Chapter 3 - Sosam the Horse Handler

A hired servant.

Someone who, unable to put food on the table, had no choice but to live in another person's household and do their employer's bidding. Put simply, a menial.

Hired servants and their employers were bound by contracts, but most of those contracts were worthless—or worse, the beginnings of shackles. That was because the contracts were kept not by the authorities, but by the employers themselves. Employers could tear them up and draw up new ones whenever it suited them. In particular, servants belonging to martial sects were closer to slaves than hired hands. Under the principle of noninterference between the authorities and the martial world, officials took no interest in those servants unless something extraordinary happened.

They knew the servants were being exploited, but that was already beyond their jurisdiction.

● ● ●

Sosam was a horse handler for the Danri Family.

He had originally been the third son of a desperately poor slash-and-burn farmer. They had never had much, but those had been happy days. Then, when he was five, a typhoon struck. His entire family died, leaving him the sole survivor.

Afterward, with no household to take him in, Sosam wandered from place to place, begging for food. Then he became a servant of the Danri Family for no other reason than that he had knocked on their gates to beg.

He had spent the ten-odd years since tending the family's horses.

Naturally, as a menial, he was made to do all the unpleasant work around the Danri estate. Cleaning the grounds went without saying; sometimes he did odd jobs in the kitchen, and at other times he even had to scrub the privies. He was a horse handler in name only. The only times he actually felt like one were when he walked the horses morning and evening, and when he went to sleep. His bed was in the stable.

Living in the stable meant that the pungent reek of horses, rotting hay, and horse dung had seeped into his entire body. Together with his lowly status, that stench made even other people of humble station keep their distance.

For these and other reasons, the people of the estate called him Horse-Shit Sam rather than his real name, Sosam.

Horse, for his work as a horse handler. Shit, because he smelled of horse dung. And Sam, from Sosam.

Put the three together, and he became Horse-Shit Sam. To Sosam—no, to Horse-Shit Sam—the Danri estate was home, but it was also the prison of the underworld.

● ● ●

As always, Horse-Shit Sam was having another grueling day.

Machil, one of the armory servants, had dragged him along to do his personal errands. It happened often, and it was possible because no one spared Horse-Shit Sam a thought. Even among the servants at the very bottom, he occupied the lowest rung.

The two had come to a weapons shop in Fengyang to collect weapons custom-made for the Danri Family's warriors.

“Ah, Machil. You're here?”

The shopkeeper came out and greeted Machil first. As the largest martial sect in Fengyang, the Danri Family was the most important customer at every weapons shop in town. Naturally, this shopkeeper supplied them with plenty of weapons too, and he knew their armory servant Machil well.

“I've come to collect everything we ordered a month ago. Spears, halberds, swords, sabers, spikes—the lot.”

“Ah, perfect timing. I've hardly slept all month, and I only just finished yesterday.”

Grumbling in the customary manner of merchants, the weapons dealer brought out the finished goods. There were so many that he had to make several trips to the storeroom before he had laid them all out in front of Machil.

Machil gave them a cursory once-over and paid. He wasn't going to use them himself, after all. As long as they looked sound on the outside, he didn't care.

“But have only the two of you come? I don't see a cart. Will you two be all right carrying these back to the Danri estate? It's quite a distance.”

“What's there to worry about? I've got a fine horse standing right here.”

With a sneer, Machil struck Horse-Shit Sam hard in the chest as he stood beside him.

THUD!

Emaciated to little more than skin and bones, Horse-Shit Sam crumpled helplessly to the shop floor under Machil's fist.

Though the shopkeeper had witnessed it right in front of him, he merely shook his head and turned away. Nothing he said would be heeded anyway, and this was an internal matter for the Danri Family. Everyone in Fengyang knew Horse-Shit Sam's plight, but no one stepped forward on his behalf. There were people in his situation everywhere in the Central Plains.

“Hey, Horse-Shit Sam. What are you doing? Get up and move those weapons. Unless you want to fucking die right where you are.”

“...”

Without so much as a groan, Horse-Shit Sam rose and shouldered as many weapons as he could carry. He would probably spend the entire day simply hauling these weapons back to the estate.

“I've got business at the Bongyang Inn, so I'll be there. Come find me when you've moved everything. Got it?”

“...”

Horse-Shit Sam merely nodded without answering. So poorly nourished was he that even this was his own way of conserving the effort it took to speak. But keeping silent was hardly a wise way to get by.

THUD!

Machil punched him across the face. Horse-Shit Sam fell to the floor again. A faint smear of blood appeared at the corner of his mouth; his lip seemed to have split.

“You little shit. Answer me. Answer! Are you looking down on me because we share the name Ma?”

“N-no, sir...”

At last, Horse-Shit Sam spoke. Like his shriveled body, his voice was pitifully thin, as dry and rough as sand. Blood streamed from his mouth even as he spoke. It wasn't only his lip that had split; his tongue and the roof of his mouth had been badly torn as well.

