← The North Wind Blows at the Treetops
Chapter 6
“The more I see you, the more I want you.”
Words that could sound like something entirely different if misheard, he spat out quite plainly.
“Well, since you’re not a boy who’d fall for a lie anyway, I’ll tell you straight. It will probably be unimaginably hard and dangerous work. But that applies to other boys. I saw you fight. I’ve never seen a boy who acts so calmly before beasts with only a single short sword. The judgment to choose the easiest and surest way to survive for oneself, well, others might think it cruel, but I liked it. Seeing you stab vital spots precisely when killing children, it seemed you had an eye for it and some skill as well. And above all, your brother.”
He was a talkative man all around. He didn’t seem to realize he was talkative himself, which twisted my temper all the more.
“Isn’t it getting dangerous soon?”
But I agreed with his last words, at least. The “final condition” he had not told me flashed through my mind in an instant. “A child who cannot refuse this proposal!” If I don’t accept…
“Will you kill me if I refuse?”
“Hmm… well, they said to kill, but if you just don’t blab, couldn’t I just let you off? No, if I say this, you might refuse, no? Probably, they might, kill you.” …Isn’t this a complete fool?
“But how old are you? From above you looked a bit older…” He swept his eyes over my scrawny arms and legs and let out a groan, ugh.
“…I’m fifteen.” And at the end of those words, he gasped, heh, swallowing his breath.
“Two years younger than my son? And you said it’s been two years…?”
“…My brother is thirteen.”
The man seemed soft-hearted. At least he didn’t seem like a bad person. Even if he were another pimp, wouldn’t he sell us to a better place than this? No, even if not, if I begged, wouldn’t he send at least my brother to some other good place?
Silently, I pulled at the pledge he was holding. And with my fang, I bit the tip of my thumb hard.
A crushed thumbprint was stamped at the end of the pledge. Still licking the blood seeping from my finger with the tip of my tongue, I gave a wry smile.
“I’ll accept. What do I do?”
***
“Four days from now, around the hour of the tiger, I’ll leave a carriage parked until daybreak. Get on it no matter what. Then it will leave at once.”
I carried my brother on my back. I tore clothes and braided them long, then bound our bodies firmly together with the cord. I held the short sword the man had secretly passed to me when we parted against my chest and watched for movement outside. The guards were making their slow patrol rounds. I shook the bars. They turned toward me irritably.
“My brother seems sick!”
“Just give him the drug,” they grumbled, taking white powder out of their clothes. They opened the door and came into the room. And telling me to set my brother down, they bent to examine his condition. Without a moment’s hesitation, I drove the short sword into his neck.
In one breath, I severed his windpipe and vocal cords. Instead of a scream, bloody foam bubbled up, glug-glug. I let go of the sword handle buried deep in the flesh and took the long spear and keys the guard had been carrying. Another one approached this way. He seemed to have sensed something strange. The moment he found the corpse and shouted, “What have you done?” I pierced his chest. The spear was unfamiliar, so I could not thrust it deep, but blood gushed out in a torrent. As he tried to scream noisily, I struck his mouth with the bars.
Killing a child who does not resist and killing an adult were clearly different. But, making such resolve seem pointless, the guards’ skills were lower than I had thought. They too were men who dealt only with children who could not resist, so in truth they had no need for great martial skill or strength. The spear, too, was so weak that once it had stabbed a person, its shaft broke right away. I stepped back for a moment and retrieved the short sword with which I had stabbed the first guard’s neck. Though its short length put me at a disadvantage, it was far more familiar to my hand. And my brother was sleeping soundly behind me, breathing softly. “Hold on just a little longer,” I said, patting his bottom, and ran out.
Since I had come in, at least, no child had attempted an escape. Some had died before attempting it, and others had lost even the will to leave this place because their dependence on the drug had grown so severe. That must be why a hole had opened in the watch. While I ran down the long corridor, no other guards were visible. As I used the key to open the door of the cell, the children who had woken up clamored, “Take me too!”
“There’s a runaway!”
Someone shouted.
I could feel the malice: if you can’t escape, then you live here too. I retrieved the key and pressed myself against the wall on the side where the door opened. I held my breath and gripped the sword. Sure enough, the door burst open and a group of armed men rushed in.
“You’re…”
This would be too much to handle. While they stared with wide eyes in surprise, I shoved aside the one standing at the very back and ran out.
But there was a limit to outrunning adults. Moreover, the children trapped behind the bars reached out dozens of hands, trying to block my path. When the footsteps had come close enough, I swung the sword behind me without looking. Someone screamed and fell away. My brother’s weight pressed down on my whole body.
