One War
"Do not be afraid…!"
The moment the main thoroughfare was sealed, the Moyong Family rebels scattered into the side alleys in a desperate search for a way out.
"Our revolutionary army can do this…!"
One of the rebel stronghold commanders shouted.
"The main road is blocked—not our line of retreat…!"
It was the sort of line that might have been a slogan, surprisingly convincing for something thrown out on the spur of the moment.
Of course, regardless of his words, the Eldest Young Master's forces had no intention of simply letting them slip away through the alleys.
"Spear walls! Spear walls of government troops on every side!"
Every alley was packed with government soldiers.
In ordinary times, the rebels had scorned the quality of those troops. Now it was their sheer numbers that became the problem.
"Raise spears! Hold the enemy back!"
"Stand your ground! Anyone who runs loses his head!"
The throngs of government soldiers crammed into every alley pressed upon them in that moment as a terrible weight.
"Government troops…!"
The instant the report reached him, the commander realized that the massed arrow fire on the main road had come from the government archer corps.
"Why is the government interfering in a civil war meant to set the Moyong Family right again?!"
Should they force a breakthrough? Or search for another detour?
The deliberation was brief—yet that brief hesitation was more than enough for the archer corps to be informed of their position.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!
Arrows that had soared high above the rooftops came pouring down like rain.
Without a clear line of sight, the archer corps had once again loosed a curving volley.
"Urgh…!"
"Gah!"
Rebels toppled in droves.
Most of the government's strength was little better than a rabble, but the archer corps was different. Training a single archer cost a fortune, and most offices avoided maintaining them for that reason. This, however, was the North. Against the steppe peoples who loosed arrows from horseback as easily as breathing, the government had no choice but to raise its own bowmen.
"W-what do we do, sir?! Do we fall back?!"
An adjutant with an arrow buried in his arm shouted the question. The rebel commander ground his teeth and roared back.
"We break through as we are! There is no retreat!"
"But—!"
"If we fall back, we will only be isolated and ground to a halt!"
He drew his sword, raised it high, and led the charge himself.
"Give your lives to the cause! True heroes of the Moyong Family!"
The rebels came on through the rain of arrows. Their charge, made with death already accepted, sent a chill through every spine that watched it.
"Hold them!"
When the government spearmen faltered under the sheer ferocity of the assault, their own officers ground their teeth and shouted as well.
"If we only hold, the victory is ours!"
"Sama Dae-gunsa…?"
Se-a, Master of the Hyeonwol Pavilion, looked as though she could not make sense of what she had just heard.
"You say he has not yet arrived…?"
"Yes."
The Eldest Young Master kept his gaze fixed beyond the tent canvas and gave a single nod.
"Siege engines had already come into play. Naturally, we assumed Sama Dae-gunsa had arrived with his reinforcements."
Thickening rain and darkness had reduced visibility to almost nothing. Beyond the wall of sight, stone projectiles were still hammering the fortifications from somewhere past the outer walls.
"Ah…!"
Se-a drew a sharp breath.
"If not that," he said, tapping a finger against the armrest, "then our very assumption may have been the greatest gambit the delayed Sama Dae-gunsa could still make."
"…That may well be so."
She inclined her head.
"Which is why Your Lordship had to pull the entire friendly force off the walls."
Had they stayed put and concentrated solely on sealing the routes, the fighting would never have dragged on this long, and the enemy would have been left with no room to maneuver at all.
"We could not gamble on a danger staring us in the face."
"Indeed."
If Sama Dae-gunsa had truly arrived, the force sealing the paths could have found itself encircled front and rear. The judgment the Eldest Young Master had made in that moment had not been wrong.
"In any case," he said, "the result is this: Sama Dae-gunsa succeeded in opening a breathing space for the Moyong rebels and the Mount Hua vanguard—who should have been trapped and annihilated."
Somewhere along a northern highway.
An armored carriage convoy of the Luoyang Sword House raced along the road under mounted escort.
"…Truly regrettable."
