The Training Continues

With the morning’s schedule behind them, Duho and the Red Headband Gang’s men made for the inn at the foot of the mountain, the one the boss had booked ahead. Food of every kind waited on the tables inside: meat soup still steaming, glossy white rice, thick-cut boiled pork piled up in mountains.

On an ordinary day the room would have been full of clattering dishes and the noise of chewing. Today it held nothing but groaning.

“Uugh…”
“Aaugh…”

Every man groaned as he fought to lift his chopsticks. Muscle ache prickled through them from head to foot.

Duho was no different. His right hand quivered of its own accord, chopsticks and all. He clamped his left hand over it to still it, which did no good whatsoever; if anything the left started shaking too, and the food only got harder to pick up.

Duho knitted his brow and put every scrap of concentration into his trembling fingers. He got the chopsticks around a steaming piece of meat and lifted it toward his mouth, but it slipped free before it came anywhere near his lips.

— Splat.

It dropped into the soup bowl and sent broth spraying in every direction.

“Ah… damn it.”

The curse was out of Duho’s mouth before he knew it, and a sigh followed it on its own. How in the world had he been reduced to a useless wretch who could not so much as pick up one piece of meat?

Well, of course. I spent the whole morning climbing a mountain — how could my body be in any normal state?

Nor had it been plain climbing. He had gone up and down with the pack basket filled to the top with earth, and not at a walk, either. At a run.

Yang Mujin, the bastard, had held their breakfast over them, so there had been nothing for it but to swallow tears of blood and take it. His thighs felt fit to burst, and his back screamed at the smallest movement, to say nothing of his arms and legs. It all left a truly bitter taste in his mouth.

Even so, he could not curse Yang Mujin.

How does a man go up and down that thing with sandbags and an iron spear on him?

Yang Mujin had climbed with sandbags and the iron spear stacked on top of his own pack basket. Having watched that with his own eyes, Duho could only swallow the complaints back down as fast as they rose in his throat. When the boss himself was out in front putting himself through it, his men could hardly whine that it was hard, could they?

All Duho and the Red Headband Gang’s men could do was hope the time went by fast.

— Clatter.

He turned his head at the sound of chopsticks hitting the floor. One of the men was straining with everything he had to pick them up again.

Now that he looked, the scene inside the inn was a little strange. Nobody was managing his utensils properly. They ate with their faces buried in their bowls or picked the food up in their hands, and not one man among them was in any fit state.

So it isn’t just me.

So this was what they meant by misery loves company. Knowing that he was not the only one, that they were all suffering together, was oddly comforting. There was more to it than that, too. A thing that had looked impossible at the start had somehow got done with that many men at it side by side; just as Yang Mujin had said, they really had done it.

A smile of satisfaction was creeping across his face when his expression went stiff.

You lunatic, why are you taking comfort in this?

He must have climbed that mountain so many times his mind had gone. Duho shook his head hard. Get a grip. All of this was that bastard’s scheme.

Never forget it: Yang Mujin was a wicked demon.

“Hooo—”

Duho let the breath out and took up the chopsticks again. Shaking hand or no, the food had to get into his mouth. The afternoon’s schedule was still to come, and if he did not fill his belly now he might well end up on the ground frothing at the mouth.

— Trembling.

— Tap.

The meat on his chopsticks fell.

— Trembling.

— Tap.

The meat went back into the bowl.

— Trembling.

This time he could not even take hold of it.

“…”

At this rate the meal would end with him doing nothing but licking his lips at it, never mind filling his belly.

— Clack.

Duho set the chopsticks down with the grave expression of a man who had made up his mind, dragged the bowl heaped with meat in front of him, and put his face straight into it.

Delicious.

The tender meat melted away in his mouth. There was not a trace of gaminess, the seasoning had soaked deep into the flesh, and the flavor was no joke.

Aaah…

It was so good he could have wept. To think a pair of chopsticks had been keeping him from food this good. It was unbearably unjust.

In the old days, before there were utensils, hadn’t everyone eaten with their hands? Armed with that strange justification, Duho picked the meat up in his hands and stuffed it into his mouth without another thought.

The afternoon came.

I brought my men to a wide clearing halfway up the mountain.

I had picked it out that morning along with a few others. Two hundred-odd men could not train there all at once, though it held half that number comfortably. Once I had finished explaining, I meant to send the rest on to another clearing nearby.

I looked the men over and found them in far better shape than that morning. Feed men properly and let them rest, and the color comes back, sure enough. The eyes they turned on me, though, were brimming with killing intent.

“The afternoon’s training is martial arts training.”

At my words the lads broke into murmuring.

“Are we really going to learn martial arts?”
“No way. The martial arts training was for real?”
“We learn martial arts and get paid for it instead of paying? Maybe the Boss isn’t a demon but a bodhisattva.”

Voices full of expectation burst out all over.

Fair enough. After a morning of nothing but climbing a mountain, a reaction like that stood to reason. From what I had heard, too, the Red Headband Gang’s idea of martial arts training until now had amounted to knocking each other about, so I understood the excitement.

When they want martial arts training that badly, it is only human for their boss to grant it.

