Chapter 7: Companion

Chapter 7: Companion

On the morning when the three of them, their packs made up for the road to Nohachon, decided to check the old western track first, the autumn rain that had been drumming on the mountain all night finally stopped.

Muddy water had swollen in every ravine, and wet Danpung leaves clung to the path like red scales. Just as Pung shouldered his pack and made to step out of the yard, an urgent bell rang from below the mountain. It was not the short bell used to drive off beasts, but the long, low tolling raised when someone has not come back down from the mountain.

Hyeonheo came out beneath the eaves, and after listening a moment he told Pung and A-yeong to tie their straw sandals tight.

“The western ravine. It seems someone has lost the way in the rain.”

The three of them went down the mountain at once, and the one who had struck the bell was a woman who burned charcoal on the western slope. Her son Seokgu had climbed the mountain the previous morning to strip bark and had not come back, she said. He was only thirteen, but he knew the mountain trails, and he was not foolish enough to go in deep without knowing a downpour was coming.

“These past few days the boy kept telling me he’d seen people dressed in black.”

The woman went on, her wet skirt bunched in her fists.

“He said there were men loitering over by the old road… I scolded him, told him to stop seeing things and go cut wood. Yesterday he said that if he saw them again he would follow them.”

Hyeonheo’s eyes narrowed.

“By the old road, do you mean the abandoned track that runs north?”

“Yes. The one that passes the fallen earthen wall and goes on to Baegunryeong.”

Pung met A-yeong’s eyes. It was one of the roads that had surfaced when they linked the vanished villages on the map. A road that had once joined the herb grounds to the market and had been abandoned long ago. It was also a road perfectly suited to moving north out of sight of any eye.

Hyeonheo asked the woman about the shape of Seokgu’s shoes and what he had been wearing, then studied the three forks of the mountain trail. The rain had scoured the soil and most of the footprints were smeared away, but Pung could see what outlasts footprints. Faint energy hung like thread from branches and in the cracks of rock, and through the muddy ash-gray of mountain animals, a pale blue light that had spilled from a child ran on toward the western slope.

Beside it lay another trace.

It was a black, unpleasant energy, as though ink had been loosed in water. Two men, perhaps three. They had lowered their breathing on purpose and smothered their steps, but on the rain-struck leaves the energy leaking from their fingertips remained, and when Pung drew his gaze back, the golden ring tugged faintly at the index finger of his left hand.

“Have you found it?”

Pung did not answer Hyeonheo’s question at once. Down at the foot of the mountain there was not only Seokgu’s mother but the villagers who had gathered at the sound of the bell. He could not let himself be seen chasing invisible energy meridians in front of them.

Pung picked up a single hemp thread caught at the edge of the mud.

“This way. The same color as Seokgu’s jacket.”

Hyeonheo looked from the slope Pung had pointed out to the strand in his hand and back again, then gave a short nod.

“I will search the waterway below. You two follow the slope, but if you find a trace, do not go rushing in.”

A-yeong flung herself forward first and Pung followed, yet before long the distance between them stretched. It was not that Pung was slow. A-yeong had dropped her pace to read the footprints the rain had bared and the bent grass, while Pung was taking in at a glance the trail of energy that reached far beyond them.

He did not go on ahead of her.

Over the years they had lived together on the mountaintop, A-yeong had asked Pung for a sparring match dozens of times, and lost dozens of times. At first, every time she lost, she huffed and kicked the stones in the yard, but at some point she began to study ways to bind Pung’s feet and tricks to deceive his eyes. Even knowing that he read the flow of energy, she did not give up. Instead she learned how to make the flow he saw and the movement she actually made fall out of step with each other.

In a bout a few days ago, she had even cut the end of Pung’s sleeve with the tip of her sword.

“Got you!”

A-yeong carried the severed scrap of cloth around like a trophy for half that day, and when Pung asked for it back so he could mend his clothes, she hid it, saying he only wanted to destroy the evidence of her victory. After the night had passed, a neatly mended sleeve lay outside Pung’s door, but A-yeong never once admitted it was her doing.

