The Man Who Saved His Life

Sa-ho, who had been standing beside Yuk-ho, spoke.

"It's dangerous. Let's just go to the village. Worthless trash or not, enough of them becomes a headache, Captain."

"You crazy bastards. We'd have gone to the village if you hadn't painted yourselves head to toe in blood. No spare clothes? Then don't soak the ones you're wearing! Why do you always have to lop off their heads? I taught you to kill them clean—efficient, no wasted strength!"

"Exactly. And here we are, reproducing your teaching perfectly every single time. We kill them nice and clean by taking the head. Efficient as it gets. Not one of them gets back up!"

When that madman O-ho said it, proud enough to nod along, Sam-ho beside him took up the thread.

"Captain, it doesn't take any strength, so don't worry! Head off or belly open—same difference."

"Shut up!"

Mui jabbed his spear into the tangle of trees. Listen to them any longer and he was going to drive it through their mouths instead. Strength gathered in the shaft of its own accord—and the thing blocking the entrance lifted clean away. Vines bound the inner trunks together; someone had been using the whole mass as a gate.

A track wide enough for a single cart ran up between the dense trees. Mui, Sa-ho, and Yuk-ho killed their presence and raced along it.

In a clearing ringed by forest stood twenty thatched houses. Even from the foot of the mountain, the thick trees would have hidden every one of them from sight.

Whoever had built them had known his work. Down to the heated floors, the houses looked solid enough. The three searched in tense silence, confirmed the place was empty, and came together.

"Looks like the bandits used it as a storehouse. Everything from goods worth a fair price to grain. All sorts of odds and ends."

"No sign anyone kept house here, but plenty of signs they slept here. I'd say it's the den of the ones we killed."

Mui nodded.

"You—go wipe our tracks, seal the entrance tight with the others, and come back. You—find something plain enough to wear. There's a stream down below. We can wash there and change."

Yuk-ho ran back down the way they had come. Sa-ho tore through the thatched houses. The men who had brought the horses moved as one, without a wasted motion.

Washed and changed in short order, they gathered in the largest house, where Mui waited. It was a single room, yet as wide as three ordinary thatched rooms put together. There were no windows, and even the door had been covered in leather—a place where dozens of bandits could gather late at night under bright lamps. The room blazed even now, and not a gleam of it leaked outside.

Mui sat on a thick cushion with his arms folded, sunk in thought, and opened his eyes.

The grave look on his face curdled. He had assumed that if their captain looked that serious, they would of course sit quietly. The madman, for thinking so, was him.

All six of them were quietly hauling out the boxes that filled one wall and checking what was inside. Eyes glittering, breath coming short—whatever was in there looked to be worth real money.

"Sit."

The moment the indifferent word left him, the madmen snatched up cushions and dropped to their knees. They knew to be warier of that flat voice and that empty face than of his anger.

"This is my personal business, and it's dangerous work. You stake your life on it. There's no reason for you to come. But the insane thing Yu-shin will do if you go back is more than I can clean up after. So for ten days, don't cause trouble. Loaf around in Seohanseong. We meet in ten days."

"We can't!"

Sa-ho went on, unyielding.

"The way I see it, you set it at ten days so it would match the day General Park leaves for Namhanseong, after the Squad Leader's state wedding is done. So we go together and finish it quickly."

Mui raked the six of them with a murderous look.

"You lot not doing something insane and actually moving the way I order is impossible. That's why I'm telling you to go play in Seohanseong."

"Easy. We just do as we're told."

Il-ho said it as if it hardly mattered. The others nodded along, just as unconcerned.

Mui swallowed a sigh. The only one these madmen followed completely was Park Yu-shin. He had to shake them as fast as he could and get into the capital.

"I'll kill every one of you who doesn't move as ordered. Still want to follow?"

He asked it flat and final. He was not a man who joked, and he expected them all to run.

"Yes, sir!"

At the answer, snapped out with military discipline, Mui's eyes went wide.

The lunatics were speaking and acting like normal men. If fighters this good—each of them worth a hundred—followed his orders and nothing else, the work would end faster than he had thought.

He opened his mouth with grim resolve.

"The man who saved my life is locked in a prison. I'll get him out. If he wants it, I'll take him and his family out of Cheongguk and join the party bound for Namhanseong. Right now Cheongguk is barring even travelers, merchants aside, so we'll have to bring them out in secret, the same way we came in."

His heavy voice fell silent. For a short moment even breathing seemed to stop.

The men watching him shot to their feet. Only Sa-ho stayed where he was, grave-faced, sunk in thought.

