The Gate of Judgment (3)
Among the massed Bobusang of Kimnyangjang, a few sharp-eyed ones felt a chill crawl up their backs.
The dirt of a market lane, trampled flat by the endless coming and going of people, is usually packed hard. But Taesu drove his mulmijang into the ground in one clean motion, as if the earth beneath him were nothing but tidal mud.
Of course, even so, his opponents were elite Joseon soldiers.
They did not panic. Fear was, after all, a rather advanced mental activity.
A sentry with a booze-glazed stare came swaggering up, his eyes half-lidded.
"What the hell are you yapping about, you peddler bastard?"
This was the middle of the market. Even people who weren’t Bobusang stared blankly at the Derringer pistols they had bought earlier, one or two of those many so-called peddler bastards among them.
But Joseon soldiers had no concept of restraint, nor any sense at all of where their limits were.
The sentry kicked the gatepost.
The result was exactly what happened when you kicked a tree sunk deep into the ground. He clutched his foot and hopped around in agony, and thanks to the people who instantly understood what had just happened, two or three more pairs of leather shoes were sold on the spot.
The sentry panted and growled, "The government’s authority has already reached here, so what are merchants’ laws supposed to be? The world’s gone to the dogs, and now even heretics and market-runners are looking down on the officials!"
As words went, he wasn’t wrong by Joseon standards.
In particular, it was true enough that the world was in decline, and that the impotent monarch was being looked down on these days.
But being right does not mean you can say anything you please.
However much the Bobusang claimed their own little self-governing order, having that denied to their faces made them instantly and thoroughly irritable.
And among the peddlers, Park Axe represented all of that irritation with special fervor.
Taesu’s uppercut landed squarely on the sentry’s jaw.
Out in this remote place, nowhere near Seoul, the sound rang out like the Dongdaemun bell being struck.
* * *
The sentry bit straight down through the philtrum into his own lower jaw and collapsed without even managing a stagger.
The soldiers behind him were appalled.
"Has this no-class bastard lost his mind?"
"So he really is a rebel, then, just like they said the heretics were!"
In unison, they drew their weapons.
Not swords.
The Joseon military’s hwando usually had no blade at all, only a hilt. Steel was heavy and expensive.
To activate one of those budget lightsabers, you’d need at least the Training Bureau. Not some provincial constable. The Force was not with them.
Still, stormtroopers have their own weapons too.
For catching and beating people, clubs and whips were more than enough to flaunt their authority.
The army, being a clan of cost-efficiency, did not use weapons beyond what was strictly necessary. After all, the real enemy of this country’s army was, and always had been, its own people.
The lead constable cracked his whip with the swagger only a Joseon stormtrooper could muster.
People often say the tip of a whip breaks the sound barrier. If it hits you, flesh falls away and blood vessels die.
That is, of course, what happens when it’s wielded by someone at the level of Jesus of Nazareth.
When Taesu swept his axe sideways, the leather whip snapped in two with ridiculous ease.
It was the kind of thing that would have required impossible sharpness and dagger-like speed, even as a feat for an axe. The constable’s face turned sober with a sudden hangover of fear, and he stumbled back.
But that reaction was too slow.
Dirt kicked up beneath Taesu’s feet.
He hadn’t sprinted from the ground; to an untrained eye, it looked more like a long-range jab, almost as if he had thrown the attack.
Crack! The constable who had been holding the whip had his nose smashed flat and sent flying backward.
From Taesu’s point of view, he had done the man a favor by not using the axe, since his opponent had come armed with a nonlethal weapon. Unfortunately, the constable wasn’t in a position to feel grateful.
People were stunned. It was fast, yes, but no matter how you looked at it, it didn’t seem like an attack that could drop a man in one blow.
The scientifically minded market folk quickly formed a hypothesis. They focused on the red gloves Taesu wore.
"That blood-red glove on his hand must be something special."
"How much is that? Wasn’t it on the stall just now?"
"It wasn’t that red, but I think there were other gloves."
The constables also came to a slightly different realization about the importance of equipment.
"Someone go get a matchlock!"
