Until Dawn Breaks
Once the stone-fight began, Ma-ryang slipped inside the seven-sided wagon circle to see how Taesik was faring. The man lay in one of the cargo trucks. Ma-ryang pushed aside the rice straw Wang-cheol had heaped over him to hold in his warmth and looked him over.
In the first moments of the siege Taesik had thrown his whole body into the fight, buying the crew the time they needed to get ready. His face was swollen fat, his lips split and leaking blood, but his pulse was steady and so was his breath. Ma-ryang turned the man's skull this way and that under his hands. The bone felt thick. The head was whole.
"How is he?"
Wang-cheol asked, and Ma-ryang answered.
"He's fine. Let him sleep it off and he'll wake up right as rain."
A strongman's toughness was something only another strongman knew how to read. Taesik was built in the classic mold, and Ma-ryang was certain a few blows wouldn't send a body like that to the grave. He had wandered China and seen trouble of every kind, and he knew from hard experience that a short-necked, thick-bodied man could take a savage beating and still come through in one piece. Whoever this Jong-dae was, he seemed to value Taesik enough not to have dealt him a killing stroke.
Satisfied, Ma-ryang climbed onto the roof of Truck One and looked south, toward the 55th Quartermaster Depot. Three kilometers, no more. Two thousand five hundred paces short of the destination, and the road was shut.
He swept his eyes over the fifty-odd men on the trucks and cargo beds, hurling broken brick with everything they had to hold the gangsters off. Plenty of stones flew wide, good for nothing but a threat, but the fight was still young. They needed to bury the enemy under rock and break their nerve. The stones on the trucks wouldn't last, though, and every brick that reached the other side came whistling back the moment someone stooped to pick it up. The bricks had to be husbanded.
Reading the shape of the fight, Ma-ryang chose his moment and roared.
"Cease throwing!"
The men were well drilled. They echoed the order and the barrage stopped.
"Palseong! Gijung! Samseok! Just the three of you throw. Hit nothing but the ones who come in close enough you can't miss!"
He had been watching which of them could actually hit what they aimed at, and he gave the order accordingly. Over on Truck Two he did the same, leaving only the sharpshooters to keep throwing.
Then he studied the enemy again. The gangsters had lost two bosses in a blink and were a rabble now. Bricks had come down on them without end, and they were half out of their minds—but they would find their wits again soon enough. Seeing the Cheongsan men stop, they gathered where they thought themselves safe and put their heads together.
Ma-ryang sent everyone but the sharpshooters to rest. Watching his men gulp air and catch their breath, he hardened his resolve.
Keeping these boys alive comes first... What the hell good is that money.
The faces of the men who had died under him in China flickered through his mind. Faces that still came to him in dreams, even now.
"It's all behind us now..."
He shook off the memory of the Sino-Japanese War and shouted down to Wang-cheol.
"Wang-cheol! Haul every bottle of beer out of the truck Taesik's lying in!"
"The beer?"
"Aye. The beer."
"Yes, hyung-nim."
The word came out of Wang-cheol as if it had always been there. Once the fighting started and Ma-ryang turned into a wild beast, no one could go on calling him Department Chief.
Wang-cheol and a few of the men dragged out thirty crates. Ma-ryang climbed down, looked over the stack inside the circle, and ripped one lid off with his bare hands.
Crrrack.
He flung the lid aside, nails and all, pulled a bottle free, set the cap against the edge of the crate, and knocked it off with a tap. Then he drank it straight down, gulp after gulp.
What in the world is that man doing...
The crew watching him could hardly believe their eyes.
Buuurp.
Ma-ryang emptied the bottle, let out a satisfied belch, wiped his mouth, opened another, and held it out to Wang-cheol.
"Pass it round. One swallow each, then dump every bottle left in the crates."
"What?"
"Shame to waste good drink without at least a mouthful, don't you think?"
"All thirty crates?"
