Watching the Fire from Across the River
"This report—can we truly trust it?"
"H-how could I bring you empty talk, sir? I had it from a merchant out of Jinling. They told me he was a man we could rely on."
Jin Guaiyi, Northern Head of Heukwol, had come pelting all the way to Mingzhou to deliver intelligence the syndicate had gathered at the official market set up in Huizhou. When he twisted the scar across his brutal face into a look of wounded innocence, Lim Pyeong read on through the crooked, hastily written letter.
…Once Chen Youliang's men came ashore, they hurried to plant a palisade and throw up a camp. At that moment Zhu Yuanzhang, drawn up on Lulong Mountain, raised a red banner to tell the whole ambush that the enemy had come, and the hidden troops moved to their assigned places. The instant he raised a yellow banner, the entire army as one…
…Chen Youliang's army seemed at first to hold firm, but when the palisade was smashed and ambushes struck from every side, they could not endure for long and broke. Panic-stricken soldiers fled in a mob for the ships, but as ill luck would have it, in spring the Yangtze's ebb runs so low that the water falls even around Jinling…
When the great warships could not move in the shallows, Chen Youliang's soldiers, swarming like ants, were shoved this way and that—trampled underfoot, drowned, a complete rout. That was the report.
Only a little while ago Lim Pyeong had been hearing that Chen Youliang had taken Taiping, just south of Jinling, and on that very momentum assassinated the false emperor Xu Shouhui, ascended the throne, and seemed about to pierce the heavens. To him, this new tale was simply impossible to believe.
"The dead past counting, and more than twenty thousand taken prisoner? And on top of that, more than ten high-ranking generals who surrendered?"
"Yes. Even without the merchant we bought, the rumor is already all over Huizhou."
"And Chen Youliang ran?"
Lim Pyeong's narrow eyes flashed as he asked, and Jin Guaiyi hurried to nod.
"Y-yes, sir! He abandoned the great warship, the River-Churning Dragon, and fled in a small boat. If that brave general Zhang Dingbian hadn't run wild covering him, his head would have come off then and there…"
The battle at Longwan, right under the nose of Jinling, capital of Zhu Yuanzhang's power, had ended—contrary to the expectations of Lim Pyeong and nearly everyone else—in a great victory for Zhu Yuanzhang. His army had gone straight on to retake Taiping, then hounded Chen Youliang's retreating forces without letup and inflicted staggering losses. A triumph that had even recovered Chizhou, and then seized Anqing on the far bank.
"They must have come down that Yangtze channel full of themselves, but going back upstream the same way won't be easy, will it? And Zhu Yuanzhang's navy—the ships are smaller, but they're quick, and the men are fierce former river pirates…"
Lim Pyeong nodded as he listened.
"And Zhang Shicheng's side? How do they stand?"
"Quiet in Jiangnan, these days, since they made peace with Zhu Yuanzhang. His younger brother Zhang Shide, though—they say he's fully pacified Huai'an and is pushing his power west."
"West?"
Lim Pyeong stared at Jin Guaiyi through eyes narrowed to slits.
"Yes. Following the Yellow River, he's taken as far as Xuzhou, and along the Huai he's laid hands on Haozhou as well. After the court gave him the post of Pingzhang Zhengshi of the Huainan Branch Secretariat, he's been pardoning leftover Red Turbans and bandits across the region as he pleases, and taking righteous militias and government troops under his banner…"
"Zhang Shide…"
Unlike his elder brother Zhang Shicheng, loose in his dealings and indecisive, Zhang Shide was rumored everywhere to be decisive and able, with an eye for genuine talent. He had once been utterly routed by Zhu Yuanzhang's army, and yet he was still reckoned the most resourceful commander under Zhang Shicheng.
"The men of Henan are so hardened to war, so fierce and stubborn, that word is his host is nothing like as easy to dismiss as it once was."
"Very well. You've done good work."
Lim Pyeong commended him. From Hangzhou, Jin Guaiyi oversaw Heukwol's northern sphere, recruiting ruffians and merchants and keeping faithful watch on the movements of Zhu Yuanzhang and Zhang Shicheng.
"Hehehe. His Grace and you, sir, have shown me favor high as heaven. How could I give anything less than all I have?"
"Keep a particularly close watch from here on. And do not relax your attention on the Mongol high officials in Hangzhou, either."
"Need you even ask? Down to the household servants and the kitchen maids, every one of them is ours. Whoever those men meet, whatever women they chase, whatever letters they write—none of it escapes our eyes and ears, sir."
When Jin Guaiyi finished his report and withdrew, Song Han-gi, who had been stroking his beard in thought at Lim Pyeong's side, shook his head.
"Well. They say a man can know the affairs of all under heaven without ever stepping outside his gate… How our lord foresaw, from a thousand li away, that matters would turn out like this, I cannot fathom."
