The Man Who Chose to Be the River
Teopseokburi accepted Hong-wi's and Ho-in's swords and handed them over.
"You've had a long journey today and must be tired—might we rest here a while before moving on?" Hong-wi asked.
"Stay as long as you please. If there's a spot soft enough to lie down on, well, that's a bed, isn't it? Come on in now. I'm called Mak-gae. I'm the one who keeps this place."
The moment Teopseokburi stepped aside from the doorway, the glow of burning pine splinters spilled out alongside a haze of smoke. Stepping inside, Hong-wi's party found that the building was one vast, open room. It was less a house than a barn—hay was heaped in one corner, and a great clay stove squatted at the other end. Ho-in pinched his nose and muttered under his breath.
"Good grief..."
He could hardly be blamed. A foul stench of sweat and stale urine rose up to greet them. And it wasn't only the smell—the din of drunken men brawling and cackling with one another was enough to rattle the senses.
Cha Gyeong-yeon, utterly unbothered, pushed his way through the drunkards and marched straight toward the back. Hong-wi and Ho-in followed in his wake.
"About that man Jang Hui-sun—" Ho-in had barely begun to speak when Cha Gyeong-yeon's feet stopped dead, and a satisfied exclamation burst from him.
"Ha!"
Where Hong-wi's party looked, there lay a man deep in his cups, sprawled atop a bed of straw husks with a piglet cradled in his arms, snoring away.
"That's him?" Ho-in asked. "The boatman whose name every soul in Manpo knows?"
"That's him."
"Looking like that, I doubt he could cross a brook, let alone the Amnok River..."
Cha Gyeong-yeon grinned, glanced around, and spied a water jar sitting nearby. He hefted it and dumped its contents straight over the sleeping man.
"Gah! Who in the blazes—"
Soaked to the bone in the dead of night, the man sprang upright spitting curses. The commitation sent the piglet bolting in fright, squealing, into the crowd of men—and the piglet's charge sent a fresh round of profanity erupting from the gamblers mid-game.
"Did I wake you?"
Squinting against the water dripping into his eyes, the man grumbled something unintelligible and glared at Cha Gyeong-yeon.
"Hmm. There's something familiar about that voice."
"You can't even place my voice?"
"Wait... Gyeong-yeon? Is that you?"
"Yes indeed—your little brother Cha Gyeong-yeon."
The man shook his head, sending water flying, and broke into a broad grin.
"Well, I'll be damned! How many years has it been? Where have you been all this time?"
"Here and there, seeing the world. But speaking of which—"
Cha Gyeong-yeon reached out a hand and helped the man raise himself to a sitting position.
"What on earth happened to you, Elder Brother Hui-sun?"
"Hmph."
Jang Hui-sun flashed a foolish, vacant smile and groped around for the liquor bottle lying beside him. But the bottle was long empty—not a drop came out. He stared down at it for a long moment, then hurled it away in irritation and flopped back onto the straw.
"Life's lost its flavor, and the booze has run dry. There's no joy left in this world, I tell you."
"Ha... Unbelievable. Just what happened to you, Elder Brother? Spell it out for me. How did the great Jang Hui-sun, the Seongnime himself, end up like this? And what about your men?"
"What do you think? Scattered to the winds."
"Scattered? What do you mean, scattered?"
In answer, Jang Hui-sun heaved a long, heavy sigh.
"It's a long story."
"We've come all this way just to see you, so what's a little listening?"
"To see me?"
For a while, Jang Hui-sun said nothing.
"Then let me ask first. On the way here, I heard that you'd gone under a man named Hwang Ga..."
"That's right."
At those words, Jang Hui-sun let out a low, bitter groan.
"This Jang Hui-sun has ended up serving another man."
"Is that the truth?"
"The truth and nothing but."
"...How did it come to that?"
"Greed got the better of me. You know of Man-ju, don't you?"
"Who in Jianzhou Guard doesn't know Lee Man-ju?"
"His son Go-nap-hap needed certain goods, so I agreed to get them for him."
