Chapter 327. Pursuit 2-3 — The Goryeo Army and the Song Army
Meanwhile, the twenty thousand Goryeo troops who had crossed the Noksu River were advancing north while preserving their strength.
Their progress had been slow at first.
The road was unfamiliar, the army was large, and provisions and equipment had to move with them.
But their marching speed changed after Jin sent them horses captured at Huanglong Prefecture.
Those horses had once belonged to Liao.
They had been bred in Liao pastures and fed for the armies of Liao.
Now they were helping carry the Goryeo army northward.
Fodder came with them.
Beans and hay, saddles and bits, reins and spare horseshoes arrived in long lines.
Provision points were also prepared along the route.
The Goryeo army spent less time halting to unload and repack its baggage.
The vanguard opened the road.
The rear repaired horses and wagons.
The center kept the banners aligned as the army pressed north.
Their destination was Wuchang.
The army was commanded by the Kim Busik brothers.
Kim Busik was famous as a man from a distinguished literary family, but he also had experience directing military operations.
He commanded the center.
Kim Buui took the left army.
Park Geunsu commanded the right.
It was a formation in which civil and military officials stood together, chosen to balance diplomatic weight with practical battlefield experience.
Park Geunsu's rise had been relatively swift.
He was a commander who had experienced the Liaodong battlefield firsthand.
He understood rapid cavalry pursuit and counter-pursuit, the layered movement of speed and missile fighting, and the people and geography of Liaodong.
That was why command of the right army had been entrusted to him.
Much had changed after the covenant between the King of Goryeo and Aguda.
No one could know every private word exchanged between them.
But one thing was clear.
The two states had chosen immediate cooperation.
Horses and provisions crossed between them.
Technicians and craftsmen moved back and forth.
Documents and orders followed one another almost as though they belonged to a single realm.
Kim Busik did not treat that lightly.
He was of the Gyeongju Kim clan and carried the consciousness of a family descended from the royal house of Silla.
Aguda's ancestor, Kim Hambo, was likewise said to have crossed from the Korean Peninsula into Jurchen lands during the confusion of late Silla and early Goryeo.
The History of Jin recorded that he had come from Goryeo, while other traditions called him a man of Silla.
The reason some accounts called Kim Hambo a Goryeo man and others a Silla man was that the period in which he was said to have lived lay at the boundary between the fall of Silla and the rise of Goryeo.
Silla was fading.
Goryeo was rising.
The story was that people who had once shared the same roots had divided.
One branch became a great lineage within Goryeo.
Another entered the tribes of Liaodong and became the ancestry of Jin.
They could hardly call one another close kin.
Yet there was still an awareness that they could speak of a distant common ancestry.
It was not the intimacy of cousins or near relatives.
It was the feeling of meeting someone from a branch of the family separated many generations ago.
They were not strangers who had never known of one another.
Both sides knew the story.
What mattered was not the actual degree of kinship.
What mattered was that Goryeo and Jin could speak of a shared root.
With that justification, Goryeo's participation in the war did not have to remain merely intervention in a foreign conflict.
It could become grounds for Goryeo to stand within the new order being created in the north.
Kim Busik understood that clearly.
The moment Aguda spoke of those roots, cooperation between Goryeo and Jin became more than a military alliance.
Ancient names that had divided from Silla were meeting again on the battlefields of Liaodong.
That was precisely what Kim Busik saw.
Aguda had not reached out to Goryeo solely from military need.
The names of Goryeo and Silla stood inside the story Jin told about its own origins.
Even the name of the state was Jin—Gold.
If that story was accepted, Goryeo became more than a neighboring country.
It became a state connected to the roots of the northern empire now rising.
That was why Kim Busik hurried.
Helping Jin meant more than adding Goryeo soldiers to a foreign war.
It meant that distant branches once separated from Silla—some who had entered Liaodong, others who had remained and become aristocratic houses of Goryeo—were meeting again on the same battlefield.
That distant sense of kinship became a justification for war, a language for the covenant, and grounds from which Goryeo could speak in the order that would follow.
At first, it had seemed enough merely to declare war and advance north.
The news that Goryeo troops had crossed the Noksu River and were moving north was itself a major threat in Liao's eyes.
The memory of having suffered defeat against Goryeo in earlier times ran deep.
That alone was a strategy.
But Goryeo did not stop there.
Liao had gathered seven hundred thousand troops.
Jin was searching for an opening before that enormous force.
And Yi Youngwoo was fighting in the middle of it all.
Park Geunsu argued strongly.
If they stopped here, Goryeo would become a country that had moved in name only.
They had to reach the battlefield.
They had to provide real assistance to the extent they could.
His argument was not based solely on loyalty.
There was also a sense of kinship.
Whether or not one accepted Jin's story of shared roots in full, traces connecting Goryeo to the peoples of Liaodong and the north were undeniable.