"…Nor can I."
Lim Pyeong and Song Han-gi looked at each other and sighed.
The moment word arrived that Chen Youliang had suddenly led a great army east in person, crushed Zhu Yuanzhang's forces, and seized Taiping, the two of them had sent a fast ship south. If things went wrong, Chen Youliang—already master of Hubei, Hunan, and Jiangxi—might topple Zhu Yuanzhang and swallow Jiangdong in a single stroke. And their lord, An Hyeon, was away, busy "pacifying" Fujian. The dread that they might be left unable to move a finger, forced only to watch Chen Youliang swell into a power they could not withstand, had driven them.
But the letter from their lord An Hyeon, arrived only moments before, was calm to the point of serenity.
Chen Youliang's momentum is formidable, but that is only because he has yet to meet a proper opponent. I have met Zhu Yuanzhang myself. His resolve is firm, his patience deep, and the officers and men under him are rarely brave—bound, from top to bottom, by trust.
Zhu Yuanzhang may be pushed back for a time, his strength the lesser, but his underlying power is nothing to dismiss, and he will not fall so easily. Chen Youliang, grown overconfident on an unbroken string of victories, has come far from his base to strike at Jinling, Zhu Yuanzhang's own stronghold. A single mistake will readily turn into a great defeat.
This will surely end in Zhu Yuanzhang's victory, and as the fighting between the two intensifies, neither will have attention to spare for anything else. Do not rush to intervene. Watch as one watches a fire from across the river, consolidate what we have, and expand our power to the south. This is the moment for that.
When the letter first arrived, both Lim Pyeong and Song Han-gi had been sunk in worry. Their lord An Hyeon had been gone a long while, then caught in a storm that chilled them to the bone; far from coming home, he lingered in Fujian, a thousand li down the sea road—some two hundred and fifty miles—and that alone was enough to fret over. They had thought he could not know how urgently they needed him back, that he was rambling like some fortune-teller. And yet.
"I never truly thought Zhu Yuanzhang would win so decisively. Honestly, does it even make sense? They say even those famous generals, Xu Da and Chang Yuchun, were beaten once…"
Song Han-gi clicked his tongue, dumbfounded. Lim Pyeong, by contrast, had sunk into a dark self-reproach.
He had thought himself seasoned enough, filling An Hyeon's empty seat and commanding the civil and military officials of Zhedong. Yet the moment the situation in Jiangnan began to heave, he had been unable to decide how to answer it, unable even to trust his own judgment. To be leaning on his young nephew like a child… Lim Pyeong, who had sneered at Zhang Shicheng for indecision, gave a bitter smile at the question of whether he had any right to sneer at all.
Their lord, by contrast, had seen through to the true weight of a man he had faced only once, and from a thousand li away had coolly judged that the fight with Chen Youliang would not end quickly.
Song Han-gi stood before the map board at one side of the council room and tilted his head.
"Now it's the other way around. Zhu Yuanzhang has opened the road into Jiangxi. And he's in a position to threaten Jiangzhou, Chen Youliang's capital, so I expect the two of them will be at each other's throats on the Yangtze for quite some time."
"Just as His Grace predicted, the fighting will drag on."
"And isn't all of this because a certain someone taught His Grace well from the time he was small? Even when he was studying the histories of past and present, his brilliance showed…"
Lim Pyeong listened without expression while Song Han-gi shrugged and puffed himself up, then asked, "Ha Ryun. How is the boy? His Grace told us to watch his talent and his character, did he not?"
"Well, that is…"
Song Han-gi scratched his head, looking awkward.
Lim Pyeong had disliked the boy, wary that he might become a source of trouble, but his disciple and lord, An Hyeon, seemed to remember fondly the young brother-in-law he had met at the wedding.
Have him carry out the work of the Duke of Yue's office alongside the other pages, and see that he is educated. Watch his talent and his character, Master, and tell me plainly whether he is a boy I ought to take into my household.
Thanks to that letter, his brother-in-law Ha Ryun had been released from confinement and was gaining practical experience as a secretary in the ducal office, together with Mongke and the other young pages. On top of an officer's training no fate had ever promised him, he was also going through the various practical courses Song Han-gi himself was running.
"Well, he's bright enough, and he has a head for the work. Not that he's any good at anything that requires his body."
"Hm."
Lim Pyeong nodded and changed the subject. "I hear a new Southern Academy is to be built in Mingzhou."
"Yes. His Grace ordered a school, like the Southern Academy that taught the children of Busanpo, to raise useful talent—teaching them the learning of late Goryeo, the Korean script, and the rest…"
"You must be very busy, in-law. Official duties, and teaching children besides… and I hear you're making all sorts of books on His Grace's orders?"
"Haha, well, I write whenever I find the time."