"What kind of goods—"
"Rusted weapons the government had slated for scrapping. It seems Lee Go-nap-hap has been building up his own faction of late."
Cha Gyeong-yeon stared at him, eyes widening.
Supplying iron privately to the tribesmen was strictly forbidden—and anyone caught doing it faced execution without mercy. And if that iron happened to be weapons, well, there was nothing more to be said.
"You pulled a madman's stunt. Do you have a death wish?"
"I thought it was my one chance to make a fortune in a single stroke. So I emptied out everything I'd saved over the years, and even took out a loan from that Hwang Ga—trading away a share of my business for it. He said he wanted to open dealings with Man-ju's son himself."
"A loan, too... Elder Brother, you overreached."
"At first I figured there'd be no trouble. You know how it is—the military officers at Ganggye Prefecture, they're practically family to me and my brother. The underlings beneath them were nothing but drifters come north for their tour of duty; one round of drinks and they'd roll over easy as anything."
"That's how it always was."
"But then, damn it all—someone spat ashes into my finished meal. That new officer."
Cha Gyeong-yeon sighed.
"Would that be Song something-or-other, the new officer?"
"Oh... you'd heard about him too."
"Song Yu-bin, was it? I only know the name—nothing more."
"Then keep that name out of your mouth here. There's no one in this room who hasn't lost more to Song Yu-bin than I have. He's a... he's a proper beast of a man. He ruined everything, and I was lucky to escape with my life and the two stones I sit on. My crew went under Hwang Daein's banner instead. Truth be told, this whole place has all but become Hwang Daein's now."
"Hold on—the others, fine, but even you call him 'Hwang Daein'? Good grief, what has become of the great Jang Hui-sun of Manpo? If a man like you is bowing his head, then this Hwang Ga fellow must be worth quite a fortune indeed."
Jang Hui-sun nodded at Cha Gyeong-yeon's words.
"I went under Hwang Daein to keep bread on the table, and he surprised me by handing me the post of Dosagong."
"A boatman of your skill? Dosagong is only fitting."
Dosagong—the post of chief boatman, the one who commanded all the navigators, crews, and water routes of a smuggling outfit.
"In any case, I've thrown in with him, and I owe him besides. Having called him my patron, how could I not act accordingly?"
"Well, that's the kind of man you've always been. So Hwang Ga has all but swallowed Manpo whole?"
"You could say that. Song Yu-bin has nearly choked off the river routes entirely—how could the small operators possibly hold out against that?"
"Could you tell me more about this Hwang Ga—and about this officer, Song Yu-bin?"
It was Hong-wi who cut in. Jang Hui-sun squinted up at him.
"...And who might you be?"
"The gentleman I've brought with me. Truth is, we came looking for you because we need this gentleman ferried across the river."
"Then I owe you an apology. I'm bound to Hwang Daein now—I can't just launch a boat whenever I please, not like the old days. You'd have to get his permission for that."
Jang Hui-sun stretched out a long, lazy yawn.
"So. You wanted to hear my story?"
"And while you're at it, the story of Manpo as well, if you please."
"Well, if it earns my drinking money, I suppose I can talk."
"That part's no trouble at all... Will this do?"
Hong-wi held out a single jewel. Jang Hui-sun stared down at it with an air of is that all?—and then his eyes went round as saucers.
"That's far too much for a mere story! You're certain it's all right?"
Hong-wi only smiled.
For a smuggler, this Jang Hui-sun struck him as a surprisingly honest man.
"Keep it regardless. If the story's worth that much, I won't begrudge it."
"Well then... let me talk, then. Where shall I start? Mm—I'll begin with Hwang Daein."
And so Jang Hui-sun began the tale of Hwang Ga.
"Nobody knows Hwang Daein's real name. When the magistrate of Ganggye first asked him, he answered, 'I have no name—call me simply Hwang Ga,' and that was the end of it. His father was a junior officer stationed at Manpoguja, and his mother was a widow of the tribes, living in a village across the river in Hwangseongpyeong. How the two of them caught each other's eye, who can say—but the widow used to come to Manpoguja now and then to peddle small wares, so I suppose that's where it began. She fell pregnant with Hwang Daein and returned to her village. And so he lived among the tribesmen until he was ten years old."
