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◈ The Hunting Genius of the Japanese Colonial Era

Chapter 9

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The Path Only I Know (2)

To other eyes it was nothing but a heap of stones too rough to walk over, but to Han San, who had spent his whole life in the mountains, it looked different.

'Perfect terrain for them to slip out and warm themselves.'

The seven-step snake[1].

Otherwise known as the banded krait.

It was the model for the [Seven-Step Soul-Severing Powder][2] that martial arts writers roll their tongues over and rave about. A venomous snake whose bite drops you dead before you can take seven steps was exactly what Han San was after.

'Let's see. There's still a little time before the sun's up.'

Han San set down his A-frame carrier first. Then he snapped off a mulberry branch and started trimming the end into a Y.

That was when it happened.

'Hm?'

Han San's nose twitched. Past the fishy snake smell seeping out of the rock cracks, he caught the musty, gamey reek peculiar to a furred animal.

'A beast?'

He craned his neck and looked. Below the talus field, perched on a boulder big as a house, a gray shadow sat looking up at him.

A wolf.

An old one, fur fallen out in patches so the raw, ugly hide showed through. For some reason its left hind leg was twisted out of shape.

'Cast out from the pack. Big as it is, maybe it was the leader once and got pushed out.'

While the mountain man's head coolly read off the beast's nature, the young body gripped the branch hard and stared the thing down without looking away.

"Grrrr..."

The wolf's throat trembled low. The drool running between its yellow teeth said it was starving.

An ordinary person would have buckled, knees gone weak.

Han San, though, was not the least bit afraid. The moment he saw that one of its legs was shot, the calculation was already done.

He could outrun it, no question, and even in the worst case he could put it down somehow.

The question was.

'Is it worth it?'

The abacus beads in his head clicked away fast.

'Hide's worthless with the fur gone. Old as it is, the meat would be rubber-tough. Most of all, wolf meat reeks. And a male, at that. There's some seasoned heft to it, so if I took the head and mounted it I'd fetch a little, but...'

Han San clicked his tongue. If he'd had a gun, no, even a bow on him, maybe. Tangling with that bulk holding nothing but a branch was a fool's move.

Not being afraid did not mean he could take it lightly.

'One scratch from a claw and it'd fester right up, and the medicine would cost more than the thing's worth. On top of that...'

Han San had not forgotten his original purpose either, the trip to Inje town.

Hauling a wild stray's carcass that had to weigh dozens of geun back and forth, training a human stray, that did not add up.

"Hey, mountain mutt."

You do not take your eyes off a beast.

Han San spoke with his gaze locked dead on the wolf's.

"I'm not going to hurt you. You just stay put right there. Then neither of us gets hurt. You hear me?"

"Grrr..."

The old wolf bared its teeth and growled, but Han San did not pull his eyes off it for a single instant.

Not only that, he stepped forward.

The old wolf flinched back. Still glaring into its eyes, gripping the mulberry-branch staff tight, Han San took one more step forward.

A startlingly human conflict surfaced in the old wolf's eyes. Humiliation and fear. It looked like it wanted to lunge at once and teach him a lesson, and also like it wanted to spring up and bolt away.

And Han San did not let it choose either one.

He advanced. One step. Then another.

The timing was exquisite.

Every time the old wolf was about to settle on a decision, Han San, as if reading its insides, cut the thought off with nothing more than one step closer.

That wily old wolf, helpless, let Han San set foot onto the talus field. A restless whine slid down its cracked old teeth, and that was the moment.

Whip!

Han San's staff shot out.

In the instant the old wolf jerked its head back, crack, the staff stretched out as if it had grown longer and pinned something to the rock floor where the wolf sat.

"Sssrk!"

A snake with white stripes laced across its black back hide so it looked like a rope, the head of a banded krait, was crushed hard into the split end of the staff.

It writhed and squirmed, trying to wrench free, but the staff would not budge.

The old wolf looked at the venomous snake with its bleary eyes, then jerked back to look at Han San again. Then it started so hard its ears stood straight up.

Han San had not once taken his eyes off it!

Walking up, catching the snake, even now while crushing down on its neck, Han San had been staring dead into the wolf's own eyes.

"Grr..."

Only then did the wolf rise, slow and very careful. Tail tucked between its legs, it dragged its bad leg down off the boulder it had been sitting on and vanished into the mountains.