Through the open window, pale dust poured straight in. Yet the gaze of the old man of sage-like bearing—Sama Dae-gunsa—remained fixed beyond it.
"……."
The night sky stretched away without end. A bright moon and its attendant stars. A wilderness that seemed infinite. Along the far horizon, where dark made it hard even to tell earth from sky, heavy rain clouds hung low.
Somewhere beyond them, in Shenyang, a great bloodbath would already be underway.
And most of that blood would be their own.
"…Too late. We are too late."
The grandeur of the northern landscape had a way of crushing a man. To Sama Dae-gunsa it felt like a gulf he could never bridge—the distance between heaven itself and one insignificant creature crawling beneath it.
"In the end, as expected… arriving on time was never possible…."
"If what arrived is not the force Sama Dae-gunsa himself leads," Se-a asked the Eldest Young Master, "then who exactly is attacking the walls from outside right now?"
The main army had not even reached them—so who were these troops that had?
The Eldest Young Master answered.
"A force within striking distance of this hour. One that already possesses siege engines, and is large enough to dare an assault on Shenyang."
"Surely not…."
As the head of an intelligence organization, Se-a had little difficulty matching the conditions to a name.
"…The Neutral Tribal Alliance?"
"Exactly."
He nodded.
Near Shenyang.
"Did you not hear me?!"
A young martial artist in black combat robes bellowed at the top of his lungs.
It was Baek Cheong—Steel Dragon Fang of Wudang, disciple of the previous Wudang Sect Leader.
"Ah, come now."
The man opposite him, clad in the traditional armor of the northern peoples, dug a finger in his ear as he spoke.
"I already told you—our stone-throwers make it hard to hear."
Behind him, in the pouring rain, mobile catapults kept hurling rock after rock without pause. Those portable engines were precisely why they had been able to open a bombardment the moment they arrived.
"Young man, and already going deaf? Tsk, tsk."
"Then I'll put internal energy into it and say it again!"
Baek Cheong's voice tore through the roar of the engines and rang out like a bell.
"Prepare combat troops to enter with our Wudang vanguard at once!"
He shook a sheet of paper roughly in his hand—the letter Sama Dae-gunsa's messenger hawk had delivered.
"Sama Dae-gunsa himself said the only way to raise our odds is to make full use of the surprise!"
"Well now."
This time the chieftain of the Neutral Tribal Alliance side could not hide behind the noise. He grew even more shameless.
"Our contract contains no clause requiring us to follow Wudang's orders."
Baek Cheong's face flushed crimson with fury.
"This is not an order—it is a request for cooperation!"
"Is that so?"
The chieftain shrugged.
"In any case, we will move according to our own judgment and tactics. So the Taoist masters may do as they please."
Fighting in water. Fighting at night. And on top of that, street combat in an unfamiliar city. Even the rebels and Mount Hua forces who were supposed to answer from within had their command fractured into pieces, and outside there was no single commander either.
It was, tactically speaking, the worst possible situation. The Neutral Tribal Alliance chieftain had more than enough reason to refuse to move further.
"Damn it all!"
Baek Cheong shouted again.
"There is no way Sama Dae-gunsa left the matter of command out of the contract! Show me the contract you hold—now!"
"Ah, what a pity."
The chieftain's expression did not so much as flicker.
"I do not have the contract. A document that important is naturally kept by the Alliance Leader."
"You—!"
"B-but…!"
Se-a made no effort to hide her dismay.
"You are saying they have already entered the war?"
She was hardly ignorant of their existence. Even so, she had pushed them to the back of her mind for a reason.
"Your Lordship originally predicted they would drive their price as high as possible and only join at the very end, did you not?!"
The Neutral Tribal Alliance was a northern mercenary confederation of a distinctly local kind. Once enough time passed and the clash between the Northern Grand General's Office and the Duke of Gong began in earnest, their rates would soar without limit. That had been the moment they were supposed to intervene.