"Hmm."
"So the tribal tongue and tribal customs came to him as naturally as breathing. The tribesmen surely gave him a name of their own, too, but he's never once told anyone what it was. Why... well, I doubt he'd have wanted to talk about it. It can't have been a happy memory."
"Why not?"
"Word is, the other children shunned him. Not that you could blame them—the tribesmen are a people who set great store by bloodlines, and half his blood was Joseon besides. A fatherless whelp, on top of it all. Then one day, one of the tribal boys who'd been tormenting him—what was it he said? Told him to go scurrying back to Joseon, apparently."
"Oh dear."
"So Hwang Daein beat the little brute to within an inch of his life. The trouble was, the boy he thrashed came from a family with real standing among the tribes. Hwang Daein could no longer stay, and so at the age of ten he bade his mother farewell and crossed the Amnok River. His life among the tribes, too, he set adrift on that flowing water."
Hong-wi found himself quietly overlaying Hwang Ga's life story with his own.
With what heart, he wondered, had a small, swarthy, quick-witted boy—a boy like that—crossed the Amnok River?
"And then what became of him?"
"Well, around that time, his father—that officer who'd raised a Great Wall of China over a tribal widow in his hot-blooded youth—was still serving at the Ganggye office. Hwang Daein went to find him, and whether it was a father's blood that stirred, or some scraps of guilt, who's to say—but the man arranged for him a post as a clerk under the magistrate of Ganggye."
Jang Hui-sun drained his bowl of liquor. Cha Gyeong-yeon refilled the empty bowl without a word.
"Much obliged. Now, where was I? Some five years on, from the senior clerks down to the runners and scribes, there wasn't a soul in the office who didn't dote on him. Even the deputy magistrate trusted him with his own affairs. And small wonder—Ganggye Prefecture is the backside of nowhere, isn't it? Nobody wants a post there. How many men can you find who know how to handle the paperwork? If you can so much as mumble through the Thousand Character Classic, you're treated like a lettered scholar. And the deputy magistrate was itching to serve out his term and shake the dust of that poor county from his boots... A sharp one like Hwang Daein couldn't help but catch his eye."
It made sense. When superiors took no interest in the work, it was only natural for a capable underling to seize hold of the machinery of the office itself. The deputy magistrate would depart when his term ended—but the clerk remained at his desk, year after year.
"So that's when Hwang Ga began lining his pockets, I take it. Deputy magistrate and garrison commander alike trusted him and dumped their work in his lap."
"Maybe so, maybe not—but I'd say it truly began after his father left Gangye. When the old man returned to his hometown, he asked Hwang Daein to come away with him. The son wasn't exactly planned for, but five years of hardship shared together counts for something, doesn't it?"
Faced with his father's offer, Hwang Ga—still barely past boyhood—answered his father just as clearly as he had once left his mother, or so the story goes.
"In ten years, I learned that the land of the tribes was not where I belonged. Now, after five more, I know that I will never fully belong in Joseon either."
To a man who belonged to neither Joseon nor the tribes, the borderlands themselves—neither one nor the other—were home, plain and simple.
His father, years worn down by duty on the frontier, quietly accepted his son's decision. By then, he had already passed on to Hwang Ga everything he had to give—his knowledge, his connections, all of it.
"By the time he was twenty, Hwang Daein had risen to a full clerkship, and not a soul raised an objection. For a man with half tribal blood, wasn't that a fair climb by then? There was no higher post to reach, after all."
But Hwang Ga had no intention of being satisfied with that.
From the moment he had, at ten years old, hurled himself at a boy bigger and older than him—a boy with powerful kin behind him—and put him in the dirt, he had been a natural-born pit dog. An inextinguishable fire smoldered in his eyes, always.