Han San kept glaring in the direction it had gone for a good while after, and only when the gamey reek had cleared away completely did he lower his eyes.

In the meantime the banded krait had lost even the strength to thrash, and he scooped it up and flicked it into his carrying sack.

"One, to start."

The kind of thing rich old men go wild for as a virility tonic. Sold whole to a herbal shop, it was a prize, sixty jeon a head, and with good haggling eighty jeon was easy.

"If I brew proper snake liquor and portion it out I could get more. Should buy a still one of these days and keep it at the house, yeah."

Whip! While he was talking to himself another snake crawled out, and Han San struck it down. That one too went into the sack once it had thrashed itself to exhaustion.

"That's the price of five doe of rice, then?"

Han San let his gaze widen and looked the talus field over.

Whether they had finally realized something was wrong in their den, or simply because morning had come, snakes were flicking their tongues out from every gap in the rocks.

Ten, no, twelve of them, spread out all around, heads raised, watching Han San.

'Catch them all and that's three mal of rice...'

His mouth watered for an instant, but the next moment Han San actually stepped back. His eyes were as cold as the snakes' own.

'Enough.'

The goal of making a little spare money was already met.

There was another reason he had picked snakes over mountain deodeok or bellflower root, but that too was already satisfied by the two he had caught.

Just enough. Without drawing notice. Take only the substance.

He backed away on his heels until he reached the A-frame carrier he had set down. He hoisted it, a little heavier now with the squirming sack, slung it on, and moved on again.

Day was breaking. As the mountain shadows lifted, Han San's stride grew freer and freer.

By the time the sun was fully up, Han San, who had crossed a mountain when he met a mountain and crossed a stream when he met a stream, climbed onto a hill on the north side of Inje township.

The view opened wide and the whole of Inje town spread out below him.

Hapgang[3]. True to the name, a fairly bustling town center had grown up along the thick channel where the Inbuk Stream and the Naerin Stream joined and poured into the Soyang River.

Between the thatched houses, government quarters roofed with Japanese-style tile jutted up like the horns of a Japanese demon, and flat buildings raised from red brick had sprouted like liver spots. Among them he took in at a glance the people coming and going, the ox carts, a few precious bicycles.

Han San's gaze settled on the entrance into the town, on the bridge crossing a tributary of the Soyang River.

'Just as I thought.'

A barricade was set up on the large bridge that connected to the new road.

Police constables in mustard uniforms were stopping people coming in at random, rifling through their loads.

"You there! Drop the bag! Stop, you bastard! What's in there!"

The booming shout seemed to carry all the way to where Han San stood.

An old farmer, startled by the menace, was scrambling to set down the load on his ox cart. Korean youths assisting the Japanese constables nudged and kicked at the load with their straw-sandaled feet, rolling it over.

'A barbaric age, every bit of it.'

If he had come in along the new road, it was plain what would have been waiting.

They would have seen the badger oil and tried to confiscate it, calling it [of unclear origin] or asking [isn't this poaching?]. To keep it he would have had to offer something as a bribe.

'For whose benefit, exactly?'

Han San's eyes went cold.

A bribe? He might hand one over. Could a man who had lived seventy-four years really not show that much flexibility?

But it had to be a bribe Han San gave because he himself was satisfied with it.

Money squeezed out of you by force is not even a bribe.

'A path is something that comes to be when people walk it.'

Han San did not look any longer. He turned.

The most conspicuous crossing of the river he had already finished earlier at a spot with little foot traffic, so he went to where the mountain slope on Inje's north side grew especially steep.

He pushed through thick brush and slid down, in several stages, ledges of rock that could fairly be called cliffs.

Somewhere along the line where a house's wall met the foot of the mountain, out he popped, sudden, like something bursting through the side of a gimbap roll.

"Hm? What's that?"

A woman next door, ladling soybean paste from a crock on the jar stand, looked up at the sound, but by then Han San was already calmly dusting off the dirt and stepping into the alley.

As if he had walked out of one of the houses inside that alley.

[1] The "seven-step snake" (칠점사, chiljeomsa) is a folk name for a venomous pit viper, so called because its bite was said to fell a man before he could take seven steps.

[2] The "Seven-Step Soul-Severing Powder" (칠보단혼산) is a fictional poison of the sort martial-arts novels relish; the snake above is its real-world inspiration.

[3] Hapgang (합강, 合江) means "joined rivers" — the place where the Inbuk and Naerin streams meet to form the Soyang River.

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