The Battle of Shenyang (5)
Just as the French had so confidently boasted—or as the Qing generals had prophesied with a twist of bitter self-mockery—the Qing troops holding the Hunhe River began to fall back in disorder, driven from their positions by the ferocious siege fire of the riverine gunboats that had steamed upstream and the French artillery.
BOOM. CRASH.
Siege shells the size of a man's torso came screaming in from nowhere and obliterated entire buildings in a single, terrifying blast. Bursting rounds from the gunboats made no distinction between man and horse, tearing limbs from bodies wherever they landed.
And that was the decisive thing. For all the riverside pickets, the makeshift palisades, the trenches dug into the bank, the great majority of Qing soldiers who actually came face to face with the Korean army already had precious little fight in them. A few exchanges of rifle fire were all it took. Their will collapsed, and they ran.
Most of them loosed a single round from a loaded rifle and then fled with everything they had, ignoring their officers' shouts to reload. A stubborn few stood frozen in the emptied ranks, mechanically stuffing cartridges into their weapons—until the Korean troops came on in a rush of keen, glittering momentum, and their heads left their shoulders before they could even manage a startled gasp.
Dozens of riverside forts and fighting positions vanished that way. Now and then a brave commander, or a unit that had sworn revenge for families lost to the Koreans, would drive the attackers back from the bank with real courage. Then the charge of the iron giants—the Armored Infantry—would smash them to pieces.
Honestly, wasn't it a bit much? An army that fielded monsters bullets couldn't even pierce!
"Hah—hah...!"
And so Sechung was running himself ragged again, a sweet metallic taste flooding his mouth. He had survived even Shengjing, and had brought his family out of Yingkou—his hometown—to Shenyang, the greatest city in Liaodong and a sacred seat of the imperial house. Now he had to get them out of the city, or else hide them deep in the warren of its streets, and he had to do it fast.
"Hah—hff!"
A vacant, simple face flickered through his mind, and he shook his head hard, as if to fling the thought away. Daiching. They had parted in Yingkou. The man had family of his own to lean on there, and family who leaned on him.
Daiching's stubborn old mother, his wife, his little children—none of them had the strength to leave Yingkou. In the end Sechung had turned his back on the family he had looked after for so long, and fled to Shenyang, where his own people and his father-in-law were waiting.
"Aaaagh!"
"Spare us! Please, spare us!"
"It's the Koreans! The Koreans are here!"
The streets were already a wreck—indiscriminate enemy shells dropping into the city proper, the assault already pushing into the outskirts. Sechung ran hard with the screams and shouts and gunfire as his soundtrack, glancing at the wounded and the deserters sliding past on either side, sucking air that would not quite reach the bottom of his lungs.
"Hah—hff!"
His lips were cracked dry with the effort. The wounded, the corpses, the deserters flickering through his vision, the whole ghastly, haunted prospect of the city, squeezed his heart down to a knot. A chill hung over everything. At some point the crows had begun to move in flocks, like a second layer of cloud. In alley after alley, abandoned old people and orphans watched him tear past with uncomprehending, empty eyes.
"Aaaagh!"
A vast tongue of fire dragged his gaze toward the far end of the road. It was fire. The thing had swallowed a building whole and was lapping at the timber with a greedy, flickering hunger, drawing the wooden house into itself.
He had seen it more than once already, and it was no less horrible for that: people tumbling out of a building the enemy's shells had set alight, a building the fire had already claimed completely. When the trapped ones could no longer bear the smoke and the heat, they began to fall, and the sound of fruit bursting rolled down the street.
Sechung squeezed his eyes shut against that hellish sight, clapped both hands over his ears, and ran for home with everything he had. He had a family to protect.
A little later, after two or three more alleys, a familiar house swam into view—the house of his late father-in-law.
BANG.
Even out here on the city's edge, even tucked down an alley, it was a proper house: a decent gate, a stone wall. Sechung wrenched the door open and found his wife coming to meet him, her face startled. The racket had shaken her too, and she cried out.
"Darling!"