"Aye. Clean 'em out. Every last drop. Move!"
At his bark the men pried the crates open with crowbars, popped the caps, and poured the beer onto the ground. The inside of the seven-sided circle reeked of it.
Meanwhile Ma-ryang unscrewed the cap on a truck's fuel tank and fed a rubber hose down into it.
"Bring the empty bottles."
Wang-cheol and the others brought them. Ma-ryang sucked on the hose, spat the fuel, and filled the empties with gasoline.
"Every one of you—strip to the skin and put only your outer clothes back on. Tear the underwear into long strips and give 'em to me."
Wang-cheol and five others peeled off even their drawers, pulled trousers and jumpers back on, and ripped the underclothes to rags. They had already guessed what he meant to do. Ma-ryang himself tugged off both his socks. Each time he filled a bottle, Wang-cheol jammed the neck with torn cloth. When the rag ran short, the men went around stripping one fellow at a time to make wicks.
In the lull, even those who had already given up their clothes pitched in, and all six hundred bottles from the thirty crates became Molotov cocktails. Ma-ryang ordered another cargo truck emptied and another six hundred made, then climbed into the cab of Truck One and pulled out the sack of cigarettes and lighters. He took fourteen lighters, paired the men two to a team, and formed fourteen throwing squads.
"Nobody throws a firebomb till I say so. You hear me?"
"Yes!"
Orders given, he posted the squads and climbed back onto the truck.
The enemy had their chain of command again, it seemed. They were moving as one. They dragged in the carts that had been blocking the five roads and knocked together makeshift siege wagons they could shove forward while the flying stones broke against them. The carts rode heavy with ballast meant to stop the trucks, and they could take the punishment.
So you ain't complete fools either...
Ma-ryang took the whistle from around his neck and waited for them to charge with the carts out front.
A moment later the gangsters, beaten in the first wave, launched a second.
"Kill them!"
The roar poured out, and eighteen carts came on from five directions. At first they crept. Once they had their weight behind them, they picked up speed, gangsters packed tight at their backs.
Ma-ryang held until the carts entered throwing range. Then he blew the whistle, and unlit firebombs sailed out along all five approaches.
Crash! Crash!
Nothing but breaking glass. No flame, of course. The men pushing forward caught the smell of gasoline and panicked.
"Hyung-nim! Ain't this gasoline I'm smelling?"
"Gasoline? What gasoline? Huh?"
In that instant a crash sounded against the very cart they were shoving, and the reek stabbed up into their noses.
"Huh? Huh?"
They saw fireballs spinning in like shooting stars and screamed.
"Get clear!"
"Everybody, get clear!"
Whump. Whump. Whump...
The bottles burst, and flame leapt up in every direction at once. The unlit ones had already shattered and soaked the ground, so the fire caught and ran. A ring of flame closed around the seven-sided circle. The gangsters fled in blind panic, leaving only the burning carts, and Seomyeon Rotary blazed bright as noon.
"Raise a shout!"
At his order the fifty Cheongsan men let out a roaring cry. Another lesson from the war. A shout did more than a man would think. It froze the other side, or it broke their spirit.
The gangsters looking on felt wretched. They had mustered three hundred men and built an overwhelming force, and still a hundred of them were wounded. Fifty too badly hurt to keep fighting simply had to lie where they were. Thirty minutes gone already, and they had accomplished nothing.
"Wh-what... the hell is this?"
An underboss, late to the scene, lost his words at the sight of Seomyeon Rotary burning high. When the report of the fight reached him, he was even more dumbfounded. The two mid-level bosses sent to stop the convoy at all costs had been knocked out at the start, and the rank and file, robbed of any center, had used what wits they had and still looked a disgrace.
"You're telling me those bastards threw stones?"
"Yes, hyung-nim."
"Then you should've thrown stones back! What were you doing?"
"We'd have to have stones first, is what I'm saying..."
