Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 39, No. 6, June, 1994
- Автор: Bashover Albert, Crawford Dan
- Год: 1994
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: ISSN: 0002-5224
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 39, No. 6, June, 1994». Краткое содержание книги:
“The Japanese pirates have been seeping through these bays and isthmuses like an evil poison in the blood. My best naval commander, Captain Yi, has been unable to stop them. Wherever he hunts, they are elsewhere. Whenever he pursues, they are gone. I fear they have information that assists them in their insidious tasks.”
He laid down the chart, and his heavy brows turned on my master, Kang Huang-ho, the Inspector of the Five White Horses.
“I fear treason,” the king said.
His words filled the Hall of Maps and Books with a dread thicker than the mists of the southern seas. With my ink brush I scribbled as fast as I could, concentrating on my transcription.
The Royal Librarian and the Minister of Sea-borne Commerce both sucked in their breath and took small steps backward. Not so my master. There was no disloyalty in the depths of his soul to make him quaver before the glare of the king. His reaction was a slow tightening of his face and anger that treason could exist in the Kingdom of Korea.
He grabbed the gold amulet that hung at his chest, the emblem of the Five White Horses that made him a royal inspector, subject only to the order of the king.
“Then I ride today,” he said, “with my trusty Scribe Jo, to find the scoundrel who is feeding information to the Japanese pirates and causing suffering to the humble seagoing subjects of our Great King.”
“May your steed be swift,” said the king. “But guard yourself carefully, my faithful Inspector Kang. To rape and pillage is an obsessive lust not easily shaken — and a vice that men will kill to protect.”
My master sank to his knees and tapped his forehead to the varnished oak floor. He rose and strode out of the hall. I scurried after him, hoping no one would notice the comings and goings of a nearsighted mouse with ink brush and scroll.
A journey of almost six hundred li should take a civilized man close to a month to traverse. This allows time for the observation of the birds and the beasts of the field and opportunity to converse with the craggy hills and the flowing waters. Without this time for reflection, how could we have created the great poetry and art of the Kingdom of Korea? Even in China, the Middle Kingdom, our men of brush and verse are held in great reverence, but it is only through considered reflection that such honors can be amassed.
Alas, my master knew none of these things. He rode ahead of me on his great white steed while I followed on my complaining little donkey, kicking him and cursing him with threats that would chill the blood of even the demon from the deep. My little donkey paid no attention, however, and if it hadn’t been for my master’s wise decision not to feed him until the end of the day, I wonder if we would have made any progress at all.
The only comforts on the journey were provided by the simple country inns at the end of the day. Most of them were stingy with their charcoal so the flues beneath the floors were not properly heated, and the sleeping mats were lumpy, and the rice was laced with pebbles and beans. But compared to the hardships of the road they seemed to me like the scented palaces of the Duke of Chou. I ate, bathed as best I could in the nearby streams, and called a big-footed country girl to my room to walk on my back. Within minutes I would be asleep. Still, I woke during the nights, my dreams troubled in the strange surroundings, and saw my master poring over reports by the light of a guttering oil lamp.
Only the sages would know why he filled his saddlebags with such rubbish. Certainly the traitor would cower and confess when it was revealed to him that a personal representative of the king, an inspector of the highest rank of the Five White Horses, had come to ferret him out.
I closed my eyes, thought of the fleshly pleasures of the capital city of Seoul, and tried not to think of the morrow’s ride.
We crested the small circle of hills and looked down on what was left of the fishing village of Hei-byon. What looked like puffed bags lay between the charred skeletons of simple huts.
As we wound our way down the narrow pathway, the stench of death assaulted our nostrils. My master slipped off his horse and disappeared into the woods to investigate. I followed, raising my riding scarf to cover my nose. The odor led us to the corpse. Using the dead branch of a tree, Inspector Kang turned it over. Flies buzzed skyward.
“An old woman,” he said. “Stabbed repeatedly.”
He shook his head and turned the corpse back over. My stomach tried to crawl up my throat. We returned to our mounts and continued down the road only to find that at Hei-byon the scene was much worse.
No dogs barked, and no sounds of human voices greeted us. Bodies lay strewn everywhere. It seemed that the swarms of insects were drunk with joy, like a second phalanx of marauders.
We rode to the center of the village. A great pile of burnt rubble sat in the middle of a clearing. Inspector Kang gazed around slowly, taking in everything.
“They started a bonfire here,” he said. “Notice the broken jars and the scattered bones of swine and fowl. They feasted. And notice the bodies that lie about us.” I was trying not to. “They are all men or old women or children too young to be worth anything as slaves.” He poked about the rubble. “I am wrong. There are some male children here also who would have been old enough to work.”
“And the others?” I asked.
Inspector Kang Huang-ho sighed. “What’s left, faithful Clerk Jo?”
“Only young women.”
“Yes. That’s all they took. And their children were killed to make the young mothers easier to handle.”
I wonder how he surmised such things. But my master was older than I, by ten years. He was over thirty and still physically robust. He had been a soldier and a foreign envoy of the king, and he had seen much of the world. I had seen little. Other than by means of the ancient texts, I had never left the City of Seoul until I had passed the examinations and been appointed to serve the great Inspector of the Five White Horses. But in many ways, I still knew little about him. Other than that everywhere he went people stood in awe of his rank and the ladies peered at him greedily from behind their scented sleeves. But he never spoke of his past. Only his work.
“Make a chart of the entire village,” he said. “Every house, every pathway, and the position of every body. Leave out no details.”
I dismounted, and my bony-backed donkey brayed his approval. After I had been working for a few minutes, I noticed my master’s body tense atop his white steed. As I turned, they emerged from the boulders surrounding the village like the mist of the sea itself.
They were unkempt men, as hard and bronzed and sinewy as the driftwood that lay scattered along the shore. The sharpened edges of their scythes glistened in the morning sun. One of them stepped forward. A ragged, half-starved boy came with him.
“You there,” my master said in his voice of command, “what brings you to the village of Hei-byon?”
“I used to live here, your honor. Me and my son here.”
“And these other men?”
“They are relatives of those who are slain, from nearby villages. Do you have news of the pirates?”
“That is what I am here to investigate.”
“If they return, we will be ready for them.”
All of his comrades grumbled in unison. Some of them brandished homemade cudgels and pikes.
“Were you here during the attack?”
“No. My son and I had traveled to Ji-san, a village up the coast. My father’s youngest brother lay dying, and it was required that we pay proper homage and assist his spirit in retreating to the underworld. When we came back, this is what we found.” He opened his arms, as if welcoming the carnage. “I buried my wife and two infant daughters. My mother I have not yet found.”