She set her hands on her hips, winding up for a scolding. Sechung lunged forward, caught her by the shoulders, and pressed a finger to her lips. He covered her mouth, pulled her in hard, and shoved her into the house. There was no time. The so-called New Army hiding behind the grand name of the Beiyang Army was, in truth, a phantom. They were being mowed down by the Korean army like so many stalks of sorghum, no better than any other Qing force, and they were breaking out of the city faster than anyone had expected.
Which meant the battlefield was the city now.
At this rate Shenyang—the greatest city in Liaodong, a vast place of some three hundred thousand souls—was a single step from becoming a hell split north and south between the Qing army and the Koreans. Sechung and his family had not yet gotten out. They had to run, and they had to run now—before the plunderers and conquerors tore their helpless people to pieces.
"Shh! You keep your mouth shut, take the kids, and get up in the attic!"
"The—the attic? Just like that?"
"Don't argue. Move!"
Something in his face—the look of a man who had already stood at the edge of his life more than once—cut through her shock. Her hands were still shaking as she went looking for the children.
He sent her off and started tearing through the cupboards and the kitchen. Until the city fell cleanly to one side or the other, they would have to lie low like rats and not make a sound. And Sechung was no fool. He had prepared for this.
When she came back into the main room with the children in her arms—roused from their nap, scooped up from the back courtyard—he was already loaded down with the bundles and water bottles he had laid by. The bundles were packed with rice cakes, rice flour, sweets. The bottles were stoppered tight; they would not leak.
"Here—take these up too! The water, the rice cakes, these rice crackers—yes, those! And grab a blanket! Take the kids and go, now!"
A blanket was a precious thing. It was property, yes—but it was also the best mute they had for the creak and groan of old, warped boards.
He pushed the lot into his wife's and children's arms and, in the same motion, pulled down the ladder to the attic, hurrying them up. The children whimpered as they climbed. His wife was trembling from head to foot, but she did as she was told.
Fortunately, his shrewd father-in-law and the men before him had, in the old days when this city of Shenyang was first being raised, built a cunning little storeroom into the gap beneath the roof. From the outside it looked like nothing but roof. And so even now, stranded in a city they could not escape because the government troops were useless, Sechung had a place to hide.
He got the children up. He got his wife up last. He was reaching for the ladder himself when a thin, piercing scream cut across his ear. Her face had crumpled into a look of genuine, dawning horror—the look of someone who had forgotten something unforgivable. And Sechung, a beat later, heard what she was screaming, his own expression going stupid with it.
"M-Mother! I can't see Mother anywhere—I don't know where she's gone!"
"Ah—!"
How had he forgotten? His own mother? And why wasn't she in the house? What was he supposed to do?
For a few seconds his mind simply went away. Then he dragged the ladder back down, dancing from foot to foot, and shoved his helpless, panicking wife and children up into the attic again.
Time was bleeding away.
"Shit—I'll handle it, all right? So take the kids and stay in there. Go!"
"No—you can't!"
"Waaah! Daddy!"
The children burst into tears. His wife was pounding her own chest, insisting it was her fault. He pushed them in anyway and hauled the ladder up. Even then they hung from the edge of the hatch, thrashing, trying to catch his hands.
"Get in!"
There was no time for this. If he used this time to find his mother and come back, that would be enough. His eyes were bloodshot as he made them promise.
"Just get in there! Hold your breath until I come back! I swear I'll come back!"
"A-all right."
"Not a sound! Not one sound!"
With that warning he left the attic behind, shoved open the gate still rattling from the shock of his arrival, and plunged back into the streets like a madman.
From the fire he had passed with both ears stopped, to the alleyways where the wounded and the dead lined both sides like a graveyard—through that hellish, chilled landscape Sechung ran without sense or stop, his throat scorched dry past any sweet taste of exhaustion, calling for her in a voice gone raw.
"Mother! Mother!"
There was no sign of the old woman anywhere. Not in the market he had walked since morning hunting news of the fighting, or food—not in the government offices standing empty because the officials had already abandoned the city. Not a shadow of her.
