WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: HidingTurtle

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◈ Raised by a Ruthless Swordsman ◈

Chapter 11: One Move

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Escort Captain Ma raised his wooden sabre in one hand. That hand was quite thick. The fingers wrapped around the hilt were broad and knuckled, and the hand looked somewhat awkward because it was so large compared to the grip.

But that was all. His stance was perfectly steady.

Facing him, I stepped back diagonally. I let my wooden sword hang loose and lowered my center of gravity.

“Come at me first.”

Ma Jeongsan brought his sabre to the center of his body and held it upright.

“I’m coming.”

With a short intake of breath, I kicked off the ground.

The sword tip shot straight toward the escort captain’s chest by the shortest path.

Whoooom!

At that moment, the force in the wooden sabre made a sound like a swarm of bees descending. The escort captain’s sabre flew in diagonally and struck the flat of my blade.

Crack!

My thrusting sword slid aside under the force of the heavy sabre. I nearly lost my grip.

I clenched my teeth and tightened my grip. Without breaking the flow, I slipped into the escort captain’s guard and sent my sword tip toward his wrist.

But he reacted quickly. Rather than following through with the strike, he abruptly cut the motion short and drew his sabre back to the center. Before my sword tip could reach his wrist, the solid blade blocked its path.

He was no easy opponent.

I stepped back and readjusted my stance, then flowed forward at once.

This time, I delivered a vertical cut through the air. The escort captain angled his sabre and deflected my descending sword.

Following the diverted flow downward, I aimed once more for the inside of his wrist.

That was when it happened.

Using the sabre hilt as an axis, the escort captain gave his wrist a slight twist. The angle of the blade beneath my sliding sword shifted, knocking it outward just before it reached his wrist.

Whoosh.

My sword tip cut through empty air.

Though the exchange had ended, the escort captain remained in place without any large movement. His stance was exactly as it had been at the start.

I stepped back again and steadied my breathing.

Crack! Crack!

We traded several short exchanges like that.

His skill with the sabre was clearly no ordinary thing.

Yet the weight carried by the sabre itself felt strangely excessive. I could see it stopping just slightly beyond where it ought to.

At first, I thought it was a habit or a mistake. But someone who could calmly twist aside a flowing sword like mine did not seem likely to lack that degree of control.

Perhaps he usually used a broad sabre, or something even larger.

I decided to use that strength against him. I kicked off the ground and launched myself forward again.

A swift thrust aimed at his chest. With one step that brushed through the dust, I slipped into his blind spot. As expected, the escort captain’s sabre came flying in from the side to strike my sword.

In a single breath, I pulled the rebounding sword overhead and curved it toward his shoulder. As I cut, I shifted my feet diagonally along the sword’s path, setting the center of the turning axis.

The escort captain’s sabre returned to the center and blocked the cut.

A heavy impact traveled up my wrist.

I let the rebounding sword flow straight into a thrust at his side, and my body slipped along with the sword’s movement.

My footwork dug one step deeper inside the arc. The escort captain’s sabre also dropped sharply toward my side.

Sword and sabre remained tangled together, neither falling away. Strike, deflect, thrust, block, strike again.

Crack! Crack! Scrape!

My body and feet shifted in short movements with the sword, while sword and sabre circled and changed places as they tangled. Though the escort captain’s footwork became increasingly intricate, his stance never broke.

Whenever I thrust or cut, I added a little more force.

For the first exchange or two, the escort captain’s blocks gave slightly. Under the added weight, his sabre was pushed inward by about a handspan farther than usual.

But he soon caught up to that weight. He added the same amount of force to his defending sabre and returned it to its original position.

As my sword grew heavier, the sabre opposing it also grew heavier with each exchange.

Whenever the escort captain blocked and recovered his sabre, it stopped a little farther past the mark. The weight he put into blocking made him a little slower to draw it back.

This was enough.

I slid my foot inside his guard again and moved in with a thrust. As expected, his sabre came down to meet it.

Just before the sabre reached my sword, I slightly relaxed my wrist and turned the blade at an angle.

Crack!

When the sword he expected to meet vanished, the sabre, carrying all the force he had put into it, swung past. My sword tip was flung far to the side, pulling my wrist and shoulder along with its rotation.

Whoooom!

Using that flow, I turned like a top around the foot planted inside his guard.

My outer foot swept in a broad arc, and at the end of the turn, my body naturally lowered.

The rebounding sword swung wide to the side, then traveled in an arc over my head along my shoulder before dropping toward the ground.

Drawing down that returning arc to complete the rotation, I swept my sword sideways across the inside of the escort captain’s ankle beneath my lowered body.

The escort captain flinched and froze in place.

I put my weight back on my pivot foot and straightened. Then I withdrew my sword and stepped back.

Ma Jeongsan stared at me. His expression was quite different from before. The stiffness around his mouth had eased, and his formerly stern eyes had softened considerably.

Holding his wooden sabre loosely at his side, he approached me.

“That’s quite a move. Your sword is very nimble.”

I blankly accepted those words.

It had been a long time since I had received praise. Perhaps not since that dawn as a child, when I followed Father to the shore and hauled up a sea bass the size of my forearm.

On the way home, gripping its heavy scales, there had been the faintest smile at the corner of my usually stoic father’s mouth.

Ten years had passed since then. It was something I had never heard from the person with whom I had spent all ten of those years.

“Thank you.”

For some reason, my heart felt lighter.

