Chapter Text
His name was Choi Beomgyu, son to Lord Choi Jingyu and Lady Sun Jahye, the first-born and sole son who lived and the rightful heir to Gyeoulseong.
Beomgyu took great pride in his name and status. He had to. After all, he was the heir to the lands in the northernmost part of the kingdom where Gyeolseong stood. His great-grandfather had been given the castle and the surrounding territory from the eastern sea to the forests of Hana that separated the lordship Beoknala from the neighboring Eojang by the king at the time. He had kneeled before the throne, took the king’s sword on his shoulders and had been announced worthy of Gyeolseong and its lands of forests and mountains and plains and grasslands, honored the title of lord under the Maker’s watchful eyes. The king had chosen it and the Maker blessed his decision. And from then on Beoknala was under the rule of the Lord Choi and his family, sworn to the king and the Maker.
And one day, the seat on the dais at the very front of the great hall would be Beomgyu’s once he took the place of his father, with the tapestry depicting the wolf’s head at his back and the silver circlet placed on his head.
But until then it was a long way.
Gyeolseong was an old castle. It had stood before Beomgyu’s great-grandfather was bestowed the lands and made of rough, dark stone that crumbled in places and had to be ever repaired. But it was a fortress in itself, impregnable. Under his grandfather’s rule the walls encircling the keep and with it the court and all there was to it, the chapel, the stables, the kitchens, the inner bailey and the storehouse, had been reinforced, the four towers standing in each direction with even spaces between completed. The portcullis was guarded, armed men stood ward on the wall’s walkway and towers at all times of the day.
Outside Gyeolseong, there was the town. When Beomgyu was younger, he was not allowed to leave the castle grounds and go down the hill to where the common folk walked. Instead, he would beg the nursemaid responsible for him to take him to the walls. There he had stared and watched the buildings beneath the hill, the crooked clay homes with thatched roofs, the ale houses and smoking furnaces of the forges sitting with heavy clouds above. His sight ranged to the outer palisade. The peasants of his father’s lands looked like tiny insects from up on the walls but Beomgyu felt entertained looking down upon them. All this would be his one day. He had known this truth since the day he came to understand the words tumbling from his mother’s lips. His to govern, his to rule and his to protect, the way his forefathers had done prior to him. And he too, would kneel to the king, renew the oath his family had given, and swear himself to the kingdom, forever serving under it, and with that, under the one legitimate God, the Maker.
By birthright, it was his. And yet, as Beomgyu grew older, he came to understand that with the lands came the weight of all there was to lordship and his father’s eyes hardened whenever his sights fell on his son, his voice grew stern and resolute and Beomgyu was not to flinch at the sound of it but to stand proper and proudly before him, to listen and act on whatever he had been ordered.
Beomgyu was not the only child to Lord Choi Jingyu and Lady Sun Jahye. There were several stillbirths later, boys and girls alike. And before him, there was Beomi, a little over two years older and a girl.
By the law of the Maker and the kingdom, she was no suitable heir to Lord Jingyu, as she was born female.
But Beomi was ambitious. Against her parents’ wishes she accompanied her brother to his daily classes in the library, fell to her knees for prayer next to him in the chapel during the early morning hours, and watched him learn the way of the sword in the courtyard. Many times she was reprimanded for this. A proper lady was not to dirty her clothes in the yard. A proper lady had no need to learn the laws of the lands or the art of war. A proper lady prayed and bowed to the Maker’s will, ever subservient to those above her. And above the proper lady were the men - the king, the noble men, her father and her brothers.
At first, Beomgyu had not understood where the issue lay. He welcomed his sister’s company as he would be alone if it weren’t for her. There were no children courtside apart from them. The lord’s brother was yet to be married. They were not to mingle with the servants’ offspring. His company were the teachers, the tutors, his father’s men, and later in the evening after the sun had gone done and supper passed, his mother and their nursemaid. And Beomgyu seeked nothing more than a friend.
But his sister was his sister, and Beomgyu came to understand that while his duty lay with protecting the lands of Beoknala, leading the men of the Choi household and serving the kingdom as well as the Maker, her duty was that - to be a woman. His sister was to learn embroidery and sewing, to pray to the Maker and to learn the way of a lady, and then to marry a man of similar standing and to bear his children and strengthen the bonds of houses within the kingdom.
It was evident that this was not in her interest from a young age.
Beomgyu did not understand. Beomgyu did not have to understand, as in time, his father had said, Beomi would come to understand the order of things herself.
Their mother, Lady Sun Jahye, was a bore. She was his mother, but she was a woman and her only interest lay with reading romance novels brought to Beoknala by traders from far south in the kingdom where the art of literature prospered, and to fall to her knees in prayer. Little else did their mother engage with. She cared for her children, but she was a lady and a noble woman like her had servants and nursemaids who took Beomi and Beomgyu off her whenever she so desired, which was often.
