The Falcon and the Shadow
Let's see what Hong-wi can do.
Suyang had adopted a quietly watchful, almost amused attitude. Unbeknownst to most, he was surprisingly well-versed in diplomacy — from early on he had exchanged envoys with the Ming court.
Under normal circumstances, the Ministry of Rites would have reported to Hong-wi beforehand, coaching him on how to respond before any diplomatic ceremony took place. But today's audience was happening right on the hunting grounds, leaving the Rites officials no opportunity to walk him through the proper protocol step by step. Would the young, inexperienced Hong-wi stumble on this diplomatic stage? If he did, doubt about the boy's competence would begin to seep through the ranks of his own ministers.
"⋯⋯So, if I may speak plainly, Your Majesty — if you would command the governors of Hamgil Province to ease, ever so slightly, the tribute we deliver, and to expand the trade of goods such as rice and iron, then our kin would sing Your Majesty's praises in song, and our dignity as those who serve the Suhang would likewise stand tall."
Dongsongnocheopmoka circled around it, but his request was plain enough — reduce the tribute. It would please the Yain people, and at the same time raise the prestige of the chieftains who had forced such a concession out of Joseon.
Hong-wi nodded.
"I well know that my great-grandfather first took root in Hamgil Province, and that his ties with your ancestors ran deep. Since you serve me with such devotion, how could I, who inherits the will of the kings before me, be remiss in carrying our friendship across ten thousand generations?"
It was a ceremonial answer, and one that struck Suyang — and every Rites official watching — as perfectly composed diplomacy.
The chieftains bowed their heads.
"If you cry out your hardships, how could I refuse to lighten your burdens? But Moryeonwi holds countless tribes, and I cannot afford to neglect my relations with them all. So it shall be — I will discuss your requests favorably with the Ministry of Rites. As for the tribute, first of all, I shall see that your burden is eased without delay."
The chieftains nodded, ears hanging on his every word.
"As for goods like rice and iron — Hamgil Province is no land of plenty itself, so the governors shall decide as their reports permit. Whatever may come, I wish to deepen our bonds of friendship all the more. I ask only that, when you return home, you carry word of our goodwill to the other chieftains."
Oh?
Suyang was quietly surprised. Hong-wi made no rash promises; he granted what could be granted and neatly deflected the rest. And the chieftains seemed to accept his words without the slightest displeasure.
When the talk concluded, the chieftains rubbed their hands together with evident satisfaction. At a flick of Dongsongnocheopmoka's eyes, a young Yain brought out a bottle.
"With your forgiveness, Your Majesty, we would offer you our liquor."
A stir ran through the gathered company. Envoy or no, the man was a mere chieftain, and the other party was a king. Nothing malicious showed in the chieftain's bearing, but it was a breach of decorum all the same — enough that even Suyang's brow creased faintly. It was not Hong-wi's dignity at stake but the dignity of the King of Joseon itself.
A lowly barbarian chieftain, and he dares⋯⋯.
And yet it was liquor offered in goodwill. Among the northern peoples, the Jurchens included, the gesture of offering drink carried great weight. True, the same held in Joseon, but refusing was out of the question.
Every eye turned to Hong-wi. He nodded and answered.
"Bai i sama-i."
"Ohoh!"
At those words, the Jurchen chieftains' eyes went round with astonishment.
"Your Majesty⋯⋯ you understand our tongue!"
"I learned a little," Hong-wi replied.
Before receiving the chieftains, he had visited the Sayeokwon — the Bureau of Interpreters — and memorized a few phrases of Jurchen. A mere handful of words, yet they proved unexpectedly effective at a moment like this.
Suyang, forgetting his own position entirely, marveled at the boy's finesse.
I took him for a mere child⋯⋯ but I must not drag this out too long.
In the meantime, Hong-wi had called for his eunuchs to bring cups. Dongsongnocheopmoka poured the liquor himself. A sour, faintly fishy smell rose strong from it — not the usual grain-fermented drink, but mayuju, liquor made from mare's milk. Before offering the cup to Hong-wi, he bowed low.
"I drink to the Great King's long health."
Hong-wi received it with easy grace, and they exchanged cups.
"Someday, Great King, when you come visit our lands, we shall welcome you with all the honors due a precious guest."
"That day will come," Hong-wi said, smiling.
Nangbal-ahan added his voice.
"In our lands, even now, many revere the Tae Sang Tae Wang — the great-grandfather of your great-grandfather's line."
"Oh? Is that so?"
