We wrestle with memories to find meaning.
Without knowledge, we live in emptiness, for without truth, life and death have no purpose.
Memories give sight through the mists of time.
Where do I come from and where am I going?
The watermarked parchment rustles.
I read words written in quill and ink and a man’s soul.
The night was dark and warm as blood. Unseasonably warm, as the maples had not leafed in the courtyard. On nights such as these, the tiger walked unheard.
Tae-shin rolled the silk-smooth paper in his hands and tucked it into the message case. He took the lamp from his table and handed it to his messenger. He did not fear darkness and silence, not when he had his sword, and his hands and feet. “Ha-nuel, run fast, and we may yet preserve our people.”
His student bowed, thin face sober, and ducked out into the driving rain. The white band tied about his head bore the black characters of official sanction.
Hwarang Master Ryu Tae-shin rested his hand on his sword, the long hilt familiar under his fingers, and watched the light disappear into the dark.
It would be a simple thing to follow to ensure loyalty. There lay the danger. Now he must fight with his heart, mayhap every drop of his blood, against enemies within and without.
But he had known before he wrote the message to Jeong Jin-ho, rebel kuksun of the five thousand soldiers massed outside his kuksun’s gate, that one hwarang with a false tongue walked among his two hundred. One of his students reported to hwarang Master Cho Seung. No one but Master Cho or Kuksun Kim Paekche would dare stop a hwarang messenger.
Tae-shin’s heart beat heavily in his chest. With the dawn, he would be his kuksun’s most esteemed hwarang—or he would be dead.
Every Choson hwarang fought with sword and bow, hand and foot, with a prowess that even the Mongols heard of on their far steppes beyond the great northern wall of China and respected. To his people of Choson, in the Land of the Morning Calm, the tiger symbolized strength and protection. His brothers of the hwarang, the flowering warriors of his people, worshipped the tiger spirit.
The punches of the most adept cracked ribs like dry pine, could crush an attacker’s throat, or shock the heart so it ceased to beat. Their open-hand strikes could knock a man senseless, disrupting the nervous system in precise combination.
His two-hundred students had followed his every hand strike and sword blow as he led them in honored techniques of Subak and Kum-sool as the sun rose over the rim of the world, glinting flame on the water of the river they practiced beside. Their feet flashed high in jumping kicks and sent their mounted opponents’ hats of horsehair spinning to the ground.
Tae-shin clenched his fingers around the hilt of his blade. His students had grown strong, from rangdo to hwarang.
Surely his most trusted messenger was true. Ha-nuel would carry his offer to Kuksun Jeong Jin-ho of the five thousand with courage. Or, yearning for advancement, would he take the missive to Kuksun Kim Paekche? Did he believe his kuksun, that it was an honorable path to fight to the last child? He might even follow Master Cho.
Tae-shin resisted the urge to draw his weapon. Nearly two hundred of his hwarang sought to serve as faithfully as he, who held the heart and hand of their kuksun’s daughter, Kim Jin-dae.
Tae-shin’s breath stopped for a moment. Beautiful, she was. As Paekche’s son-in-law, he had been favored.
He took much pleasure in Jin-dae’s cooking, or his Huen, as he so often called her in his heart and whispered in her ear. He had not tasted the hot bite of her fermented cabbage and spice for days. The village had little food left, bottled behind the ramparts as they were, with many hwarang who ate much.
Carefully, Tae-shin wrapped his sword-hilt for a solid grip against the wet. None knew the undercurrents between the villages better than the hwarang and the supporting warriors from the lower bone ranks. The rebel would need them to peacefully oversee his new land and people. So Kuksun Kim Paekche and his daughter, Kim Jin-dae, might live. And his brothers, from chin-gol to the lowest bone rank.
Satisfaction tugged at Tae-shin’s mouth. Life, and his Huen’s smile. He would see her live if it meant his own death. His mouth tightened. He had a task to finish.
Tae-shin stepped out into the thundering dark and shut the door. Rain misted against his face as he slipped away. The budding maples smelled sweet.
Moving through the courtyard garden toward hwarang Master Cho’s ceramic-tiled roof, Tae-shin kept to the shadows. His breath came faster. No spark of quicksilver ran along his bare, blackened blade in the light of the lamps from his old master’s open door—which yet quivered on its hinges. Cho Seung also hunted this night.
Ryu Tae-shin listened warily. There was no going back.