Pung had no wish to overtake such a person’s steps carelessly. The fact that he could see the traces did not make A-yeong’s judgment worthless. Besides, what they were tracking now was not the energy of some martial form but human malice, and to trust only what could be seen might leave him too late, the way he had been too late before.

The two of them stopped before a rock ledge where the rain had poured down into a small waterfall, and there Seokgu’s blue trace split in two. One ran on to the old road in the north, the other dropped down the steep grade into the valley below.

A-yeong knelt in the mud.

“He was dragged.”

On the side of the old road, deep, broad marks were stamped in among the small footprints. The spacing was ragged, as though two grown men had hold of a child as they moved, and on the edge of a rock there were even scratches left by fingernails.

Pung looked down into the valley. The blue energy flowing that way was faint, but it was unbroken. Something Seokgu carried might have fallen down there, or the boy himself might have gone that way. The trouble was the black energy. The traces toward the old road were too dark and too tidy. Men who knew how to hide their presence had no reason to leave so many marks.

“We should search below first.”

“But the footprints go that way.”

“They are too clear. It looks like they were left for us to see.”

A-yeong stood and pushed her wet hair behind her ear.

“Even if it’s a trap, Seokgu could have been dragged that way. If we lose time, they’ll slip out along the northern trail.”

“Seokgu’s trace remains down in the valley as well.”

“What trace?”

Pung closed his mouth. He had no intention of hiding from A-yeong the eyes that saw energy meridians, but right now it amounted to asking her to rely on those eyes alone. Telling someone to trust what could not be explained and abandon one of the two roads was not a thing he could say lightly.

“Please trust me.”

“I do trust you.”

A-yeong answered at once, but she did not take her eyes off the old road.

“Even so, I can’t pretend those traces aren’t there. You go below. I’ll check this way.”

“Elder Hyeonheo told us not to move separately.”

“He told us not to go rushing in. He didn’t say not to split up.”

“Are those not the same thing?”

“They are not.”

On an ordinary day Pung would have laughed. A-yeong always made that face whenever she was losing an argument, and afterward she always found some absurd quibble. But now her hand did not leave the hilt of her sword, and there was no mischief in her eyes.

Pung realized that he had to choose one of the two roads. If he held A-yeong back and went down into the valley, they might lose the traces on the old road. If instead he followed her, the faint energy left in the valley would be washed clean away by the rain.

Above all, A-yeong’s face was that of someone who had already made up her mind.

“Half a gak.”

Pung said.

“If you find nothing within half a gak, come back here. If you meet a dangerous man, do not fight. Shout first.”

“I feel like that’s my line to say.”

“If A-yeong shouts, I will hear it.”

A-yeong’s eyebrows shot up.

“Are you planning to go so far you couldn’t even shout?”

Instead of answering, Pung unfastened a small signal tube from his waist and handed it over. Pull the cord and red smoke rose from it. A-yeong looked down at it for a while, then took it.

“Half a gak. If you’re late, you lose.”

“What kind of contest is that?”

“The kind I decided on.”

A-yeong ran off toward the old road, and once Pung had watched the red hem of her clothes vanish among the wet trees, he threw himself down into the valley.

The slope was deeper than he had thought. Wherever the soil gave way he trod on tree roots to change direction, and at the cliffs he pushed off the rock with his palms to bleed away the force of the fall. He could have gone to the bottom in a single stroke had he wished, but rousing a great surge of energy would announce his position to anyone who might be hiding above. Pung killed his speed so that not one fallen leaf stirred more than it had to.

When he had come down near the valley floor, he smelled blood.

A boy lay collapsed behind a boulder. A face caked with mud, a torn hemp jacket. It was Seokgu, beyond doubt. His right leg was bent at a strange angle, as though broken, and blood ran from his forehead, but his chest rose and fell, however weakly.