Hong-wi had of course heard the tales — how Taejo Yi Seong-gye had once made his name alongside the Jurchens of Hamgil Province. But he had not known that Taejo's majesty reached even the Yain across the Tumen River.
"Indeed it is. The people still set his deeds to song, even today."
Nangbal-ahan wiped his beard and went on.
"And seeing the bearing of the young Great King — it is in nothing different from the Tae Sang Tae Wang of the old men's songs. Today, it is as though we look upon Tae Sang Wang himself once more."
Hong-wi only smiled without a word. Taejo Yi Seong-gye had been dead for over fifty years; neither Dongsongnocheopmoka nor Nangbal-ahan could possibly have seen him alive. In the end, it was flattery, plain and common.
And yet for Hong-wi, sunk in one worry after another since the Gyeyu Coup, the words rang somehow hollow — and somehow, in some corner of his heart, comforting all the same.
Could I, of all people, ever touch the majesty of my ancestors?
Suyang, for his part, found Nangbal-ahan's flattery unaccountably grating. The stated reason for today's hunt was to elevate Hong-wi's standing — but obviously that was not why he had come. And beyond that, the old man's fawning itself nagged at him.
Suyang was fairly broad-shouldered and tall, but he carried a single flaw: a sparse beard, which left his presence falling short of the imposing dignity his elder brother, the late King Munjong, had worn so naturally. His father Sejong aside, the founding kings Taejo Yi Seong-gye and Taejong Yi Bang-won, and all his sons besides, had carried the air of heroes. Hong-wi was still young, but his frame was solid, and the first dark shade was creeping into his upper lip — a face that would one day match his father's.
These small things already gnawed quietly at Suyang, and so the old chieftain's flattery — that Hong-wi was the very image of Taejo Yi Seong-gye — stuck in his throat all the more. He cleared his throat with a dry cough.
"Come, the winter days are short. Let us hunt."
The company agreed, and Suyang, thoroughly soured, stroked his horsewhip with an irritated hand. Right Minister of Royal Secretariat Han Myeong-hoe, quick as ever to read the mood, sidled up to him.
"Something the matter?"
"Hmph," Suyang spat.
"Do not be swept away, Your Highness, by the idle prattle of witless barbarians. Those men will sing another tune entirely by tomorrow."
"I know that," Suyang snapped.
He did know it. Such men would flutter and flatter before a king, of course they would. And yet some corner of his heart would not settle. It had once been said among all the brothers — if any one of them embodied the majesty of Taejo the Great, it was unquestionably the eldest, Munjong. The man had been dead for years, and still Suyang could not deny it.
Suddenly the food in his mouth tasted bitter. Years had passed since his brother's death, and he had still failed to shake off his shadow.
How long must this go on? I overturned all of Joseon with these two fists — and still I cannot crawl out from under my brother's shadow?
Suyang groaned inwardly. His grandfather, Taejong, had once raised a rebellion as Prince Jeongan and taken the throne. But judged by circumstance and odds of success, those times had been far kinder — had Suyang not pulled off his coup in far worse conditions, with every chance of failure? Then why, today of all days, was this moldy old inferiority raising its head? Because a few stupid barbarian chieftains had babbled that his nephew — his elder brother's son, that Hong-wi — carried the majesty of Taejo the Great? He was shaken by that?
Absurd, he told himself, again and again. But the mood would not lift.
"Prepare the falcons!"
The shout came from Eom Ja-chi, the Senior Palace Eunuch who had now served three kings, from Sejong onward. His voice was the soft warmth of a eunuch, layered with the settled gravity of a long-serving one. Eom Ja-chi also held the post of Jang-eung Hwan-gwan, the royal falconer charged with the palace's hunting birds. Old as he was — and castrated besides — his archery was respectable, and in his prime he had possessed real strength of arm.
A sleek Haedongcheong falcon perched above the falconer's deerskin glove. Slender and beautifully tapered, the bird swept its keen, clever eyes across the terrain in every direction.
"Hoye! Hoye!"
In the distance came the clamor of the beaters, driving the game before them. Then, with a thunderous burst of wings, a pheasant cock of resplendent, iridescent color exploded upward into the sky — and in the same instant the falcon beat its wings with tremendous force and soared to meet it, a streaking shooting star against the blue.
"Take it!"
The falcon, shrunk to a speck in the vast sky, did not pounce at once. It seemed only to drift at its leisure through the open heavens — and Hong-wi watched, deeply moved.
Ah — to fly so freely through that endless blue, unburdened by anything, rising above it all⋯⋯!