Suddenly, the thought came to me that if someone thrust a spear from behind, my brother would be stabbed. Even in the midst of it, I stopped and turned around. The guard who had been running with all his might could not control his speed and staggered. In that moment, I cut his throat. The one behind him swung his spear. A chilling pain rushed through my left arm. I took out the drug I had secretly gathered in my clothes and put it in my mouth. As the pain subsided, strength returned to my hand. I threw the short sword at the one who had stabbed my arm. While he deflected it with his spear, I picked up the fallen guard’s spear and drove it into his chest. He was a fairly nimble man, and as he twisted his body to dodge it, I too turned sharply and ran. As I ran, I turned my brother’s body to the front. It was a hindrance when I needed to run at full speed, but it was better than having my brother pierced by the bars while carried on my back.
Fortunately, the structure to the south was not complicated. But the situation of “escaping secretly” had long since passed. Shouts came from all directions, and guards I had never seen sprang out to block my way. When I came to my senses, I was already surrounded. “Should I prostrate myself now and beg them to spare only my brother? Would they listen?” The thought crossed my mind. But they would not listen. I held my brother with all my strength and gripped the spear. I gritted my teeth. I might die here like this. I’m sorry. I was greedy, though I could have lived longer.
“Ah, but you’ve done well to come this far.”
A familiar voice was heard. I turned around, and a man wearing a strange mask came toward me, spinning a round-bladed crescent moon blade. Some of the spears that had been aimed at me turned toward him.
“I’ve come to meet you, little one.”
With a whoosh of wind, someone’s neck popped off with a tok. The heavy sound of it falling to the floor sounded like a dream. Unconsciously, I deflected a spear flying toward my brother and moved close to the man. The man, who had cut down several approaching men cleanly, shouted as cheerfully, or as flippantly, as when we had “talked” before.
“Run!”
I think I laughed madly as I ran until my breath reached my chin. Was it the feeling of liberation, or the thrill of having survived once again?
And so, after going to Yeon, My brother breathed his last at the young age of not yet fifteen.
And the rabbit hops and plays about In my childhood I had no cares; now that I have grown, I am full of cares… I would rather sleep and never wake.
— from the Book of Songs, ‘Airs of Wang,’ ‘Mian Yuan’
“…nim!”
A young boy’s voice came carried on the wind. A man who had climbed the round man-made hill west of the imperial palace, Samhaksan, and was enjoying a rare nap there lifted his drowsy eyelids. In the blue sky, a single wisp of cloud drifted slowly along. Perhaps because it was about time to grow hungry, somehow it looked less like a cloud than a fluffy snack, and he swallowed the saliva pooling in his mouth for no reason.
“…ching-nim!”
The flock of blue pigeons around him was cooing gloomily, beaks buried in the blades of grass, eating something. Worms, perhaps. The thought occurred to him that if they ate away like that, the vermin in the imperial palace might soon be wiped out altogether, and he wondered if that was a bit of a stretch.
“A-ching-nim!”
The boy, who had come up to his head before he knew it, let out a shrill cry with a pop. Thanks to that, the pigeons that had been idly setting about exterminating bugs flew up with a flutter, feathers scattering in all directions. Not expecting this, the child covered his face with both hands and, screaming a murderous scream, collapsed and sat down right there.
His still-loose blue official robe piled softly on the grass.
It was In-ah, the apprentice palace physician child who had entered the Inner Medical Office. Only then did A-ching get up languidly and brush the feathers stuck in In-ah’s hair away with his sleeve. In-ah, his dark eyes brimming with tears, whimpered, even making crying sounds as he fussed. Twelve, or was it thirteen. Judging by how he had entered as an apprentice palace physician at that young age, he must be a little brat used to being called quite the genius in the world and acting grown-up, but it seemed that did not mean he could wholly hide his age.
A-ching scratched the back of his head for a moment as he looked at the whimpering In-ah, then suddenly took hold of the child under both armpits and lifted him up. And he slung In-ah, who flailed and shouted things like, ‘I am not a little child!’, over his shoulder and strode off. Well, he had meant to go down to the foot of the hill just like that, but soon In-ah pulled his ear long, so he stopped and ended up shouting undignified screams like, ‘Aaah, don’t, it hurts, it hurts!’
“His Imperial Majesty summons you!”
In-ah, who had finally set both feet on the ground again, spat the words out as if firing them off.
“Ah, what is it this time?”
“Ho, how can you say such rude things about His Imperial Majesty’s command…” As more nagging looked set to follow, A-ching clutched his aching ear and waved one hand about. In-ah at once glared at him with a sulky face.
The one who had inherited the post of royal physician at the age of twenty.
Leave a Reply