In the richer quarters, where the streets ran straighter and cleaner, every courtyard wall had been studded with nails and smeared with filth, and behind them people crouched in deathly silence. Under the bridges and in the beggars' shacks, refugees who had not managed to flee watched him pass with ominous eyes, writhing in the dark like insects. Toward the north, where the city gate opened, the crush of people trying to get out was a roaring chaos. On the lanes swept clean by that tide of refugees, there was not so much as an ant. No—even a dog was a day's food now.
The Korean army's terror propaganda had done its work. The people of Shenyang had been afraid of a Korean invasion from the moment the peace talks collapsed. Hundreds of thousands of enemies had sat in silence across the river for two weeks, waiting to take the city. Of course they were afraid.
"Hah—hff!"
He was telling himself there was no time—or that the world was beginning to move more and more slowly—when his mother suddenly caught in his vision.
No: there she was, squatting on a stone step in the corner of an alley, showing him a wasted little wrist, waving.
What on earth?
"Mother! Why aren't you at home—what are you doing here...!"
"Chung-ah."
He had been about to snap at her, all the labor and worry and gnawing impatience of the search rising in him as anger—when the old woman lifted a finger and pointed at the sky.
"This Spring Festival isn't cold at all, is it? I always used to worry around this time of year whether I should sew extra pockets, because the grandchildren's hands got so cold."
What Spring Festival, Mother. And what pockets?
He had the retort ready. Then his eyes, unthinking, followed her finger to the sky, and his mouth closed.
"Pretty. So pretty."
What she was pointing at was not Spring Festival fireworks stitching the heavens. Evening had settled in without his noticing, and the enemy shells bursting in that darkened sky were not, in the end, so different from the fireworks she meant.
Her son took her hand and held it tight, and looked up with her. The sick old woman spoke again.
"Look over there. Isn't it truly beautiful?"
Sechung had been about to tell her it was not. Instead he only gripped her hand harder. Hot tears ran down both his cheeks and dripped from his chin. A fierce heat burned at the corners of his twisted eyes.
Against the darkened city, against that deep-blue canvas of sky that was strange now and yet still held a beautiful scene from long ago, he spoke to her. The anger that had been about to break from him a moment before had sunk away. His voice had gone quiet.
"...Come. Let's go, Mother. The sun's already down."
"Yes. Let's. My mind is... well."
Sechung bent at the waist before his ailing mother, and she climbed onto his back in a posture as old as memory. When he felt her settle comfortably against him, his legs found their strength again and began to run.
He moved like a scrap of down caught on the wind, out of the alleys, out of the streets, taking care, as much as he could, to pass the worst of those earlier horrors by so they would not strike her. The weight of her years had already made her frail; today's shocks had surely made her sicker still.
So he came, with his mother on his back, hurrying back to his father-in-law's house. He set her down with care, yanked the ladder to the attic into place, and gently boosted her up by the hips.
"You first."
She climbed. Sechung followed, and gathered into his arms his wife and children, their eyes swollen red from sobbing, and whispered.
"I'm here. I found Mother too."
"Darling."
"Daddy!!"
The family was one piece again. The children, toys abandoned, pressed into their father's arms, a little calmer now. His wife, who had wrapped his mother's cut soles in scraps of cloth, claimed one of his shoulders for herself.
Yes. Sechung had gotten every one of them into the attic in time. Now they only had to wait—until the Korean army occupied the city outright and settled it, or until the Qing army drove the enemy out—and then they could go back to their lives.
That was when Sechung and his family tried to let the tension go.
BANG.
Something breaking. The faces of the family in his arms froze solid. They understood what it meant; terror flooded their eyes. Sechung jabbed a finger to his own lips and whispered.
"Shh."
His children, who had even forgotten how to cry, and his wife, gone paper-white, nodded.
He left them and dropped flat, peering through a gap in the floorboards he had padded with the blanket, trying to see what was happening in the house. And there it was.
"Hh—!"
Iron giants. The Armored Infantry. Those hideous, terrifying monsters had pushed this far.
How? How did they know? Ah—
Had they found the house on the outskirts while he was tearing through the city after his sick mother? Or had the invaders been watching him run himself ragged, and quietly followed him home?
