Showing The Bottom

“So you mean to do nothing but run? Where has that spirit of yours gone? Am I so very frightening?”

Namgung Mu-baek heard it and thought it childish. There was nothing to say back. In the old days a jibe like that would have had the better of his temper, and he would have flown at the man swearing.

Which is no doubt exactly what he is after.

He could work out now what Jegal Do-won would say and do before he did it, and he saw straight through the man.

“I was seeing whether your skill had come on. It is not so different from last year, which is disappointing.”

“You little bastard!”

The provocation had not taken, and out came the coarse words. It had nothing to do with what he intended. His true nature, down at the bottom, was throwing a fit.

“You have gone out of your mind and want to die, is that it!”

“This is a friendly sparring match. Is swearing not going rather far? You would do well to calm yourself.”

The stupid hellion was putting on airs all of a sudden, as though he had turned sage overnight. Jegal Do-won swore to himself that he would shame him good and proper, and let his aura drop.

“Well, then. Let us see how far that spirit of yours carries you.”

Jegal Do-won opened with the move he was surest of, the one that had left Namgung Mu-baek sprawling last year with no answer to it at all.

When Jegal Do-won came in with a dazzling move that took the space on the left, Namgung Mu-baek swung his sword toward the space on the right.

— Tak-tak-ta-ta-ta-tak!

Then Jegal Do-won worked an irregular trick, shifting his offensive from the left to the right in the blink of an eye.

Jegal Do-won is forever fond of the stratagem that clamours in the east and strikes in the west¹, all to parade his own cleverness. In the old days I fell for that move like a fool. Ah — come to think of it, I understand Jegal Do-won rather well.

In their earlier bouts he had had no such understanding, and all of him had gone into simply answering the attacks. Knowing neither the direction the attacks came from nor the character behind them, he had been beaten more often than not. Once he understood the man’s character and the man’s martial arts, though, the moves were plain to see.

Driven into a corner like this, he will use the killing move he trusts most, even knowing it is overreaching.

By now he could even predict the man’s moves. And sure enough, Jegal Do-won gave off a powerful aura and drove it hard into him, as though he had staked his life on this one stroke.

Jegal Do-won is all bluster, so he always likes to get behind his opponent. Because he wants everyone to see that overwhelming skill of his.

Namgung Mu-baek gave ground, and rather than block the offensive driving in from the front, he turned his body.

— Tak-tak-ta-tak!

The wooden swords met with a hard crack, and at that same moment the two of them came to a stop. Jegal Do-won’s sword lay wedged against Namgung Mu-baek’s side; Namgung Mu-baek’s rested on the crown of his opponent’s head.

For a martial artist there was no shame like it. To yield the crown of your head to the man across from you was the shame of shames.

“It is true. Master Scholar Cheon was right.”

He had muttered it without meaning to. He looked down blankly at Jegal Do-won, who was trembling.

That would have been me standing there, most likely. If he had not been here.

He shifted his gaze to the placid scholar, who sat with his chin propped on one hand, watching the two of them as though he were bored.

Has Scholar Cheon no nerves at all? Everyone here has the strain plain on his face from the battle intent the two of us have let loose.

It staggered Namgung Mu-baek that a man could sit that close to their sparring match and not be touched by it in the least. He did not even wear the face of someone worried for him.

Did he know I would win? Or did he give me up for lost from the start and expect nothing at all? Well, would you look at that — now he is yawning.

Namgung Mu-baek muttered.

“I have a long way to go yet.”

He said it to himself. He had come this far on a koan Scholar Cheon had given him; what he had grasped on his own amounted to very little.

“Had it been live blades and not wooden swords, I would have won.”

The words came at Namgung Mu-baek’s back as he turned away.

— Pfft!

“Maybe.”

It was not worth answering further.

“If the win and the loss trouble you so much, let us call it a draw.”

He had said it, in his own way, out of consideration for Jegal Do-won, and it goaded the man instead.

“How did you read my moves? Did Scholar Cheon teach you? They say he was at the Murim Alliance, so he might well know how to break the martial arts of our Jegal Clan. Is that not so?”

He knew himself that it made no sense, but even so he wanted some way to make his own defeat sit right with him.

“How has a clever man like you turned so childish? You are like a small child throwing a tantrum.”

Namgung Mu-baek, unable to watch any more, spat the words out.

“If you truly cannot accept it, let us hold another sparring match tomorrow.”

Meaning, perhaps, to pay back all the bitterness he had swallowed over the years, Namgung Mu-baek scraped away hard at Jegal Do-won’s insides.