“My name is Ma Jeongsan. I look forward to working with you on this protection convoy.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Ma Jeongsan’s mouth eased further. With a satisfied smile, he raised one hand toward the escort standing nearby.

“Take him inside.”

Following the escort across the clearing, I saw the inner courtyard beyond a short corridor.

Several rooms stood to one side. At the table before them sat a man past middle age, gray scattered through his hair, with paper and brush laid out before him.

He looked somewhat different from the escorts. Even at a glance, his shoulders were narrow and his hands well kept.

An abacus about a foot long lay neatly beside him, with small cloth bundles and wooden tokens stacked beside it.

His clothing was also far more orderly. Like the escorts, he wore an emblem embroidered over his left breast, but the fabric was finer and a darker gray.

Perhaps this was what Hyeonam would have looked like without the madness.

He appeared educated, likely someone who managed the accounts and ledgers inside.

As I approached, the man lifted his brush without looking up.

“We have a successful applicant early today. What is your name?”

“Jin A-pyeong.”

He flipped through the papers, pointed to an empty space, and wrote something down. Then he untied a cloth bundle beside him and placed a set of clothing and a small wooden token on the table.

Just as I was about to take the clothes, I remembered something I needed to ask.

“I heard the protection convoy is heading to Yeongpa. I have business there. Would it be all right if I only went that far?”

Only then did the man look up at me.

“The convoy is going to Yeongpa anyway, so it makes no difference.”

He answered indifferently, as though it were no concern. However, my pay would be half. I would receive two taels in advance and three more upon arriving in Yeongpa.

When I said I understood, he added another line to the paper.

I watched him briefly, then examined the clothing I had been given.

It was a tightly woven hemp garment. A small emblem had been embroidered over the left breast, the same one I had seen on the chests of the people inside the escort agency.

It felt thick and heavy in my hand. The cloth was dense and rough enough to last two or three seasons easily.

I examined the small wooden token beside it as well. It was about two finger joints long, with the four characters Faithful Escort Agency engraved into it.

“You must keep the escort token on you at all times. Be careful, since you will owe the agency if you lose it.”

I asked how much I would have to pay if I lost it. The man narrowed his eyes at me for a moment, then told me.

“Five hundred coins.”

About the price of three or four sets of clothes.

Then two small silver ingots were placed on the table as my advance payment.

They felt heavy in my hand. Just as Abok had said, this did not seem to be an escort agency that treated its people poorly.

“Come to the main gate at the Hour of the Dragon three days from now.”

The man looked through the papers once more.

“It says you use a sword. Is there anything else you need?”

“No.”

“Then that is all. I’ll see you in three days.”

As if he had nothing more to say, the man lowered his head and pressed his forehead firmly with both hands.

I gathered the clothes in one hand and the escort token and silver ingots in the other.

“This way.”

I followed the escort across the inner courtyard and entered another corridor. It led in a different direction from the way I had entered.

We had been walking through the narrow, shaded passage for some time when the escort casually spoke.

“It has been a while since the escort captain said someone showed such a good move. Usually, an applicant’s sword goes flying within two or three exchanges, and that’s the end of it.”

“His strength is remarkable. I thought my hand would split open.”

We continued chatting lightly. His name was Gwak Seok. He was twenty-five and had joined the escort agency a little over a year ago.

“What’s it like, working for an escort agency?”

“Not bad. I used to wander around as an unaffiliated martial artist, but it’s no way to make a living.”

Gwak Seok shook his head.

“Do you know what happens when you live as a wandering martial artist? One fellow slept with one eye open. He was so afraid of being stabbed in his sleep that he couldn’t close one eye, and eventually it became like that.”

He jokingly added that it was much better to handle odd jobs at an escort agency in one’s hometown and occasionally travel with protection convoys.

His words suddenly made me consider my own future.

What would I do to make a living once I reached Yeongpa?

Had things gone as they were meant to, I would have learned to fish from Father. I would have spent my life catching fish, married a girl from a neighboring village, and had children.

But could I do that now? For ten years, I had held a sword instead of a net. Perhaps it was too late to put down the sword and do something else.

Still, I did not want to wander as an unaffiliated martial artist like Gwak Seok had described. Yeongpa was quite a large city, so perhaps it had an escort agency or two.

Working as an escort might not be so bad either.

Before I knew it, Gwak Seok had moved on to another subject. Perhaps he was tired of guiding applicants all day, because he was quite talkative.

Ma Jeongsan used a large broad sabre. This protection convoy was unprecedentedly large. There would be more than twenty temporary escorts gathering at the Hour of the Dragon three days from now.

At the end of the passage, a narrow door came into view. Just as Gwak Seok reached for the bolt, a question came to mind, and I quickly asked it.

“How many people passed today?”

“Until noon, just you. Some days, not even one person makes it through.”

Just me.

Perhaps that old man Hyeonam had taught me the sword well after all.

I gave a brief bow. Gwak Seok returned it as he pulled the bolt free and opened the door.

“See you in three days.”

Behind me, I heard the bolt slide back into place.

The sun had risen overhead, and the shadows fell short beneath my feet.

There were quite a few people on the streets around midday. Steam rose from every stall, while the smell of oil heating drifted from beneath the eaves of a house.

I considered taking a look around, but the martial uniform in my hand suddenly felt cumbersome.

After exerting myself, I was quietly growing hungry too. My stomach was beginning to feel empty.

When I had lived in the mountains, I had never once looked forward to a meal.

What would Abok recommend today?

I briskly headed toward the inn along the main road.

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