Pung checked the surroundings first. He felt no energy lying in ambush. It seemed the men in black had seized Seokgu, thrown him down into the valley, and dragged only his shoes along the old road. They had tried to kill the child and then lure any pursuers off to the wrong place.

Beside Seokgu’s neck was a slender red dot.

A poison needle.

Pung drew a cloth from inside his robe, pulled the needle out, and smelled it. The scent differed from the one left by the man who had watched him and Hyeonheo three years ago, but the thickness of the needle and the twisted shape of the tip were alike. The poison was of the kind that clots blood quickly. Had he come late, the child would have been past all help even with breath still in him.

He pressed the pressure points to block the path by which the poison spread, and splinted the broken leg with a branch. Just as he was about to lift the boy onto his back, birds rose in a flock from higher up the mountain.

It was the direction A-yeong had gone.

Pung looked down at Seokgu. He could not leave the child and climb. If he carried him on his back and moved at full strength, the broken bone might pierce flesh, and the energy holding down the poison would be shaken loose. Half a gak had not yet passed, but if A-yeong was fighting, that much time was far too long.

Just then red smoke rose from the direction of the old road.

Pung’s heart dropped like a stone.

He gathered Seokgu into his arms and climbed the valley wall, wrapping the boy in his two arms and his waist so that no shock reached him, bursting energy only from the tips of his toes. Wet rock split apart beneath his feet and the mountain animals fled in alarm, but he had no room to care.

When he was about halfway up, a stone rolled down from overhead, and behind a stone the size of a fist came boulders the size of a man’s head, one after another. Someone above had clearly pushed them loose on purpose. Pung pulled Seokgu against him with one arm and thrust his empty hand upward.

The instant his palm force met them, the boulder burst into pieces.

One scattered fragment came flying close enough to graze Seokgu’s cheek. Pung turned his wrist and bent the path of the energy, and the shards poured away to the left and right, missing them both. The ring’s power surged up a beat too late, but he let it drain into the ground, and though the slope beneath his feet rang loudly, it did not collapse further.

Above him, a black shadow turned and went.

Pung did not give chase.

When he climbed onto the rock ledge, bloodied footprints led off toward the old road, and the red smoke was rising from under a pine much nearer than that. A-yeong stood with her back against the tree. There was blood on her sword, but no wound showed on her, and at her feet a man with his face covered in black cloth lay groaning.

“You’re late.”

A-yeong spoke through hard breaths.

“Half a gak has not passed.”

“Half a gak runs until you get here after seeing the smoke.”

Only then did Pung let out his breath. The strength threatened to go out of his legs, but he had to hold on because of the boy in his arms. A-yeong was watching Pung’s face, and the moment she saw the child inside his arm she sheathed her sword at once.

“Is he alive?”

“He has been poisoned. We must get to the elder quickly.”

A-yeong unfastened the fallen man’s belt and bound his hands with it. There was a shallow sword cut on his shoulder, and the back of his knee was swollen as if struck by a stone. While Pung had been reading traces, A-yeong had evidently cut off the man’s line of escape first.

“I told you not to fight alone.”

“He came at me first. And I warned him before that.”

“I said to shout first.”

“I set off the smoke, didn’t I?”

“After the fight, was it not?”

A-yeong stuck out her lower lip.

“He starts in about how I blame every man in black for being a villain, and then suddenly throws a dagger. So what, should I have let it hit me?”

Pung wanted to press the argument further, but Seokgu’s breathing was thinning. As he shifted his hold on the child, A-yeong slung the rope binding the man over her shoulder.

“Go on down. I’ll drag this one.”

“He is too heavy alone.”

“Who asked you to worry about me? Save Seokgu first.”

A-yeong hauled on the rope with all her strength, and when the man’s body slid over the mud she staggered along with it, but she did not let go. Pung hesitated a moment, then turned his feet down the mountain, and when he looked back after a few steps, A-yeong was dragging the man along with her teeth clenched.

