The Gapsin Coup (2)
Like a guest at some Western fête, Min Young-ik accepted the wineglass a eunuch offered him and was just savoring the taste when a tremendous blast from outside made him doubt his own eyes.
Behind the rim of the glass, the whole glittering backdrop of the celebration seemed to drain away in slow motion.
A dull, wet thud — the sound of washerwomen bringing their paddles down at the riverside — and droplets of blood scattered through the air like pink azaleas.
Then an unfamiliar scream tore through the banquet.
"Ghhk!"
While every guest in the hall still reeled from the explosions crashing one after another outside, Min Young-ik turned toward the sound of an old drum being ripped apart — and found his vision filled by only two men.
Someone roared as if fury and hatred themselves were the fuel, and the words came out like flame.
The well-dressed gentleman in the Western suit wrenched free the dagger he had driven in with a reverse grip.
"Khhrk!"
A figure pitched forward at the same instant.
"Th-this...!"
The middle-aged man clutched his belly, where a red liquid was already writhing out of him, and mumbled at his attacker with a face that could not believe what it was seeing.
"Ugh— V-Vice Minister, what in God's name have you...!"
He never finished the sentence.
Dear God in heaven...
The patriarch of the Min clan crumpled where he stood. There was not even time to blink.
Someone spotted the fallen Min Yeong-mok and screamed, voice cracking with horror.
"Good God!"
"M-murder!"
Min Young-ik, who had just watched Min Yeong-mok — Maritime Defense Commissioner and Left Vice Councilor of the State Council — double over clutching his stomach and pitch onto his face, sucked in a great useless gulp of air. He dove beneath a table, clapped both hands over the scream clawing up his throat, and barely forced it down. Then he crouched there trembling, muttering to himself.
"Wh-what in the world...!"
Min Young-ik, who held office at the Conversion Bureau and served as a Military Affairs Commissioner, could not make the scene in front of him real. The man in the Western suit who had just put down his own kinsman was a face he knew far too well.
"Baeg-on...!"
Political differences had cooled things between them of late, but the two men had once been comrades, of one heart and one mind, sworn to the modernization and enlightenment of their country. And now—
Baeg-on. Baeg-on!
Perhaps he already felt they had crossed a river from which there was no return. Or perhaps he had simply realized how little time he himself had left. Min Young-ik clapped a hand over his mouth and sobbed in choked little gasps, and through that muffled weeping the cruel voices of the future poured into his ears.
The doors crashed open.
"Kill them all! Don't let a single soul leave here alive!"
"Aaaagh!"
"P-please, spare me!"
"Don't let those bastards get out!"
Before Min Young-ik could even collect himself, unidentified swordsmen in black uniforms stormed the banquet from both the entrance and the exit at once.
"We're foreigners!"
"Open this door at once!"
"Lay a hand on us and we will report this outrage to our governments!"
Technical advisers and diplomats dispatched from Germany, Britain, and the United States protested to the men who had sealed the doors in a mood of naked menace. The answer they received was ice.
"Turn around! Until the search is finished, no one leaves this room!"
"Th-this is an outrage! We are invited guests!"
"Honored guests from abroad, step aside while I'm still asking nicely — unless you want something ugly to happen to you!"
"Y-you're all madmen!"
"Shut your mouths and get out of the way!"
There were Qing officials among them, and civilian businessmen from the Japanese consulate. It made no difference. In those hands were blades sharp enough to take a head off at a stroke, and the long training swords of a drill ground, and they looked ready to use them on the very men standing in front of them.
"Push the foreigners aside and deal with the principal targets first!"
The most savage-looking of the men who had smashed their way in stabbed a finger toward a far corner and bellowed.
"Kill the traitors Han Gyu-jik, Yun Tae-jun, and Yi Jo-yeon!"
All except those still sorting the foreigners drew their swords and charged the ministers, who stood there stupidly, faces blank, with no idea what to do. The attackers wore cadet uniforms.
"Out of the way!"
"Aigoo!"
