Chapter 40: Duel

“What are you lot doing right now?” Taehak Scholar Lee Shin asked, glaring.

We answered.

“We were putting on armor.”

“So why were you wearing quilted armor?”

“Isn’t it that when we sparred we usually wore quilted armor?”

“Are you out of your mind? The Grand King was watching — what is this talk of quilted armor? Wear lamellar! Lamellar!”

The lamellar he handed me was armor made by joining thin plates together.

If it was made of leather and lacquered it was considered a low-grade item, and if it was made of iron it was considered a high-grade one.

Of course, anyone from the Taehak would have at least one of those items, whether low- or high-grade, and some were even kept within the Taehak, but they were so expensive that, lest they be damaged, they were almost never used in practice.

But when the division commander came to inspect, didn’t everyone bring out every new piece of equipment from the warehouse, even water gourds? Goguryeo was no different.

“…Surely you wouldn’t bring real swords as well?”

“We wouldn’t go that far. Do we have cause to kill you?”

That was true enough.

We huddled our heads together again.

“If it were real armor, we’d have to subtract one die from the attack.”

“That would be right.”

By ‘die’ we of course meant the wargame concept.

The enemy’s defense had increased, so we would subtract one die from the attack score when calculating.

These days, before Taehak students engaged in a spar they always went through the step of rolling dice first.

It was still rough around the edges, but it proved that the Goryeo Myosan I had made was becoming not just a ‘game’ but a ‘practical wargame’.

“Everyone, ready!”

“Ready!”

So we were ready.

Our team moved according to procedure.

The ones at the very front were Maeng Sap and me.

Within the first-years, in terms of size, the two of us were the twin towers.

“Ondal, move forward. I’ll adjust from the rear.”

“You will?”

“I had more experience.”

That was true.

Unlike me, who had at best killed a few thieves, Maeng Sap from the west had already seen real combat against the Khitans and the Malgal.

For tactics I might not know, but in a spar where a small force confronted another, Maeng Sap would be better than me, so he intended to send me to the front and observe the situation from the rear.

A long horn blared!

“It began!”

At the same time as the flags we heard the horn.

This spar did not unfold in a narrow place like last time; it was a large-scale exercise spanning mountain ranges.

“Enemy entering!”

Soon the scouting party reported in, and we departed to intercept at that point.

Because the battlefield was mountains, both sides favored light, easily wielded swords over long spears as their primary weapons.

“Kill them!”

“Eliminate them!”

Soon the swordmen with wooden swords clashed.

Clack! Clack! The wooden swords collided.

Now that both sides wore armor and carried shields, simply knocking the enemy down was not victory.

Both sides had tied straw cords around the vulnerable spots of their armor — the neck and armpits — so that if someone slipped a wooden sword into that gap and tore it out, they would be eliminated.

“Uratcha!” I shouted as I used a ssireum wrestling move to grab the armor and topple him.

Grabbing the throat of someone who was moving was hard, but grabbing the throat of someone who had fallen was easy.

With my short wooden sword I tore the straw at his neck like splitting a drumhead, and my opponent raised both hands.

“He was dead!” I thought.

I sprang up at once and charged the next man, and weapons were changing hands quite often in the meantime.

When going in with a shield they used a long sword; in narrow places against several men they used a medium sword; to stab armored enemies they used an awl-like blade that could poke through the gaps in armor.

Switching swords cleverly during an attack was the trick of Goguryeo swordsmanship, and it was why Goguryeo men carried three or four blades.

“He was dead!”

“He was dead!”

Those who were dead raised their hands and left the battlefield.

Maeng Sap shouted.

“That’s it, it’s roughly by Myosan’s rules! If we push in like this and hit them from front and back, it’s over! Send a messenger right away!”

“I sent three… huh? One’s been caught?”

“That’s Ondal’s cipher anyway; they won’t be able to read it! If only Go Jaemu’s follow-up unit charges in properly, we’ll win!”

But that did not happen.

“…Enemies!” we heard.

When we arrived at the place where we had agreed with Go Jaemu by dispatch, what met us was not Go Jaemu but an enemy ambush, and Go Daewon sighed heavily.

“Where’s Go Jaemu, and why are there enemies?”

“This… looks like we got played.”

“Did they manage to decode Ondal’s cipher? I was uneasy because it was so easy to learn….”

“Talk later — everyone, fight!”

“He was dead!”

“He was dead….”

In the end we were surrounded from front and rear and defeated just like that.

Yet it was a satisfying defeat.

Not because we had fought well and lost.

“No, you bastards — we succeeded in decoding your cipher!”

“Did you call this easy thing a cipher?”

We lost, but I had accomplished my goal.

“Excellent, very excellent. North and south fought together as one — what else could this be but the spirit of Goryeo?” the Grand King Go Yangseong praised the winning squad, awarded them two mal of rice each, bestowed blessings on the Taehak students one by one, and then returned to the palace.