So to Beomgyu, she was a bore. Her dresses, while lovely to look at, were neat and orderly, the fabric closing up to the base of her throat, resting over it on a thin golden chain, the sign of the Maker. Not ever had Beomgyu seen her dirty her clothing, or - Maker forbid - her delicate hands. Lady Jahye talked of little else but their God, of gossip at court of whatever book she was currently reading. Beomgyu liked reading, but not those writings his mother preferred, and whenever he talked of else to her, she declined or nodded along dismissively.
Which was why she was appalled by the very prospect of it, of her daughter’s dark affliction.
Before telling their mother, Beomi had confided in Beomgyu and other trusted servants many times. She had dreams. At night, when the world was dark and her eyes were closed, she could see it, their father’s flag depicting the wolf’s head in the dirt, run over by horses’ hooves and men’s boots alike. There was blood, much of it, wetting the grounds and sinking into the earth, cursing the lands of Beoknala. “He was dead”, Beomi claimed, “He died. I’m certain of it.”
Beomgyu had looked at her across the space of the low mahogany table with concern written on his face. “He’ll die?”
That day Beomi had been twelve years of age and Beomgyu’s tenth name day had passed just a fortnight ago.
“I don’t know”, Beomi replied, bowing her head to the side. Her braids were in disarray and there was mud from the rain wet courtyard on the bottom hem of her dress. “It was a dream. You dream too, don’t you? Namseon said I should not give it too much thought. Dreams come and pass.”
“Dreams are dreams”, Beomgyu mimicked his older sister.
Beomi continued on. “Last night, I dreamt of you, dear brother.”
“What of me?”
Suddenly, Beomi went quiet. Her eyes looked empty and far away, staring off over Beomgyu’s shoulder, as if she was commemorating an unkind memory. “There was a beast - no, a wolf. But it was no ordinary wolf. It was larger. And the wolf, its fur was red with blood and you laid before it in the snow and it was eating you.” Her shaking pupils found Beomgyu at last. “Brother, the beast was eating you.”
The wolf was the coat of arms of his family. Beomgyu had seen the imagery of it often, the wolf’s head embroidered on the tapestry in the great hall, the gray beast with its yellow eyes staring down on him from the high raised flags on the castle walls. It invoked fear into their enemies, his father had said, they shivered before the wolf. His bannermen held the flags high contemptuously whenever they rode out. At the time, Beomgyu assumed it meant their enemies were scared of wolves, but later he understood it was not the animal they were afraid of, but his father and his household guard and the fyrd he could possibly raise.
Beomi’s words stayed with him for a long time, but as she had said, it was but a dream, and if the wolf was his family’s coat of arms, then it served him more than it frightened him. He had never spotted a live wolf, not even when his father had taken him outside the castle walls with his household guard and into the forests for hunting, but he knew they were around as for he had seen and touched the fur of a wolf. His father owned a heavy winter cape with wolf pelt rimmings on the neck. His sister had a wool dress with gray fur on the end of the sleeves. His uncle had a wolf’s flat corpse slung over his shoulder at times, of which Lady Jahye despised the sight. “Barbaric”, she had called it, “barbaric and nordic and ungodly.”
And though Beomi had confided in her brother in private, their mother had learned at last about her dreams, which she then came to call witchcraft. With that, she pieced it together, her daughter had been touched by the devil and perhaps the moon was too high during her birth or the midwife an unclean woman and whatever it was, there had to be reason as to why her daughter had such alignment. She was no proper lady. She wanted to learn of battle and war, she had an appetite for fighting and rolling around in the dirt, and craved the feel of a sword’s handle in her palm. Her daughter was taken by the devil at a young age and tempted to sin, to go against her nature and thus evil infiltrated her head and planted vile visions of a false future into her dreams, to stray her, perhaps, to mislead her.
Lady Jahye had then taken her daughter to Priest Shiwon, the churchman serving their family courtside. Beomi was to attend daily holy sermons in the chapel and it was forbidden for her to follow her brother to his lessons and she was to stay away from the stablemaster’s son who had been playing with her in the hay, a nun was assigned to accompany her wherever and in time she would become a proper lady. It was the Maker’s will.
There was a time long ago when Beoknala was not a land of the Maker but instead the people of the northern part of the kingdom had prayed to false gods with animal faces and savage practices. They had lived in sin, they ate their own dead, they had no order or law and Beomgyu heard they had butchered children to appease their gods.
Few of those heathens remained and most of Beoknala and the kingdom had been converted. But there was a man once, a trader, who came courtside, who had told the tale to a curious group of onlookers, that of Gyeo and Bom, of Yeo and Gah. Father Winter and Mother Spring, Mother Summer and Father Fall. He was then thrown out by the guards who had investigated the sudden crowd and deemed him a heretic preaching blasphemy.
When Beomgyu brought up the matter to one of his tutors as he had heard of the tumult from some servants, he was quickly shut down. Beomgyu was a faithful boy. He never missed his morning prayers by the chapel, kneeling until his joints ached, and he was to continue this practice. Because if he didn’t, and Beomgyu only came to know this later, what claim did he have? The Maker had chosen the king and the king had chosen the lords and the lords had chosen the thegns, and if the Maker didn’t exist, then who was the king to call himself the king? Who had acknowledged Beomgyu to be heir to the lands in the north, to Beoknala and with it the castle grounds of Gyeoulseong?