“Then we shall simply find out. Whether he knows how to break our house’s martial arts.”

Hearing that, Cheon Tae-san sighed.

“You really are like a small child. Give a child a hammer, they say, and he takes everything for a nail — and that is exactly the state Young Master Jegal is in now.”

Was it those words that lit the fuse?

Jegal Do-won came up in front of Cheon Tae-san and scattered a flurry of sword strokes without warning. Namgung Mu-baek saw it and closed in, trying to beat the sword aside. He moved with everything he had; never in his life had he unfolded his footwork so fast.

— Taak!

The wooden sword Jegal Do-won brought down carried force enough to break a shoulder bone, and because it had gone out first, Namgung Mu-baek could not turn it aside completely. Its line knocked askew, the sword came down toward Cheon Tae-san’s forearm. To an ordinary eye that speed would have been lightning; to him it was a speed his eyes caught quite clearly.

Cheon Tae-san drew up the spirit energy of the Seven Stars and Seven Primes, pressed lightly on Jegal Do-won’s sword as it fell toward his forearm, and turned.

— Fwing!

Unable to bear the force of the turn, Jegal Do-won lost hold of the wooden sword.

“Ugh!”

The web of his hand split and blood spurted up. The wooden sword flew off toward the Jegal Clan elders standing behind him.

Cheon Tae-san had turned it toward them deliberately.

“Look out!”

The Jegal Clan elders shouted, seeing the sword come flying at them out of nowhere. One of them drew to cut it out of the air, but the sword drove into their chest.

— Whack!

Then it happened.

— Snick!

In that instant the wooden sword broke in two and dropped to the ground. Namgung Mu-baek had pulled the sword from another Jegal Clan warrior standing beside him and cut the wooden sword down. The whole thing had taken the blink of an eye, and at first few people understood properly what they had seen.

“Master Scholar, I have grasped the fourth move!”

Having cut Jegal Do-won’s wooden sword in two, Namgung Mu-baek broke into a broad smile that did not suit the mood at all. He had crossed thirty feet of ground, taken a Jegal Clan martial artist’s sword and cut the flying blade out of the air. That one stroke held the essence of the fourth move of the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique, Skyflash Parting the Sea.

When Skyflash Parting the Sea unfolded, Namgung Hak sprang to his feet. His eldest son had only lately managed to complete that move, and his youngest had just unfolded it perfectly.

“This cannot be!”

Some of the Namgung Clan elders let out cries of wonder. Those who had recognized the move were stirred up and would not stop talking.

But Namgung Hak’s eyes moved quickly from his son to Scholar Cheon. The scholar had pressed Jegal Do-won’s wooden sword with his forearm, turned, taken the sword off him and lent it speed, and that was part of the fifth move of the Boundless Azure Sky Sword Technique, Azure Dragon Spiraling Ascent. To everyone else’s eyes it would have looked as though Namgung Mu-baek had blocked Jegal Do-won’s attack on the scholar, and the scholar had barely dodged it in the confusion.

Could a man do such a thing by chance?

It was impossible.

Azure Dragon Spiraling Ascent turned an incoming force and sent it back out at three times the force and speed.

Could a Jegal Clan elder really have failed to dodge a single wooden sword thrust by Jegal Do-won, and taken it full in the chest?

No.

The elder had judged the wooden sword’s speed, but Scholar Cheon had turned it and trebled it, and so the blow could not be dodged.

Not simply reading an oral formula — he knows how to put one to use? Is that possible for a man who has never trained in the martial arts? If it is, he must be a genius the likes of which the world produces once in a generation.

Faced with something past all understanding, Namgung Hak fell for a moment into a panic. He had seen an outstanding scholar come close, now and then, to the ultimate truth of some difficult martial oral formula. But to take the formula he had interpreted and demonstrate it with his own body was a thing of another order altogether.

“Our youngest is really quite something.”

Jeon I-an said it in a delighted tone.

“Indeed. The boy has done admirably.”

But the answer that came back from Namgung Hak was hollow.

While his thoughts were still tangled, Jegal Bang-hak, an elder of the Jegal Clan, came over and spoke.

“Clan Head. There is urgent business at our house, and it seems we must leave today.”

“Oh? There is still business between us not yet reckoned up. So soon as this?”

Namgung Hak knew perfectly well what lay behind it, and shot back with a straight face.

“That… settle it as you see fit, Clan Head. Our house will leave it to the clan head’s decision.”

“Come now. In that case the Jegal Clan’s loss will be no small one.”

