The Siege of Shengjing (3)
They call it the calm before the storm, do they not? Before the battle, Shengjing and the surrounding prospect of Mount Geumseok looked, at a glance, bleak and forbidding.
"But it's the finest hour there is for settling the mind before a fight."
Colonel Armand had established his observation post on a hill that commanded the fortress, the palisades ringing it, and the fields beyond — a landscape of trenches, ditches, and churned mud — and there he composed himself. The battlefield on which he would win honor and distinction today was a fine one. The earth still damp from a brief drizzle that had swept through at dawn. The ground around the fortress, gouged and torn by hastily dug trenches and ditches, laying bare its rust-red flesh. The weather was cool. There was no fear the men would tire easily before the assault.
There was only one thing that distracted him and his French artillerymen with questions and curiosity, keeping them from giving the coming fight their full attention: the palisades the Qing had raised. Some of the deeper trenches and ditches stood half-flooded and sucking with mud, but what lent the scene its most sinister air was the riot of crude talismans plastered like wallpaper across the wooden stockade that encircled the walls.
Through his telescope, behind that barrier of charms, Qing soldiers stared out at the invaders with gaunt faces twisted by terror and dread.
Stared?
Or perhaps they were straining to compose some groveling expression, begging for mercy.
"Spineless, groveling Chinks."
Colonel Armand was a French artillery officer who had won brilliant distinction on the Indochina Peninsula. Even if two short years were not enough to take the measure of every Qing subject, and even if he had never so much as glanced at a treatise on anthropology, one fact remained unchanged: these Qing soldiers would be as cowardly and craven in the north as they had been in the south.
Of course, the Korean troops who would face them in those trenches did not appear to share that view.
Turning his gaze from the fortress and the Qing soldiers — a sight that had grown almost tedious in its repetition — the colonel looked the other way, toward ranks of blue and gray uniforms drawn up with crisp, orderly precision. He let out a short hum.
"Hmm."
By contrast, the Korean army, dressing its battalions and regiments before the engagement, possessed a morale that put the Qing utterly to shame. Like the armies of Europe or the United States, they carried the colors of each regiment and battalion, and beside them flew the beautiful patterned national flag of their Republic — the Taegeukgi — alongside the red banner that stood for the people and the revolution. Which meant each Korean battalion had no fewer than three standard-bearers.
The sight of it was rather like—
"Like looking at our own revolutionary colors."
Yes. Like their predecessors of the French Revolution, and of Napoleon's revolutionary wars.
Beneath those red banners, officers charged with a peculiar duty — men the Koreans called hundo, Political Officers — were stirring the soldiers' spirits. The method was, as a rule, oratory. Some officers read speeches they had written themselves and polished the night before; the majority recited an address from the Tongnyeong, circulated as an official dispatch by the revolutionary government. Beside them, drummers with instruments brought from France, America, and Japan, as well as traditional Korean drums strapped across their bellies, drove the mood to a climax at the close of each speech. The Political Officers — or political commissars, as some called them — would then raise a great shout to lift morale still higher, and nod to the commanders of each battalion and regiment.
Watching that entire sequence from above the batteries deployed just below the high ground that commanded Shengjing and all its surroundings, Colonel Armand regarded it as the visual incarnation of the gulf between civilization and barbarism. With a look of satisfaction, hands clasped behind his back, he addressed his staff.
"Gentlemen!"
The enemy was antiquated, feeble, and slothful. Their allies, by contrast, had wrung the blood and flesh and tears from their people and thrown everything into this day. As revolutionary elders, then — as comrades who shared a great ideal — they could not possibly disappoint them.
"Report when each battery is ready!"
At the order, the flag-bearers on each hill and at each battery called out in turn.
"Target of bombardment: Shengjing!"
"Nine batteries, three rounds per field gun!"
"Deployment complete, sir!"
At the same time, artillery officers burst from each battery and reported in ringing voices.
"Batteries ready to fire!"