"The answer is simple," the Eldest Young Master said without difficulty. "Sama Dae-gunsa paid them in advance the kind of fortune they would only have expected at the last possible hour."
"……!"
The scale of a payment large enough to drag an entire power into a war was beyond her imagination. Se-a pressed a hand to her temple against a sudden wave of dizziness.
"Then… what you are saying is…."
After sorting through the tangle in her mind for a long moment, she spoke again.
"That Sama Dae-gunsa foresaw his own delay long in advance, and paid the Neutral Tribal Alliance an enormous hiring fee ahead of time?"
"Yes."
"At that point he would not even have had proper intelligence on Shenyang."
She asked as though she still could not believe it.
"If the rebels had simply held out well enough inside the Moyong Family's main house, the Mount Hua and Wudang vanguards alone would have been sufficient support."
She shook her head hard.
"The Neutral Tribal Alliance is a collection of mercenary companies. They are paid by the engagement."
"Correct."
He nodded.
"Once their rate goes up, it does not come down again until the war is over."
"Then every time they are committed from now on, Sama Dae-gunsa's side will have to pay a staggering sum."
"Exactly."
She could not understand a man who would pour precious war funds into a vague prediction from the very start.
"And besides," she said, turning to the part that had never made sense from the beginning, "does Sama Dae-gunsa even have that kind of money?"
"No."
"…What?"
The Eldest Young Master smiled.
"Sama Dae-gunsa does not. But the Namgung Clan does."
"But he would not have had the time to obtain the Namgung Clan's permission, would he?"
Even if he had, the Namgung Clan would never have authorized the release of such a sum on the strength of one man's private forecast.
"……."
When he only shrugged in answer, her face went blank with shock.
"You mean Sama Dae-gunsa simply used the Namgung Clan's name as he pleased?!"
"Look a thousand li ahead, and a thousand days into the future," the Eldest Young Master said, as though reciting a verse, "and still every eye is blind—so no one believes a word."
He turned his gaze back outward.
"Those who see what others cannot… always pay a price for it."
"…Grand Military Advisor."
A senior strategist ventured the words while carefully watching Sama Dae-gunsa's expression.
"……."
There was no answer. When the old man's long brows twitched in irritation, the strategist hurriedly corrected himself.
"Sama Dae-gunsa."
Only a short while ago, the New Martial Alliance had possessed two Grand Military Advisors. To distinguish them, simply saying "Grand Military Advisor" had rarely been enough. To Sama Dae-gunsa, even that single form of address now felt bitter.
"…What is it?"
His voice was rough with dust. The senior strategist offered his opinion even more carefully.
"…We spent far too large a sum by freely using the Namgung Clan's name."
"And?"
"W-well, that is…."
The unusually curt reply made cold sweat bead on the strategist's forehead as he pressed on.
"If we had not needed to commit the Neutral Tribal Alliance at all—if the Mount Hua and Wudang vanguards alone had been enough…."
They still had no current intelligence from Shenyang. Even the swiftest messenger hawks could not overcome the problem of distance.
"In that case, Sama Dae-gunsa's standing within the New Martial Alliance could be badly shaken."
Once one man had opened the subject, the other strategists began to chime in as well.
"In a matter such as this…."
"Which is why, going forward…."
Show them and they do not see. Tell them and they do not hear.
If the situation in Shenyang was unfolding as he had predicted, then right now the Neutral Tribal Alliance would be dragging its feet, reluctant to engage the enemy directly. Wudang would be hesitating to enter without their support. The contract clearly stated that combat command would rest with the Mount Hua or Wudang officers—but a mercenary confederation that had grown old in war would find any number of excuses to wriggle free.
"…our concerns…."
"…Elder Namgung Hyeok-cheon will…."
The swarm of stifling voices from every side made Sama Dae-gunsa feel as though his breath itself had been cut off.
…Brother Jegal.
The absence of a true confidant pressed upon him now with crushing force.
And in equal measure, a blacker rage rose and rose within him.
Yeon So-hyeon…!