Audience with the Grand Chieftain
Tung Jugang stepped forward.
"Merchants come to see the Dudu elder."
At his words, the gate guards nodded. One of them went inside to pass along the news. The other, though his suspicion had softened somewhat, still kept his spearpoint angled toward them.
Hong-wi studied it closely. Like most Jurchen villages, the man's spear was not tipped with iron but with a sharply honed stone point.
So even here, iron is not something they can use freely.
Just then, the guard who had gone inside returned. Some fifty armed young men of the village filed out behind him. Judging by their clothing, they were hardly wealthy, but neither did they show any sign of starvation—they seemed to live with a certain ease. Faced with strangers, they showed more curiosity than wariness or hostility.
Even with the world beyond growing more chaotic by the day, these people are remarkably guileless. This chieftain Onyan Isiha must govern his village well.
While Hong-wi was thinking this, a guard called out.
"The Great Chieftain bids you enter. Leave your weapons here."
"Very well."
When Hong-wi nodded, Tung Jugang dismounted first. The rest of the party followed, and the sentries silently took the reins and led the horses off toward the fields.
They passed through the gate of the fortress. Inside the palisade, the curious eyes of the village women and children poured over the strangers from every side. Hong-wi gave them a light smile, and the innocent children smiled back. No matter how he looked at it, there was no hostility to be found anywhere.
He turned his gaze to the villagers' homes. Unlike the crude huts seen in other Jurchen settlements, the houses here looked properly like houses. In some ways they resembled the log cabins of the remote Korean mountains, plastered thickly with mud to keep out the cold. Wooden fences enclosed each dwelling, with timber stacked at the entrances—far too low to stop any bandit worth the name. As he would learn later, that was said to be a marker indicating whether the master of the house was home or away. In the yards, chickens and dogs routinely pottered about.
Every household keeping chickens and dogs—these people don't live so poorly after all.
They made their way toward the center of the village, onlookers gathering in ever greater numbers. There stood a well, and beside it a large house. The women drawing water stared at Hong-wi's party with wide, wondering eyes, then murmured among themselves.
Hong-wi looked up at the house and thought, That must be the residence of the Great Chieftain Onyan Isiha.
The house was not particularly more ornate than the other villagers' homes, but in sheer size it surpassed even the residence of Tumut-Chahar, the chieftain of Sahalcha, and its yard was broad and open. Yet its fence was no different from the others—low, almost nonexistent.
Tung Jugang gestured. "This way."
Hong-wi's party entered the house. It consisted of one large chamber. In the center sat a leather-cushioned chair, and in it an old man, surrounded by elders of similar age seated in a ring.
Ah—the one in the center must be the chieftain, and those around him elders or close retainers.
Hong-wi regarded the old man in silence. The braided hair and beard—shaved clean in the Jurchen custom except for a dozen or so strands above the lip—had gone entirely white, marking his years. But his back was ramrod straight and his bearing imposing; he must have been quite a figure in his youth. He wore a marten-fur robe, and apart from a silver belt he carried no ornament at all—a picture of utter simplicity.
Yet what struck Hong-wi most were the man's two eyes. In that gaze, forever seemingly lost in thought, dwelt a wisdom whose depths could not be fathomed.
This old man was none other than the Great Chieftain, Onyan Isiha.
Tung Jugang stepped forward first, paid his respects, and spoke in the Jurchen tongue. Onyan Isiha observed Hong-wi's party with an impassive gaze and gave a nod.
Tung Jugang whispered to Hong-wi, "Pay your respects to the elder."
Hong-wi bowed first. It was not the ritual of the present-day Jurchens, but a deliberate adherence to the old ceremony of the Jin dynasty: both hands tucked into one's sleeves, the body bending backward at the waist, the left knee lowered, both elbows raised—four bows in all. He had heard that Onyan Isiha clung to the customs of the old Jin imperial house, and so had deliberately used the ancient form of greeting.
The elders around Onyan Isiha let out sounds of astonishment and admiration.
"Hoh."
Hong-wi rose slowly, pressing his right knee down with both hands. At a glance, Onyan Isiha seemed to show a faint flicker of satisfaction on his face, though Hong-wi could not be certain. Presently the old man spoke in a voice of low resonance.
"Be at ease and sit. You come from Joseon, I hear."
Onyan Isiha had spoken in Jurchen. He was not ignorant of the Korean tongue, but his choice not to use it now was quite deliberate.