For a moment the falcon circled, tracking the fleeing pheasant's line of flight. Then it bent smoothly after the bird and dove at it nearly straight down. The pheasant, frantically fleeing the men who had flushed it skyward, finally sensed the hunter fixed upon it — but too late. However it twisted, it could not escape the talons falling on it like lightning from above. The iron grip clamped down on the cock's nape, and the two of them tumbled together into the wild grass below.
"Got it!"
The hunters swarmed to the spot, and a moment later a cheer went up. A hunter emerged from the grass, holding aloft for all to see the limp pheasant in his grip. The falcon, having surrendered its kill to the men, wheeled back into the sky and settled lightly on the falconer's outstretched hand, where he gave it an easy stroke.
"Magnificent," said Suyang, genuinely impressed. He had not come to enjoy the hunt itself, but he was by nature a man of hearty appetites, and hunting was among them. His hands were itching. He glanced back at Hong-wi.
"Have you been practicing your archery for the Daesaerye, Your Majesty?"
The Daesaerye was the great archery rite occasionally held together with the ministers. The royal house of Joseon traced its line to Taejo Yi Seong-gye, himself renowned as a master of the bow — the finest archery bloodline in the country, one might say — and so its kings had always taken a keen interest in the art. Archery was counted among the six arts of cultivation, alongside rites, music, charioteering, calligraphy, and mathematics, and even scholars practiced it from time to time.
"Not much, I confess. I am in mourning."
Hong-wi shook his head. A Confucian state though Joseon was, it kept a wary eye on archery degenerating into idle play that slighted one's studies — and even setting that aside, the bow was a poor look for a king in mourning.
Suyang gave a hearty laugh. "Heheh. Then let us see one shot."
Hong-wi drew a bow from the leather quiver. It was a gakgung, a horn bow shaped by the patient hands of a master craftsman, and he handled it with practiced ease.
"There — try that tree stump."
Suyang pointed to a tree some hundred paces off, bare and skeletal with every leaf dropped for winter. Without a word, Hong-wi leveled the bow. He drew the string with its nocked arrow to full draw, steadied his breath, and gathered all his senses onto the target. The distant trunk seemed to swell slowly larger before his eyes.
Then, unbidden, the memory of his late father rose in his mind — King Munjong's words to him at a Daesaerye, long ago.
When you loose an arrow, you must never lose your composure.
And at those very words, Hong-wi's forefinger trembled. The next instant, the string sang, the arrow flew — and slipped wide of the mark.
A smile curled at the corner of Suyang's mouth.
In the end, he is only a child.
He squared his shoulders. All that nonsense the barbarian chieftains had spouted earlier⋯⋯ hah! Carved in the image of Taejo the Great, were they? Nangbal-ahan, was it? One day he would give the old man a proper fright.
Lost in such thoughts, Suyang paid no heed as Hong-wi nocked a second arrow, then a third.
"Commander of the Royal Guard!"
"Yes? What is it?"
At the words of the Siwi Byeolgam, Suyang turned his head.
"The beaters will begin the drive shortly."
"Ah⋯⋯ yes. Attend His Majesty and let us be off."
Suyang looked back at Hong-wi, who was just lowering his bow.
"Shall we, Your Majesty?"
"Let us, Uncle."
Hong-wi turned, and the two rode off after the Siwi Byeolgam. Neither of them — least of all Suyang — noticed that three arrows stood planted dead center in the trunk of the very tree he had pointed out.
Well over an hour had passed since the falcon took the pheasant in the first hunt of the day, and the outing had yielded little else. The sun was already slanting low in the west, and worthwhile game remained stubbornly scarce.
"We need at least a boar or a deer to save face."
Pressed hard by Suyang, the Siwi Byeolgam and the armored guards drove the beaters mercilessly. The men, slogging back through the snow after raking the mountain from end to end, were bone-tired — but there was nothing to be done.
"Damn it all, we'll freeze solid out here in this snowfield."
"The beasts are all curled up in their dens napping on a day like this, I reckon. What fool of an animal would walk into a tiger's mouth over all this racket?"
The beaters grumbled, each in his own key. And small wonder — the king's progress had drawn not just the court officials but rank upon rank of soldiers spread across the slopes. No beast could fail to notice. Anything that dim-witted would have long since become a tiger's dinner.
As the hunt dragged on without result, the company drifted apart in small clusters, boredom settling over them. Hong-wi and Suyang had drawn apart with the Siwi Byeolgam and two soldiers, waiting for the beaters to turn up something suitable. And it was at the very moment when the crowd's interest had all but ebbed away that it happened.