"Spare me!"
"There he is!"
"Kill him!"
They were the swordsmen of the Chung-ui-gye and the officer cadets of Japan's Hosan Academy, all of them mustered by the Gaehwadang. On their commander's order they dragged the Front and Rear Guard officers and commanders out of the corners where they had been hiding and butchered them in full view of the foreign guests and the court ministers alike.
"W-wait!"
"This one's Sadaedang too!"
"Ghhk!"
After Min Yeong-mok, the first man to lose his head was Left State Councillor Min Tae-ho.
"Why... why?"
He toppled sideways, unable to stanch the deep cut across his throat, flopped like a fish dragged from the water, and died.
"Everyone, run!"
"Kyaaah!"
As the Chung-ui-gye swordsmen and the cadets came on, the quicker ones — those who had finally grasped what was happening — screamed for help toward the corridor beyond.
"R-Rear Guard! It's a rebellion!"
"Rebellion! Rebellion!"
Sharp steel punched into the napes of their necks in the same breath.
"Die!"
"Ghhk!"
Min Eung-sik, Director of Military Affairs, shoved through the crowd and twisted this way and that, trying to run. They caught him soon enough, slammed him to the floor, and butchered him without mercy.
"And just where do you think you're going!"
"Wait! P-please, spare me—!"
One man scrambled up onto a table. Another bolted behind a folding screen. With both doors of the Postal Administration sealed, every last desperate flailing came to nothing.
"Check the other rooms as well!"
Having seized the party hall, where the crowd was thickest, they spilled into the corridor and the rooms opening off either side, picked the hiders out one by one, and executed them.
"Come out this instant!"
"Here's another one!"
"Aaaagh!"
A flash of steel, and Rear Guard Commander Yun Tae-jun — who had been cowering under a table — was the first to have his viscera run through; he became one with the floor. Left Guard Commander Yi Jo-yeon, trying to flee from the adjoining room, met a cadet bursting from the exit and died with a length of iron pinned through his chest.
"I-I have nothing to do with the royal in-laws!"
Someone tried to explain that he had no connection whatsoever to the men already dead.
"Choi Ji-hyeong of Transportation Affairs! Weren't you the Left Vice Councilor's own lapdog? Die!"
"Spare me! Spare...!"
It was useless. Each cadet carried a slip of paper or a notebook and checked his targets one by one.
"You dogs!"
Then, from among the great and lesser officials dying so wretchedly, a thunderclap of a roar burst out.
"You dogs! Do you even know where you are?!"
It was Front Guard Commander Han Gyu-jik, the only military-examination graduate among the party guests. With a crack of raw force he hip-threw the first cadet who rushed him, then snatched up whatever came to hand and hurled it, fighting back.
"It's the Front Guard Commander! Kill him too!"
"Kill that old dog who licks Qing ass!"
"You traitorous bastards!"
Even hiding, a man might or might not live through this. Han Gyu-jik saw his own end coming and charged the knot of cadets anyway. The Chung-ui-gye swordsmen spat curses and swung.
"You old bitch of a man! Die quiet!"
"You spent your life simpering for those Qing dogs!"
"Aaaagh!"
Han Gyu-jik was the only one who understood, even belatedly, that the unknown invaders were hunting the Sadaedang's principal military commanders. He seized the enormous porcelain vase standing by a pillar in both hands and fought. Then the cadets closed on him from front and back, and their blades sent him after his comrades.
In a single instant, dozens of edges punched into his back, his waist, his side. A clot of blood burst from the mouth of the man who had so boldly stood against the cadets.
"Hhurk!"
He staggered, the steel still buried in him, that heavy torso swaying — and a black shadow came flying at his head.
A vicious-looking iron mace smashed into his skull, and the world went quiet in a heartbeat. The huge body folded forward and went down.
Han Gyu-jik, the only man who had resisted, never even got out a proper sound. His head was half caved in when he hit the floor. Min Young-ik, still pressed to the boards under the table, watched it happen and panted in silence as his own breath came faster and faster.