No one stirred behind the carved porch pillars, no voice or clatter of dish came from within the house. Then Master Cho stood in the garden archway, a dark shape against the square of light. It was as if the hwarang master manifested there in his leather and cane armor for one of their practice bouts. Then he turned his head in a sneer, and his teeth glinted. Sliding his sword from its sheath, he stepped down to meet Tae-shin. He was as sure-footed as a cat in the dripping grass.
Tae-shin retreated into the dark. The light must not blind him. His weight even, he did not lift his feet despite the mud beneath his boots. He must feel his way along the earth and avoid the stray branch, the tuft of grass, the rock that would turn.
Master Cho shifted his heavy frame as a feather, circling Tae-shin, a blot of darkness in the night. Noiseless, his old master lifted his blade and sliced up and across Tae-shin’s body in an adder-swift strike. But Tae-shin was not there to be gutted.
Hwarang Master Cho rained down heavy blows, precise and swift with hate. Steel grated on steel and sparked in the black. Tae-shin’s steel gave before his—deflect, attack, deflect. He stumbled.
Master Cho hissed and extended his arm in a slashing lunge with all his weight behind it. Tae-shin struck. Master Cho’s weapon flew from his hand and thudded to the earth. Before it hit, Tae-shin spun to grab his opponent’s arm. With a quick blow of his hilt to the neck and a heave over his hip, he bore him heavily to the ground. Dropping astride him and locking his legs about Master Cho tighter than a strangle-vine, Tae-shin rested his blade against his throat. His old master did not dare try to throw him but struggled to speak. Tae-shin lifted the silvery edge a finger span.
“We could uproot the house of Kim and plant the house of Ryu and the house of Cho in its place. Together we could rise far.” Kimchi and fish mingled sour and warm on the hwarang master’s whistling breath.
Tae-shin’s last doubt died under a storm of fury and sorrow. He gripped him harder. He was the only one with the authority and knowledge to judge him, and there was no more time. Master Cho plotted to kill his Huen and his brothers. His throat felt suddenly thick. Not for him, the mountain-cat playing with the mouse.
He forced out a hoarse, “I am sorry.” He slammed his hand down, and hot wet flooded his fingers. The struggling body beneath him went limp. After a moment, his stomach roiling, Tae-shin got to his feet.
When he returned to his command post, the rain had washed the blood from his hands and the tears from his face. He stood outside, letting the rain patter around him with his thoughts. He could not let the traitor live. A hwarang who betrayed his oath would betray again. Tae-shin swallowed hard. The same might soon be said of him.
Dawn was near, and they could not find him with Jin-dae. She could not be accused of conspiring with him against her father’s house. A faint smile lightened him, despite the chill that spread over him with the coming light.
When he first saw his Huen, he had been a student of Master Cho. That long ago morning, he was ordered to display the way of the sword with one of his brothers, to show their martial skill before the kuksun’s daughter, who walked through the courtyard.
She had been such a bright spirit, her cheeks soft as a slender peach, her form and deep brown eyes reminding him of a graceful water deer. Her low words to her maid as she watched them begin the dance of the blade were as swift as the red that crept up her neck, a rosy blush on her golden skin.
With a feint and a rush, Tae-shin disarmed his brother in a moment. The surprised hwarang stared in disbelief at his empty hand where his weapon had been. Jin-dae laughed in equally surprised delight, then brought her hand to her mouth in dismay.
Red-faced, Master Cho sharply ordered Tae-shin to strike his brother with the flat of his sword. He stopped after three blows. Master Cho yelled at him to continue.
Tae-shin bowed, reversed his blade, and offered the hilt to his master. “I did not teach my brother the sword aright.” Then he bent across his brother’s back and took the rest of his master’s bitter instruction.
After the lesson, as Tae-shin returned from washing his bloody back, he contrived to pass near Jin-dae, who lingered in the garden nearby. He overheard her quiet aside to her maid. “That hwarang has a spirit about him—a tiger’s strength—yet with the gentleness of the deer.” She said it thoughtfully, words that would be cause for blood coming from any other mouth. He thought her rather perceptive. He had bowed deeply, straightened, and met the sardonic gaze of his kuksun, who stood just beyond his daughter.
From the beginning, Master Cho Seung had sought to protect his place as the most respected hwarang Master, driving the hwarang under him mercilessly, without care for life, limb, or purpose. No warrior among them attracted Kuksun Kim Paekche’s notice without paying a price. So hwarang Ryu Tae-shin soon performed his master’s toughest tasks.
Tae-shin traced the rough wood of his command post door and bowed his head. He still did not lift his sword without reason and held it until he completed his task.