"A mat, a matchlock? Where was that again?"
"Do we even have powder?"
"Looks like the quartermaster sold it off and swapped it for dirt piles…"
A few clever constables tried to run off at once. The important thing wasn’t whether the guns were in storage; it was whether that bastard was here, right in front of them, or not.
But even that didn’t go their way.
The Kimnyangjang merchants had decided to help the county soldiers they knew by sight.
"If it’s guns you want, we’ve got them right here, so there’s no need to go far."
The people of Kimnyangjang surrounded the soldiers with Derringers in their hands.
Those who couldn’t afford even that had, as a compromise, cheaper Western scissors or hard brass bowls from Anseong’s specialty workshops.
The tears of emotion in Yi Seong-nyeo’s eyes and the panic of the constables were about equal.
"W-what do you think you’re doing?"
The market people paused to think about what they were doing.
The practical thought that if they got on Park Axe’s good side, they might strike favorable business with the source of all kinds of goods came only afterward, as a bonus.
Soon enough, they realized the real reason.
Given the chance, every one of them wanted to smash Kim Seong-hwa and the county constables who had been in league with him.
* * *
Apparently worried that the Joseon constables might not know modern Western inventions very well, one or two of the merchants fired their Derringers on the spot.
"Hiiik!"
The soldiers clutched their heads and crouched low.
Foreign military instructors from the West had been imported in great numbers under King Gojong, so this sort of thing was unnecessary. Once the time came, they’d learn to hit the ground by instinct.
The constables poked their heads out between their arms and shouted, "You traitorous bastards, defying the government!"
The power word traitor made the crowd hesitate for a moment.
Then a middle-aged man with a limping gait stepped forward. He had a noticeable hobble, but he still looked like someone with many years of Bobusang experience behind him.
Taesu had no way of knowing that he was Yi Chun-hwa, the former head of the Chaeim Guild in Kimnyangjang, who had been NTR’d by Kim Seong-hwa like the wife stolen by Cao Cao from Jangje, then crippled and driven out.
But the people of Kimnyangjang knew him.
Yi Chun-hwa took the Derringer someone had kindly handed him and aimed it at the prostrate officers.
"What’s the difference between officials who don’t protect the people and a band of thieves? When people appealed against Kim Seong-hwa’s wickedness, did even one of you step forward?"
That was the signal. Shouts burst out from all over the market.
"Exactly! They all took money and kept their mouths shut!"
"And was staying quiet enough? Did we forget how they threw the whistleblowers in jail and crippled them in the square?"
"Our Dobansu has raised the gate, so get lost! This is our affair!"
With every shout, it felt like two or three more people joined in. The constables trembled, terrified that they were about to be surrounded and wiped out.
But salvation came for the constables too.
The hyeongbang, who had now finished his business, came running up, hurriedly pulling on his trousers.
Hopping along on one leg for part of the way, the hyeongbang was breathless from the strain and shouted, "You heretics and common riffraff dare conspire to threaten men who bear the king’s orders? Do you truly mean to start a riot, you mob? Must every one of your heads be hung at the city gate?"
Sure enough, for a hyeongbang, his tongue was dazzling.
The crowd faltered.
Taesu did not.
"Who said we were heretics?"
The hyeongbang went briefly dumbfounded at the insolent tone of a lowly peddler, something he had never expected to hear.
"Y-you bastard… someone has already filed a report!"
"A report from that Kim Seong-hwa bastard, right? So you’re going to drag people off just because you heard one man’s side?"
"How dare a worthless worm talk back like that? Everything will be revealed in the county hall's investigation!"
Yes, it would be revealed.
Revealed in whichever direction the investigator wanted.
Life is like that everywhere.
Only, Joseon suited Taesu just a little better than Korea had.
He lifted his axe more comfortably than he ever had in his old home.
The hyeongbang, with the sharp survival instincts of a bureaucratic lackey, sensed it at once.
If he counted to three, he would die.
One.
Two.
Then someone from behind Taesu tackled him with furious force.
"Stop! Stand down!"
It was Cha Un-hong.