I happened to meet him briefly in the meantime, and nothing much came of it; I was still an ‘unofficial royal son-in-law,’ and even if we had won today it probably would not have made much difference.

More important was what happened afterward.

“Go Jaemu, are you all right? Did you eat a lot of lettuce?” someone asked, and Go Jaemu scratched the back of his neck as if ashamed.

“I’m sorry. We lost because of me.”

“What happened in the rear?”

“Well… we were ambushed. It seems they managed to decode the cipher we used, the ‘Maekgeul,’ learned the information in advance, and lay in wait for us.”

Go Jaemu handed over the dispatch that contained the cipher I had made.

“I won’t blame you. We have won more thanks to Maekgeul than not so far. Still… it’s a pity the defeat happened in front of His Majesty.”

At that, Go Daewon shook his head.

“They were more focused because it was before your father; that’s fine.”

Even though he had lost in his father’s presence, he did not seem particularly upset.

When the men who had beat us arrived, we heard the whole story from them.

“Recently you’ve been having fun in the duels using some cipher called Maekgeul, right?”

“That’s right.”

Ciphers of this era were usually variations on Chinese characters, and a moderately clever fellow could figure them out.

But the ‘Maekgeul’ I had made had nothing to do with Chinese characters, so it was impossible to decode — or so we had thought.

The enemy said they had managed to acquire my cipher somehow and then wracked their brains over it.

What kind of letters are these?

They called it Maekgeul. By the way, what on earth does the character 인복 (人卜) mean…?

I heard Maeng Sap pronounce that as “sa.”

Then what about the gukbok (口卜) attached here?

They said it was pronounced ma…

So this dot and the bokja make an “a” sound… ah, I get it. This and this… hey, that’s just pronunciation!

Oh, now that you mention it, it is easy; “Bypass the Ma-bu Cave on the midslope of the mountain and flip them over.” Right? We should get that guy.

Ondal sometimes does silly things. How could he call something that easy a cipher?

In that way they learned how to read my cipher and trounced us.

Hearing all this I could not help but laugh.

“Yes — this is it….”

My cipher ‘Maekgeul’ was, need I say, Hangul; since the Goguryeo people at the time identified more with the Maek people than with the Samhan, I had called it Maekgeul.

Tired of idu, I had long wanted to spread Sejong the Great’s script somehow.

But in the present situation, if I tried to introduce a new script as my own and spread it, I would only make unnecessary enemies.

So what I thought of was using it as a cipher.

‘As a country fond of war, Goguryeo was naturally interested in cipher systems.’

Of course, as a cipher, Maekgeul was a failure.

One could see that just by looking at it now.

At first, it had the effectiveness of being a “completely new script,” but it had been broken at once, had it not?

But the students of the Taehak were not so foolish as to say, “Only ten days? Trash.”

At this age, secretive gestures and codes spread easily.

From that day, a ghost wandered the Taehak — the ghost called Maekgeul.

“…What, were you writing letters?”

“No, it’s nothing.”

“Tell me!”

“Ha, this… it’s the Maekgeul that’s trending these days, but really, I shouldn’t be telling just anyone….”

Centered on our room, Maekgeul subtly became a trend.

Naturally, I was leading it.

‘In my time too there had been a fad called “alien language,” where we spoke in strange distorted sounds.’

One would say “babap meobeogeobeoseobeo?” instead of “bap meogeosseoya?” (Did you eat?), a method mostly used by those friends who thought themselves cool.

But alien language was merely Korean stretched into strange shapes, so it was inconvenient and people tired of it quickly.

Maekgeul was different.

“The more I use this, the better it is than idu….”

“It’s easy to learn too….”

Could one really bear to keep using idu once one had tried Hangul?

For example, the character 木 could be read as namu (the object, wood), as mok (the sound), as the human neck (the phonetic), or even as the verb “to scold.”

Of course, there were rules, and if one looked at the context and removed the nonsense, interpretation was possible, but inconvenient nonetheless.

Since its foundation was in Chinese characters, there were many native sounds idu could not capture.

‘But Maekgeul was easier, simpler, and broader in what sounds it could represent.’

Had it been nobles already fluent in idu or Chinese characters, they might have sensed the danger here, for they knew how much they profited from linguistic difficulty.

But the students of the Taehak were different.

Their minds were flexible, they found idu annoying, and half of them — the Domestic Fortress Faction — whined that killing men was easier than learning idu.

So what if such students were shown Maekgeul?

It would be like seeing a mouse for the first time while typing on a command prompt, or like Chileans seeing a taxi door open automatically.

“I’ll tell you only because it’s you.”

“Wait, you’ll learn it in a day.”

From afar I overheard such conversations.

‘They were doing well.’

Trick them with the pretense of a cipher → let it spread under the guise of a trend → keep a bit of secrecy.

‘That was the method cults usually used.’

Approach kindly with services.

Share a small secret to create complicity.

Present something as if it were popular and hook them in.

Of course, it was not that I myself had done such things; I had only received instruction.