"Simple! Captain, let's go. Night's the best time for sneaking anything out."

"We finish it tonight, Captain. What's so hard about pulling one man out of a prison? Hurry, and we might even catch our Squad Leader's wedding."

"No black clothes in here? These are white. They'll show when we go over a wall."

"Hey, Yuk-ho! Any arrows around? I've only got a few left."

"That house over there's full of weapons. Come on. I even saw a sword set with jewels."

"Mine! Mine! The jewel sword is mine!"

Five of them poured out in a clatter. Mui's grim face curdled. Grim resolve, against those lunatics? The madman was him, for believing them even for an instant.

"Captain. By any chance, is the man who locked him up someone with power?"

Mui turned his head and met Sa-ho's sharp eyes. The madman with the wickedly good head—hadn't he called him that?

"Yeah."

"And you don't even know where he's being held?"

"Right."

"Finding a man like that, getting back in ten days, and joining the party leaving for Namhanseong... that means he's someone anyone would know the moment you said the name. Easy to find."

"That's right. Cheongguk's loyal subject. Seol Woo-chan."

"Damn it!"

Sa-ho shot to his feet and shouted.

"Have you lost your mind? Seol Woo-chan is the loyal subject of Cheongguk that even the people of the Han Empire know! The only man who could throw Seol Woo-chan in a prison is the King of Cheongguk! You mean to drag him out of a cell and haul his family all the way to Namhanseong? You'll all be dead before you even clear the capital!"

"I know that. That's why I said it was dangerous and told you to go back to the Han Empire and loaf!"

Sa-ho dropped back down, stared hard at him, and tossed the words out.

"Captain. The Squad Leader doesn't know about this, does she?"

Sure enough, Mui clamped his mouth shut.

"You couldn't tell her. If the Squad Leader knew, wedding or no wedding, she would have said she was coming with you. She would never send you into something this dangerous alone!"

The certainty in Sa-ho's voice sat heavy on Mui's heart.

Sa-ho looked at him with a depth Mui had never seen in those eyes.

"Captain, forget benefactors and turn around now. That is how you save a great many lives. If you so much as die in Cheongguk, then in that instant the King of Cheongguk becomes an enemy to the Squad Leader."

Mui swallowed a sigh. That was why he had left the Han Empire in secret, without a word to anyone.

"You know better than anyone that the Squad Leader is absolute when it comes to her own people. In a few days, that Squad Leader becomes the Han Empire's one and only Crown Princess. And the Han Empire's military is the strongest there is. If she sets her mind to it, sweeping away a Cheongguk already falling to ruin won't take three days."

"Which is why my head hurts, trying to do this quiet and sneaky when it goes against my grain. So don't pile on. You take the madmen to Seohanseong right now and wait. I'll send word when I'm done, and we'll go back together."

"Not a chance!"

Sa-ho sprang up and walked for the door, still talking.

"Our magnificent Squad Leader came in person and gave the order. Han capital or Cheongguk capital, we sleep first and move when the sun's up! I'm so sleepy I could die!"

For a brief moment he had looked sane. Then Sa-ho turned back into a madman and left the room.

"For crying out loud. I'm the madman, for taking that lunatic seriously!"

Mui flopped onto his back and closed his eyes.

The Daejeon, grand throne hall of Cheongguk. Killing intent brimmed in the eyes of So-wang where he sat upon the throne.

At the center of a hall packed with ministers, the Minister of Rites, Seol Woo-chan, and his son, Grand Master of Sungkyunkwan Seol Ga-heon, knelt bound in prison ropes.

So-wang had deliberately thrown them into an underground cell for a month, meaning to break their spirit and humiliate them. In a lightless prison beneath the ground they had been unable to eat, sleep, or wash, until they were worse off than beggars wandering the market streets.

Yet the eyes of the two who sat so properly composed were clear, and the lofty backbone that the ministers filling the hall could not even imitate was without the slightest crack. And so So-wang grew angrier still.

"The coronation can only be held if we have the Dragon's Sacred Relics? No relics, so it can't be done?"

The mutter, thick with rage, was murderous. The ministers bowed their heads lower still, lest they meet that killing gaze.

"Yes, Your Royal Highness. A coronation in Cheongguk is the rite that proclaims to all beneath heaven that one is a descendant of the Dragon. Yet Her Ladyship, Consort Oh, has not been able to find the sacred relics that would prove that descent. How, then, could a coronation be held?"

Even under So-wang's gaze, dense with the will to kill, Seol Woo-chan spoke as he always had—without fear, without hesitation, in a calm voice.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Unable to bear his fury, So-wang slammed the armrest of the throne.