* * *
However sudden the tackle, someone of Cha Un-hong’s weight could not possibly have brought Taesu down.
Taesu let out a sigh and lowered the axe. Then he set Cha Un-hong, who was hanging from his waist, upright again.
"Why?"
"Have you lost your mind, trying to butcher a government clerk?"
An ajeon was not a lowly rank at all, unlike what historical dramas would have you believe.
By nature, they were local powerholders. The descendants of those very people from proto-ancient times who had ordered their neighbors around to stack dolmens.
The most successful of them had gone to the center, while the rest had remained in the provinces, but they all belonged to the same so-called samhan-gapjok.
Joseon sent magistrates all over the country, but that only meant the state had inserted itself one step into the chain of extraction through its magistrates. From the people’s point of view, the ruler had not changed.
Even the famous Dasan Jeong Yak-yong concluded there was no neat, proper method for dealing with the original evil local officials.
So he wrote down useful little tips like, "If you want to beat a petty official to death, transfer him to the provincial or military headquarters where the legal limit on flogging is higher," or "Assign someone to watch the official so he doesn’t notice the beating coming."
If Joseon had truly controlled the provinces through magistrates, such underhanded methods would not have been necessary.
Just as the king could not entirely suppress the great central aristocratic clans, the local magistrates could not entirely dominate the ajeon either.
It was a kind of feudal nobility, though with a meaning different from Europe’s.
The hyeongbang tried to recover his noble bearing.
"Ahem! At least one of you still has some sense left. Hurry up and throw away those grotesque things you’re holding! And you lot—stop lying around in such an ugly heap and get up already!"
The constables might have felt wronged. After all, their boss was belittling the very effort they had spent suffering while he was having his fun with the brothel madam.
But they were slaves. A sense of grievance or rebellion is something the weak selectively and voluntarily erase in the presence of the strong.
The constables, shakily getting to their feet, smiled with thoughts not of injustice but of the torture methods they would use on Taesu and his companions.
But Cha Un-hong was no slave. She said coldly, "I told you to stop because there was no need for the guildmaster’s hands to get stained with filthy blood."
"W-what?"
"Look behind you."
The hyeongbang did as she said.
Behind him was a newly arrived group of Bobusang who were clearly not from this Kimnyangjang branch.
They were the people from the Wonhongju Six Armies Commercial Corps, who had naturally passed through the Yongin branch on the return route to Chungcheong Province.
As Yi In-son looked over the scene, Yi Seong-nyeo, who had recognized him and run over, whispered in his ear.
After grasping the situation, Yi In-son drew in his courage.
Fortunately for him, he had achievements impressive enough to make even the hyeongbang, a "high-ranking person," hesitate.
He barked loudly, as if making sure everyone could hear, "Are you trying to slap the heretic label on Dobansu Park Axe, the man who drove off the heretics in Ganghwado and even earned the king’s praise, just so you can squeeze something out of him? If so, even if blood has to be spilled, our caravan brothers won’t hesitate!"
Local officials who could counterfeit the royal seal as casually as a fake stamp at the train station did not truly fear the king’s name.
But the sheer, primal violence of numbers that even the entire resources of the Yongin county office could not withstand was enough to make those officials afraid.
This was the very principle by which the hyeongbang and the others had always feasted.
Fists came closer than law.
Seen through the historical lens, a magistrate does not die even if a peasant uprising breaks out.
But a petty official certainly does. Burned alive, beaten to death, torn apart—there are many ways.
What good is it if the ringleaders are all beheaded afterward?
The hyeongbang suddenly developed a strong desire to uphold law and principle.
* * *
After hearing the report from the hyeongbang and the "market folk who respectfully escorted the hyeongbang to the county office," Magistrate Jo Bok-rim made his decision.
A magistrate, unlike a petty official, respects the king. So Jo Bok-rim paid attention to the important royal matter of the Military Merit of the Byeong-o Western Disturbance.
The heretic talk is obviously a false accusation.
Then the matter was over.
Needless to say, Jo Gwan-seop could not bring up anything about the future king, Yi Won-beom, or Catholicism.