The preparations were already done.

— Trundle, trundle.

A rough rattle of wheels reached us.

“What’s that noise?”
“Sounds like wheels?”
“Those carts over there… huh? Weapons!”
“Hoh!”

My men stared at the carts with their mouths hanging open. Elder Kang was hauling in more than ten of them, weapons stacked on top by type. Spears, swords, sabers, axes, even iron maces, all of them well oiled and gleaming, and in excellent condition besides.

I pointed to the carts and gave the order.

“Each of you take the weapon that suits your martial art or your hand.”

My men swarmed toward the carts.

“Young master, I will be going back down now.”
“Good work, Elder Kang. Get back safe.”

I saw Elder Kang off and turned back to my men.

“Anyone with no main weapon, or who does not care what he uses, pick up a spear. There is no better weapon for killing a man than the spear.”

A few who heard my advice thought it over and picked up spears. Duho had brought bandages along at some point and was winding them around his fists. Come to think of it, back at Blood Sand Plain he had been good at closing in on an enemy and beating him down, too.

A short while later, two hundred-odd men were back in formation, each with a weapon in hand. More than half of them held spears. I nodded, satisfied.

“There is only one thing for us to do. Grow familiar with the weapon you now hold.”

The faces of the Red Headband Gang’s lads creased all at once, the disappointment plain on every one of them. They had been hoping for a martial arts manual, or at the very least a single form. There was no such thing, because that was not what we needed right now.

“Were you all expecting some peerless divine art?”

The words struck home, and a few of the lads flinched and looked away.

I gave a short laugh and went on.

“Unfortunately, there is no peerless divine art for me to pass down to you. Naturally, my house does not have one either. So even if I wanted to teach you one, there is nothing to teach.”

My men’s shoulders sagged visibly.

“There is nothing to be disappointed about.”

Two hundred-odd pairs of eyes turned on me at once. Rather than look away, I met them and threw the words out like a verdict.

“You do not need a peerless divine art to kill a man. Strength, and the ability to handle a weapon like your own hands and feet — that is enough.”

The lads swallowed and fixed their attention on me.

“Repeat the motions of cutting and thrusting until your body remembers them perfectly. A man who has drilled one form properly is stronger than a man with ten half-learned ones.”

Simple and crude, and every bit as certain for it. Ten years of rolling around at Blood Sand Plain had taught it to me in real fights.

The mood among my men shifted as the disappointment went out of their faces and their eyes brimmed with drive again.

“We begin training in earnest. Squad leaders, forward.”

Twenty men stepped forward, Duho among them, all of them my earliest followers from the Guantao days.

“These men will serve as squad leaders and form squads of ten.”

I paused only for breath and went straight on.

“Once formed, a squad of ten shares one fate. You move together when you train, when you eat, even when you relieve yourselves. If one man falls behind, the whole squad answers for it.”

Collective responsibility.

The most effective means of control there is, and the fastest way to make comrades of men. I know how well it works, because I have been through it myself. Even men meeting for the first time become inseparable in no time at all.

When I had finished, I put the question to my men.

“Any questions?”

The words were barely out before one arm shot up.

It was Duho.

I had a rough idea what he was going to say, but I decided to hear him out first.

“Speak.”
“And what will the Boss be doing?”

I had told the bastard to ask a question and here he was lodging a complaint.

When I stared at him in disbelief, Duho turned his head a little and avoided my gaze. Just as he had intended, every other man’s eyes swung to me.

There is nothing innocent in those eyes.

They wanted me down in it with them; it was written all over their faces. After a whole morning of it, these lads still thought I meant to stand by and watch. They did not know me at all.

I would use the chance to teach them properly what sort of man I was.

“Naturally, I will be taking part in the training with you.”
“That is our Boss. Taking the field in person — truly an example to us all.”

Duho chimed in with his praise, and my men nodded along in agreement. Judging by how his face had brightened, he seemed to think his ploy to drag me down with them had worked.

Cute bastards.

“I will be training with you, but that does not mean I will be swinging a weapon alongside you.”
“What does that mean?”
“There is no better training than real fighting. The squads of ten and I will spar.”
“Sorry?”

Duho asked blankly, and my men looked at me with the same incomprehension.

I paid it no mind and went on.

“The sparring will be held squad by squad, in turn. Look after yourselves.”

My eyes went to Duho. The lad’s pupils were shaking wildly, like the ground in an earthquake.

“As for the order… partly to set an example for the men, we will start with the deputy boss’s squad.”
“Ah.”

A short groan leaked out of Duho’s mouth.

The nerve of him, trying to put one over on the boss. That was not something I could simply let go. It was only right that he pay a price to match.

I let one corner of my mouth twist upward.

“Everyone but the deputy boss’s squad will scatter and drill the fundamentals.”
“Yes!”

The answer came back as a roar, and my men scattered like an ebbing tide, their relief plain. Simply not being first in line seemed to be enough to make them happy.

Duho, by contrast, wore the face of a man who had finished with the world, and his squad of ten looked no different.

I turned to them.

“Get ready, all of you.”

From here on, it is a real fight.