- Aftermath
The battle that had been awaited for months was finally over.
The nomads had suffered a blow from which they could not recover, and only a small number survived to flee.
Gateukrip himself had not been slain, but most of the tribal chieftains failed to break through the defensive wall at Haran.
The majority of those who had ridden into the Central Plains now lay as bones scattered across Haran’s barren earth.
Though lighter than that of the enemy, the Han army’s losses were far from slight.
More than a thousand men had fallen.
It was not only the armored infantry who suffered.
The White Dragon unit, too, paid a heavy price.
Jeong Hyeon was killed, and So-sam lay struck down with a blade wound to the shoulder.
Even so, it was a great victory.
Jin Muguang ordered a civil official to draft the victory report and dispatched a courier that very night.
Riding in relays without rest, the message would reach the capital in five days.
The memorial was written by Geum Chaeksa.
His brush carried urgency and fatigue as he first recorded the course of battle, then concluded with praise for His Majesty’s grace and prayers for the security of the state.
He did not omit an expression of contrition for the long delay in fulfilling the campaign.
Jin Muguang read the memorial twice more, affixed his signature and seal, and sent it off under guard.
To His Imperial Majesty, I humbly report.
Your servant, Jin Muguang, Military Commissioner of the Northern Expeditionary Army, bows his head and respectfully submits this memorial.
At the hour of Mao today, your servant and his forces lured the enemy who had been facing us in the Haran Gorge and commenced battle.
With armored infantry we firmly sealed the mouth of the gorge, and with volleys of bows and crossbows we shattered the enemy vanguard.
Trapped within the narrow pass and unable to advance or retreat, the enemy fell into confusion; when our hidden forces rose and added their fire, the number of those cut down defied counting.
Once their formation collapsed, I ordered the cavalry to pursue.
They rode in all directions, trampling the enemy rear ranks.
Mong Roe of Cheollimok and the chieftains of the various tribes were all slain.
On the plains of Haran, corpses lay piled like mountains and blood ran like streams.
Only the rebel Gateukrip escaped amidst the chaos of battle.
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That I could not sever his head and present it before the throne is a crime deserving death.
Yet the enemy slain exceeded ten thousand.
The horses captured numbered more than two thousand.
Valuable goods plundered from the continent were recovered—over sixty wagonloads.
The northern tribes, having witnessed imperial might, will not dare again to cast covetous eyes southward.
For long I was unable to bring this campaign to its conclusion and thus failed to relieve Your Majesty’s concern.
Now that a small merit has at last been achieved, I am grateful and ashamed in equal measure that I may repay, in some small part, the grace bestowed by Heaven.
However, in this battle over two thousand of our principal armored infantry were killed, and more than two hundred cavalrymen also lost their lives.
This is entirely due to my own inadequacy, for which I have no excuse.
I humbly beg that Your Majesty extend benevolence to their loyal spirits, granting generous honors and ensuring they are returned to their native homes for burial with glory.
A detailed account of the engagement and a full register of the captured spoils will be submitted to the capital as soon as they are organized.
Military Commissioner of the Northern Expeditionary Army,
Jin Muguang,
with deepest reverence bows and submits.
Geum Chaeksa’s prose was clean, its transitions smooth from beginning to end.
Careful choice of words revealed a temperament that weighed each phrase and withheld excess.
There were passages Jin Muguang might have wished to amend, yet he signed and sealed it as it stood.
So-un sat in the middle of the battlefield, drenched in blood.
A violent hunger gnawed at him.
Emptiness coiled around his entire body.
He had chased the field, swinging his halberd until not a single enemy still moved.
Only when nothing living remained did he lower his weapon.
The stench of accumulated killing clogged his throat.
At last he retched, expelling what little remained in his stomach.
All day he had eaten nothing.
Over the dryness of hunger and thirst came only a thin, bitter fluid.
The metallic tang—unnoticed in battle—now overwhelmed him.
He shook his head.
On the frozen, barren earth, the corpses did not rot.
They stiffened exactly as they had fallen, locked in the posture of death.
It was Ga Gyeongpil who told him to move away when he saw him vomiting.
Gyeongpil remembered the phrase: boy commander.
He had heard it murmured among the nomads.
He had heard it whispered within the Han ranks as well.
Only months ago, the boy had been carried into the garrison entrance half-collapsed.
Now he had grown beyond measure.
What he displayed today was beyond even Gyeongpil’s imitation.
The halberd moved light and swift; enemies fell like autumn leaves.
He wielded its blade as freely as though it were a sword in his hand.
It was not the standard spear of the Yang lineage, nor the common forms of the army schools.
With a shaft longer and slimmer than ordinary spears, he pierced into the heart of enemy ranks without resistance.
Men crowded in numbers, yet with a single sweeping stroke they collapsed in clusters.
When he drove forward, the enemy parted like waves before a prow.
Gyeongpil could scarcely believe what he had witnessed.
The boy who had fought like a reaper in human form—
and now he knelt in the field, retching.
The Han army pitched camp at a remove from the blood-soaked field.
The living were treated.
The dead were buried.
Weapons and armor were carefully collected.
Countless horses were taken as spoils.
So many mounts were captured that another White Dragon unit could have been formed entirely anew.
Yet the losses of the White Dragon riders were grievous.
Though victorious, they had met enemy cavalry head-on.
More than two hundred riders had fallen—nearly a third of their strength.
The Sixth and Seventh Companies, newly formed and lacking true combat experience, were shattered beyond recovery.
It took more than three days to clear the battlefield.
Bodies were gathered.
Rites were held for the fallen.
With a solemn face, Jin Muguang lit incense.
The Grand General, who had bowed to no man in life, knelt humbly and offered the military salute.
The atmosphere grew heavy with reverence.
One by one, the commanders stepped forward, bowing or saluting, praying for the souls of those who had perished.
Afterward, Jin Muguang turned the army back toward its original encampment near the garrison fields.
More than sixty wagons laden with captured goods set out toward the imperial capital.
The Grand General and his commanders would depart separately for the capital as well.
The enemy had fled on the brink of annihilation.
For a time, no nomad host would dare descend upon the continent again.