Worse Than Beasts

Even by the time he reached the place where they penned those bound for the slave auction, his thoughts were still a tangled knot.

The great storehouse stood at the innermost reach of Maehwadang's annex. A single flick of his hand, and the men guarding it threw the doors wide. The women heaped in the corner curled in on themselves, terrified they were about to be dragged out.

Watching them tremble, the steward smiled a greasy smile. What was there to agonize over?

"Haul out the pretty bitches, and one of them's bound to catch his eye."

Muttering to himself, he turned to the guards.

"Drag every last one of them out and line them up."

Brawny men with swords bellowed and snarled, their faces vicious, and hauled all forty-three women into the open.

In a spacious room, eighteen women stood in two rows with their heads lifted and their eyes cast down. From girls of thirteen or fourteen to women who looked twenty-one or twenty-two, they shook so pitifully it seemed a single meeting of eyes would kill them where they stood.

"These are the top grade, my lord. Take your time choosing."

Mui lounged in his chair, chin propped on one hand, lazily working a fan with the other, and let his eyes alone travel over them. Only the woman in the farthest corner of the back row had an old cloth wrapped around her head. They had clearly set her where she would draw the least notice. She looked to be in her late twenties and was small of stature, and though she had borne two children, both her figure and her face were remarkably lovely. On looks alone, she was the finest of the women standing there.

Mui rose slowly and walked the line, studying them as he went. At last he stopped before the young woman at the very end of the back row.

"Ah!"

A short cry burst from her. Mui had snatched the old cloth from her head and yanked it away. Her hair had been hacked so ragged that even a man would have been ashamed to walk the streets with it. So this was the woman who had cut her hair and sold it to pay the tax. She covered her head with both hands, bowed low, and shook. Mui set the folded fan beneath her chin and tipped her face up.

She could not meet his eyes. Hers were squeezed shut, and in her face he found the pretty features of a little girl. Satisfied, Mui lifted one corner of his mouth, tapped her cheek with the tip of the fan, and turned away. Sa-ho, who had followed at his back, inclined his head with quiet composure.

"This one will do."

The words were not even finished before a thick, sticky regret flickered across the steward's face. He had coveted that woman from the start. Since last year he had worked at it, picking quarrels until he had her husband killed and dragged her here by force. Even after she had borne children, the sight of her stirred his lust every time, and he had meant to take her as his own pleasure slave. So he did not find it strange that Mui, passing over the young girls, had chosen the oldest of them—a married woman. What rankled was only that he had been summoned without warning the night before and never got the chance to have her. He meant to squeeze a fatter price out of it for that.

When the steward opened the door, the man waiting outside led the rest of the women away, leaving only the one who had been chosen.

"As expected, your eye sits high. Top grade—thirty gold coins."

Mui stepped toward the door as if the sum meant nothing to him, and Il-ho opened it. The men had not been there when they went in, but now four sturdy fellows stood outside, the sort who looked as if they could throw their weight around. Under Il-ho's cutting stare—he stood a full head taller than any of them—they flinched and fell back.

Taking the gold, the steward passed in front of the woman and, without meaning to, looked her over as if he might lick her, smacking his lips. Sa-ho's gaze sharpened to a blade's edge. Once the steward had taken the men and gone, Sa-ho spoke coldly to the woman, who was still shaking.

"Let's go."

As if she had already given up on living, she staggered after him and out of the courtesan house.

The room lay sunk in a peaceful dark. Listening to the children's soft, even breaths, Sam-ho—asleep with his back to the wall—slowly opened his eyes. Against the opposite wall, Yi-ho woke as well and cracked his stiff neck this way and that. Both tightened their grip on the swords they had never released, even in sleep, and looked to the closed door.

Strangers were climbing through the hush of night, killing their footsteps as they drew near. The two men's eyes touched the peaceful faces of the children—full, for once, and sleeping—then fell away. They rose without a sound, opened the door, and slipped out into the dark.

The man following the one ahead, both of them muffling their steps, asked again for confirmation when the fence of the little house came into view.

"You sure about this?"

"I'm sure, I tell you. This morning I heard it half asleep! Kkot-bun-i came and asked my girl how you even go about selling your body! And in the evening I saw her going up with men on horseback! Later more men rode up after them. Men who can afford to ride—that many of them—she must've been paid a fortune!"

For a whisper, it was loud.

"Aigoo. I always took Kkot-bun-i for a naive little thing, young as she is. She's no ordinary girl! I don't care if her grandfather's dead—how do you drag men into a house with a little brother in it and think to make money that way!"

"She takes after her mother. Pretty face. She sets out to bewitch a man with it, and only a fool wouldn't fall."

