Chapter 224 — Dolhapsok
The few remaining riders scattered far apart.
The Eighth Mouke, which had been rushing forward as one only moments before, had broken apart across the field.
The sound of horse hooves split into several streams and receded.
The survivors had lost even the presence of mind to call to one another.
Still holding their reins, covered in dust, they stared only at Yeongu.
Their hearts still wished to fight, but the unit had collapsed, and no proper form for battle remained.
The battle line had broken, the spears were snapped, and the men who had lost their horses dragged themselves across the ground.
Overwhelming martial power.
Against a warrior who had charged alone into more than a hundred riders and brought them all down, no one rushed forward again.
Yeongu slowly turned his head.
The banner, soaked in blood and dust, swayed low beside his horse.
Several broken arrow shafts were lodged in his shield, and across the shoulders and chest of his armor, white scratches left by dozens of collisions stood out.
He drew in one deep breath and shouted toward Dolhapsok.
"Come out, you son of a bitch!"
The air over the field froze.
Dolhapsok's face hardened.
For a moment, he looked down at the hand holding his reins, then very slowly turned his horse's head forward.
That was not the gait of a charge.
It was the gait of a man being dragged out toward what he had done.
Zongwang immediately rode his horse forward and blocked his path.
Dolhapsok was counted among the notable generals even within the Jin army.
Dolhapsok was a general who could hold firm even when placed on a harsh battlefield.
He had not lost soldiers on mountain roads, had not retreated before gateways, and had not let his formation collapse beneath fortress walls.
If such a general were lost here, it would be a great loss.
But Dolhapsok had already done the deed.
He had ordered arrows loosed, moved his mouke, and driven men forward.
Because Yeongu had survived, they were now trying to settle it with words.
Had Yeongu fallen, they would have called it victory.
Zongwang knew that too.
That was why there was strength in the body that blocked the way, and servility mixed into the words that came from his mouth.
"Jungnangjang Lee!" Zongwang shouted loudly. "Spare Dolhapsok!"
Then he immediately shouted at Dolhapsok.
"Hey, you bastard! Bow! You are the one who did wrong!"
Dolhapsok's shoulders flinched.
Zongwang gritted his teeth and spoke again.
"Get down from your horse. Lower your head. Confess your fault first!"
Yeongu watched the scene coldly.
The way the two acted looked like a clumsy play.
They had sent more than a hundred riders to test whether he lived or died, and now, because he had not died, they told him to apologize.
After driving him with arrows and spears, they thought that lowering their heads before the man who survived would end the matter.
What law was there like that?
Dolhapsok's eyes shook uneasily.
He still could not accept what stood before him.
Who could break a hundred riders in one stroke?
Who could receive more than sixty arrows head-on and still carry out a charge?
Who could pierce through a wall of heavy cavalry spears, come back out, and break them again?
Such a man had begged them.
He had asked them not to kill prisoners.
He had asked them not to cut down the powerless.
When Dolhapsok had heard those words, he had seen them as weakness.
He had thought it was a heart unable to use the blade, and pity that retreated before Jin's military order.
But the Yeongu standing before him now was not a man made weak by pity.
Yeongu could kill.
Yet he did not lower his blade upon those who had set down their weapons and knelt.
The wind blew, carrying Yeongu's wind cloak backward.
Beneath it, silver armor was revealed.
That armor resembled the armor of antiquity that Yeongu had insisted on creating.
The thickness of the iron plates, the tying of the leather cords, and the layered overlap covering shoulders and chest had all come from battlefield experience and necessity.
Just moments ago, more than sixty mounted archers had fired at him in a coordinated volley, but that armor had endured around Yeongu's body.
Arrowheads had slipped away, spearpoints had glanced off, and collisions had remained only as scratches.
Dolhapsok advanced to about ten jang away.
He could come no closer and dismounted.
The moment his feet touched the ground, his knees bent heavily.
He knelt on one knee, joined both hands, and bowed deeply.
Above his head, the red and blue banner hung like a shadow.
When the bright red side turned over in the wind, it looked like cloth stained with blood.
"This humble general was wrong."
Yeongu's face twisted.
"So what?" he asked through clenched teeth. "Are you asking me to spare you?"
Dolhapsok lowered his head further.
"You may do as you wish."
"Hey, you bastard!" Yeongu roared. "We cannot attack a powerless enemy!"
Those words were a rebuke, and at the same time, his law.
Anger rose up to his throat, but he did not draw his sword.
The other man was kneeling.
He was not holding a blade and charging.
In that instant, Dolhapsok was an enemy to Yeongu, yet not an enemy he could cut down.
Dolhapsok clenched his teeth.
"Forgive me. We were wrong."
"Pick up your blade!" Yeongu shouted. "Pick up your blade and charge. Only then can I kill you."
Only then did Dolhapsok begin to understand a little of why Yeongu did not kill prisoners.
To Yeongu, an enemy was one who stood against him with a blade in hand.
One who put on armor and charged, drove a horse and stabbed, and entered death by his own will.
He did not kill those who had set down their weapons, those who knelt, or those who lowered their heads asking to be spared.
Dolhapsok did not fully understand that ethical standard.
But he knew that this standard was the very frame that moved Yeongu.
Zongwang hurriedly rode closer.
He came between Yeongu and Dolhapsok, raising his hand.
"Jungnangjang Lee, many have fallen." His voice cracked. "Let it be enough here… please stop, Jungnangjang Lee."
Yeongu said nothing for a while.
His breath rose and fell roughly.
Perhaps feeling its master's anger, his horse struck the ground once with a forehoof.
In the dust, the fallen soldiers of the Eighth Mouke groaned, and the survivors lowered even the sound of their breathing.
Ttuk.
Yeongu slowly separated the long spear shaft.
The iron-jointed sections came loose, one becoming two, and two becoming three.
He did not look at anyone. Only his hands moved.
He folded the sections, turned the shaft, and wound the red and blue banner around it again and again.
The banner that had filled with wind and flapped broadly gradually shrank into a small bundle in his hands.
He took out a leather cord and wound it around the wrapped banner.
Once, twice, three times.
Each time the cord tightened, the folds of cloth were pressed down, and the red surface that had just knocked men from horses disappeared inward.
When he pulled the final knot tight, the banner no longer looked like a battlefield standard.
It had become nothing more than one long, rough piece of baggage.
Yeongu tucked it toward the rear of the horse.
When the bound banner hung heavily behind the saddle, the horse neighed.
The sound of that cry was strangely long.
It was like the remaining breath of the battle that had just ended leaving the field.
Yeongu looked down at Dolhapsok.
Dolhapsok was still kneeling.
Zongwang too could add no more words.
"Few of them will be dead."
The two men cried out at the same time.
"What?"
"Yes?"
"He faced more than a hundred riders alone and restrained his killing."
"Treat them quickly. What fault do they have?"
Dolhapsok had feared he would have no face to return and meet the elders of the tribe.
His eyes widened.
It was as Yeongu said.
Groans could be heard everywhere, and blood was spattered across the ground, but few had died.
On the field remained scattered riders, broken spears, fallen horses and men, and the red and blue banner wound and bound.