Pung went back, lifted the man with one hand, and tucked him under his arm.

“I said save Seokgu first.”

“Going down together is faster.”

“You’re quick enough to use that strength at a time like this.”

“Was it not for times like this that I learned it?”

A-yeong opened her mouth to snap something back, then shut it. Instead she went ahead, clearing branches aside and picking out the most level path.

Hyeonheo was waiting for them at the mouth of the valley. Taking Seokgu from them, he checked the poison needle and the wounds, then laid his hand at once on the boy’s back. As the lips that had been turning blue-black slowly found their own color again, Seokgu’s mother, arriving late behind them, sank to the ground and broke into weeping.

The captured man would not open his mouth to the end. He even tried to bite down on the poison pill hidden inside his jaw, but A-yeong struck his jaw aside first and he failed. From inside his robe came only a few silver coins and a slip of paper bearing the names of shops in the market. The shops all stood near the old road that connected to the villages of the vanished people.

Hyeonheo sealed the man’s energy meridians and pressure points, took out the poison pill, and shut him in an empty storage stall of the charcoal hut. He wound the door and window with iron chain that could not be cut from the inside, and told the two young people that the next day he would stay behind to guard the prisoner and make him talk.

Hyeonheo tucked the slip of paper into his robe and asked.

“How did you find him?”

Pung explained the energy he had seen and the false trail that had been too clear. At the part where the two of them had separated, Hyeonheo’s gaze cooled, but Pung offered no excuse.

“I permitted it.”

“I was the one who insisted.”

A-yeong’s words fell almost on top of his.

The two of them looked at each other, and A-yeong glared first.

“Why are you taking all of it on yourself?”

“I failed to stop you.”

“Permitted, he says. Am I your subordinate?”

“That is not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?”

Pung could not find an answer. It was true that he had not wanted to send A-yeong into a dangerous place, but whether it was right to hold her back, he could not say. When the quiet of the mountaintop ended, he intended to go north. To find the vanished people and see what the silver ring pointed toward, he would have to enter the roads the men in black traveled.

A-yeong seemed to mean to walk that road with him.

“I chose the thing I had to do.”

She said quietly.

“Just as Pung can go alone into somewhere dangerous, I can choose my own road too.”

Hyeonheo watched them both without a word, and Pung looked down at the blood on his wet sleeve. He did not regret going down into the valley to save Seokgu, and because A-yeong had gone to the old road they had been able to take the man and gain the slip of paper. They had chosen different roads, but neither one of them had been wrong.

It was only that, without knowing it, he seemed to have believed that companions must walk none but the same road.

Pung bent at the waist toward A-yeong.

“I am sorry.”

A-yeong’s eyes widened a little.

“For what?”

“I thought that your choosing differently from me was wrong. Next time I will hear your reasons first.”

“And next time you won’t start off thinking about splitting up again?”

“That… depends on the situation.”

A-yeong glowered at him as if she could not believe him, and in the end burst out laughing.

“You really are hopeless with words.”

That evening Seokgu came back to consciousness. The boy said the men in black had watched the herb gatherers and porters on every market day, and had written the names of the sturdy ones on wooden tags. One of the shops named on the captured man’s slip of paper was due to gather porters at the market opening the very next day.

Hyeonheo spread the slip of paper beside the brazier and studied it a long while. Outside the window, the rainwater gathered at the edge of the eaves fell drop by drop.

“As it happens, our food and lamp oil have run out as well.”

Hyeonheo tapped one of the market names.

“Tomorrow the two of you go down to the market below the mountain. Buy what we need, and fix the surroundings of this shop in your eyes, but do not make the first move.”

A-yeong picked up the slip of paper before Pung could.

“This time it’s the same road.”

Pung pressed his fingertip to the black wolf emblem drawn at one corner of the market’s name. The faint energy steeped into the paper resembled the ink-dark residue of the watcher who had left the poison needle and fled.

If he met that trace again at the market the next day, this time he did not mean to let it slip away.