There was no reason to ignore them completely and stand outside the new order being built.
There was also the matter of a share in victory.
When Liao fell and a new order arose, the fact that Goryeo troops had actually stood on the battlefield would carry more weight than any words spoken afterward.
Those who shed blood earned a seat at the table after the war.
And Park Geunsu had one more reason.
Yi Youngwoo.
That young commander was fighting within the Jin army under the name of Goryeo.
He was repairing armor in a foreign camp, training cavalry, and devising plans aimed at the Liao emperor's center.
He could not be left to endure it alone.
Only if the Goryeo army truly advanced north would Youngwoo cease to be a lone foreign commander and become a general with a country standing behind him.
So the Goryeo army hurried.
They hurried in the morning.
They hurried after sunset.
Where fresh horses were available, they changed mounts immediately.
Where wagons slowed on the road, loads were redistributed.
The infantry marched in formation.
Cavalry moved back and forth along the column, opening the way.
Thirsty horses were watered first.
Tired soldiers were given dry grain and hot broth.
Rest periods were kept short.
Once the banners rose, the army moved again.
Kim Busik continued receiving reports from the central army.
How far had each unit fallen behind?
What condition were the horses in?
How far had the provision wagons reached?
Where was the next supply point prepared by Jin?
He checked each matter one by one.
True to his background as a civil official, he never neglected ledgers and reports.
But on that day Kim Busik was not merely a man of documents.
No one understood more urgently than he did that the army had to arrive in time.
He summoned Kim Buui and Park Geunsu.
The two men dismounted and offered military salutes.
Kim Busik pointed north.
"We must hurry. The battle is close."
Park Geunsu answered,
"We are doing everything we can."
Kim Busik gave them the latest news.
"The Jin army has moved. Battle is imminent. We must reach them quickly."
Kim Buui replied,
"The left army will increase its pace."
Park Geunsu bowed as well.
"The right army will clear the road ahead."
Kim Busik heard them, but his mind did not ease.
The two great armies had faced one another for a long time already.
A long stalemate could collapse in a single moment.
And now, at last, the cause of that collapse had appeared.
Once an opportunity came, even one day was long.
Even one double-hour was long.
The battle might begin before the Goryeo army arrived.
That thought kept driving him forward.
"We march farther today. We go through the night as far as we can. Spare the horses, but do not waste time.
"If we are late, all the merit will belong to others. If we arrive, Goryeo's voice will stand upon the battlefield as well."
Park Geunsu understood.
He mounted again.
The cavalry of the right army rode ahead first.
They checked the snow and ice along the road, marked shallow waterways, and stationed men at places where wagons might sink or become stuck.
Kim Buui's left army tightened its formation and matched its pace.
In the center, Kim Busik's banners began moving once more.
The winter roads of Liaodong were harsh.
The red loess tracks had frozen hard, and every hoofbeat struck with a dull sound.
Roadside thickets still held a trace of green through the winter.
When the wind passed, leaves and dry branches trembled together while Goryeo spearpoints and banners moved between them.
Wagon wheels scraped over frozen earth.
White breath spread from the horses' nostrils.
The soldiers understood.
This march was more than a movement north.
It was a step toward breaking the long pressure of Liao, opening a new order with Jin, and ensuring that Goryeo stood there in person.
Some rode to aid Aguda.
Some rode to aid Yi Youngwoo.
Some rode to carve the name of Goryeo onto the battlefield.
All those reasons converged in one direction.
The road to Wuchang.
The Goryeo army hurried, and hurried again, determined not to arrive too late.
Meanwhile, the Song army was also moving.
It could not march directly into Liaodong.
The distance was too great, Song armies moved too slowly, and preparations were insufficient for them to reach the northern Liao battlefield in time.
So Song advanced toward Yanjing instead.
Yanjing was Liao's Southern Capital.
Pressure there would force Liao to look south.
It could also block Han troops from the Yanjing region from moving north to reinforce the main battlefield.
Even if the Song army never reached Liaodong, an advance on Yanjing could still pin down one entire Liao front.
Tong Guan held overall command.
Cai You accompanied him.
The two raised the banners of the northern campaign under the emperor's orders, but the road before them was far from easy.
For years, Song had purchased peace through annual payments.
It was not a state accustomed to fighting large-scale wars against Liao.
Its armies were numerous, but they lacked experience in the rapid cavalry warfare of the north.
Even so, the fact that they moved at all mattered.
Liao could no longer watch only Jin and Goryeo.
From the south, Song troops were advancing toward Yanjing.
From the east, Goryeo troops had crossed the Noksu River.
And on the northern and eastern battlefields, the Jin army was pursuing the emperor himself.
The vast realm in which Liao had once taken pride was now being pressed from several directions at once.
The three things Yi Youngwoo had hoped for had all come to pass.
Whatever happened afterward, the conditions were finally in place to avoid defeat in the great battle immediately before them