The news from the city wasn't alarming on its face. Grandmother Seok talked
about a merchant who'd gone missing from the valley road, a rise in the price of
autumn rice, and a water rights dispute between two valley villages that had
apparently been generating conflict for three generations and showed no signs of
resolving in this one.
What she mentioned as an afterthought, in the way people mention things that
are interesting but not personal to them, was the fire.
"Trouble on the mountain road two nights past. The Crooked Pine you know it,
up near the Yongang pass? Run by that drunkard Gwak." A pause. A tone of mild civic
disapproval. "Burned straight down. The road patrol was up there yesterday."
"Anyone survive?" Jaehyun asked. His voice came out level.
"Don't think so," she said, and reached to refill his bowl before he could decline.
Road patrol. That was a complication he'd anticipated but not yet quantified.
The local constabulary had been to the site, which meant they were probably talking to
anyone who came through the area asking questions about it. A young man arriving
from the mountain direction the day after a fire, asking about it: that would be noticed,
depending on who heard it and how it reached the constabulary post.
He stayed in Ahngol only long enough to buy a small amount of dried food with
a copper coin that had been in the dead traveler's satchel, and left before noon, taking
the east road at a pace that was hurried enough to cover ground and controlled enough
not to look like flight.
The trouble found him an hour east of the village.
Two young men. They stepped from the tree line with the relaxed, almost bored
confidence of people who had done this many times and found the outcomes
predictable. Mid teens to early twenties, in clothing that suggested they weren't
starving but weren't comfortable. The one on the left had a short knife at his belt, worn
handle forward in the casual way of someone who expected to be believed rather than
used. The one on the right carried a staff, horizontal across his body, held like a prop
rather than a weapon.
"Where are you going?" the left one said. Not quite a question.
"East," Jaehyun said, and stopped walking.
"That's convenient," said the one with the staff. "Leave the bag."
He assessed them the way he'd been assessing everything for the past five days:
structure and load paths, points of likely failure. The one with the knife had his weight
on his rear foot, which meant a forward step would precede any effective use of the
weapon telegraphed, predictable. The one with the staff was standing too close and
holding the weapon too far across center a threat display, not a combat ready position.
They had not cultivated, or had done so only minimally. They were larger than
him and had weapons, and they expected these facts to be sufficient.
"I don't have anything worth stealing," Jaehyun said.
"The bag," the staff carrier said again, and stepped forward.
Jaehyun stepped sideways and forward off the line, not backward, which was
what they'd expect and drove his elbow into the man's solar plexus. Not hard by any
cultivator's standard; but accurate, and the body was positioned correctly, and the
man's own forward motion contributed to the impact. He folded. The staff hit the road
with a clatter.
The knife carrier stared.
The encounter had cost Jaehyun something he was breathing harder than the
physical effort justified, his reserves thin enough that even a small expenditure
showed. But he was standing, and the other man was not.
"I'm going to need to keep moving," Jaehyun said. He bent and picked up the
staff. Not to threaten further the knife carrier was already reassessing his afternoon's
ambitions but because a staff was useful and this one had just demonstrated it wasn't
being used to capacity by its previous owner.
The man helped his companion up. They retreated into the trees without
additional discussion.
Jaehyun walked on, staff in hand, breathing steadily, putting as much road
behind him as he could before the light failed.