"Wait—those men might still be in there. We should come tomorrow. What happens if we go up now!"

"I already came and checked a little while ago. Look! No horses, no men's shoes, and the lights are out! Think about it! Why would rich lords linger in a shabby thatched hut like this? Once the business is done, they leave! They've already gone back down the path behind the house!"

"Perfect! We agreed we'd split whatever we get for selling those two brats right down the middle! No changing your tune later!"

Nodding, the man in front started forward again, caught hold of the closed fence, and suddenly whipped his head around. The one about to follow him in startled to a halt and whispered.

"What?"

"Before we sell her—how about a quick turn? She's no virgin anyway. She's already been through plenty of men. Who's going to notice if the two of us add ourselves to the list?"

A foul light thickened in the eyes of the two men facing each other.

"Well. You've got a point."

Impatient now, the man flung the fence open and stepped in. Even if the little ones screamed, there was no one who would come running.

Thwack. Thud. A roll across the ground. Out of the black dark, Sam-ho's sword flashed, and the head of the man following behind was sheared clean off and tumbled away.

"Hk—!"

Thwack. Thud. The man in front felt darkness surge up over his eyes and startled, but he never managed a scream. The head cut free by Yi-ho's blade never got the chance to roll. Yi-ho's foot crushed it where it fell, and his sword drove without mercy into the mouth stretched wide. Killing them had not eased his rage.

"Bastards worse than animals! Why do scum like this get to die in a single stroke!"

Thud. Thud. Thud. Yi-ho's furious blade went to the headless body and stabbed at its groin.

"Filthy bastards! I should've carved them until they screamed and begged me to finish it!"

Sam-ho snorted a laugh and clapped him on the shoulder. In his fury Yi-ho had gone past stabbing at the dead men's parts and was hacking off their limbs.

"Hey. The Captain's here."

Having tied the horses behind the house, Mui, Il-ho, and Sa-ho were leading the young woman toward the fence when they stopped. Fortunately Sa-ho was quick to cover her eyes with his hand, so she did not see the furious work of Yi-ho's blade.

"I half thought they wouldn't actually come. They did. Bastards worse than beasts."

At Sa-ho's cold words, Mui had a fair guess at what had happened, but he asked anyway.

"What is this. This garbage?"

"They came to sell those little kids—that alone makes me want them dead! And they got hard over a child! I ought to have butchered them proper, but I was afraid I'd wake the brats, so I ended it in one cut, and the rage still won't let go!"

Watching Yi-ho pant the words out low, Mui answered without much feeling.

"I told you. Cut their limbs off on the back mountain. You should've dragged these bastards up there and wrecked them. What is this. Painting a pretty house in blood."

"Ah—hey—don't look. Aish."

At the flustered note in Sa-ho's voice, the three of them turned. The young woman had torn his hand away and stood trembling, staring down at the two severed heads.

"You animals! Every day I split my own share of gruel and fed your sick son! My husband dug medicinal herbs for your sick wife! And this is what you do to our children!"

Mui looked at her, shaking from head to foot with a rage she could not contain.

"You know them?"

"Yes? Yes. They're men who live at the village entrance. This one—"

Her trembling finger pointed at the head of the man who had walked in front.

"He dragged his only daughter into prostitution and gambled away the money. That girl worked herself to the bone earning medicine money on the side for her mother, who died last month. And even after the mother was gone, her father took every coin she made and gambled it, so she had nothing to buy food with and had to keep scraping by on her own. The hardship was no small thing."

Her shaking finger moved to the head of the man who had walked behind.

"This one's wife and son wasted away with lung sickness. His wife died last year, and his son died a few days ago. He spent everything he earned on whores. Never once bought medicine for the wife and child who were sick, and never even fed them properly."

The Crazy Bastards' eyes, raking over the dead, went cold. Their faces said they wanted to stitch those lives back on just long enough to teach them what the worst pain felt like. Mui, expressionless, strode across the yard and cracked open the door of the room where the children slept. Fortunately, they were sleeping soundly. A faint smile brushed the chill of his face and was gone. He turned and stepped toward the woman.

"What do you want done with him? If you wish, I'll clear these away and bury him on the back mountain while I'm at it."

She followed the line of his fingertip, and her face crumpled into something wretched. Her father-in-law had, in the end, been beaten to death by that vicious man's hand, just as her husband had. She wiped her cheeks, already soaked with tears, on the back of her hand and shook her head.

"It would be better to place Father with my husband. That way they'll meet on the road to the underworld, won't they?"

Put him where the other one lies? Cremate them and keep the bone ash in the same box? Mui thought it strange, but he said nothing of it and nodded.