Blood. The whole place was a sea of it.
"Hhkk... hhkk...!"
From the crown of his head to the soles of his feet he felt as if he were going under. Breathing itself was becoming too much. His body sank like waterlogged cotton. His trousers were soaked. The back of his neck was cold.
Hhh... hhhk...!
Crushed by the terror that he might follow them at any moment, Min Young-ik — a small, ordinary man — found the Postal Administration banquet a scene from a horror play and nothing else.
One last scream for mercy rang out somewhere far off, and the storm of slaughter that had filled the Postal Administration passed. Then his old friend Kim Ok-gyun, and a swordsman whose face might have belonged to a demon, issued their orders to the blood-soaked cadets.
"Drag every corpse into the courtyard and identify them!"
"Check them thoroughly! There can be no mistakes!"
"Confine the foreign dignitaries in the Uigeumbu until the revolution is finished. It is essential that not a soul carry word of this outside."
While the coup troops hauled out the Sadaedang's principal men, checked each face, and matched them against what looked like a kill-list in a notebook, a search of the foreign envoys and civilians was already underway at the opposite door.
"Search the adjoining rooms thoroughly, and drag the bodies out as well."
Beneath the tables being overturned one after another, beneath the corpses being hauled into the open, Min Young-ik could only jam his face into the floor, both hands still clamped over his mouth, and weep.
"Bring those over here too!"
"Pile them here! Block the road completely!"
Meanwhile the night watch guarding the approaches to the detached palace was losing its mind. Screams were coming from the palace entrance, and explosions had gone off near the royal compound itself.
"I heard it was the Postal Administration's opening ceremony today."
The commander of the watch was not cold at all, though it was midwinter and snowflakes were drifting down. On the contrary: his heart had been hammering for some time, and his tongue felt strangely, tinglingly hot.
The men I sent to the detached palace haven't reported back, and neither have the ones I dispatched to the garrison. What in God's name is happening in the capital?
He shook the thought out of his head. His men were already sweating, hauling carts and whatever junk they could find into the roadway, straining to seal it off. If the rebels tried to force the palace, the watch would have to hold them until the Capital Police Camp and the Special Army could deploy.
"Seal every road leading to the palace! Set up barricades so no unauthorized person can approach the royal compound!"
"Yes, sir!"
A report of the disturbance had already gone up to the Zongli Yamen, and rumors were running through the streets that the Maritime Defense Camp and the Ki-yeong ought to put the capital under emergency order. The quicker sort had long since barred their gates and gone to ground inside their mansions.
They say the Capital Police Camp has been called out too. The Qing troops pulled out and I thought better days were coming...
Then his men came pounding back, gasping, with reports for the commander who was still directing the roadblocks.
"Commander, sir! They're saying the bomb went off at the detached palace!"
"There's a fire at the Postal Administration as well!"
That a bomb had gone off, and that something was burning, he had seen clearly enough from in front of Gwanghwamun. The reports that followed were of an entirely different order.
"They're saying dozens of able-bodied men are brawling in Jeong-dong, where the legations are clustered — shouldn't we send men there too?"
"A body of armed troops has occupied the main avenue near Bosingak..."
"What?"
Unidentified armed troops? A street fight on the Jeong-dong avenue? At this hour of the night?
The watch commander felt it in his gut. Something was going wrong — badly wrong.
Another soldier came running up, panting out his report.
"They're saying gunfire was heard near Seoninmun as well!"
"One at a time, damn it, one at a time!"
Drowning in the flood of news pouring in from every direction, the commander clawed at his hair and managed, like a dying man, to get out a last-ditch order. A stopgap. That was all it could be.
"F-first, send word to the Gyeonggi Provincial Garrison and the Lower Capital Garrison that gunfire has been heard — and we seal the approaches to the palace! Let the Royal Army handle the detached palace themselves!"
Sometimes the wisest thing a man could do was simply mind his own piece of the board.