Hong-wi answered in fluent Jurchen. "Yes, that is so. I am grateful for the Great Chieftain's kindness in receiving us."
"Ho-o..."
Upon realizing how fluent Hong-wi's Jurchen was, the light in Onyan Isiha's eyes softened noticeably. The demeanor of the other elders eased considerably as well.
Stroking his beard, Onyan Isiha said, "You speak our tongue well for a Joseon man. Joseon folk have come calling more than once in my day, but never yet has one of them addressed us in our own language first. More than that—where did you learn such an old form of greeting?"
"This is Jurchen land, and I have come as a guest. How could I fail to learn the Jurchen tongue before speaking it?"
At Hong-wi's answer, satisfaction was plain on the faces of the elders.
"Moreover, I have long heard the elder's honored name. As a guest, I wished to show proper courtesy, and so made a point of learning it."
Onyan Isiha laughed softly at that. "Heh heh. So you have heard my name. And what exactly did you hear?"
"That you are a descendant of the old imperial house of the Great Jin, and that your wisdom and grandeur are renowned throughout all Jianzhou. Whenever the tribes face some great difficulty, they say, it is always to the elder chieftain's wisdom that they turn."
"Ha. Empty fame, nothing more."
Onyan Isiha chuckled quietly. "For now, I would hear your story. Yes—what do they call you?"
"I am called Temusi-i."
"Temusi-i. What manner of circumstances led you to abandon Joseon and drift all the way here?"
Hong-wi laid out the history he had prepared in advance. His family had originally been rooted in Hamgil Province, but they had been caught up in the Gyeyu Coup and could not escape the extermination of their entire clan. Only through the help of those who had been close to his grandfather's generation had he barely slipped free with his life... In truth, examined closely, it rested to a fair degree on fact.
The Jurchens were, by nature, a people who delighted in listening to stories. And Hong-wi's tale seemed to strike them deeply. At the passage where the treacherous faction following Suyang ambushed and slaughtered the men of righteous conviction, they clenched their fists and groaned in lament; at the news that even the servants and dependents had been implicated and put to death, they wept openly.
By the time Hong-wi finished, the eyes with which the elders regarded him had grown markedly warmer.
"A truly heartbreaking tale... How can an uncle covet his nephew's throne and turn all who stand against him into a field of weeds? But that is the nature of power. Even among our own, there are those who tear each other apart over a chieftain's seat."
Onyan Isiha sighed. "So your family too was caught up in it."
"We were."
"A terrible thing. If my ears do not deceive me, you would be that boy king who was driven out and made to yield the throne to his uncle. They say he, too, has vanished without a trace."
At those words, Ho-in flinched. Hong-wi showed nothing on the surface, but he felt it all the same—that remark seemed to pierce straight through his heart.
Even hidden deep in the Jurchen interior, they still heard news of Joseon itself?
Onyan Isiha fixed Hong-wi with a steady gaze. The air was not that of an interrogation, yet there was a power in that look for sifting truth from falsehood.
"I have heard such rumors. How is it that you know of them here?"
"Words have no feet, yet they travel a thousand li. I no longer have the strength to roam far in my old age—but so long as the heart remains, one is not entirely in the dark about the news from outside that drifts in here."
Onyan Isiha waved it off lightly. "To my eye, Master Temusi-i is no ordinary young gentleman of a good family. Your bearing says as much."
The conversation paused for a moment. It was Onyan Isiha, naturally, who broke the silence.
"Ah, yes—that Kim Jong-seo you say was caught up in this turmoil and killed. Would that be the same man who once served as Hamgil Province's regional commander?"
"It is. How did you know?"
"Among the Jurchens, when one speaks of the Tiger of Joseon, who could fail to know?"
Onyan Isiha smiled broadly. "He spent most of his days contesting the Udiye faction of Moryeonwi far to the east, but from time to time he came into our lands as well. Those days are still vivid before my eyes. Back then, my hair was black as ebony. I and Ashikusinu here were both dashing young men. He is two years older than I. Kushinu—do you remember?"
"How could I forget? That Kim Jong-seo was quite the remarkable specimen."
An aged warrior seated nearby responded to Onyan Isiha's words. His hair, too, like the Great Chieftain's, was thickly streaked with white. Soon the conversation drifted naturally into tales of the elders' youth, and from there into the stories of ancestors already fading even from memory. To Hong-wi's party, they might as well have been tales from the truly ancient past.