They took one step forward from their guns, finished their reports, and quietly looked up at the colonel on the observation post. A brief silence passed among them. Through his telescope the colonel read the signal flags of a Korean army signalman below, and drew a deep breath.
"Hah—"
Fresh air filled his lungs to the brim. The cool air, washed by the dawn dew, sharpened the colonel's mind, and his thoughts grew clearer still. With this feeling, he was certain: today the pride of Europe, the French artillery, would make something extraordinary happen.
"Good."
Preparations complete, the colonel lowered his gaze and found the battery deployed directly before him. There they stood at attention behind their gun carriages — his reliable French gunners, waiting for the order. Meeting the eyes of his senior officer among them, Colonel Armand drew the sword at his hip and commanded:
"Target fixed on Shengjing! All batteries, load!"
"Load!"
At the order the batteries grew briefly busy. A soldier seating the primer and stepping back; another ramming the next shell home and wiping down the barrel last of all. In some ten seconds the work was done, and the colonel's voice carried through each battery officer.
"Deflection, northeast, 2252! East-west, 3112!"
"Elevation, 341! Hold!"
"Target fixed!"
Everything was ready. And Colonel Armand's sword cut slowly through the empty air.
"FIRE!!!"
The black devil opened its maw. Flashes of crimson light began to pour down upon the streets of Shengjing.
The curtain rises.
An eardrum-splitting shriek, a climbing screeeee of light. A point of brilliance that soared high and grew brighter still as it fell. At last, beyond, it struck with a chaotic boom around the fortress and trenches where the Qing were garrisoned, and made the surroundings brighter still.
Hong Beom-do took in that succession of beautiful — or perhaps seductive — sights with both eyes, his mouth hanging open, and muttered.
"...Whoa. I'd only ever heard about it."
It was magnificent. More than magnificent. In his unit there were soldiers who, before the ports were opened, in the days when the Daewongun still ruled, had directed the artillery duel against two lots of Westerners on Ganghwa Island, and who would sometimes launch into Back in my day... He had heard those stories. Today he finally put in order the notions he had long nurtured, in imagination alone, about the men from the West. And on the other hand, he felt a deep gratitude that those men were on his side — and for the existence of His Excellency the Tongnyeong, whose silver tongue had brought them to stand with the Republic.
Screeeeee!!!
"Whoa!?"
When the shell landed, a thunderous roar that shook heaven and earth set the ground beneath his feet to trembling. Not as a figure of speech. The earth truly shook.
"Heh."
The whole harmony of it was so uncanny, and so strange to put into words, that Hong Beom-do of the 3rd Regiment's Armored Infantry — and his comrades and senior officers besides — were plainly feeling the same thing. Then came a barrage that split the ears like a woman's scream, yet for all that slender voice it came down heavy in the hips: an enormous explosion as it struck the earth, delivering a tremendous shock even to those watching from a considerable distance.
Just what was happening over there? And why were the Qing bastards just sitting there, taking every last one of those hideous shells like idiots?
"This is hard on the ears."
Beside him, Nam Man-ri, the company commander, seemed to have developed a ringing in his ears. He shook his head left and right, distrusting both the constant whine in his own skull and eyes gone dull from the sudden brightness.
"Ah, I think I've got it too."
"Fine show, but they could show a little consideration for the folks watching."
"Consideration, my ass. You start worrying about consideration and you'll catch a knife in the gut in that maze of holes."
"I was just sayin'."
"Talk all the shit you want."
A few other men who had been watching Nam Man-ri copied his motions. Or they ran their mouths with nonsense, doing their best to shake off the tension that had gathered before the fight. It was a meaningless exercise, perhaps, but these were officers who had more learning than the rest of them, so they would follow first and ask questions later — a fine attitude. Truly, they were Pyeongan men of thorough soldierly spirit.
Then the red banner and the regimental colors rose high before their eyes. Where before the standard-bearer had merely rested his flag against his arm, he now gripped it with both hands and planted the staff against his thigh. A moment later, thick voices punched through the din of the bombardment ahead and rang out with force. They were the Political Officers attached to each battalion and regiment.
