bastard's head go?"
"General Uru cut it off and took it with him."
"Is that so?"
Buru nodded as he looked at the now headless cow body, then fell into deep thought about whether the meat strewn all over the ground could actually be eaten.
"That'll make one killer bow."
A wide grin spread across Uru's face as he sprinted along, holding a cow's head half the size of his torso in one hand. That was because of the anticipation that he could make a top-quality Maekgung, crafted from the resilient horn of something like a water buffalo.
Thus the chaotic, incomprehensible first day passed.
* * *
"Hahp!"
WHOOSH!
"General, are you training at full strength from the morning?"
"Hwi, you slept late."
After his light reply, Jin-cheon lifted his Hwandudaedo once more and tore the air apart in sharp strokes. Jin-cheon's sword was sharper and faster than ever, and he himself felt that sensation more than anyone.
"Isn't it strange?"
"Strange? If anything, you seem even faster."
"That's what's strange. I'm not using my full strength now; I only put in about eight-tenths of my power."
"What?"
Jin-cheon said no more to the questioning Hwi-garam and moved toward the soldiers busily working on breakfast. For people who had arrived after enduring days of storms, their movements were excessively energetic.
"Even setting aside the sailors and their mates, isn't it a little strange that the cavalry and regular infantry shed their fatigue in a single day and move around like that?"
"Well, it's been a long time since they set foot on land......."
"That might have been enough yesterday. Haven't you noticed? This land isn't the place we came from."
"......."
In truth, Hwi-garam had sensed it too. The moon hatching young, pigs walking and swinging axes in their crude, rusted armor, the enormous cow that appeared in the night wielding an axe—these were things unimaginable in their own world.
Hwi-garam, who had let out a long sigh, spoke.
"The earth's pull is weaker here."
"Use simpler words."
For Jin-cheon, who'd never had the slightest intention of learning anything beyond combat and similar matters, there'd been no reason or need to know what the earth's pull meant. Hwi-garam clicked his tongue and began to explain ruefully.
"To put it plainly, the force that pulls things toward the earth is weak. What happens if you drop an object?"
"......Do you take me for Buru?"
"......It falls down. In short, the earth pulls everything toward it. But here, that force is weak. The weight of your armor and weapon will probably feel lighter than usual. Your body, too."
"Right."
They couldn't sense the exact figure, but gravity here was weaker than in the world they'd come from. If the gravity there was ten, then here it was only about seven.
Jin-cheon, who had been nodding, spoke to Hwi-garam in an offhanded sort of tone.
"I heard a cow and dogs walked in yesterday."
"They were wolves."
Jin-cheon, possessed of an insensitivity so profound that he did not stir at all when perceiving no danger, had slept soundly through yesterday's entire commotion. Of course, that was also how much he trusted his subordinate commanders.
Since the creatures caught the previous night, unlike the pigs, had all been killed, Jin-cheon received his report while examining the corpses. But as Jin-cheon inspected the bodies, his eyes stopped on the headless corpse.
"Then that one has no head. Is that enormous thing the cow?"
"Yes. The head, I'm told Uru took it with him."
"That fellow—he didn't eat it, did he?"
One of Jin-cheon's eyebrows twitched. At that, Hwi-garam let out a quiet laugh and spoke.
"He is extracting the horns."
"The horns?"
"Yes, he said they would make for a good bow."
The Gakgung they possessed was a composite bow made from water buffalo horn. And as a master of the bow, there was no way Uru would simply overlook such excellent material. Jin-cheon nodded, ordered Hwi-garam to assemble all the commanders except the deputy commander, and headed toward the command barracks. Though things were chaotic now, the path forward had to be decided before the soldiers began to tremble with unease in the days ahead.
At the center of the command barracks, Go Jin-cheon took his position, and Yeon Hwi-garam sat beside him as though attending him. Eulji Buru and Uru occupied the next places, and Mu-deok along with the remaining commanders took their seats.
Once their gazes converged on Jin-cheon, his mouth slowly began to open.
"Whether the moon hatches young or not, in our current situation, we must devote everything to survival."
"Yes."
"First, the reconnaissance results show no traces of the Tang army. But the real problem is that we don't even know where this region is."
Whenever Jin-cheon's explanation swept through the group, they nodded along. But when the words came that they didn't even know where this region was, every face darkened. Just then, a commander who'd gone out on reconnaissance entered, offered a military salute, and delivered his report.
"Daesaja. The morning reconnaissance of the surroundings has resulted in the discovery of human footprints."
"Can you identify them?"
"It hasn't been confirmed yet, but since this place is at a lake, there's a high chance a village is in the vicinity. Moreover, the human footprints, rather than being traces of soldiers, are highly likely to be hunters', given the animal traps set up in the surroundings."
"Mm."
After nodding briefly, Jin-cheon looked over at Buru, who was seated to one side.
"Buru. Take a larger force and locate the nearby villages."
"Got it."
As Buru bowed his head, Jin-cheon turned to Uru with another order.
"And Uru, fully establish an encampment in this region. Fell the surrounding trees and erect a palisade, and together with Buru, seek out terrain suitable for long-term garrisoning."
"Leave it to me."
Jin-cheon continued to steer the discussion, assigning a few more items. It seemed as though nearly everything was being decided at Jin-cheon's sole discretion, but the officers followed without a single word.
"Captain of the Guard Dae Mu-deok, take charge of security for the encampment, and Hwi will oversee all of these matters. Is there anything else?"
"About the perimeter security—we'll need to assign at least one deputy commander to it. From what I saw yesterday, the beasts here aren't to be underestimated. If twenty of them attack as a pack, I reckon it'll put the soldiers in danger."
When Buru spoke with a somewhat worried expression, Go Jin-cheon gave a slight nod and replied.
"Organize it as you see fit."
"Yes."
With that answer, the meeting concluded. Everyone rose from their seats and went outside to carry out the orders they'd been given, and only Jin-cheon remained alone.
"Hoo......."
In contrast to his demeanor just moments before, a sigh escaped his lips. It wasn't a problem right now, but the path forward had not been found. What Jin-cheon had to do was decide on that path.
"If we're thinking about settling, then food and women are the issue."
In the current situation with an unbalanced sex ratio, if the worst case occurred and only beasts like those from last night appeared, it would be impossible to prevent agitation among the soldiers. The top priorities for settlement were food and women to build families. If that wasn't resolved, it could even escalate into a revolt.
That was why he'd ordered them to locate the nearby villages. If there was a village and persuasion failed, then in the worst case they might have no choice but to raid it.