Chapter 237 — The Man Named Lee Yeongu 4
Case 4.
It was the same when a horse was injured.
During a march, one horse began to limp.
Perhaps a stone had lodged inside its hoof, or perhaps a tendon had been strained. Every few steps, the horse lowered its head and breathed roughly.
The soldier leading the horse turned pale.
In an army, a horse being injured is no small matter.
To a cavalryman, a horse is his legs, his life on the battlefield, and sometimes a possession more expensive than a house.
Naturally, people's faces grew serious.
At that moment, Yeongu looked at the horse's leg and clicked his tongue.
"Ah, this is serious."
Everyone waited for what he would say next.
Should the horse be abandoned?
Should the load be divided?
Should they force the injured horse to carry on to the destination anyway?
Yeongu spoke far too easily.
"Let's just walk for a bit!"
At first hearing, it did not sound like a real solution.
What kind of army at war simply walks because a horse has been injured?
If cavalry dismounts and begins to walk, the speed drops, and if the speed drops, the enemy may catch up.
Everyone made that calculation first.
But Yeongu was looking at something else.
He was trying to prevent the injured horse from being driven too hard and ruined further.
If the men walked for a while, the horse could catch its breath, and if the horse caught its breath, it could move again.
If they divided part of the load, loosened the saddle, checked the hoof, and led it slowly to water, it was a horse that could be saved.
Rather than save one hour now and lose a horse, it was better to arrive a little late while preserving both horse and men.
He immediately unloaded the saddle.
He divided the heavy bundles among the men, loosened the belly band so the horse could breathe, lifted the hoof, scraped out mud and small stones, and felt along the injured leg with his hand.
Then he held the reins short and began walking slowly ahead.
As if it were no great treatment at all, he spoke to the horse.
"Now, let's go."
Strangely, when they did as he said, it worked.
At first, the horse limped, but once the pace slowed, it found its balance again.
When the men dismounted and began walking too, the column did not collapse greatly.
Those in front slowed a little, and those behind carried divided loads.
The cavalry force became, for a moment, an army on foot, and because of that, the horse endured.
He was not a man who would tell others to ride an injured horse and charge the enemy anyway.
He was not a commander who tried to prove bravery by driving a group beyond reason.
He saw the situation, and within it, saved first what could be saved.
He saved the horse, saved the breath of the men, and saved the strength of the formation.
Yeongu's solutions always looked that way.
At first, they sounded unrealistic.
He spoke too lightly and too easily, startling people.
Yet once they followed him, there was precise calculation within it.
He knew where slowing down would save the whole, what had to be given up for the next road to open, and what would be ruined forever if they overstrained it now.
So people gradually came to trust his words.
Before a fortress wall, he said they could break it.
Before the enemy's flank, he said they could go around.
When a horse was hurt, he said they should walk.
All the words were light, but the results always solved heavy problems.
In every situation, there was a solution, and that solution lay close enough to touch by hand.
Yeongu did not explain it in difficult language.
He moved first and showed it.
Case 5.
It was the same before the Great Khan's concern.
After walking in silence for some time, the Great Khan finally let his true thoughts slip.
"I am worried about the enemy's great army. Hundreds of thousands will come."
Those were not words that easily came from the mouth of a ruler.
The Great Khan had swallowed them several times.
He had pressed the worry down before it appeared on his face, and pushed the words back down when they rose to his throat.
Yet in the end they leaked out like a groan.
The number hundreds of thousands had a weight that pressed down on a person's breath all by itself.
This was not the army of one tribe, nor the soldiers of several fortresses, but the shape of an empire rising with its whole body and pressing forward.
Yeongu looked at the Great Khan for a moment.
Then he spoke with a lightness almost absurd.
"We only have to win. Ahaha. Ahaha."
He even laughed.
It was so frivolous that, at first hearing, one should have become angry.
As an answer before an army of hundreds of thousands, it was far too light.
Yet the moment the Great Khan heard those words, he strangely felt one part of his chest loosen.
It was true.
They only had to win.
Whether hundreds of thousands came, whether the emperor came in person, whether banners covered the field, war would end by victory or defeat.
Fear comes from numbers, but victory and defeat are not decided by numbers alone.
They had to shake the enemy's mind, cut the roads, strike the center, and not miss the moment of collapse.
And Yeongu was a person who could make that happen.
He had looked at walls and said they could be broken, looked at injured horses and said they could walk, and said that if a road was blocked, they could go around.
At first, all those words had seemed absurd, but in hindsight, they had always made a road.
This time would be the same.
If he spoke with such laughter, somewhere there must already be a road he had drawn with his finger.
The Great Khan slowly repeated it.
"I see."
Once he said it aloud, it became a little easier to believe.
He said it again.
"I see."
Yeongu, meanwhile, had already started rolling his eyes around.
The man who had just laughed off an army of hundreds of thousands now looked as if he were thinking about something else.
His concentration was sometimes so short it seemed frivolous.
In the middle of heavy conversation, he would cut it off and suddenly turn the topic to rice, fodder, arrowheads, or who had gone where.
But the Great Khan now knew that habit a little.
Yeongu was not taking the great army lightly.
At the moment fear grew larger than it needed to be, he deliberately cut off the words.
If people dwell too long in fear, they stiffen.
A stiffened person moves slowly.
An army that moves slowly dies.
That was why Yeongu searched for the next task.
A matter one could handle immediately, a matter that would change if they moved now, a matter that would turn people's attention forward again.
His frivolity sometimes saved people faster than strategy.