Chapter 234 — The Man Named Lee Yeongu 1
It seemed the questions had ended, yet they were still walking side by side.
Their bodies moved as if there were still something left to say, but the words exchanged between them had ended there.
Perhaps the lingering silence was heavier.
The sound of lamellar armor made by the guards following behind repeated at a steady rhythm.
*Lamellar armor: armor made by lacing together small armor plates, called gapchal.
It was armor fitted to the body by lacing finger-length iron plates horizontally and vertically with leather cords.
To twist the waist and draw a bow on horseback, this kind of living, moving armor was better than armor that stiffened the body like a board.
Because small iron scales were connected left and right, above and below, to fit the curve of the body, it allowed better movement than plate armor and was suited for mounted combat.
The armor Yeongu had newly improved was closer to willow-leaf armor.
*Willow-leaf armor: lamellar armor made by linking long armor plates shaped like willow leaves.
Long iron plates like willow leaves overlapped downward from the shoulders to the chest, and the skirt armor below the waist covered the thighs on horseback.
When arrows struck, they slid off, and when a blade point entered, the overlapped plates received it once more.
The Great Khan liked him.
There are people one simply feels good having nearby, even without conversation.
Yeongu did not drag thought on for long.
He saw the matter before his eyes, said what had to be done, and moved at once.
He made even the air feel lighter.
Conversation with him always flowed in a positive direction.
No matter how difficult the conditions were, when one was with him, it seemed possible to break through everything.
Above all, he expressed difficulty itself very easily, even almost frivolously.
Even if an army of hundreds of thousands pressed in, he said they only had to plant the spark of discord inside Liao.
If the tribes moved as they pleased, he said they only had to establish law and beat them into order.
He expressed that certain obviousness, and it was as light as air.
He did not speak of difficult matters with a difficult face, and he did not lay out hopeless matters with hopeless words.
Even when dealing with things that seemed as if they would bring the world down, he said, "It can be done," and then threw his body in and proved that those words were not empty.
The Great Khan liked that about him.
Yeongu did not wrap hardship in grandeur.
He did not wear fear like authority.
He spoke as if it were simply something that had to be done, and placed that obviousness beside others as lightly as air.
It had been the same when they attacked Buyeobu.
The generals had many worries over the walls.
The walls were high and thick, the road before the gate was narrow, and they had to endure arrows and stones while approaching.
No one could easily open his mouth.
At that time, Yeongu tilted his head and said,
"Well, can we not just break it?"
The words were so light that at first they sounded like a joke.
But Yeongu had not said them to be funny.
His face showed that he truly thought so.
What others regarded as a nearly impossible obstacle, he saw as one step in the work that had to be done.
The things of the process simply had to be done, so there was no need to worry whether they would work or not.
The generals saw the height of the wall, and Yeongu saw the place where the wall would fall.
The generals worried about enemy arrows, and Yeongu thought of the armor and shields that would cover against them.
The generals thought of the soldiers who would fall before the gate, and Yeongu calculated who would run in first and open the road.
That difference was clear to the Great Khan.
Yeongu was not a person who deceived others by calling difficult work easy.
He simply did not sit there holding onto a difficult thing while calling it difficult.
If there was a wall, one crossed it or broke it.
If a gate was closed, one opened it or tore it away.
If a person blocked the road, one knocked him down.
That was how he was.
That simplicity sometimes looked reckless, but on the battlefield, there was no force more precious than that.
He was a person who gave strength and courage to comrades and subordinates.
That was why the Great Khan liked him.
When Yeongu was nearby, great problems became small.
Words swollen by fear were, in the end, only small matters that could be handled by their own hands.
A wall was only a wall, a gate only a gate, and an enemy only an enemy.
Yeongu crossed lines easily.
Usually, such behavior is difficult for society to tolerate.
Between person and person, there is naturally a distance that must be kept.
The moment that distance is crossed, the other person's time and feelings are consumed.
But Yeongu crossed that line too easily.
He suddenly entered into another person's worries.
He lightly handled heavy problems others had held for a long time.
He even touched the thoughts the person involved had not yet been able to put into words.
That could be called rude, and it could be called lacking consideration.
Yet strangely, it did not feel unpleasant.
When Yeongu crossed a line, there was no sense that he was trying to press the other person down and win.
He was not arrogant.
There was no vanity of trying to display his own cleverness.
He simply saw a blocked place, and when he saw a blocked place, he stretched out his hand.
A person's heart, a battlefield gate, a difficult matter of court politics—none of them were more than things that had to be solved to him.
So his rudeness did not look like rudeness.
When he came close, at times it felt suffocating, but soon a gap opened in the blocked place.
When he seemed to speak carelessly, it was bewildering at the moment, but looking back later, those words were the words most needed first.
He crossed lines, but he did not make others consume their time and emotions.
And at the end of where he went, he left behind a road.
The Great Khan thought that point strange.
He had no consideration, yet no malice.
He approached roughly, yet did not cut people down.
He crossed the line, yet lifted the other person's burden together.
So he was hard to hate.
Even at moments when one should have become angry, laughter came first.
Even when he should have been scolded, one found oneself already listening to him.
Yeongu made people tired, but at the same time, he made people move.