The Bond
Father had said it.
"That child's name is… I am certain of it."
Father, head of our Moyong Family and Northern Great General, had always looked every inch the part — imposing, solid, a man you could lean on. Even if it was only in a dream, to see him so hale again made me glad.
"They call him So-hyeon."
"…So-hyeon."
There was something soft in the way the name rolled off the tongue. Alone, I repeated it to myself again and again.
"You need not worry."
Perhaps he mistook my silence for fear. Father spoke as if soothing a child.
"He is the son of my old friend, the Number One Sword Under Heaven, and of the Medicine Fairy."
Then, as he had in the old days, he laid that great hand upon my head and stroked my hair.
"They say he is remarkably bright, and kind of heart. Only…"
The hand stroking my hair paused.
"I do not know the particulars myself."
I looked up at him.
"They say the child was born under a cruel fate, and that a deep misfortune clings to him."
Father sank to one knee and bent toward me, meeting my eyes as he charged me with his wish.
"That is why we mean to bring him to you as your husband. So, Un-jeong — you must be the one who protects that child."
"My name is Yeon So-hyeon."
The boy I met for the first time had a face pale as snow and eyes that ran deep as wells.
"I have heard that clashes between Haedong and the northern tribes have grown frequent of late in Jilin Province."
Even with Father, the Northern Great General, before him, the boy showed not the slightest awe. He said everything he meant to say.
"Before the northern tribes slip any further beyond control, Your Excellency—"
His small hands, like a child's fists of grass, tapped precisely across the map.
"—must subdue them first."
"Oh-ho."
Struck by that bold manner and the accuracy of the analysis, Father forgot even that this was their first meeting and fell into eager conversation with the boy.
"Yes… I see. Then tell me — have you some secret strategy for dealing with them?"
"Yes, of course…"
The boy started to speak, then his face clouded and he held back the words.
"…I apologize."
Was it somehow connected to that deep misfortune Father had mentioned? The boy bowed his head.
"What secret strategy could a child like me possibly have? Please regard what you have just heard as nothing more than a boy's little performance."
"A performance? Nonsense!"
Father laughed heartily and said to him,
"That analysis alone already outstrips my own military advisors!"
Then, with a mischievous smile for me, he added,
"If Un-jeong refuses to take you as her groom, I shall have to claim you myself as a personal strategist!"
I flushed and pinched Father's side in secret.
"Ouch!"
Father put on a great show of pain.
"You take after your mother — your hands grow sharper by the day!"
"Father…!"
Even through the noise, I could not take my eyes from the boy. He turned his face to the window as if keeping the world of people at a distance, and a faint, bitter smile touched his mouth. For some reason it felt terribly fragile — as if he might unfurl wings at any moment and vanish into the far sky.
In that moment I thought: I will protect this child.
"…Miss!"
A voice called to Un-jeong, who had been listening, half in dream, to the flute of young So-hyeon.
"Young miss!"
Before her maidservant could even shake her awake, Un-jeong's eyes snapped open. A sword was already in her hand. Ever since her father had fallen in the northern war, she had not once slept without a blade at her pillow.
"Another night raid by the Yaryul tribe?"
As Moyong Un-jeong threw herself upright from the bed, the leather armor she had never removed even to sleep stood revealed in the middle of the night.
"Yes, my lady!"
With the ease of long practice her maidservant buckled iron plate over her and explained the situation in a rush.
"Yaryul cavalry have set fire to Umuk Village and are looting it as we speak!"
She was skilled at both armoring and briefing. One could feel, in that efficiency, what years they had lived through.
"Umuk Village — land of a tribe friendly to Zhongyuan…!"
Moyong Un-jeong bit down hard on her cracked lip. The Yaryul tribe no longer even bothered to hide their black ambition.
"May fortune go with you…!"
With her maidservant's farewell at her back, the warhorse under Moyong Un-jeong snorted and broke into a run.
"Any last words?"
The prisoner made no answer. Moyong Un-jeong's long sword simply cut through his neck.
Ssuk—
"Khh—khuh…!"
She had deliberately severed only halfway. Blood frothed and bubbled from the half-opened throat as the prisoner thrashed in agony. Watching with a face of iron, Moyong Un-jeong withdrew her sword, took the long spear her man offered with one hand—
"Acting Great General."
—and drove it through the dead prisoner's body, planting the shaft upright in the earth. At the shock, the half-severed head dropped to the ground.
"Pteh."
The soldiers guarding her spat on the skull, stripping the enemy of honor. A dozen heads lay scattered that way. Bodies skewered on spears and fixed in the soil numbered in the dozens. Blood ran down and gathered until it formed a little stream across the steppe.
