Clearing Out The Great Saber Gang's Remnants

Swallowing up Musam’s force was easy.

Musam their chief and most of the men under him were dead drunk, so putting them down was no trouble either. We waited for Duho, who had been drinking cup for cup with Musam, to come out, then walked in without a drop of blood spilled and swept the place clean.

It ended so tamely, without anything like a proper fight, that even I was left at a loss.

And to think a man who rose to be the right hand of one of the unorthodox sects with Qingzhou in its grip could be this stupid.

I looked at Musam, bound and forced to his knees, snorting with rage. Whether it was the drink or the anger, his face had flushed red.

Probably both.

“Pah! Duho, you gutless bastard! You dare betray me?”

Musam spat the curse in Duho’s direction.

“Come now, why would a gentleman who knows what’s what act like this? Betrayal’s a common enough thing in this line of work, isn’t it? And it isn’t cowardice, it’s putting your head to good use.”
“Nnngh…! You—!”

None of it took with Duho, so Musam turned his aim on me.

“You bastard! Is the Yang manor not an orthodox sect? Are you allowed to pull a base trick like this?”

The words were so absurd that a short laugh escaped me before I knew it. Hardly the sort of line to come out of the mouth of a man who had done more base work than anybody.

“In a contest, where do orthodox and unorthodox come into it? Win, and that’s the whole of it.”
“Why, you mad—!”

He could not go on, and ground his teeth. He would never have expected to hear a thing like that out of an orthodox man’s mouth.

But I am not a man who weighs justification. So long as I can win, I can throw justification to the dogs.

Musam swallowed his fury down and went on.

“Don’t go thinking you’ve won, greenhorn. You imagine the men under me will follow a novice like you? Strength alone doesn’t settle everything in this line of work! As long as I am alive, never—”
“Is that so?”

I drew the sword from Duho’s waist.

— Shing.

Musam’s shouting broke off for a moment. He was tense enough that I saw him swallow. Then his face screwed up; plainly he found it humiliating to have flinched.

He clenched his teeth, threw his head back and shouted.

“Kill me! Kill me if you can, greenhorn! A kid who’s never so much as killed a man, throwing out empty threats! You think that would make me or the men under me blink even once?! You’re wasting your breath!”

He said it with complete conviction, and I answered him plainly.

“Well now. I think differently.”

The instant the words were out, I brought the sword down from above.

— Shk.

— Bump, bump-bump-bump.

Musam’s head came away from his body and rolled across the floor. The body it left behind lost its strength and toppled where it stood.

“…”
“…”

The room went quiet. Not so much as a small breath sounded. I could feel the air freezing over fast.

I looked over Musam’s men one by one. Any man who met my eye shuddered and looked hurriedly away.

“Musam said you lot wouldn’t follow me. If there’s anyone here who feels that way, raise a hand.”
“…”
“…”

They all kept their faces turned away and said nothing.

“Then you all mean to follow me. Is that it?”
“…”
“…”

This time too there was no answer.

I raised the blood-smeared sword.

“No answer?”
“We’ll follow you!”
“Only spare us! We’ll follow you!”
“We’ll serve you as our boss!”

Only then did they scramble to find their voices.

“Good. From today you belong to the Red Headband Hall. Sit quiet and wait until you get separate orders. And if there’s a man among you who breaks my word, or turns on me and goes over to somebody else…”

I raised the sword.

“You know well enough what will happen.”
“We’ll bear it in mind!”

A full-throated answer burst out.

With the situation squared away, Duho and I went out of the building together. He shook his head in amazement.

“There’s not a scrap of mercy in your hand. I thought you’d at least talk to that Musam fellow — and you take his head off with one stroke.”
“He did every kind of filthy work at Black Leopard’s elbow. What good is keeping him alive? Killing him as an example pays better.”
“It was murderously effective, I’ll give you that. The boys were scared witless and tucked their tails on the spot.”
“When it comes to controlling men from the bottom, there’s nothing like fear. Talk won’t persuade them, and there’s no time for it besides. The others aren’t going to sit still.”
“You mean the other lieutenants?”
“Yes. By now word will have got round that we hit Musam’s force. What men like that do next is obvious. The three of them will have banded together.”
“True enough. Without banding together they’d have a hard time facing us.”