Listening to them, Hong-wi at last came to understand the life of the Jurchen people—a life apart from Joseon. As Joseon's king, he had received a certain measure of reports on Jurchen affairs, and had heard still more from Cha Gyeong-yeon. Now he came to know the things those accounts could never contain: the thoughts the Jurchens never revealed to outsiders, their secret pride in their ancestors.
They could not read or write, and precisely because of that, they had set their oral traditions to song, preserved through their singularly prodigious memory.
Naturally, some of their tales would have sat uneasily with Korean ears. The land of Hamgil Province, now part of Joseon, had originally been settled ground for the Jurchen people. Their songs told of how their forebears had stood against the terrifying armies of Yun Gwan, a general of the old Goryeo dynasty, and driven him back. They told of the brilliant chieftain Agolta, who built a great empire that made even Goryeo, Liao, and Song tremble.
The private histories known only to the Jurchens were difficult to intrude upon, but these tales Hong-wi knew relatively well. Thanks to that, he was able to join in bit by bit.
Onyan Isiha stroked his beard and smiled. "Hoh. You are remarkably learned. Where did you hear all this?"
"My late grandfather would unfold tales of old and new for us. Our family, too, once served in the army and traveled far and wide, they say."
Hong-wi improvised smoothly. Indeed, considering the history of Taejo Yi Seong-gye, it was not entirely a lie.
Onyan Isiha regarded him steadily for a moment, then laughed quietly. "Heh heh. Then you might well have crossed blades with this Ashikusinu here. These days his hair has gone white as mine, but in his prime this man was a formidable warrior. Time is a cruel thing indeed—that a fighter who once led the charge over the Amnok River and overtop the forts Joseon had newly raised should now be so utterly white-haired."
"That is all ancient history, elder."
Hong-wi felt something strange stir in him. The forts they spoke of were surely the Four Garrisons and Six Forts that King Sejong had established. So fierce had been the Jurchen incursions of that era that even Sejong was said to have seriously weighed abandoning the newly opened territory. He was now sharing a table with a man who had been among those who invaded Joseon in those days.
"Well, these old men have had our fun, but it is hardly entertainment for the young. Time we returned to the matter at hand. So—what brings you here?"
Onyan Isiha turned to Hong-wi with a slight smile. He was quietly pleased that Hong-wi, unlike other merchants, did not hasten to lay out his business at once but instead lent his ears patiently to the elders' talk.
"Yes. As you are no doubt aware, I am a man of trade. And so I have come to present the Great Chieftain with various goods that may prove of use."
"Ho? A man of trade who would hand over goods for nothing?"
Onyan Isiha asked in an offhand manner. "Goods obtained for free must be examined closely, lest they carry hidden trouble."
"Would I dare offer the Great Chieftain anything that brought trouble upon him?"
Hong-wi smiled calmly. "But I could hardly speak a falsehood to the elder chieftain. Yes—it is not, of course, for nothing. Yet there is no other scheme behind it. If I am to trade with the many chieftains of Jianzhou in the days to come, it is only proper that I first pay my respects to the most revered and trusted among them. That is why I have come calling with gifts of courtesy."
At those words, the elders broke into smiles.
"It is true that merchants chase profit in all things, but to do great business, one must know when to forgo the petty accounting."
"Hoh. A rare young man these days—one who can see the larger picture."
Onyan Isiha nodded slowly. "Then let us have a look at these modest gifts."
Hong-wi had Iharachi bring out the gifts. Splendid silks and an array of ornaments—every piece befitting the dignity of a king. The elders murmured among themselves. Such things were hard to come by in the Jurchen lands.
"These were prepared especially for the Great Chieftain."
Hong-wi presented a lacquered wooden case. Onyan Isiha regarded it with curious eyes. When Hong-wi opened it, inside lay a single magnificent sword, exquisitely ornamented. Similar to the one presented to Tumut-Chahar of Sahalcha, but finer still, and sharper.
Hong-wi passed the sword to Onyan Isiha.
"My, oh my."
Onyan Isiha turned the blade this way and that in his hands. Even at a glance, the edge was keenly honed, the grip sat snugly in the palm, and the balance was superb. The scabbard of ebony wood was delicately worked as well.
When he set the sword back into the case, a rare light of joy flickered for an instant across Onyan Isiha's face—the delight a once-renowned warrior might show. The next moment, his expression returned to perfect blankness.