It was the price of plunder and invasion — and a warning.
Yet though the battle had ended in a clean victory, there was no cheering, no lifted morale among their own.
"In there…!"
Suddenly Moyong Un-jeong's gaze swung toward the screaming.
"Our child is in there! Please, save him! Please…!"
"If you go in now you'll burn to death!"
"Stand back!"
Where the mother's wails, blocked by the soldiers, were directed, the remains of a nomad village of gers stood wreathed in merciless flame.
"The sheep…! All our family's sheep…!"
"Why did you come so late?!"
Only the bitter weeping of nomad people who had lost family and fortune rang hollow across the night steppe.
"…Another fine command today, Acting Great General."
Her direct aide sheathed his blade, approached, and offered low congratulations on her merit. Moyong Un-jeong pulled off her helmet, wiped her face roughly with the cloth he held out, and asked,
"Can the village be rebuilt?"
Watching the cloth turn red almost at once, the aide shook his head heavily.
"…It will be difficult. The young warriors who went out to defend the place are all dead or taken. And with most of the sheep and horses plundered as well…"
He clicked his tongue under his breath.
"Even their parent tribe, after raid upon raid, will not be able to support them."
A rumble. Before the troops could even master the blaze, tents whose pillars had burned through collapsed. The people's keening rose higher.
"…Take them into a village attached to the Great General's Office."
"But Sister—!"
Her aide — her own younger brother — raised his voice. She left him only one word as she turned away.
"That is an order."
"…As you command."
On the steppe that night, without even the moon, the cold was vicious and the dark complete.
The Great General's Office. A council of the army camp.
"…The attached villages have reached the limit of what they can take in."
One general spoke without meeting Moyong Un-jeong's eyes.
"To feed them, we will soon have to break into the emergency grain stores themselves."
"The Acting Great General's compassion is now known to every commoner," a strategist carefully continued after him. "Perhaps it is time to return each tribe to its own responsibilities…"
"The troops' exhaustion has long since passed any reasonable line. We need a measure, and soon…"
"As tribes break from the alliance, even resupplying new men has become—"
Once one man aired his hardship, the complaints that had been held back poured out. Every one of them was a veteran tempered by a hundred battles in this harsh north; Moyong Un-jeong, Acting Northern Great General, knew better than anyone that their words were no mere theater.
"Perhaps additional support from the Moyong Family—?"
"Impossible."
Moyong Un-jeong shook her head beneath her helmet.
"They refused the Great General's Office's request."
Since the rise of the Fear King among the Yaryul, the Moyong Family had been tearing itself into four and five factions from within.
"…To ignore even the word of the Acting Great General — who is also Acting Family Head…"
"I hear voices rising inside the clan that we should simply cooperate with the Fear King."
"The Moyong Family has gone mad as well."
"We do not need their support."
Moyong Un-jeong cut them off.
"Request necessary supplies as before from the war merchant Dong Ga-hyu."
"But, Acting Great General."
The general who had spoken first voiced his unease at her order.
"That man is a merchant without blood or tears where money is concerned. For some reason he cooperates readily now, but—"
Others cautiously added their warnings.
"—in a situation where we cannot know when he might turn—"
"—to deepen our dependence on his trading house is extremely dangerous—"
"Enough."
At her voice every mouth closed. She was the deputy the Northern Great General himself had named, and every man gathered here acknowledged her ability.
"You may trust the northern war merchant Dong Ga-hyu."
No one argued further. The mood of the council only grew heavier.
When the meeting ended and all had gone, one man remained.
"…Sister."
It was Moyong Ho, her blood brother and direct aide.
"That man Dong Ga-hyu—"
"You know as well as I that he is the man the Eldest Young Master of the Luoyang Sword House sent himself."
"Of course."
"The Eldest Young Master said he could be trusted. Therefore I trust him."
"I am the same."
"Then what is it you wish to say?"
"…Well."
Moyong Ho chewed on the words a moment, then forced them out.
"Lately, even this far north, we hear the Eldest Young Master's name."
"No."
Moyong Un-jeong, already knowing what was coming, shook her head hard. Still Moyong Ho finished.
"Could we not ask the Eldest Young Master of the Sword House for additional aid—"
Thang.
The desk cracked under the blow of her hand.
"How many times must I tell you it is impossible?!"
"Sister…"
Her voice rose.
"Once he decided to end his seclusion and live as the Eldest Young Master of the Luoyang Sword House, the betrothal became as if it had never been!"
"But—"
"Even sending us the war merchant Dong Ga-hyu was already more than duty required of him!"
Her voice climbed higher than she meant.