Next their commander, Han Seong-geun of the 3rd Regiment, rode forward on a brown charger, drew a great sword, and roared.
Every gaze turned to him. So it begins. Receiving the full weight of those complicated looks, Han Seong-geun swung his sword without a trace of fear and shouted toward the fortress.
Everyone held their breath. They hid their fear. Beneath a greater cause.
Those last words kindled their courage. Han Seong-geun, the general of the 3rd Regiment to which Hong Beom-do belonged, was a truly fine man.
Advance! Advance! Advance!
Then, with the answering roar, the ranks began to ease forward. As Hong Beom-do swallowed a sound in his throat and followed the departing files with his eyes, his company commander Nam Man-ri also bellowed orders at his men.
"Forward! Forward!"
"Stay tight on the man in front!"
At that command Hong Beom-do bent his locked knees and drove a powerful step forward. At the same time, young officers and cadets educated in Japan, America, France, and Qing China roared in ringing voices to keep the intervals between the ranks and the battalions.
"Left foot! Left foot! Left foot!"
"Knees straight! Keep your intervals!"
"Don't gawk around! Eyes front!"
"Look ahead! Ahead!"
If the earth had trembled a moment ago, now the earth itself was moving. Hong Beom-do was certain that was how it would look to the Frenchman directing the batteries on that high ground, and to the senior generals watching with him.
Hard going.
The infantrymen filling his vision had their rifles slung against their shoulders, and in one hand each man clutched a small sandbag against his side. The bags were barely the size of a man's head. But if you remembered they were packed full of earth and sand, you had to remember the weight was anything but light — that it was, in fact, punishing. Hong Beom-do, unlike those ordinary infantry, wore heavy armor and was meant to charge bravely into the heart of the enemy line as an armored infantryman; he had been spared that particular duty, and counted himself fortunate for it as he walked on in silence.
They advanced a long while, and advanced again, and then a sound like something cutting the wind brushed the ears of Hong Beom-do and his comrades. No — they heard it. That was unmistakably a whistle.
Fweeeee!
"They're putting up a fight."
Nam Man-ri, advancing just ahead of Hong Beom-do, swallowed a sound in his throat. Hong Beom-do's unit, a relatively mid-column formation, still could not see a finger's breadth of what was happening at the very front, screened as they were by a wall of men. But if, with a host of nearly twenty thousand surging toward the fortress at once and that terrifying bombardment crashing down, rifle fire could still be heard now and then — then the Qing counterattack from those pits dug before the walls was apparently more than anyone had imagined.
So Hong Beom-do, a little taller than the rest, was just rising on his toes to take stock of the situation when, from ahead of his unit that had been advancing in grim silence, madmen of grotesque appearance came bursting out.
Yes — raving madmen.
"Kieeeeeek!!!"
"Uwaaah, uwaaagh!"
They had gone mad, striking soldiers aside as they fled, tripping, sprawling. Madmen who tangled in one another's feet, or who shut their own eyes as they ran and went down.
"What the hell is that...?"
Every one of them foamed at the mouth, or stared with eyes so wide the orbs seemed ready to pop from their sockets, flailing arms and legs as they bolted blindly back past the column.
"Kyaaaaah!!!"
"Ueegh!"
Every last one of those madmen had hair standing wild, clothes torn so that filthy skin showed through, and between the rents a great deal of some red fluid — whose, no one could say — was smeared thick. Their faces were so caked in soot they might have been dusted with ash, the black flaking and drifting as they ran. In the midst of those blackened faces, only their eyes remained white — clear, and utterly unfocused. The sight struck sixteen-year-old Hong Beom-do with a profound shock.
What had those men seen, to be so consumed by terror that they lost their reason?
Those tangled thoughts piled upon one another as, on a battlefield where bombardment and screams and rifle fire wove themselves into a hideous concert, a new order reached Hong Beom-do's ears.
Now it was Hong Beom-do's turn. His turn.