Chapter 87 - Taking Flight

Meanwhile, Lee Jasong’s main army, which had been heading toward them, altered its course and advanced to encircle Guishui Fortress.

To Bato, it looked as though the Gray Wolf Corps would reach the fortress just a little sooner. Perhaps they could slip inside, if only by the narrowest margin. If the gates would only open for them...

“That hope is futile.”

Bato flinched.

Without his noticing, Dong Bongsu had come up directly behind him. Even then, Bato instinctively reached for his saber’s hilt, but his hand could go no farther. Dong Bongsu already had it in his grasp.

And somehow, he was riding Kaiji. Kaiji was a monster of the north that permitted no one but Mamorota or Timur Khan on its back. How?

But he was not permitted to ask questions.

“Do you understand me?”

He must have meant whether Bato spoke Chinese. Bato immediately nodded. His father had been a merchant belonging to an ortoq, one of Northern Yuan’s large merchant associations. As with any frontier merchant, most of his customers had been Han Chinese merchants. Naturally, Chinese was essential to trade, and it was only to be expected that the children who would inherit the business should learn it too.

Dong Bongsu spoke again.

“Timur Khan has already abandoned you.”

“The moment you left the fortress, you were abandoned.”

“What do you...?”

“I would have done the same.”

Bato could make no sense of it. Yet he found it believable. Then again, what choice did he have but to believe? His life was already in this man’s hands.

“You only need to help me with one thing.”

The words were brief, but Bato understood. Whatever that one thing might be, helping with it would presumably buy him his life.

He nodded again.

Dong Bongsu pulled the reins, turning Kaiji back around. His back lay exposed, but Bato did not move a muscle. This man had killed Mamorota. A small fry like Bato could do nothing against him.

SQUELCH, SQUELCH.

Kaiji’s paws made sticky sounds as they trod through ground where blood ran in streams.

Soon, Dong Bongsu and Kaiji reached the last remaining counterweight trebuchet. To Bato’s eyes, it was not intact. It was clearly the one whose throwing arm Mamorota had broken earlier. Still, the arm had apparently not snapped off completely. It dangled from the end of the joint, but stubbornly remained attached.

Dong Bongsu picked up ropes lying scattered on the ground, raised the broken section, and lashed it in place. It was far from perfect, but it should hold together for a few shots. So Bato thought.

Dong Bongsu urged Kaiji onward again, this time toward the mound of corpses.

He touched the foul-smelling masses of bodies without the slightest hesitation. Then the corpses vanished, just as the trebuchet had earlier.

It no longer even surprised Bato. He merely regarded it as an unusual technique. After all, he had heard that the Central Plains teemed with people who used martial arts beyond imagining. Perhaps this man was one of them. Without realizing it, Bato tried touching various parts of his own body. Unlike Dong Bongsu, however, he produced no change whatsoever.

Having gathered up all the corpses, Dong Bongsu returned to the trebuchet.

He went straight to the basket of coal attached to its front end. Drawing over half the hauling ropes attached to its end, he tied them around Kaiji’s neck. He tied the other half around his own torso, then dismounted.

Finally, he looked at Bato and said,

“Come here.”

Bato approached without a word. He knew it was time to do the favor the man wanted.

“When this fellow and I get onto the throwing arm, cut the hauling ropes.”

Without understanding what Dong Bongsu meant, Bato nodded again.

CREEEAK.

Having received his answer, Dong Bongsu suddenly began pulling the ropes with all his strength. Kaiji strained alongside him, hauling in unison. The counterweight basket, so heavy that Bato could not begin to guess its weight, rose into the air, while the throwing arm—the launch platform—began to descend.

At first, Bato had assumed Dong Bongsu wanted help pulling the ropes to raise the counterweight basket. Apparently not.

Once the basket had risen as high as it would go, Dong Bongsu tied the ends of the ropes tightly to an anchoring post driven into the ground. The two of them had done the work of fifty soldiers, but Bato was hardly surprised. For some reason, it simply seemed natural.

TWANG. TWANG.

Like a musician checking an instrument’s strings, Dong Bongsu lightly plucked the middle of a hauling rope with his finger. Presumably, he was checking whether it was taut enough for launching.

The notes cut off short. The rope vibrated so little that anyone could see how tightly it had been drawn.

After tugging on the ropes a couple more times, Dong Bongsu mounted Kaiji again and took his position at the end of the throwing arm. Kaiji was so large that its forepaws reached the middle of the arm, but not so far as to interfere with the launch.

Now Bato thought he understood exactly what Dong Bongsu wanted—and that doing it was the only way he would survive. What he could not foresee was what his action would bring upon Guishui Fortress.

Even so, he had no choice. Even if he refused, Dong Bongsu would find some way to sever all those ropes. In that case, shouldn’t he at least save his own life?