THUD!

At the sight of Horse-Shit Sam bleeding, Machil kicked him in the face again. This blow must have been harder, for Horse-Shit Sam tumbled across the floor and crashed into a corner of the shop.

Though he had no strength left, he lifted his head with all his might and looked at Machil. His bloodshot eyes, their tiny vessels burst, were asking:

Why? Why? Why...?

“Ah, that bastard's splattered blood all over the weapons. Fucking jinx. You're no use no matter what you do.”

Just because of that...?

Horse-Shit Sam—no, Sosam—was truly miserable. Getting through each day was so hard that all he wanted was to die. But finding the courage to die wasn't easy either. Whenever he tried, fear would almost always make him give up.

Each time, he would tell himself to take the courage needed to die and try his hardest to live once more... only to find himself wanting to die again before long. After going through this over and over, he had little courage left even to go on living.

Unable to die, yet finding it just as hard to live...

Sosam hated himself for being a coward who could do neither.

Groping along the wall, he barely managed to get to his feet. Swaying unsteadily, he staggered toward Machil.

Machil gave his forehead a few light shoves with a finger, then spoke in a spiteful tone.

“Move all the weapons, and wipe every bit of that blood off them. If I check later and find even one drop left, you'd better be ready to cough up a bucket of blood for every drop. Understand?”

“Yes, sir...”

With that final threat, Machil left the weapons shop. Just as he had said earlier, he was heading to the Bongyang Inn.

Sosam knew very well why he was going there. He was certain to be meeting Aeng-Aeng. Until Sosam finished moving all the weapons, Machil would pass the time there fondling her bare flesh.

Sosam rubbed the blood from his mouth with the scrap of straw matting the shopkeeper had handed him. It was the only help the man could offer. It was a tiny gesture, but tears welled in Sosam's eyes. No one in the Danri Family would do even this much for him. He was merely the estate's most useless, foul-smelling servant, worth less than a worm.

He handed the bloodstained scrap back to the shopkeeper and thanked him. Then, with great effort, he hoisted two spears onto his shoulder and left the shop.

● ● ●

Harsh, ragged breaths poured from him, and hot sweat dripped down without pause.

By evening, an utterly exhausted Sosam had finally finished moving all the weapons. Seeing him, the shopkeeper spoke.

“Why don't you rest a little? Your color isn't good. You look as though...”

He swallowed the rest—that Sosam looked as though he might die at any moment. He felt that saying something so ill-omened might make it come true.

“I'm all right...”

With that, Sosam started moving again. Every bone in his body creaked, and his muscles screamed for him to rest, but he had to keep going.

Leaving the shopkeeper's pitying gaze behind him, he walked out of the weapons shop.

He staggered toward the Bongyang Inn one step at a time, looking half-dead. Perhaps from overexertion, his breathing had grown so ragged he could barely catch his breath, and sweat streamed down his body. It felt as though pushing himself even a little further in this state might actually kill him.

Even so, he somehow reached the Bongyang Inn without collapsing.

“Stop.”

“What's... the matter, sir?”

“What do you fucking think? Would you let something like you in here?”

“...”

The inn's waiter looked his filthy body up and down and pinched his nose between two fingers, refusing to let him enter. Sosam was dirty at the best of times, but now he was a truly wretched sight. The blood from Machil's beating had mixed with the sweat he'd shed hauling weapons and the grime on his skin, leaving him looking like the most destitute of beggars. In the end, he asked the waiter to tell Machil that the work was finished, then turned away.

Machil was sure to grill him later about why he had sent the waiter instead of reporting in person, but Sosam had no choice. Unless he hurried back and rested, he felt he really would breathe his last.

“... So tired. I just... want to rest...”

In his heart, he was already racing toward the Danri Family's stable, shabby though it was—his own little refuge. But his body wouldn't obey. He was so exhausted that he wanted to lie down in the street, right where he stood. Now that it had come to this, perhaps it would be a relief to die of exhaustion.

Damn it. Damn it.

Despite those thoughts, apparently some part of him still wanted to live.

Though he staggered even worse than before, his feet kept carrying him toward the estate through Fengyang's bustling streets, dyed red by the setting sun.

“Heh... heh-heh.”

A bitter, twisted laugh escaped through his split lips before he knew it. Sosam... Sosam, do you really want to keep clinging to this worm's life, even like this? He asked himself again and again.

“Yes... I do. Even like this...”

He didn't want to die.

Live. Yes, live. If he kept living, surely a good day would come eventually.

“Hey, Horse-Shit Sam.”

He was dead on his feet, and now someone was calling him.

Sosam forced up his drooping eyelids to see who had spoken. His vision was blurred, making it difficult to recognize anyone, but he raised his head fully.

BUMP.

He felt himself collide with someone—presumably the person who had called out to him.