Song Han-gi watched Lim Pyeong's face, afraid of offering him anything to pick apart.
When the day's crush of work ended and he went home, he set down what he had pried from His Grace's letters and from the pages who attended him. The laws enacted when An Hyeon had gathered the Jurchens of the north, founded a realm called Bayan Gurun, and governed its people—the principles, the institutions, the customs. The policies and unspoken rules by which the An family governed the people, artisans, and households of Busanpo, a place inside Goryeo and yet another world entirely. And the reforms and methods of rule by which their lord governed the lands of Zhedong under the Duke of Yue's office, quite unlike the laws and institutions of Yuan.
He had begun with a book on the Korean script devised from the spoken language of Goryeo, The Correct Sounds for Korean Writing. Then on to pressing oil, smelting iron, treating wounds from spear and blade, and the secret of preventing smallpox. Song Han-gi, thirty-six, a failed examination candidate—vastly learned, and, perhaps because he had never quite grown up, curious about every last thing under heaven. The miscellaneous writings he had piled up without ever sorting them stood in heaps like mountains.
"Last year His Grace stopped by the house, saw them, and said I might bind them into books and try them as textbooks for the children at the Southern Academy."
"It isn't that someone is picking a fight, claiming they aren't the words of the sages, is it? I hear grumbling even now that when we appoint men we look mainly at the clerk's arts—statutes, the conduct of lawsuits, keeping ledgers, arithmetic."
"Aigoo, it's nothing so serious as that."
Song Han-gi waved his hands at the bleak light flickering in Lim Pyeong's eyes.
"Everyone praises His Grace for throwing the road to office wide open, after the men of the south had found it barred for so long, don't they? The ones talking that way are only a few. You needn't pay them any mind…"
"Fools who know neither a favor nor their own place, running their mouths. I'll make an example of them once…"
"In-law! In-law! What are you saying? Lay hands on scholars just for grumbling, and it will do His Grace's reputation no good."
Lim Pyeong, governing Zhedong in the Duke of Yue's absence, and Song Han-gi, assisting him and mediating, went on bickering today as they did every day.
"Well? You lot ready, or what?"
"Yes, Division Commander!"
"We do this right, yeah? Right?"
Huindungi swallowed and bellowed at the naval officers and men. The crews specially picked as the best swivel-gun handlers in the navy shouted back, voices brimming with confidence.
"Don't you worry! When it comes to cannon, we're old hands!"
"Good! Then start loading!!"
"Yes!!! Load!!!"
A bearer with a heavy hemp sack shoved it deftly into the muzzle. At once the loader drove it home with a long rammer, deep into the chamber. Next went a wad of bundled old rope, rammed tight to the very end. The bearer set in an iron shot of nine catties—some twelve pounds—then another rope wad, packed hard with the rammer so the ball could not roll back out. In truth, aside from the sheer size of the thing, it was no different at all from loading the swivel guns the Zhedong navy favored.
"Aim! Aim it properly!!!!"
With the front sight at the muzzle of the long barrel—six feet three—and the rear sight at the breech, the gunner gauged the target and kept roaring.
"Right, to the right!!! No—a little left!"
Behind the carriage the barrel rested on, where the long trail lay against the ground, the gunners had fitted handles to the tail. At the gunner's calls they heaved and grunted, shifting the piece a little left, a little right.
"Good! Hold! Hold!!!!"
Alignment done, the gunner turned the elevating screw set behind the barrel and adjusted the elevation.
"Aim complete!!!! Ready to fire!!!"
A paper fuse, rolled and packed with powder, was thrust into the vent that led to the chamber, and the sailors fell back to either side as they had been trained. The man with the linstock, its slow match already burning, swallowed hard.
"Fire!!!!!"
The moment he touched the match to the fuse, it burned furiously down into the vent—
KRA-BOOOOOOM!!!!!!
With a roar that shook heaven and earth, the beautiful golden barrel bucked and slammed backward.
Eeeeeeeeeeeee—
Something tore the wind, and in the instant he sensed it flying, too fast to see, a cloud of dust burst up well short of the target, and another rose beyond it.
Huindungi had been watching after all his bold talk before his lord An Hyeon, his elder brother Makdong, and the other commanders. Cold sweat broke on him, and he swallowed hard.
Fuck. These bastards. They swore up and down they were old hands with cannon, and then—
"Hm."
"M-my lord! I—I'm sorry!"
An Hyeon grinned at Huindungi, who ducked his head with a face on the verge of tears.
"Cannon are like that. You can't expect a hit on the first shot. They're a bit different from swivel guns."
"What? Th-that's…"
"Come on. Let's go take a closer look."
An Hyeon walked toward the field piece brought by ship from Busanpo, a gun of two thousand catties—well over a ton of iron.
1) Reference for the attached map
By OpenStreetMap, CC BY Public Domain Mark