The watch had gone silent at the order to shut up and hold their ground. Then someone shot a hand into the air.
"What about the fire?"
"Hanseong Prefecture just stood up a new fire brigade, didn't they? They'll handle it!"
"Ah."
He was right. Hanseong Prefecture had lately been busy organizing a fire service equipped with the latest hydraulic pumps imported from America. Marvelous machines brought in from the Western powers — unless the blaze was truly enormous, they might well have it out in no time.
His men closed their mouths. The commander lifted a finger and pointed them off one by one.
"You lot keep the residents from pouring into the streets when they hear the noise. The rest of you run and tell the duty Royal Secretary that all hell has broken loose!"
"Yes, sir!"
"Everyone else — block every road that can be blocked! Whether they're rebels or riffraff, keeping them out of the palace is our job!"
His men were answering that perfectly reasonable order at the top of their lungs when it happened.
A sudden tramp of boots cut through the night — stamp, stamp, stamp — and several of the watchmen spun around.
"Huh?"
"Who the hell are they?"
Hundreds of soldiers filled their vision.
At the very moment the night watch was sealing the approaches to the principal offices and the palace, a body of armed troops that had force-marched from the foot of Bugaksan all the way to the great avenue of the Four Gates came on in column, straight toward them.
They ran with their eyes fixed dead ahead.
The movement was far too strange. The watchmen had nothing but swords and clubs, but they remembered their duty, ducked behind the barricade, and shouted.
"Who goes there!"
"Halt! Halt!"
The hundreds of armed men came on at that measured tramp, formed ranks before the roadblock, and stopped.
"You there!"
An officer burst from the head of the column, flanked by his standard-bearer's escort, and called out boldly to the commander still crouched behind the barricade.
"Who's in command here!"
"I am!"
The watch commander stepped out without waiting to be asked. The rider opposite him shouted back.
"I am Lieutenant Colonel Seo Jae-pil of the Royal Front Guard! Who are you to blockade the road to the palace and throw your weight around!"
"We're the Hanseong Prefecture night watch! We received word of an incident at the detached palace and immediately sealed the Four Great Gates and the main roads!"
The column muttered among themselves for a moment, then came forward and shouted again. This time a peculiar hostility rode on the words.
"By royal command! You will lift the roadblocks at once and return to your respective offices!"
"What?"
Lift the cordon and go back to their offices? Were these people in their right minds?
The watchmen stared at one another, blank-faced. The men claiming to be a Royal Army column started bellowing.
"By royal command! Return to your posts and open this road!"
"If you keep blocking this road, we'll treat you as rebels!"
"We've received no such order! If anything, you're the ones who look suspicious!"
"What did you say!"
The commander contradicted them to their faces. Curses erupted from the column at once, and a rider drew his sword and spurred forward.
"Open this road at once!"
"W-wait a moment!"
The column was at once so assured and so deeply wrong, and the commander was sweating cold as he looked back at his own men, crouched trembling behind the carts, barely breathing.
"Damn it."
They had hundreds of men, every one of them armed with a rifle. And his own side?
There's going to be a lot of funerals tonight.
Anyone with eyes could see it was a coup. Dozens would die before morning. Hundreds, maybe.
The living have to stay living.
The answer was obvious if he bothered to weigh it, so he did not bother long.
"A-all right! We'll stand down at once!"
"Good. Smart decision."
Both sides having come to terms, the positions and barricades they had sweated so hard to build began to come apart.
"Open the road."
A moment later the night watch pulled the blockade and shuffled off to the left and right. The soldiers of the Royal Front Guard, in full uniform, broke into a pounding run in column.
Their objective was the Lower Capital Garrison.
"All units, advance! We've got no time!"
"Waaaaah!"
The Royal Army officer who had introduced himself as Seo Jae-pil drew his sword with a flourish and led from the front. The column roared in answer and began pouring through the watch.
Through that clamor, off toward Donhwamun, the commander heard the distant crack of gunfire.
It was going to be a long, loud night. That much was certain.