Master Cho had sought to kill those hwarang of rank around him and sell his people to rebel Jeong Jin-ho. To gain a new kuksun who would place him at his side, as Kuksun Kim Paekche had not. Those who had reached enlightenment would call Master Cho demonic, one who walked in greed and hate. What could he have been if he had kept his oath?
Tae-shin stepped inside the command post, wiped his sword, and slid it slowly back into its wooden sheath. His own journey to become hwarang had not begun in truth.
Before his test to become a hwarang master he traveled to the Chinese mainland to study scribing and medicine, as well as their arts of war. He had so many questions.
He yearned, but nothing he attained filled his longing. He pursued higher rank for his father’s sake, as did many others among the hwarang. But why did one succeed and another not? Why did he feel every time he gained a step in life, or drew closer to his desire, that something or someone knocked him back? The earth was chokingly full of injustice. It reigned under Master Cho. Life felt broken.
In China, he found answers. A man, shunned by the rest, showed him a bit of a book by a man named John. In it, he spoke of another, Yeshua, who was more than a man. And Tae-shin discovered the power of truth.
Inside his command post, Tae-shin settled himself against the wall and laid his sheathed sword before his feet.
Zen, or Seon, as his people put it, had given him power. Seon gave inhuman strength to both flesh and spirit but never the power to dispel his darkness. That grew ever heavier. He felt its hunger but could not name what devoured him.
Ryu Tae-shin smiled wryly. Strange that one could seek enlightenment, the end of delusion, and still be so deluded, caught in the darkness of hate and wrong, where there was no light to see. The book was different.
Its light reflected the ugliness of Master Cho, but also his own hate. But the book haunted him, and its words would not leave. Turning his face toward the Buddha, drinking the power of Zen, had changed little within him.
Tae-shin caught back a soft laugh. Though he had beaten the man who showed the book to him, who asked why a hwarang warrior feared the truth, soon after, Tae-shin could no longer petition the spirits of river and hill, or follow the way of Seon. The looming meaning of the book and its purpose kept him unsettled in spirit until he found a copy of the entire Book of the I Am, and read further.
He discovered the Master of the stars gave the path of meaning to all things he created. That path was not easy, for the Master of all did not look at things as men looked at them. Tae-shin’s throat closed.
He knew soon after he met Jin-dae that he could never attain rightness as the Master of the stars was righteous in all things. Compassionate, just, pure, strong, existing in himself, the Father of all was good. But Tae-shin knew his own hatred too well and could name other slithering things within.
He also knew swords. And the Book’s edge was keen; it divided the pure from the impure. He could never be worthy of the touch of the Master of the stars. But then he learned something else. Unlike any weapon, the Book also brought healing.
The Master, in love for him, had paid his debt with a blood-soaked price. If he would accept it, the Master of all expunged his darkness and made him a new creation, sending him on to live, to love, to grow in joy. The pieces of the universe slid into place. Injustice had an end.
Tae-shin had asked pardon of the man who showed him the book of John, and they parted as brothers. Then he became a hwarang master.
Tae-shin tipped his head back against the wall. He took truth and left the power of Seon, the Zen.
It was not so comfortable, dividing intentions, hearts, and men. But the Master of all cared for him and taught him to wield the blade in both worlds, the realm of spirit and flesh. Though life held much suffering, his father, master, and brother had overcome it. He shut his eyes. His fate lay in the strong hands of another.
* * *
The thin cane door of the command post bent under heavy blows. “Open, in the Kuksun’s name!”
Ryu Tae-shin lifted his head from his knees. The door burst open. He did not move.
They took his sword and seized him, two men for each arm. Six guards marched him between them into his kuksun’s presence.
Tae-shin knelt one moment before the guards forced him down. He would die with few faces to witness his dishonor—Kuksun Kim Paekche gave him that. He raised his head.
Paekche’s mouth was flat, his black eyes hard. A frown wrinkled his wide brow beneath his black hair in its simple warrior’s knot, bound by a green silk band stitched with the sigil of the house of Kim.
Had Jin-dae fashioned that dignified band with pride and joy? Tonight it would bring her sorrow. His kuksun had never fully trusted him. Tae-shin let out his breath. If he were of the house of Kim, however distant, or born chin-gol, it would be easier to convince his kuksun of the truth. But for that, there was no remedy.
“My kuksun.” He leaned forward whether Kuksun Kim Paekche raised his keen edge above him or not, baring his neck in trust.
