North Sea Martial Arts Warrior - Chapter 52

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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52. The Trap-Layer’s Due

Garkan’s arm came away.
The Bing Cheol-sae scraped across stone and launched upward, the chain twisting in midair. The foreleg of each of the five lead horses snagged simultaneously.
Shriek! Shriek! Shriek!
All five horses crumpled forward.
Their riders catapulted from the saddles. One of them struck the rock wall headfirst.
Crack!
The dull concussion echoed deep into the gorge.
The stench of metal and sweat poured in after them.
“One down!”
Garkan’s shout cut through the thunder of hooves.
The two hundred ninety-five riders behind did not slow.
They trampled through the wreckage in their momentum, and the sound of hooves shattering broken legs overlapped in a raw, grinding chorus.
One cavalry soldier rode directly over the face of his downed comrade.
“Aaaaaaagh!”
A terrible scream tore through the air.
The three hundred vanguard soldiers seemed to crumple in the narrow gorge, but then they flowed forward again. They too were seasoned in mounted warfare.

Taikan lay prone atop the left rock face.
He leveled his Gak-ak Gung and fitted an arrow to the string.
His target was the rider on the third horse from the front—a man bearing a red cloth on his shoulder armor that marked him as a Ma-jeon Commander.
Twang! Hiss!
The string released. The arrow cut a clean arc through the air. The arrowhead buried itself in the Commander’s left eye.
He jerked backward in the saddle.
His horse, directionless now, slammed into the right wall. It buckled at the knees and went down. The two cavalry soldiers behind it became tangled in the mess.
Taikan nocked his second arrow.
“Two.”
A murmur to himself.
Counting was an old habit of his, and like a man who hoarded words, he hoarded numbers too.
Hiss!
The second arrow flew. It passed through the next Commander’s throat—the point emerged from the back of his neck. He pitched forward without a sound.
“Three.”
The third arrow found the temple of the next Commander.

Arko held his breath atop the right rock face.
He loosened the Poison Powder pouch at his waist and shook it three times, watching the red grains gather in one corner before inverting the opening downward.
The wind blew west to east, and it carried into the gorge where the enemy surged.
Arko’s right cheek went cold first. The wind came from the west.
“Got the wind. Go.”
A flat statement to himself.
Red dust cascaded from the western rock face toward the east. The powder scattered into the air. Caught by the wind, it settled to face height among the cavalry soldiers.
“Cough! Cough!”
The forward twenty or so riders coughed first. Their eyes reddened in the next instant. Hands that had lost their reins clutched at their faces.
The masterless horses veered sideways. The veering horses took hits from the cavalry behind them, and chaos erupted.
One face entered Arko’s field of vision.
The angle of looking down from the rock.
As the Poison Powder thinned like mist, the face of a cavalry soldier still clinging to his mount became sharply clear.
Arko’s jaw hardened.
A man in his early forties. A horizontal scar across his left cheekbone. A black mole beneath his right ear. A face burned into memory.
The one who had stood beside him that day.
The one who had been with the archer who fired Poison Arrows from behind the Vigilance Corps. Not the same clothes as then, not the same weapons either—but the arrow quiver slung across his back was unmistakable.
Yes. The one who had stood watching and laughing just after that arrow pierced his shoulder.
That man now held a position as a Ma-jeon vanguard commander.
Arko opened his Poison Needle Quiver and drew out a single needle.
Dried poison coated the tip—the most expensive poison the Aelak Tribe knew, and in limited quantity.
So he had saved them.
Now he would use them.