"I must defend this north in Father's place! And he must defend his own house!"
Something like a scream tore from her throat.
"He and I are nothing to each other now!"
Such open passion from a sister who rarely showed her heart. Feeling what lay beneath it, Moyong Ho bowed his head deeply in apology.
"…I am sorry, Sister."
When Moyong Ho had gone, Moyong Un-jeong buried her face in her hands with a long breath. After a moment her hand opened a drawer. From it she drew a single letter — the one the Eldest Young Master had sent her through Dong Ga-hyu.
When she unfolded the paper worn soft by handling, the brief lines filled her sight.
"I will most certainly come to your aid."
Her rough hands turned the letter over and over, again and again.
"…I want to hear the flute."
Between the edges of her helmet, the hair she had bound so tightly slipped free and hid her face.
"What did you just say…?"
Moyong Ho, standing at Moyong Un-jeong's side, stepped forward.
"What did you just dare to spout?"
"Dear me."
The chieftain of some tribe already sworn to the Yaryul shrugged.
"Long years on the battlefield seem to have ruined your hearing."
He spread his hands as he spoke.
"I come as an envoy of the Fear King, to present His Majesty the Fear King's most merciful proposal."
"You—!"
The envoy's gaze passed over Moyong Ho as if he were nothing and fixed on Moyong Un-jeong in the seat of honor.
"Even now — offer the Great General's office to the Fear King, and kneel."
His voice cut through the stir of the hall and rang out.
"And if, as proof of that loyalty, you will marry the Third Young Master of our new ally the Luoyang Sword House—"
He smiled, showing yellow teeth.
"—then the name of the Moyong Family need never vanish from this north."
His eyes swept the assembly.
"Of course, the troops of the Great General's Office will all be taken under the Fear King's rightful command."
"You—!"
Moyong Ho's roar shook the chamber, but neither he nor anyone else could draw steel against an envoy of the Fear King.
"…So the Third Young Master of the Luoyang Sword House visited the Yaryul, and now an alliance has already been struck?"
In the heavy air, only the muttering of those present slowly seethed through the wide space.
"An absurd proposal."
"…But if we fight on as we are, is there any chance of victory?"
"This is the north. If the Fear King seizes the north and merely pretends loyalty to His Majesty the Emperor, the Imperial House will have no choice but to accept him."
"That may be so, but…"
Furious, Moyong Ho turned on Moyong Un-jeong and cried out,
"Sister! This is a proposal not worth a moment's consideration! Refuse it at once! Every man in our camp will fight to the last and die!"
Moyong Un-jeong's mouth stayed tightly shut. She closed her eyes, thinking of the letter against her breast.
"…Sister."
Grief twisted Moyong Ho's face. The smile on the envoy's only deepened.
"…I—"
At last, when her deliberation ended and her lips parted, what lived in her eyes was nothing but the pain of bitter regret.
"Of course, you accept?"
The Fear King's envoy cut across the words that would not come easily.
"Though you are welcome to take more time deciding. In the meantime more tribes will kneel beneath the banner of Yaryul, and we will only grow stronger."
Her lips moved.
"I…"
Her hand, having touched the letter one last time, moved slowly.
"…?"
Puzzlement entered the envoy's eyes. Where her hand was reaching, her sword waited.
"Surely you don't—"
Before he finished, her voice rolled out.
"I am Acting Head of the Moyong Family, and Acting Northern Great General, charged by His Majesty the Emperor with the defense of the north."
Sword in hand, she rose and looked down on the envoy with cold pride from beneath her helmet.
Sighs broke from the assembly.
"Fool!"
At once the envoy's face flushed dark.
"Fool! You fool!"
He shouted to the hall.
"Before you ever stand on a field of battle you will be cut off by the allied tribes already kneeling to the Fear King, and annihilated!"
He jabbed a finger at Moyong Un-jeong.
"And you, girl — in the end you will be dragged down from that seat to warm the Fear King's bed—"
Then, without the least warning, the ceiling shattered — and black lightning fell.
Ujijik!
The Fear King's envoy left not even a scream. His massive body was crushed to pulp and died on the spot.
"I did send word ahead."
A clear, ringing voice. At that voice sunk so deep in memory, Moyong Un-jeong's eyes flew wide.
"Yet somehow, in my haste, I seem to have outrun my own letter."
Bathed in the sunlight pouring through the gaping hole in the roof, the Eldest Young Master Yeon So-hyeon stood with his black fox-fur coat streaming, and smiled toward her.
"It has been a long time, Un-jeong."
Dulce bellum inexpertis.
War is sweet only to those who have never tasted it.