Magistrate Jo Bok-rim could not understand why he should throw away his life to avenge the petty grudge of Jo Gwan-seop’s subordinates getting beaten up. Doing this much for a half-born like that was already excessive.
If any commotion broke out, the Joseon system dictated that a magistrate would be dismissed without regard for the circumstances. He had disturbed the "peace."
And being restored quickly after dismissal was only something for high-ranking central aristocrats like his own father, Jo Deuk-rim. For a post like this, tied to appointment by patronage, there were too many candidates; once you fell, there was no telling when, or if, you would rise again.
As a magistrate, Jo Bok-rim judged generously.
"There is no need for compensation or punishment, and no subordinate official or relative to instruct in this matter. You shall govern yourselves. The hubbub of the low-born who do not even know proper etiquette—bringing petty scuffles like this before the county hall—has become intolerable. All of you, get out at once."
His tone sounded like expulsion, but in the end he had confirmed their official extraterritorial rights.
The hyeongbang, who had been all about law and principle, also fell silent.
The fact that the magistrate had not mentioned heretics at all meant, quite simply, that if they kept playing games with a VIP concern, they were asking to be killed.
That was what "local control in Joseon" meant, in the textbook sense.
All crimes committed against the people were tolerated. Only those who crossed the center were to be caught. That was the magistrate’s job.
The Bobusang bowed to the wise magistrate and withdrew.
Then they returned to the market where Taesu was waiting—Cha Un-hong had not brought him along, fearing he might swing his axe in front of the magistrate.
The gate still stood.
One criminal had yet to be dealt with.
By now the hyeongbang and the constables, having cut him loose, had vanished without a trace.
Also, Kim Seong-hwa, who had awakened after being doused by a storm of filthy water, had lost all color from his face.
* * *
Yi Chun-hwa, the former head of the Kimnyangjang Chaeim Guild, advised them.
"Since the magistrate has spoken so generously, we must not embarrass him. Let us avoid killing anyone."
That was generous?
Still, I hadn’t planned to kill him anyway.
Kim Seong-hwa had plenty of crimes, but the biggest one was sexual assault. And for that, Bobusang had a traditional punishment.
I had mentioned it briefly when I was chatting with Cha Un-hong on the day I first met her.
But honestly, I didn’t want to be the one to do it.
I was about to hand my axe to Yi Seong-nyeo, but then I heard the Mountain Spirit howl that using it for that kind of thing might diminish its divine power, so I just swapped it for Kim Seong-hwa’s dagger instead.
Even Yi Seong-nyeo, once she took the dagger, seemed not to want to touch the thing. Fair enough. Want to buy these work gloves?
"Since I wasn’t the one who was violated, I’ll let the people who have deeper resentment finish him off."
Yi Seong-nyeo gathered the Bobusang who had actually suffered at the hands of Kim Seong-hwa and his gang.
Fortunately, they seemed more interested in revenge than hygiene. Yi Chun-hwa especially.
* * *
Even after Kim Seong-hwa was bundled up in a straw mat and dumped aside, to the point that even the doctor had given up on him, no one pulled out the Gate of Judgment Taesu had erected.
Not only did no one pull it out, more people gathered around it. It was starting to look like a gate built by the state itself.
Yi In-son was pleased too.
They had taken the orthodox route southward in the opposite direction from Taesu, passing through Songpa Market.
They had been worried they might not be able to unload all their cargo in Kimnyangjang, the last stop before Chungcheong Province, but now not only merchants but also townspeople who had heard the rumor in the meantime were pouring out in droves. For a trader, it was an excellent environment.
Yi In-son praised Taesu with idle cheer.
"Traveling with Dobansu, blessings come rolling in on their own. This trip can end right here."
But Taesu did not think so.
Once the atmosphere had ripened sufficiently, he began the real work.
This was the linkage he had originally intended: taking over this Yongin branch.
The first step in unifying the Bobusang nationwide.
If you thought of it as a state, it was the cornerstone of forming a government.
Taesu stood before the gate he had built. Even the people who had been busy trading looked up at him, as if they had all agreed in advance.