Chapter 333. The Great Battle of Hubodagang 4 — An Ancient Name
Old names rose in Kim Busik's mind.
Silla.
Goryeo.
Liaodong.
Jin.
It was said that during the turbulent years between the fall of Silla and the rise of Goryeo, a man had crossed from the Korean Peninsula into the northern lands.
The History of Jin recorded that he had come from Goryeo, while the Songmo Jiwen called him a man of Silla.
This battlefield was no place to argue over exactly how far that old tradition could be trusted.
But Kim Busik understood the power contained in such a story.
To be able to speak of a common root was a powerful justification in both war and diplomacy.
Perhaps, long ago, they had once been one people.
Those who worked iron and gold.
Those who crossed mountains and rivers and drifted into Liaodong.
Those who remained in Goryeo and became great lineages.
Long years had passed, and they now stood beneath the banners of different states.
Yet today they were moving against the same enemy.
Kim Busik looked at Aribo.
"Tell the Great Khan that the Goryeo army has reached the battlefield. General Park Geunsu will strike between the Liao left wing and center, while General Kim Buui presses below them. We will move toward the emperor of Liao."
Aribo bowed deeply.
"Loyalty. I will deliver your words exactly."
He turned his horse and rode away.
Kim Busik looked back toward the battlefield.
Through the dust, Youngwoo's long banner snapped once more.
Park Geunsu's right army increased its speed in that direction, while Kim Buui's left pressed into the lower part of the Liao left wing.
The drums of Goryeo began to overlap with the drums of Jin.
The two armies had begun fighting the same enemy together.
It felt as though another great wheel of history had begun to turn, grinding forward with a tremendous sound.
It was an old tradition.
Yet Kim Busik remembered the name.
Kim Hambo.
A man said to have left Silla, passed through the lands of Goryeo, and entered Liaodong.
A man said to have settled among the Jurchens and become one of the roots of the Wanyan clan.
His brothers, the stories said, had remained in Goryeo.
Those who stayed became part of Goryeo's great families.
Those who left lived on under different names among the mountains and plains of Liaodong.
The years grew long.
The states changed.
Language, clothing, and customs changed with them.
Even so, each side knew the other existed.
Had they truly become people completely severed from one another, a covenant such as this—and a joint war such as this—would have been far harder to imagine.
Jin had never raised a great sword against Goryeo.
Jurchen tribes had sometimes troubled the border.
But their words had more often sounded like desperate requests.
Give us farming tools.
The grasslands have dried.
Send us grain.
Let us trade horses for iron.
The tone was very different from the terrifying offensives Jin would later unleash against Song and other states.
Within Goryeo, there were also many voices calling for war in the north.
The Seogyeong faction argued for northern expansion.
Reckless men claimed Liaodong could simply be taken.
Kim Busik did not give his heart easily to such words.
If one saw Jin as nothing more than barbarians, judgment became simple.
But Kim Busik believed their roots touched memories shared with Silla and Goryeo.
That fact made Goryeo's relationship with Jin far more complicated.
The ignorant are often brave.
They draw their own fence narrowly and call everyone outside it an enemy.
The less a man knows of history, the narrower the circle in which he defines his own people.
Kim Busik saw that Jin was a newly risen great power.
He also saw that this great power spoke openly of roots reaching back toward Silla and Goryeo.
Aguda knew that too.
So did Kim Busik.
The two men had never met face to face.
Yet in the middle of the battlefield, they saw one another's banners again and again.
From the center of the Goryeo army, Kim Busik could see the banner of the Great Khan of Jin.
Aguda, in turn, could see the banners of Goryeo advancing toward the Liao center.
They had never exchanged a single word.
Yet between them stood the same ancient name.
Jin.
Gold.
Aguda had chosen that name when he founded his state.
It was said that he took the surname of his ancestor Hambo and made it the name of his realm.
Within that single word lay both the hardness of metal and the brilliance of gold.
Kim Busik read something else in the name as well.
A desire among those who had gone north to declare where they belonged.
They had gone far away, but they had not forgotten.
Just as Goryeo had not forgotten them, those who had gone farther north had not forgotten either.
Could they one day have met again under different circumstances?
Not on a battlefield, but in a royal court.
Not with swords and horses, but with ritual and writing.
Was this truly the best reunion possible?
People speaking of the same roots, standing beneath different banners, charging together toward the central army of the Liao emperor?
Kim Busik had many thoughts.
There were still words left unspoken.
The covenant was only the beginning.
When the battle ended, a new order would open.
Then Goryeo would have to decide where it stood.
What it would call Jin.
What sort of relationship it would build with people who spoke of such distant common roots.
But for now, this was a battlefield.
Aguda's banner pointed toward the Liao center.
The banners of Goryeo moved in the same direction.
Park Geunsu's right army drove into the gap between the Liao left wing and center.
Kim Buui's left army pressed below it.
In that moment, the memory carried by a distant ancestor's name ceased to be merely a story.
It became the movement of armies