Outside the gate stood a log barricade
The darkness inside the castle was heavy and damp.
The bodies caught in the pits below were burned into the soldiers' eyes.
That fear flipped into rage.
"We're going out!"
"Better a blade than hunger!"
A movement that began with two, three, ten swelled until a hundred men surged toward the gate.
The gate groaned open.
It was not an ambush.
It was a self-destructive shove.
Outside the gate stood a log barricade first.
A wall of upright timbers rose to about a man and a half.
Only one narrow passage was left below.
It was so tight a man had to turn sideways to squeeze through.
The Japanese soldiers saw the structure and let out short laughs.
"Just a few logs."
"Get through the gap and it's done."
The lead man shoved into the gap, half through—
A drum sounded from far off.
Shhshhshhshh—an entire volley poured into the narrow slit at once.
Fire crossed from above to below and from the side to the inside, turning that gap into a single death.
"Aaagh—!"
"Shields—!"
"Up—!"
The shields caught on the slit.
Half jammed in place, the shields could not turn.
Arrows bored into necks, shoulders, arms, ribs, calves.
The narrow gap soaked with blood.
The warriors behind raised planks and shoved them forward like folding screens.
A few endured the rain and vaulted over the slit to the far side.
"We're over!"
The moment their feet touched ground, the earth answered.
Chik.
Barbed iron caltrops bit into their soles.
Feet pinned to ground.
Bodies twisted.
As they toppled, a second volley swept down from above.
Men bending to rip out the caltrops went down where they crouched.
Hands and faces behind the planks were pierced from the side angles.
"Back—!"
The instant they tried to pull back, the narrow slit became a throat again.
Men crawling out were threaded even thinner in that place.
Screams filled the ravine.
The darkness under the wall threw the sound back at them.
On the battlements, soldiers watched to the end.
Bodies stuck in the slit.
Feet warped over caltrops.
Shoulders going still with arrows planted in them.
Mouths opened, and no words came.
"That…"
"How…"
The Lord of Tsushima braced a hand on the wall frame.
His breath shook.
"To build a barricade like that…"
"To set traps like that…"
A commander inside the castle said low.
"…A wall that blocks the outside."
"…A wall that cuts the roads inside."
Eyes wavered across the ranks.
The gate had opened, and the road had closed.
One grain hardened in their hearts.
Go out and you are stopped.
Stay in and you dry.
Wind slid past the parapet.
The siege line outside held its place without any big motion.
Engineers kept digging before the palisade.
Another stake went in.
The sound of splitting wood grain tapped softly in the dark.
Ten days.
Not a long time.
Those ten days dried the people inside like a burning summer.
The walls of Kaneishi were intact.
There were three to four hundred fighters.
In the storehouse lay grain enough to endure seven or eight days.
Weapons were maintained.
From the parapet the ring below did not even look that large.
All of it lost meaning.
Food existed, and spoons did not rise.
Weapons existed, and hands trembled first.
Walls stood high, and climbing them made the ground below feel monstrous.
They had been pressed in one direction the whole time.
The most terrifying thing was not a blade.
It was the fact that the road had vanished.
Tsushima had always been a place to pass through on the way out and back.
The sensation of having no exit crushed their chests.
Every direction held death.
Staying held death.
Flight met arrows.
The end of surrender could not be guessed.
They broke first in the mind, not in strength.
On the tenth day, the drum did not sound.
No war cry rose.
The soldiers of the siege line stayed quietly in place.
As dawn fog slid down the slope, the gate creaked open.
At first only the door groaned, and no person appeared.
White seeped through the crack.
White clothing.
Hands hanging loose.
A man bowed deep and walked out.
It was the Lord of Tsushima.
He wore coarse hemp cloth instead of brocade and ornaments.
Only a slack waist cord held it.
Behind him, attendants, chamber samurai, and commanders filed out.
No one carried a weapon.
Some lost strength in their legs and sank into the dirt.
What their eyes had endured was not battle.
It was uncertainty.
Park Seong-jin walked slowly into the wide yard by the port.
Behind him, Goryeo commanders and the warrior corps stood in silence.
The lord dropped to his knees before him.
"I was wrong. I beg forgiveness."
Even in the cold winter dawn, sweat beaded on his brow.
He folded fully toward the ground.
"I, the master of this small island, will bear every crime."
"This island no longer has the strength to hold a blade."
He did not say "surrender."