Rugan positioned his horse beyond the Poison Powder barrier.
He’d watched three officers collapse one after another at the entrance. He’d watched the front lines crumble. He’d watched the Poison Powder rise into the air.
Rugan opened his mouth to curse.
But the inside of his lip stung first. Before he’d even realized he’d bitten it again, blood was already seeping through.
He licked the blood away—it tasted of salt.
“Rear ranks. Hold the rear ranks!”
His cry came too late.
The cavalry behind him was already surging forward. The soldiers buckled under the raw pressure before they could even hear their Vanguard commander’s voice.
The thunder of hoofbeats swallowed his shouts.
He pulled hard on the reins, but he could barely turn his own mount around.
A black blade entered the corner of his vision.
Aelak.
Aelak, dismounted, was walking into the shadow on the left side of the Rock Gorge. His pace was unhurried, his footfalls buried beneath the noise of the cavalry.
Heat raced down Rugan’s spine, then drained away.
He turned to his aide.
“Go back and report to the Lord. The Vanguard has engaged. The beast’s nose has caught the scent—”
His words died.
The Poison Powder touched his aide’s face. The aide coughed. The coughing continued until he tumbled from his horse.
Rugan covered his mouth with his sleeve.
“That’s enough. I’ll go.”
He turned his horse’s head around.
He signaled the twenty cavalry soldiers following him to keep pace.
Rugan found a detour around the edge of the Poison Powder barrier. There was a path around the right side of the rocky terrain.
Hoofbeats moved once more.

Harku burst from the shadow on the right.
The Ssang-ado in his hands spun once in opposite directions.
He laughed.
“They’re coming, they’re coming!”
Harku lunged at the lead cavalry soldier’s flank with wild, gleeful abandon.
The left blade. The tendons of the horse’s front legs.
The right blade. The falling rider’s throat.
He didn’t stop. The next horse. Four riders down in three breaths.
“Hey, at this rate I won’t get any rest tonight!”
He shouted with laughter.
“Garkan, five on your left! I’m busy!”

Garkan released the Bing Cheol-sae from beneath the rocks on the left.
This time too, his hands were wrapped the reverse way, from pinky to thumb. He’d learned over thirty years that this order was how the strength flowed best through his arms.
“Don’t get carried away. We’re just getting started.”
There was no laughter in Garkan’s voice.
“Keep your eyes on the Clan Chief’s signals!”
That single phrase was shorter and fiercer.

Aelak took another step forward.
His foot made no sound against the stone. The Eun-seol-bo of Serian.
The footwork of a Fu-ku woman. But his feet had memorized the texture from watching it only once with Karani and once with Serian.
It wasn’t a perfect recreation, but it was more than enough to use in the narrow confines of a rock gorge.
He shifted five paces to the right, into shadow. Three mounted soldiers saw his movement only as he arrived.
To see it late was to be too late already.
The Bei Ming Dao came free from his waist.
The blade was black. A thin layer of frost had formed across its surface. The hand gripping the hilt trembled faintly. The Bei Ming Dao was reacting to its master’s killing intent before the master had even moved.
The blade wanted to strike before its wielder commanded it.
Aelak gripped the hilt hard once, holding the blade steady.
“Not yet,” he said quietly.
He spoke without inflection.
The blade obeyed.

First strike. Aelak slipped past with half a step to the side, slicing across the first cavalry soldier’s waist.
Upper and lower body separated atop the horse.
Second strike. He advanced another half-step, cleaving through the second soldier’s left thigh. The horse threw its rider.
Third strike. Without turning his body, he cut the next soldier’s throat.
Three fallen… and he stopped.
The Bei Ming Dao rang out long and clear. Its cry echoed off the stone walls.

Serian hurled Bing-chim from the entrance to the middle dead-end.
Three needles tore through the air, piercing three cavalry soldiers in succession.
She drew three more from her Needle Quiver.
Her hand did not tremble. Not once. With each increment the needle’s point closed toward its mark, her eyes sank lower by measure, focus sharpening.
“… Three more.”
She spoke low.
A brief silence. The space of a single held breath.
“Received.”
Arko acknowledged curtly from atop the rock.
Just now, Serian had murmured her next move. Arko caught the meaning woven into her words. What she wanted.
Poison Powder spread left and right.
The cavalry tightened their formation. Before Serian they had become three columns deep.
Shwip!
Three more needles flew from Serian’s fingertips. Three more fell.