He did not know. One thing was certain. Sechung and his family were in mortal danger.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The iron giants dragged those heavy bodies through the inner rooms, the main hall, the kitchen, without mercy. Every time they moved, dust and cobwebs shook down through the gaps in the roof. The floorboards caved in deep pits under their weight. In their rough palms, the cheap little household things his wife had cherished and fussed over were smashed to nothing.
They searched every corner of every room as if they were certain a family was hidden here. The pistols at their belts, the spiked clubs matted with blood-soaked hair—it was all too horrible to look at.
The iron giants drew closer and closer to the corridor where the attic ladder was. His family, bleached white with terror, shook and clutched at Sechung's collar.
"Daddy!"
"Wh-what do we do, darling...!"
"Waaaaah!!!"
"W-wait—!"
Then it happened. The biggest of them, the one who seemed to be their captain, put a hand on the shoulder of a man who looked like a subordinate and said something, and the other iron giants hurried out.
The search was over.
"Ha—haha."
He was just letting out a breath, telling himself that—when the big iron giant who had sent his men outside tilted his head and stepped back into the main room.
And he looked, with perfect accuracy, at the gap in the attic from which Sechung was peering, and then—
Crrrack. THUD.
—that enormous frame, tall enough to reach the ceiling, began to hammer without mercy at the floor under which the family was hiding. First with his fingers. Then with his palm. Then with the iron plate of his gauntlet. Then, fully, with his fist.
As the iron giant's hands worked closer and closer to the attic hatch, Sechung's face went the color of death. He put his palms together and prayed to heaven.
No. He prayed to the iron giant. Please don't come this way. Please just leave, the way your men did.
"Please. Please. I beg you, please..."
But—
Creak.
The iron giant captain found it. The hatch into the attic. Against every hope of Sechung's, the ladder fastened to that hatch spilled down into the corridor of its own accord, without a hint of a jam.
There was nothing left between the attic and the room below.
Thud. Thud.
The thing was climbing the ladder. The rungs screamed under the weight of the heavy armor. As the shadow grew, the faces of Sechung and his family went paler still.
At last the iron giant stood before them—a full head taller than the others of his kind.
The youngest could not even hiccup, staring blankly at the monster sheathed in iron from head to foot. The iron giant, in turn, looked at Sechung's family.
A green gleam seemed to flash across his gaze, as if fire might come pouring from the mouth-slit of that helm at any moment. Slowly, he swept that gaze over Sechung's family, huddled as small as they could get in a filthy, dust-choked corner of the attic.
Savoring them. Yes. The gaze of a predator violating a head of livestock.
Under that look Sechung pulled his family still further behind him. His wife and his old mother clutched his shoulders. The children, unable even to cry out, buried their faces in their parents' backs.
The thing came on, slowly. The bloodied club at its belt swung and knocked against the armor with a strange, dull sound.
The shadow over the family deepened. Sechung, seeing the future, was already leaning forward to take the pain before the others when—
"You're in luck."
"!"
Everyone in the room held their breath. This was a moment none of them had imagined. The iron giant who had seemed about to kill them on the spot was speaking Korean.
Terror in their eyes thinned toward curiosity, or bewilderment, and they started to look up at the captain—but he was already hanging on the ladder that joined the attic to the room below.
He was simply leaving. Just like that. Simply leaving.
"Ah—!"
The meaning of it hit Sechung. He shook his family off, crawled to the hatch, and bowed toward the iron giant who was quietly disappearing.
This man was a savior. He had spared Sechung's family.
"Th-thank yo—"
"That's enough."
The words cut him off, and from inside the iron helm a man's eyes were visible. The same eyes that had looked at Sechung, at his wife, at his mother, at his children. A person's eyes. Human eyes.
Sechung was starting to speak again, starting to bow again, when the iron giant, having reached the bottom of the ladder, raised a hand that reached the ceiling and waved it over his head, and said to Sechung and his family:
And then he was gone.
It was over.
Sechung and his family had survived.
All because of one iron giant with a fondness for going off-script.
Feeling it at last, Sechung and his family let the tension go and collapsed onto the attic floor, and their mouths opened.
"Hah... haaah."
"Waaaaah!"
"Ha—haha, hahaha!"
Yes. They had survived.