Night Raid 2
Soun dug his heels in and drew his sword.
It was a blade he had rarely used in actual combat.
He had always preferred the long polearm, the hwageuk.
Now he decided it had to be the sword.
Do what you can do.
The First Unit had already passed through the enemy's makeshift wooden barricade.
Soun cut down the sentry standing at the front and rode past without a pause.
It might even have been the very man who had warned them not to go too far.
Men were stumbling out of their tents.
Low-ranking soldiers who had been sleeping on the ground scrambled up and thrust their spear shafts forward, but there was no strength in them.
There was no will to kill.
They had only risen in panic.
Soun charged through them, severing throats and cleaving shoulders as he rode.
He summoned his energy and swept his blade horizontally, drawing a line through the air.
More than ten men blocking his path clutched at their necks and chests and fell backward in unison to a single stroke.
As Soun cleared the front, the Baekryongdae riders rushing in from the flank finished off those still breathing.
Cavalry battle was not about killing every enemy.
It was about striking and breaking through.
Soun spurred forward again.
A pot-bellied man, running between tents like a lost child, collided with him.
Soun cut upward from below, splitting him in two.
He might have been the one still searching for his tent.
A cool sensation ran down Soun's chest.
Was it tears?
Was this what it felt like when sorrow flowed through the heart?
He broke through the front and rode toward the center along a path he already knew.
Nothing blocked him.
The enemy were in total panic and did not even attempt to engage.
Not one thrust a spear forward in defiance.
He struck aside those in his way and advanced.
The closer he came to the center, the thicker their numbers grew.
Attacked from the outside, they fled inward instead of outward.
He had hoped they would scatter into the night, but they crowded toward the core.
The soldiers were densely packed in the center.
When the attack began, the terrified men had gathered there, not knowing where to run.
Shoulder pressed to shoulder, they leveled their spears.
Pressed from all sides, they had trapped themselves.
Across the field Soun saw the Second and Third Units, and Lee Hui.
Lee Hui saw the wall of spears and ordered his men to fall back and ready their bows.
Even as the horses stepped backward, the enemy did not advance.
The massed soldiers stood trembling.
They had no battle experience.
Under attack, they had simply clumped together in confusion.
Those cut down at the edges had already scattered, and only those packed at the center still retained a semblance of formation.
"Arrow nocked!
Those ready, fire!"
At less than forty paces, the arrows struck with lethal force, even against armor.
The dense line collapsed.
Men pierced through the chest screamed and fell forward.
Those who did not die instantly wailed in agony.
The cries tore at the hearts of those who heard them.
"Fire!"
Lee Hui commanded like a drill instructor.
Three to four hundred arrows flew at once.
At such close range and such density, there was no escape.
It was slaughter.
"Fire!"
The sharp whistling of arrows sounded almost cheerful in the night.
The sound of death felt treacherously light.
Soun loosed three or four arrows at a time.
The enemy were no longer opponents but targets.
They lacked even proper shield units.
Men behind the human wall broke under fear and rushed out screaming, but they became nothing more than fodder for arrows.
They fired until their quivers were empty.
This was not battle.
It was massacre.
The enemy had no experience, no preparation, no command structure.
They had gathered their forces intending to charge the Jin estate.
How many arrows had they loosed?
The quivers ran dry.
The ground was a writhing mound of bodies.
"What about the center?"
Gagyeongpil, sensing victory, approached Lee Hui.
"We must break the center.
There are too many."
Lee Hui glanced briefly at the sky.
"Wheel assault.
Spears out.
Shields left.
Circle to the right."
The order passed through the captains.
They circled the dense mass, striking with long spears, cutting down those who surged outward, thrusting deep and withdrawing.
The outer ring fell helplessly before the rotating assault.
Their longest weapons were little more than spears barely taller than a man.
A few officers brandished swords but did not dare advance.
"I'll go inside," Soun said quietly.
"Alone?"
"Yes."
"It's dangerous."
"If we kill only the commanders, the slaughter will lessen."
"Then they will surrender."
"This is not battle.
It is butchery."
"Yes.
It sickens me as well."
The killing had no end.
This was not why he had entered the army.
An army with poor leadership met a miserable fate.
The Arimgun were proof of that.
Soun gathered his energy and leapt into the dark sky.
A sword was already in his hand.
From above he saw the center clearly.
Junior officers urged the remaining soldiers forward.
Behind them stood the commanders.
They were terrified.
Those with the finest armor clustered in the middle.
They shouted for others to charge.
Soun fell toward the empty point at the center.
Chaos.
One stroke.
He landed at the very heart of the enemy formation.
The sound of hooves and shouts did not reach that dense core.
He bent his knees and lowered himself to the ground.
It was not an attack, but preparation.
His breath settled into stillness.
His sword moved horizontally in a long arc.
It was closer to drawing a line than striking.
A bluish aura rippled outward like water.
The commanders shouting orders froze.
Their armor split first.
Then flesh and bone.
They collapsed without even a cry.
The technique he called Sweeping a Thousand Armies made a full circle.
The space around him separated into above and below.
"One more."
The enemy turned to face him, blades raised.
The space was too tight.
They could only thrust.
Soun did not stand.
From his lowered stance, he rotated.
Another simple line.
The world split again.
Blocking swords broke.
Armor parted.
No one remained standing.
A bright flash spread like a fan of light.
Everything within its range was cleaved—armor, shields, faces.
It was not brute strength.
It was not an explosion of force.
It was a single intention.
To divide.
When he rose, blue energy shimmered along his blade.
Those who witnessed it dropped their weapons.
Knees buckled from the inside outward.
He had not even touched them.
Yet the world had split.
Lee Hui saw surrender begin at the core and ripple outward.
Men knelt in widening circles.
At the center stood the young warrior, Yusaengwon.
Had they surrendered sooner, none of this would have happened.
Those who knelt were countless.
There were only two kinds of people left in that field.
The dead.
And the living.
Soun sheathed his unstained blade and walked away.
The kneeling soldiers shuffled aside on their knees to clear his path.
How could one fight a man who slew dozens with a single stroke?
They had lost all will.
Soun felt hollow.
He felt sorrow.
They had won.
It had not been battle.
It had been a one-sided massacre of men who had never fought before.
They did not know how to wield swords or raise shields properly.
Was this right?
An inexpressible grief pressed down on his chest like a bursting flood.
He closed his eyes and felt the blue current flowing within him.
The tide of surrender continued without end as the Baekryongdae secured the field.