Duho nodded and chimed in.

“But if the three of them band together, that makes a force about even with ours — so what do you mean to do? Push it through by main force and our own losses will be pretty heavy.”

He was right. Our force ran to a hundred men or so, and the three of them together came to much the same.

The two sides were near enough level.

Set force against force in a situation like that and at best we would break even; go wrong and both sides would come out beaten and bleeding. Even winning would do us no good then, since the Black Water Gang and the Blood Wind Gang would come down on us the moment our strength thinned.

That amounts to laying the table, taking up the spoon as well, and holding it ready at their mouths.

I’m not about to watch that happen.

If I were the one being fed, that would be another matter, but I had no wish to wait on anybody else. I had gone through enough of that in my past life to last me.

Which meant putting down what was left of the Great Saber Gang without any great losses of our own.

“Don’t worry. I mean to avoid going at them head-on as far as I can. And their banding together was a variable I’d already allowed for when I laid the plan.”
“You knew they’d band together? Then why not just beat them down one by one? Wouldn’t that be easier?”
“If we had time, I would have. How long do you think it would take to catch men who are scattered?”
“Uh… a damned long while, I suppose? Some would run, and some would fight back.”
“That’s why I let them band together. Time isn’t on our side. This plan has to be finished with a quick battle and a quick decision.”

I paused a moment before I spoke again.

“It matters that we finish the job before the Black Water Gang and the Blood Wind Gang step in. And for that, rather than going round catching them one at a time, it’s faster to drive them into one place and take them all in a single net.”
“Hah— our Young Master had it all planned out.”

Duho clapped his hands in admiration.

“If you expected them to band together, then you’ve a way of dealing with it too? Right?”
“Naturally.”

I nodded and laid out the plan.

“It’s true their force is about even with ours. But the reason they banded together is to keep from being eaten alive by us. They had no choice but to make an alliance. Will men like that really trust each other?”
“They won’t.”
“Right. They’ll be smiling on the outside and ready to knife each other in the back at any moment underneath.”
“That’s certainly true.”

He nodded along.

“We just work our way into that gap. Then they’ll destroy themselves for us.”
“Oho… now this I want to hear.”
“First, recite everything you know about them. As much as you know.”

Duho swept his hair back.

“The three lieutenants left are named Suje, Docheol and Manbong. Suje first — his byname is Viper. Good at working the small angles. He’ll have been the one who got them banding together in the first place, most likely. The other two are a bit short in the head, see?”
“And the other two?”
“One of them’s called Docheol, and that one’s an ignorant brute. But greedy with it — show him money or a woman and he loses his mind. And the last is Manbong, and he’s a bat, that one. Attaches himself wherever the profit is. Mostly he goes along with whatever Suje proposes.”

Duho’s account gave me a rough picture of what sort of men they were. A clever one, a greedy one, and one with no backbone of his own.

The worst possible combination.

Men who would distrust and suspect one another, fight to take more, and betray at the first disadvantage. Nothing good could come of that lot banding together; they would only drag one another down.

“I can see the shape of it now.”
“Which one will you hit first? Suje looks the better bet to me. Wouldn’t it be easier to get rid of the one who uses his head first?”
“No. Suje is as suspicious as he is clever. He won’t take our story easily. Poke at him carelessly and all you do is put his guard up.”
“Then who is it you’re aiming at?”
“The one we go after is Docheol.”
“Docheol?”

Duho cocked his head, puzzled.