“We can only hope for the clan head’s leniency.”

At those words Namgung Hak felt as though an aching tooth had come out. Negotiations over the escort agency’s cargo had refused to come untangled, and here was word that the Jegal Clan would give way on the whole of it. Since yesterday the two houses had been locked in a war of nerves, neither side yielding, and he had been facing the prospect of swallowing some degree of loss, which had not sat easily with him.

Catching the elder’s intent, he spoke obliquely.

“What has happened here today will not leak beyond these walls.”

“It is the clan head’s own word, so I shall trust it.”

“Ah — even if you go, you must set your seal before you do. As a sign that our negotiation has been well concluded.”

The Jegal Clan elder glanced at Jegal Do-won, quickly turned away and sighed inwardly. The web of the boy’s hand was split, the blood running freely from it, and he stood staring blankly at the scholar. The sight of him twisted the elder’s insides.

“As you say.”

To protect a hidden dragon the Jegal Clan had brought forth only with difficulty, a loss of that size could be swallowed a dozen times over.

Then it happened.

“That wretch—!”

Elder Jegal’s brow knitted. Jegal Do-won had taken up another wooden sword and was walking toward Scholar Cheon.

“You wretch! Do-won!”

The voice was full of fury, and Jegal Do-won started and turned around. This was the elder who ordinarily kept him close at hand and called him the Jegal Clan’s genius. In all his life he had never seen the elder angry like this.

“You wretch! How much more ink do you mean to smear on the name of this house! Was it to make a disgrace of yourself like this that you were taught! Since when has the Jegal Clan been a house that will not accept a result!”

The words were bitter, certainly, but they were right, and Jegal Do-won hung his head low.

“Worthless boy! Lift your head! You have lost a sparring match and nothing more — must you wear the face of a man who has lost the whole world! Did you imagine you would go on winning forever! A man must learn how to lose before he can learn how to win!”

The Jegal Clan elder had ended up, without meaning to, making a long speech of it. With the clan’s face fallen to the ground, what little pride could still be picked up off the floor had to be gathered somehow, even this way.

“Apologize!”

When Jegal Do-won hesitated, the elder thundered again.

“At once!”

Jegal Do-won threw down the wooden sword and made a cupped-hands salute to Cheon Tae-san.

“I went too far. Forgive me.”

Cheon Tae-san looked at him steadily. It was creditable, at least, that he took the elder’s hard words without kicking against them. His hands were shaking hard; here was a man visibly swallowing his humiliation. And at a moment like this, with so many eyes watching, it was necessary to show the bearing of a generous scholar of quality.

“When the will to win runs too strong, such things happen. But never mind that — is your hand all right? Dear, dear. To have bled as much as this.”

With a sigh he tore a strip clean off the hem of his own robe, and bound it round and round the web of Jegal Do-won’s hand.

“This wants treating quickly.”

People murmured at the sight, and it was all praise of Cheon Tae-san or wonder at him, nothing else.

Jegal Do-won brought his mouth close to Cheon Tae-san’s ear.

“You bastard! One day I am going to kill you!”

Hearing the words he chewed out low, almost as though he were reciting them, Cheon Tae-san pulled the bandage tight.

“Ugh!”

“Life is short. Youth is shorter.”

Jegal Do-won glared at the scholar, who was reeling off talk that had nothing to do with anything.

“And the time for loving is shorter still. In so short a time, is it not a waste to spend it hating? And when hatred grows, it does the hater harm. To hate is to raise a blade in your own heart, and once it has grown, it is you that it runs through.”

Jegal Bang-hak, the Jegal Clan elder, had sharpened their hearing with internal force beforehand, and hearing what passed between the two men, could not keep down a feeling of utter desolation. The nephew could not admit defeat and was speaking words full of spite, while the scholar, far from growing angry, was handing him counsel for his life. In fifty years of living it seemed they had rarely met a man of a character to match that young scholar’s. Young he might be, but the scholar’s character stirred respect in them.

That bearing of the scholar’s is the very thing our Jegal Clan sets out to be.

Jegal Bang-hak looked at the scholar again.

To have made so decent a human being of Namgung Mu-baek, the Namgung Clan’s hellion — this scholar must have some formidable ability, and no mistake. Even looking at him now, there is something different about him.

Jegal Bang-hak sighed a moment, and judging that the nephew would only make a worse spectacle of himself if they stayed longer, gave the order.

“See to Do-won. We treat him and go back to the house.”

Only then did the people of the Jegal Clan come to themselves and begin to move. They too had been at a loss what to do, unable to lift a hand.