A broken heart spoke first.
People who had come down from the fortress saw him,
and one by one they sank to their knees behind him.
The walls did not fall.
People fell.
Park watched in silence.
Some commanders lowered their heads, drunk with exhaustion.
Some soldiers could not swallow their sobs.
"Just let us live."
The words scattered like sand.
They had not lost to assault.
They had not lost to fire.
They had not lost to a charge.
They lost to one fact.
The road was blocked.
Tsushima's winter morning was unnaturally quiet.
Those who came down had thrown away weapons and gathered in white in the port yard.
The sea was calm.
No smoke rose from the village.
A hush like held breath lay over everything.
Park felt the grip tighten around the hand that held his sword.
Raid memories rose, and the urge to cut flared.
Burned houses.
Taken people.
Children sold away.
As anger surged to his wrist, he pressed it down with breath.
Killing is fast.
Keeping alive and changing the road is slow.
Park said.
"The treatment of prisoners."
The Governor of Jinju stepped forward and reported.
"We will make them bondsmen and send all to reclamation labor in Liaodong."
Park nodded.
"Send them all to Liaoyang."
"Go to Goryeo, take the Seohaeng Route north to Uiju, then move by water along the Taizi River to Liaoyang."
"Loyalty!"
Oversized supply ships were anchored at the port beyond necessity.
Prisoners were loaded in a line.
Thick rope wrapped their arms.
Numbered wooden tags hung at their waists.
Disarmed, they split wood, twisted rope, and cleaned holds inside the ships.
Park said.
"Work them on the ships as well."
"Work earns food."
"Yes!"
The heaviest scene was the Sō clan.
Every single person of the Sō house under the lord's command was bound and put aboard.
Fear, shame, and despair layered on their faces.
They understood that from this day on, the Sō clan would vanish from Tsushima.
This was not a victory report.
It was a rewriting of the island's order.
When transport was done, Park called the Governor of Jinju.
"From now on, you govern here as the local magistrate."
The governor blurted in shock.
"General, do you mean I replace the Sō clan's seat."
"Yes."
"Leave a vacuum, and the pirates rise again."
"Organize the people, compile household registers, and reorder taxation."
"Lower the tax."
"Life must be possible, so plunder does not become livelihood."
"Yes!"
"We will seek His Majesty's ratification later."
Villagers lifted their heads cautiously.
Tsushima's first Goryeo magistrate received the post on that ground.
Walking toward the port, Park said.
"This is Goryeo territory."
"Then defense stands."
A commander asked.
"We occupy the island, and still build defenses?"
Park lifted his head.
"Pirate ships pass and stop by."
"It takes time for the fact that we seized this place to reach the ends of the sea."
"The remnants on Iki and Nagasaki can covet it at any moment."
Defenses rose at the port.
Palisades and barriers.
Watchtowers.
Emplaced artillery.
Some objected to leaving such weapons here.
"If weapons stay on Wa soil, they may be turned back on us someday."
Park's answer was firm.
"This place is no longer Wa."
"It is Goryeo land."
"We place Goryeo weapons on the foremost Goryeo frontier."
He rapped the artillery with his hand.
"To hold an island, we need power that stops with one blow."
Some soldiers from Gyeongsang helped and whispered.
"Isn't occupation the end?"
"Why keep the port and station men?"
Park passed those words and said.
"Tsushima alone will not erase the pirates."
He pointed to the southern sea.
"Iki. Hakata. Nagasaki. Hirado. The Kyushu coast."
"All are the same springhead."
His words cut clean.
"If we take only this and return, boats sail again."
"We came to pull the pirates out by the root."
The commanders drew breath.
"Tsushima is an advance base."
Some civil officials and commanders showed concern.
"Diplomacy with Wa."
"If the shogunate makes an issue of it—"
Park shook his head.
"The shogunate now lacks the strength to seize this matter."
"They lost control, and that is why the pirates ran wild."
"We are, in effect, carrying the duty they failed to carry."
He looked toward the sea and said.
"From now on, this island is land that receives Goryeo's soul."
The wind stayed cold.
Smoke began to rise again on Tsushima.
The cookfires.
The forge fires.
The lamps under the watchtowers, lit in order.
Administrators, officers, and the people's organization began to settle into place.
Park walked slowly across the wide port yard.
The strength bled out of the hand that held the sword.
His gaze moved onto the map instead.
"Now the next is Iki Island."