Poison Powder filled the depths of the Rock Gorge.
Horses backed up. They tangled with comrades pressing from behind. Already eighty-some cavalry could advance no further.
One cavalry soldier dismounted and stepped forward.
But the moment he moved, he saw Aelak. He saw the Bei Ming Dao.
The soldier tried to step back. There was no room to retreat. The horse behind pressed its head against his back.
He was shoved forward. Above him, Harku’s left Ssang-ado blade traced its arc.
The instant the cavalry dismounted, they were driven into Harku and Garkan’s range.
Ssang-ado claimed six more. Bing Cheol-sae broke five. Serian’s needles pierced eight. Taikan brought down two more commanders.

“Blocked, aren’t you? Come this way!”
Harku shouted with laughter edging his voice.
The three hundred Vanguard collapsed where they stood, their own unraveling point lost to them.
With the Bei Ming Dao alone, Aelak cut down twelve more cavalry.
The North Sea Bing Jeong Shin Gong flowed from his toes to his crown, chilling the surrounding air by one degree.
Horses would not approach that proximity. By animal instinct, they knew the cooled air—the air of death.
Those who advanced met the blade. Those who could not advance fell to Arko’s Poison Needles and Serian’s Bing-chim. Either path led to the grave.
The screams of three hundred died away in sequence.

Rugan reined in his horse at the right flank passage through the rocky terrain.
His twenty direct subordinates halted alongside him.
The right flank passage was narrower than expected. Not wide enough for two horses to stand abreast. From a distance, he had judged there was room for three horse-widths, but now that he was here, his judgment had fallen short.
He adjusted his grip on the reins. His knuckles turned white. Salt still lingered at the spot where he’d bitten down before.

Serian had already shifted her position toward the flank passage the moment the Vanguard was driven into the dead-end.
It was Aelak’s instruction.
At the passage’s end, deep in the shadow of the stone, she stood with silver Bing-chim clasped in her hand.
Rugan saw that silhouette.
A woman with a slender build.
Rugan’s back tensed once.
One woman alone—he could overwhelm her. But this woman’s waiting meant only one thing: this place was a trap.
He spoke without turning his head.
“Retreat—”
The word cut off.

The woman’s hand moved first.
Three needles lodged in the throats of his direct subordinates. Three of them.
The subordinates’ bodies pitched in their saddles. The horses bolted forward. In such a narrow passage, there was no room to swerve aside.
Rugan pulled hard on the reins.
In the chaos, he could barely manage to turn his own horse around. Of the twenty cavalry soldiers, only seven at the rear had survived.
Poison Needles and Bing-chim rained down.
Barely seven had escaped alive, retracing the path Rugan had taken. The other thirteen were sorted among the needles, the narrow passage, and the tangle of horses.

Rugan rode hard for a long stretch before finally reining in again.
He could not understand it.
The escape route had been flawless. Yet at the end of that path, a woman was already standing. She stood as if she had known all along that he would come that way.
A stray dog’s nose could be wrong.
There was one thing he had never missed in his entire life—the escape route. Today, Aelak had turned that route into a path of death.
“Spit!”
As he spat, a wad of spittle fell to the ground and traced a red pattern. Blood.
“That’s enough. I need to report to the Commander.”
He muttered to himself.
His horse turned its head south.

The Bei Ming Dao had been driven toward the forked passage in the middle of the Rock Gorge.
The middle fork was a dead end. The cavalry soldiers who had been pushed into it tried to turn back and leave, but they could not.
Behind them were Harku and Garkan. Ahead, Serian. To the side, Arko’s Poison Powder.
They had nowhere to go.
Aelak walked into their midst.
The gentleness of the Eun-seol-bo had been released here. There was no need to hide anything now. The weight of his footsteps echoed across the stone floor.
The surviving cavalry soldiers finally sensed Aelak’s presence.
They drew their swords.
They were no match, but… they could not just sit and die. Four of them rushed forward at once.
Aelak drew the Bei Ming Dao once, from upper left to lower right. Four sword blades snapped simultaneously. A thin frost rose like mist from the break.
In the next strike, all four men fell together.
Six more rushed him. Aelak dealt with them in six breaths.
The last cavalry soldier thrust at Aelak’s face.
Aelak did not dodge. He raised the Bei Ming Dao in front of his face. The sword tip that touched the blade froze solid. The next moment, the sword shattered.
The soldier’s face turned deathly pale.