“Cut them. Right now.”

SWISH. SNAP! WHOOSH!

At last, Bato brought his saber down on the hauling ropes, and Dong Bongsu flew toward Guishui Fortress.

Bato watched him go, then quietly rode his gray wolf away and disappeared into the distance.

Timur Khan’s blue eyes flashed open. Mamorota was dead. Though he had already cast the man aside, it was still the death of his sworn brother.

Timur Khan had watched the battle between the enemy and the Gray Wolf Corps from beginning to end. The shock sent ripples through his heart. It had been a bizarre fight, one he would never have believed without seeing it himself. He had been too far away to make out the details, but something had certainly been strange. And the victor of that battle was unquestionably the man who had killed Mamorota: Dong Bongsu.

The strategic victory, however, belonged to Timur Khan.

Through the Gray Wolf Corps’ “sacrifice,” the whirlwind-catapult units had been annihilated, and the few remaining mercenaries were scattering in nearly every direction. Wasn’t that achievement worth sacrificing the corps?

His eyes gleaming more brightly, Timur Khan continued observing Dong Bongsu’s actions, his surroundings, and the battlefield as a whole.

For some reason, Dong Bongsu was crouching down to examine Kaiji. One unidentified member of the Gray Wolf Corps remained, watching him.

Even then, the surviving corps members were making all haste back to Guishui Fortress, while Lee Jasong’s main army advanced toward the fortress to cut off their return.

Before long, Timur Khan dismissed Dong Bongsu and the trebuchets from his mind. What point was there in paying any more attention to a place already reduced to utter carnage? He could see one broken trebuchet, but, well... something in that state could hardly decide the course of the war.

Having reached that conclusion, he turned his attention entirely to Lee Jasong’s main army.

“Fire the crossbows.”

Timur Khan’s new order went out to the defenders all along the walls.

“He orders the crossbows to fire!”

The crossbowmen fired at Lee Jasong’s main army in unison. The archers, who had long since drawn their bows, released their arrows in time with the ballista volleys.

ZIP-ZIP-ZIP! WHOOSH-WHOOSH!

The air tore with the sound, and dozens of men charging at the head of Lee Jasong’s army fell. Naturally, the army’s advance slowed.

Lee Jasong knew perfectly well that, with the encirclement tightened to this distance, Timur Khan could not open the gates. He did not force his men to advance farther. However formidable the defenses of Guishui Fortress’s gates might be, he also knew that opening and closing them was nowhere near as flexible an affair.

The standoff continued between Lee Jasong, who waited for the gates to open, and Timur Khan, who had no intention of opening them. But Lee Jasong, too, knew perfectly well that Timur Khan had no such intention. It was obvious that opening the gates at this distance would allow the main army to enter the fortress.

From the outset, Timur Khan had never intended to let the Gray Wolf Corps back in after sending them out. Their role had ended the moment they destroyed all the trebuchets. Once he sent them out onto the steppe where that black monster ran rampant, their usefulness was gone. Only their sacrifice remained.

WHOOSH-WHOOSH-WHOOSH!

As expected, Lee Jasong’s main army unleashed a volley at the Gray Wolf Corps, trapped before Guishui Fortress’s gates with nowhere to go. Timur Khan seized that opportunity to inflict as much damage as possible on Lee Jasong’s army. With the enemy this close, he meant to thin their numbers as much as he could.

Timur Khan concentrated his ballista fire on Lee Jasong’s vanguard. Lee Jasong poured indiscriminate volleys into the Gray Wolf Corps. And the corps, with nowhere left to flee, perished.

ZIP-ZIP-ZIP-ZIP!

“Aaagh! A-aaargh!”

There was no romance in this battle. Surely war was at its finest when swords and sabers clashed with spears and halberds, sending blood flying...

Yet this was real war. If you could kill without being seen, you did so. If not, you annihilated the enemy while avoiding direct confrontation as much as possible. In a fight, winning was what mattered, not looking impressive.

Both Timur Khan and Lee Jasong were waging war in accordance with that simple truth.

“Aaaaaaargh!”

The killing continued on both sides, but while Lee Jasong’s expression was grim, Timur Khan was smiling.

He might have lost the entire Gray Wolf Corps, but the enemy’s artillery had been completely destroyed, and obtaining the materials to rebuild it had become difficult. Moreover, over ninety percent of the artillery crews in Lee Jasong’s main army had been slaughtered. In other words, even if they had the materials, they had no craftsmen left to build the machines.

All he needed to do was keep the gates securely shut, and the enemy would collapse on its own. This battle had made Timur Khan more certain of victory than ever.

The flames consuming the Yin Mountains grew fiercer and fiercer.