"You pea-brained son of a bitch! The rotary's nothing but stones right now, piled to the sky! Pick up what those bastards threw and throw it back, you idiot!"
"Ah... yes, sir."
The gangsters closed on Cheongsan's circle to gather stones. But the rotary was bright as day, and every movement showed clear to the men looking down from the buses and trucks. The sharpshooters picked the gatherers off one by one, and the men who could hurl a firebomb far kept dropping bottles around the stones. Gangsters dropped in a steady stream with their heads cracked, and others reached for what Cheongsan had thrown only to burn their hands.
"Agh! Hot! The stones are cooked through..."
Small wonder they recovered so few.
From the truck roof Ma-ryang glanced at the watch on his wrist. It was past five in the morning.
We've got to hold another two hours...
He remembered Kijo's order. If the transport was blocked, hold until around dawn.
Scanning the enemy lines, he caught something strange. The gangsters had climbed onto the roofs of the houses around the rotary and were tearing tiles loose and flinging them down. Stone-gathering wasn't going well, so they meant to rip up other people's roofs if that was what it took to keep the fight alive.
So they're going for broke...
Ma-ryang climbed down and called the men in behind the wagons. He handed out the protective gear loaded in the cargo trucks.
"Hats and vests. Put 'em on."
All fifty hats and vests had been braided from straw rope by the people of Eundae-ri. Village Chief Jang Seokgu had made them and brought them on Kijo's orders. They had been meant to shield heads and bodies if a brawl broke out, but they looked as if they would serve in a stone-fight too. The men pulled on the straw-rope caps, shaped like old field hats, and cinched the cords. With the vests on as well, they looked halfway respectable. A stone would still hit hard, but a blow to the head might not be the end of a man.
"Light. That's nice."
Wang-cheol grinned in vest and hat.
"You take this, too."
Ma-ryang handed him a wooden shield knocked together from a beer crate.
"Don't stick your head out 'cause you're curious. Watch the stones coming in and block 'em."
He wanted Wang-cheol kept safe. The man was the heart of Cheongsan Transport, and he had no gift for fighting.
"Understood, hyung-nim."
Wang-cheol felt the care in it, and he was grateful.
Around half past five, the gangsters—throwing stones secured at last—began their counterattack. Ma-ryang pulled the transport men off the attack they had been pressing and ordered them onto the defensive. In their place he took a few quick-bodied fellows up onto the trucks and cargo beds. Crate-wood shield in one hand, lantern in the other, they set about spoiling the enemy's aim, shining the light full in the faces of the men throwing and dazzling their eyes. Even that much, if it cut the damage.
Thunk! Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!
Stones began to hammer the trucks and cargo beds in a rising storm.
Thud-thud-thunk, thunk, thunk—a rattling crash...
When it grew as fierce as hail on sheet metal, Ma-ryang called off the harassment and ducked back inside the ring. He was hoping the gangsters would burn through their broken tiles fast. After about ten minutes the impacts on the trucks grew fewer and fewer. Then came their war cry.
Ma-ryang and the elite squad he had held ready prepared to step out of the formation. Every one of them wore the gear, a wooden shield in one hand and a birch club in the other.
"We're only stepping out and coming right back. Don't get all fired up. Just show 'em we ain't lost our nerve, then we come back."
"Yes."
Ten men answered, grim.
Ma-ryang took up a long iron staff he had set aside for himself. Cheongsan's maintenance crew had forged it in the likeness of a zhangba shemao, the old serpent spear. It had real heft, but not so much that he felt it. He gave it a swing. He could thrust with it and he could batter, and he could do both fast. At a glance it looked like a bladed piece of iron, but the tip was rounded, not sharp, so a man stabbed with it would not die. The edges were not honed either. It had been made for one thing only: to give a man the feeling that if it cut him, he was dead.
He had been watching the enemy mass. Now he shouted.
"All right! Let's go!"