“Why?” Paekche growled. The stinging blow of his hand numbed Tae-shin’s cheek and rocked him back on his heels. The carefully shaven lines of his beard framed his square chin, working with rage. “How could you give us to Jeong Jin-ho! The tiger is dead in you. The master of my hwarang has turned his back to his enemies!”
Word had gotten out. Had they taken Ha-nuel on his way or returning? “I do not give our people to Kuksun Jeong Jin-ho. I give them life.” Tae-shin’s jaw hardened. “I seek to master the tiger before he devours us all. Then, I serve the Master of the stars, who bids us not to kill without rightful need. As for my enemy, I have faced him.”
“So, you lift your name beside the tiger. Do you also seek my seat?” Kuksun Kim Paekche glared at him.
“No, most honorable kuksun. I fight for our land and for the house of Kim. That both may endure.” Tae-shin bowed his forehead to the floor.
His kuksun paced back and forth on the dais. His silk slippers whispered over the polished wood, and his robes loosed the scent of cloves, star-anise, and musk.
“Did not your Master of all die without lifting a hand for his kingdom?” Paekche’s voice was harsh.
Tae-shin could not keep from stiffening and sat back on his heels. The wary guards pressed down on his shoulders but let him gain his knees. “He died for us, honorable kuksun, and as such is one of the greatest hwarang who ever lived. He rose from death to build his lawful kingdom in our hearts—in any who wish for purity and strength.” Tae-shin’s eyes stung abruptly. “He holds my heart in his hand.”
“As I, your kuksun, hold your body.”
“Yes.” Tae-shin lifted his gaze. “As does lady Jin-dae. My Huen also holds my heart. My kuksun—I seek rebel Jeong Jin-ho’s face that you and Jin-dae may live, and the house of Kim. There are five thousand outside. It is death to fight them with but five hundred.” He strove to keep the heat from his voice. If it would place his weapon between Jin-dae and suspicion and ambition and fear, he would beg indeed.
“The houses of Kim Paekche and Jeong Jin-ho both lay claim to the same burial land. Each claims it stolen. Our ancestors remain in our memory, but bones cannot speak, or touch, or laugh. Though that earth is sacred, their dust sleeps. Would they not rather we walk in life than for our blood to water the ground where none can ever touch them?
“My kuksun, the rebel will need you. Our new king may rise for a day, and the next he may fall. There is no need for more blood if our hearts remain true to him and our people. The ministers are not settled at court. Yield for a moment, and carry the battle.” Tae-shin swallowed the knot in his throat.
Kuksun Kim Paekche lifted his hand.
The men holding Tae-shin’s arms tensed, their fingers binding as steel. The sixth guard stepped forward, a moon-blade halberd in his hands.
It was his answer. Tae-shin bowed his head. He had one thing left to lose.
If only he could know Ha-nuel got through. Master of lights, my Father with whom there is no shifting shadow. Give me your tiger’s heart, the hwarang heart of your son. “So I will not shame you.” It was a whisper.
“Speak, if you wish me to hear!” Paekche stroked the medallion that rested against his silk-clad chest, and his mouth twisted.
“Your pardon, honorable Kuksun. I asked a hwarang heart from the Father of all. I would not shame him.”
His kuksun snorted.
Tae-shin’s chest tightened, and his breath came short. “My kuksun, do not listen to crooked tongues who seek their own power. I have silenced hwarang Master Cho Seung. He would have opened the gate to the rebel. There are others who followed him. Some would see the house of Kim fall and take your place. I do not know their names.”
Kim Paekche’s mouth twitched, and his hand tightened on the medallion. “A treacherous murderer speaks wisdom. Your words I will heed.” He gestured. With a rustle of the guard’s robe, the moon-blade loomed above Tae-shin’s head.
If my kuksun were not blind—but he may yet see—when it is too late. My Father, Master of the stars, have mercy on us. Huen. “My kuksun,” he choked out, “give my lady Kim my sword and my mother’s land.” If he could be calm, there would be time for Paekche to think again after his death.
Tae-shin found his hands shook and straightened his arms, pushing against the hard hold of Paekche’s men on either side for steadiness. They braced.
He could escape. It would be quick. One twist left, a spin and a kick to the knee—a blow with the bright iron taken from the guard on his left who kept licking his lips—then he would be free. Every hwarang master knew the touch of death. His executioner would fall in his own blood, and the moon-blade would be in his hands.
Every muscle rigid, Tae-shin leaned forward, exposing his neck. They were only loyal.
Kuksun Kim Paekche did not mean to surrender. He would need every man to hold the wall.