"They say he once said this to an old colleague of his father's."
Jang Hui-sun explained, then recited the words.
"I am like the Amnok River that flows between that side and this. Where I go from here, I intend to leave to the river."
The old colleague couldn't quite grasp what he meant. He only answered,
"With your talents, what couldn't you do?"
"The very next day, Hwang Daein submitted his resignation to the deputy magistrate. He was thirty years old at the time."
Hwang Ga, who had kicked away a secure post without a moment's hesitation, walked away with nearly twenty years of administrative skill honed on government rice, a web of connections inside the bureaucracy—and a considerable fortune besides.
"As you know, Manpoguja is one of the great trading posts between the tribes and Joseon. Whoever holds the actual workings of the place can line his pockets as he pleases—a gold mine, in a word."
"Surely if he skimmed long enough, the men above him would notice."
"He'd oiled every axle long before that. I mean, the deputy magistrate and the garrison commander—why not tend the spirits and eat the rice cakes too? In any case, that's when he threw the fortune he'd built into the river-smuggling trade on the Amnok."
Scarcely a year into the business, Hwang Ga had become a rising comet in the 'trade.' His competitors were, in name, illegal cross-border traders—but in truth little better than bandits, or else mere drunkards. Neither the skill nor the will to run an organized operation lived in any of them. Against a man who possessed not only mastery of the paperwork but connections straight into the Ganggye office, they never stood a chance.
In barely a year, Hwang Ga—his goatee now trimmed to a sharp point, lending his face an edge keener than ever—had seized the Manpo smuggling trade by the throat and begun to shake it.
"These days, Hwang Daein ranks among the three greatest traders on the whole frontier—along the Amnok, and even up the entire Tumen. And with that as his footing, he means to push his business deep into the interior of Jianzhou."
"A man of big dreams."
"That he is—a man of enormous nerve. And it was at exactly that moment his true rival appeared. The Tiger of Manpo himself—Song Yu-bin."
Song Yu-bin's family had made their living as Armored Guards of the Two Borders for as long as anyone could remember—a household martial to the marrow. When the Four Garrisons and Six Forts were first carved out in King Sejong's reign, Song Yu-bin's own father had campaigned there beneath the great Minister Kim Jong-seo—the Tiger Minister, Jeoljae, that white tiger of Mount Paektu.
Come of age, Song Yu-bin walked the officer's path as a matter of course, and before long he caught the eye of Yi Jing-ok, then risen to Provincial Commander. Over the years that followed, he won dazzling victories against the tribesmen under Yi Jing-ok's banner, climbing all the way to Magistrate of Jongseong.
The tribal chieftains feared Yi Jing-ok, calling him the Wild Boar—and they gnashed their teeth at Song Yu-bin, calling him the Boar's molar. In truth, "molar" was too kind a word; they might as well have called him the mallet, the hammer.
Around the time King Munjong first passed away, Song Yu-bin's wife fell gravely ill. She had been born in Ganggye and wished to lay her bones in her homeland, and so Song Yu-bin petitioned his superior, Yi Jing-ok, for leave.
"My wife is gravely ill. I beg the Commander for leave of absence."
It was the first such request he had ever made in his life—for personal reasons, at least—and it would be the last. Yi Jing-ok, though he grieved the necessity of it, granted the request without hesitation. And so Song Yu-bin came to Ganggye, and for the final two years of his wife's life he never once left her side.
It was in those years that the bloodwind began to blow, sweeping out from Hanyang until at last it reached even Hamgil Province.
Song Yu-bin would learn of the miserable death of the commander he had once served only long afterward. What he felt when the news of Yi Jing-ok's end reached him, only Song Yu-bin could say—but by the grace of heaven he had long since abandoned his official post, and so he escaped the "manhunt" that fell upon the remnants of Yi Jing-ok's men.
Even after his wife died, Song Yu-bin did not return to service.
They had had no children between them, so nothing bound him—he might have gone anywhere. Yet he never strayed far from the land where his memories of her lay buried.