I had lived in the countryside, hadn’t I?

There, swindlers and cultists who targeted the purses of the elderly came more often than one might think.

So local organizations sometimes made curricula teaching “how to deal with cults and scams,” and that was what I had once learned.

‘I had never thought I would use it like this….’

It felt a little wrong to spread Sejong the Great’s great work in a cult-like way.

But I had also heard that marketing used the same methods, so I consoled myself with that.

Besides, I had no bad intentions — only to make writing easier.

‘At this rate… the nobles would dismiss it as the latest youth fad.’

Meaning no one would interfere.

Though we called it a “secret,” before long there was no Taehak student who did not know Maekgeul.

‘That was it.’

I laughed as I saw it.

For now they were childish, hormone-ridden teenagers… but they were all sons of noble families.

In a few years they would take power and become the new generation of elites.

If they rose to high office, then naturally Maekgeul — that is, Hangul — would become the language used in the center of Goguryeo.

‘I am sorry, Seol Chong.’

Unfortunately, your improved idu seemed to have no use in this world.

Before I knew it, time had passed and it was March.

On Samjinnal, having received a short holiday, I went to see Boknyeo after a long while.

As I looked around near her house, the people nearby recognized me.

“Are you Lord Ondal?”

“Yes, I am. Why do you ask?”

“I truly owe you a great debt!”

“So do I, so do I!”

Suddenly people crowded in, thanking me, and I was somewhat bewildered.

“What happened?”

“No, aren’t you on your way home now?”

“Yes, I am….”

“Then I’ll have no time to catch anything! Hurry, Princess has been counting the days for this!”

…How did commoners know so well about my household affairs? I wondered, and the moment I stepped into the house.

“Nanggunnim!”

Boknyeo ran with her arms wide open and leapt straight into me.

“Oof! You’ll get hurt!”

I picked her up at once.

It felt like we had been apart for a long time, though in truth it had not been that long, yet my chest ached as if years had passed.

Was this what being married meant?

Boknyeo clung to me and asked.

“…I heard about what happened at the Taehak as well.”

“I sent you a lot of letters, didn’t I?”

“That, and Daewon told me about it too.”

“Crown Prince? What did he say?”

“He said you made a very good match.”

Normally Boknyeo would fly into a rage whenever I mentioned my younger brother, but she seemed to like that praise of me.

“By the way, people on the way here were thanking me — what’s that about?”

“That’s all thanks to Mother.”

Boknyeo said.

“My mother travels between Gomchon and Pyeongyang to provide relief to the needy, and I, though only a little, have been helping so she need not bear it alone.”

“Huh….”

Even while I was away, my mother and Boknyeo had been steadily winning the people's hearts within Pyeongyang Fortress, and I felt grateful enough to ask Boknyeo.

“Is there anything you’d like to do today? It’s been a while — I want to spend time with you.”

Boknyeo, who had hesitated, answered.

“How about fishing?”

“...Fishing, huh. Fine.”

So Boknyeo and I cast a fishing line into the nearby river.

She giggled lightly at my side and then, suddenly, leapt up onto my shoulders.

“What are you doing?”

“Stand up! Move a little forward! There — okay!”

She reached out and plucked a willow leaf.

“There are lots of leaves below too, aren’t there?”

“The ones above work better. Look.”

She tore off a willow leaf and made a sound by whistling with it; the sound was poor but there it was.

“Let me try — I can do this well.”

“It’s not easy, you know?”

It wasn’t hard for me; I had played with these as a child in the countryside.

A steady trill came out.

If one moved the mouth right, one could even make tunes; “Joyful, My Home” would suit it.

“How is it?”

“Rather than how — can you see it?”

Boknyeo pointed in front of me.

“There’s nothing there.”

“That’s the problem. Our fishing rod!”

“Aah!”

While we were playing with the leaf whistle, a fish apparently bit and took the fishing rod whole; must have been a snakehead.

In the end we caught no fish, but it had been fun, and that was enough.

As we sat there, my previous life came to mind.

“My father always dreamed of going fishing with me.”

He had also hoped that someday his grandchildren or daughter-in-law would come along.

“…Are you crying, Ondal?”

“Ah, I was thinking of my father.”

At that, Boknyeo’s eyes filled with tears too.

“Why are you crying?”

“Because you’re crying.”

The Boknyeo I knew was very different from the Pyonggang in the Ondal Yeoljeon; she was far more political and clever.

But in being a crybaby, perhaps she was the same.

Not long after returning from leave, a big event occurred in Goguryeo.

It began with the return this year of the Confucian monk Uiyeon, who had been dispatched to Northern Qi.

Although the return had been scheduled for five years, he came back after only one year, and it was not because he had learned five years’ worth in one.

It was far worse news.

“It’s terrible, terrible news!”

As soon as he arrived in Pyeongyang he rushed to Anhak Palace in a panic and cried out to the high ministers and officials.

“Northern Qi will soon be destroyed…!”

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.