“Is there a reason for hitting him first?”
“He’s as easy to handle as he is ignorant and greedy.”
“And what exactly do you mean to do?”
“The operation is simple. I mean to sow discord and tear the three of them apart.”
“Sow discord?”
“Right now they’ve made an alliance, but they’ll be uneasy with it. None of them knows who will betray whom. That’s what we work into. We set light to their unease.”
“Ah… so that’s why you had me slip our boys in underneath them ahead of time?”
“That’s right.”

I had been laying this plan since we abducted the young bureau head of the Shandong Escort Bureau, which was why I had told Duho to place men he could trust under the lieutenants. The time had come to make use of the men planted in advance.

“Have the man who went in under Docheol leak him something.”
“What should he say?”
“That once this business is over, Suje means to push Docheol and Manbong aside and eat the Great Saber Gang up on his own.”
“Will he believe that?”
“Have him say Suje has opened a line with the Black Water Gang. Then he’ll have no choice but to believe it.”
“The Black Water Gang?”

Duho repeated the name, plainly not following.

“That one seems hard to believe. If he meant to deal with the Black Water Gang, there’d be no reason for him to be building a separate force of his own like this.”
“He wouldn’t believe it. In ordinary circumstances. But right now it’s an emergency. Black Leopard, the gang leader himself, is dead, and Musam died at my hand too. In the middle of all that, if Docheol hears that Suje — who is good at working the small angles — has done a deal behind their backs, can he really not believe it?”
“Uh… he’d doubt it, but he’d believe it?”
“Yes. He won’t be able not to believe it. Docheol will have taken a good many small losses off Suje, ignorant as he is. Put the present situation together with his experience up to now and he’ll come to suspect Suje.”

Duho smacked his hands together and let out a sound of admiration.

“Whoa— how did you know Docheol had been done over by Suje so often? I only learned it from one of my own men. Young Master, have you got some divine art or something?”
“Divine art, my foot. What do you suppose happens when a man who works the small angles fastens himself beside an ignorant one? He’d pick the profits out for himself and leave the losses to Docheol. A guess that far is easy.”
“Easy, you say?”

He gave a hollow laugh.

“Times like this make me wonder whether I’m the stupid one.”
“Don’t worry. You’re not stupid.”
“I can guess roughly what comes after that… That you’re a genius? It isn’t that, is it?”
“Hardly.”

I let out a short laugh.

A genius, he says.

I think nothing of the sort.

In my past life and this one together, I had never once heard myself called a genius. There was nothing uncanny about my knowing how those two stood with each other. I had spent the last ten years rolling around Blood Sand Plain, a place that draws every sort of humanity there is, and I had met all manner of men in it. Enough of them, and behaviour becomes predictable up to a point. That was all it was.

I ignored the suspicion filling Duho’s eyes and went on.

“Leak something to Manbong as well.”
“What sort of thing?”
“It goes like this…”

I told Duho what to leak to Manbong. At that, Duho looked at me with plain revulsion.

“Er, Young Master. Are you really a man of the orthodox sects?”
“Why?”
“No, it’s just — hearing what you said just now, it’d be no exaggeration to call you a thoroughly vicious man of the black path.”
“If it means winning, I can do worse than that.”
“I’d best pray for the repose of the three poor fools in advance.”

That drew a laugh out of me.

“I mean to have the business finished as fast as it can be.”
“How many days do you think it’ll take?”
“Four days at the outside.”
“Four days? Isn’t that a bit optimistic? They’re not fools — are they going to take each other’s heads overnight?”
“It’s because they aren’t fools that they will.”

I put a hand on Duho’s shoulder.

“They already don’t trust each other. What I’m throwing in is a small ember, but the mistrust inside them has been steeping in oil a long while now. The instant the ember touches it, it goes up in no time at all.”
“Hmm…”
“Within four days they’ll have knives in each other’s hearts. All we have to do is take the force over without bleeding for it, the way we did this time.”

Duho scratched his head at how certain I sounded.

“Ah, hell. I don’t know. If the Young Master says so, then that’s how it is. I’ll move on it right away.”

Duho left.

The seeds of suspicion were his to sow now.

All we had to do was wait for the moment they destroyed themselves.