“The last one.”
Taikan spoke quietly from atop the rock.
What he had counted was not the number of arrows he had shot today. It was the number of commanders bearing red marks on their shoulders.
He descended from the rock and sifted through the pile of corpses. He identified at once the spots where his arrows had struck. He discarded the ones with bent points and set the intact ones back in his quiver.
He also emptied the arrow quivers of the Ma-jeon cavalry soldiers. He kept the ones that matched the length.
Nineteen arrows could be used again on the bowstring.
Wind passed through the inner part of the Rock Gorge.
Of the three hundred Vanguard, none moved. Only Rugan and seven others had escaped. The rest lay inside the Rock Gorge.
Harku shook off the Ssang-ado.
“That was refreshing.”
He turned to look at Aelak.
“Clan Chief, this entrance is cleared.”
“Understood.”
Aelak answered curtly.
“I’d say we’ve earned our keep today. Would two bowls for supper be alright?”
“Ask Serian.”
“Ah, then it’ll be one bowl.”
Harku clicked his tongue.
Serian turned her eyes that way, then lowered her gaze back to the Needle Quiver.
Aelak did not turn his head.
His gray eyes looked toward where the Vanguard Commander had been standing. That spot was empty. The Vanguard Commander had escaped.
“He got away alive. He couldn’t find the place to die.”
He spoke.

Aelak did not sheathe the Bei Ming Dao. He washed the blade clean with frost aura, and holding the washed blade, kept it at his side.
Aelak turned his gaze south.
A cloud of dust hung low on the horizon. Still distant enough to mean they had time.
“Today I took your left arm. Next will be your right.”
Those words rode the wind southward.
For a single breath, none of his men dared speak.
Harku let out a low whistle.
“Clan Chief, might I commit those words to memory? I’ll put them to good use later.”
Harku laughed, his teeth bared at the end of it.
Serian spoke as she tidied her Needle Quiver.
“Harku, wipe the blood off before you grin like that.”
Serian’s tone was gentle, wrapped in the warmth of someone caring for family.
Harku broke into a broader smile.
“This? I thought it was sweat.”

Garkan secured his Bing Cheol-sae. The blood-stained chain links chimed softly in his palm—tap, tap, tap—each impact releasing droplets of crimson.
“Washing all this blood away will take the whole night, I reckon.”
He muttered it like a man talking to himself.
“Shall I help you scrub it down?”
Arko answered in his flat, economical way.

From the southern horizon came a low rumble.
At first it sounded like distant wind, but soon it became the tremor of earth itself, rolling back toward them.
Serian turned her body toward the sound first. Taikan, standing atop a boulder, gazed down toward the south.
“The main force. A thousand cavalry. The Lord Commander’s Black Flag is raised.”
His voice came shorter than usual.
Aelak stood with his back to the gorge entrance, facing south.
The blade of his Bei Ming Dao caught the distant dust from the south. They were still far off. A bead of frost clung to the sword’s edge, then fell and struck the stone floor.
“We won’t have to wait long. Good. Tonight, we face the Lord Commander himself.”
He said it plainly.
“Clan Chief.”
Garkan opened his mouth in a low voice.
“There are so many corpses here that our attack options are limited. Are you certain we should meet the main force right here?”
“Yes.”
“Understood.”
Garkan lowered his head.
His pinky finger circled once more toward his thumb. The Clan Chief had spoken his will; there was no room for objection. It would be done.

As Aelak’s words fell, a single Black Flag rose above the southern horizon. The eagle’s eyes upon it fixed on the north.
Below those eyes, a single man drew twin blades simultaneously.
A thousand hoofbeats surged northward.
Three hundred paces ahead of them, the dust cloud suddenly stilled.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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