As Beomgyu grew older, his father’s eyes on his children hardened. Beomgyu was no longer a child. His father had been bringing up marriage to his sister, offering her long variety of lords from places further south. She hated it, but never complained in the presence of their parents. Once supper was over and they were meant to retreat to their chambers, Beomi took her brother by the wrist and through the endless hallways of the keep, down some stone stairs and past cold cellar walls, into the depths until they reached the back entrance used by servants. It led to the yard behind the keep, close to the eastern castle wall behind which nothing lay but the sea. Beomgyu had not understood why Beomi had taken him there.
What she wanted was to climb up the stairs and onto the wall. Up there, the wind was strong and her long dark strands whipped around her face. Beomgyu watched her and Beomi watched the sea before them. There was nothing there but water. It was getting dark, the sun having lowered in the west on the opposite side of the castle. Their father had no ships and no port as there was no need to. Behind the horizon on the east there was nothing but the endless stretch of the ocean and if the rumors of lands beyond that were true, then no vessel had ever reached that far.
“I have no choice, do I?”, Beomi had said.
“No choice in what?”, Beomgyu replied. These days he had taken to carrying a sword at his hip - a real sword, not one of those softwood ones for training. The hilt was decorated with a deep red gem, one that appeared to be glowing when held up into the sun. “A ruby”, his father’s swordsman and his teacher had said, “pretty but useless in combat. It won’t serve you anything but encouraging folks into stealing from you.”
“In who I marry”, Beomi answered, staring off forlorn.
And by then Beomgyu’s brain had been taken over by the order of things. It was her duty to marry and bear her husband’s children. It was his to take over Gyeoulseong when the time came and to honor the oath his forefathers had made to the king.
“Your seventeenth’s name day has passed. You are old enough to marry. Some might say, too old to be wed.”
Beomi had looked at him then and Beomgyu had gotten the feeling that he had said the wrong thing. Her lips were pressed in a tight line and for the first time it was not her younger sibling standing beside her but her brother, the man who had authority over her and her future.
The following days Beomi took Beomgyu by the wrist each time after supper, leading him through the keep and to the eastern wall. The guards standing sentry acknowledged them with a polite bow and then went their way along the walkway, sights set on the sea and the lands stretching before them. Beomgyu did not understand why his sister took him to the wall to watch the ocean each evening. But he let her do it. She needed company, he thought, or maybe she feared being scolded if she went alone. Beomi rarely talked on those evenings and if she did it was of unimportant matter. Then, one day, she ceased bringing him outside and retreated to her chambers after supper, defeated.
They had grown up.
From his fifteenth’s name day onwards, Beomgyu was included in his father’s affairs. He had learned enough - read the Holy Book multiple times and no longer faltered when writing or reading longer words. Now it was time to teach him the way of a lord and his duties to the realm. And so, Beomgyu followed his father around to his meetings and gatherings. Many of those consisted of a considerable amount of ale and then cordial conversation about the wife and the children. It was the way of the man. Most lords and thegns that visited Gyeoulseong came with a message, but hardly was that message of great importance. And Beomgyu sat with them and listened and learned the way of the man, the way of the lord.
Then there were those days when his father called for his council and there was a frown on his face, his forehead wrinkled in concern. Beomgyu knew when it was such a day as the air around them shifted. There was no ale and no mindless talk of women, and instead they discussed serious matters, those that Beomgyu had only ever read about in books.
There was no war in the kingdom. People liked to say this. They were living in peaceful times. His mother clung to that. And yet there were conflicts. Sometimes it was about borders, sometimes it was about the laws, then it was about marriage and other times it was about taxes and trade. And always it was about pride. Because to yield was to declare defeat, and no proud man allowed himself to be bested in the absence of battle.
Beoknala bordered on Eojang in the west, a land of rich and arrogant men, of fools and idiots, of his family's forever enemies, the Kim family.
Lord Kim was a fat man, Lord Jingyu had claimed, who could no longer saddle his own horse for he indulged too much in his riches and lost his head and strength along the way. Beomgyu had never met the man, only heard of him, and from what his lord father had told him, he despised him.
There was a dispute along the border concerning the stones and trees marking the line between the two territories. It was an ancient dispute, older than Beomgyu’s father himself, a concern that had emerged with his great-grandfather having been bestowed lordship. Lord Kim had been commanded to give up part of his lands on order of the king, but the man had refused. The king had wanted the matter to be settled bloodlessly but could not detain the ceaseless hostility that followed. Many battles resulted, many soldiers were killed on both sides alike, and every once in a season, the matter of the border stones was brought back to the council at Gyeoulseong.
And Beomgyu supposed this would be his constant worry once he took the place of his lord father at the end of the table in the council room; the feud between the Chois and the Kims. He expected his life to consist of little else than what his father’s before him had.
Beomgyu was wrong.