Chapter Fourteen: Yeon Gaesomun

Yuan Taizao was besieged in Liaodong City, and news of this had already reached Pyongyang. By this time, the royal court of Goguryeo had erupted into chaos. Yuan Taizao had held power in the court for many years; most of the ministers were his protégés, and they were eager to show their loyalty. One after another, they submitted petitions to King Yingyang, urging him to send troops. King Yingyang initially wished to use the opportunity to eliminate this overbearing elder statesman, but he feared provoking popular outrage and dared not speak openly. So, he shifted the responsibility entirely onto Yuan Taizao’s own nominee and acting Daedaero—his own son, Yuan Gaesomun. King Yingyang understood all too well that Yuan Gaesomun harbored ambitions to supplant his father. If Yuan Taizao could be removed by Yuan Gaesomun’s hand, it would be an ideal outcome. This way, not only would Yuan Taizao, who monopolized the court, be eliminated, but his faction would be driven to seek revenge against Yuan Gaesomun instead, killing two birds with one stone and allowing the royal family to reclaim governance. Thus, all matters were handed over to Yuan Gaesomun, and the king ceased to intervene.

Power is a beguiling poison: the deeper one sinks, the harder it is to escape. The only reason a man does not covet power is that he has yet to taste its privileges.

Yuan Gaesomun was no exception. After assuming his father’s duties as Daedaero, he increasingly realized that one man could determine the fate of countless others, and he became deeply intoxicated by it. When he received his father’s plea for help, and with ministers coming one after another to petition for military action, he could not help but feel annoyed. After all, he was now the Daedaero—the one to whom their loyalty should belong. Though angry, Yuan Gaesomun dared not refuse to rescue his own father. Goguryeo had long been influenced by the Central Plains dynasties, and Confucian ethics ran deep. The principle of a father as the pillar for his son could not be ignored; how could a son abandon his father in peril?

A rescue was imperative, but there seemed to be nowhere near enough troops around Pyongyang. According to his father’s report, the Sui army besieging Liaodong City numbered no fewer than three hundred thousand. If too few troops were sent, not only would his father remain trapped, but he himself might be lost as well. Yet if they waited for the armies from all regions to gather, it would take another two days, and with fewer than twenty thousand defenders, Liaodong City, besieged by such a vast enemy force, might not hold out half a month. If the provisions he was preparing were all burned, it would take even longer to transport new supplies from elsewhere, costing more precious days. At this thought, Yuan Gaesomun’s lips curled into a smile, and he ordered all regional armies to assemble at Pyongyang, preparing for a full-scale rescue of the Daedaero.

Given Yuan Taizao’s longstanding authority, no army dared delay. As soon as the order arrived, not a single garrison dared to feign compliance but disobey in secret; all troops set out immediately for Pyongyang. On the night the order was issued, three large granaries in Pyongyang inexplicably caught fire. Though the flames were quickly extinguished, over seventy percent of the provisions were destroyed. Furious, Yuan Gaesomun executed several night-watch officials in Pyongyang and ordered that half the grain from every region be sent to Pyongyang for military use. This caused a delay of two or three days before Yuan Gaesomun himself led the army, self-styling as Grand Marshal of the Expedition. He also took with him most of the ministers loyal to King Yingyang, leaving behind only his father’s confidants. Born into a family of power, Yuan Gaesomun was well-versed in political struggle. Since he had already considered using the Sui army to eliminate his father, he naturally guarded against King Yingyang using the Sui to remove him as well. By taking away those loyal to the king, he cut off one of the king’s arms; whatever schemes remained, they could cause no great storm.

When King Yingyang bid Yuan Gaesomun farewell as he set out with the army, he said before all the assembled ministers, “Beloved subject, you must rescue the Daedaero; I await your good news here.” On the surface, these words seemed to encourage Yuan Gaesomun to fight bravely, but in truth, they were a message to his confidants: you must bring Yuan Taizao back, or none of us will meet a good end.

The seasoned Yuan Taizao understood well that regardless of his own power, he could never replace the royal Gao clan, and so the best course was to stay close and share in their fortunes. But the young Yuan Gaesomun thought differently—he had greater ambitions, sought greater power, and had enough time to quell unrest in the state after ascending. Weighing all the gains and losses, the best choice was to do everything possible to save Yuan Taizao.

At that moment, Yuan Taizao had just led his men in a day of fierce defense, repelling the Sui army’s first large-scale assault.

As Yuan Gaesomun’s army advanced toward the Yalu River, he suddenly noticed a cavalryman in one squad who kept his head bowed, unlike the others who all rode proudly upright. Yuan Gaesomun, displeased by the damage to military discipline, spurred his horse forward and barked, “Hey, you there, the cavalryman with his head down, come here!”

The cavalryman hesitated, but obediently approached Yuan Gaesomun. “Raise your head,” Yuan Gaesomun commanded, waiting for compliance. When there was no response for a long while, he flicked his riding crop and knocked off the cavalryman’s helmet—then started in shock. A cascade of dark hair tumbled down, revealing a delicate and beautiful face.

Startled, Yuan Gaesomun realized the rider was none other than his sister, Yuan Gaezhen. “Why are you here?” he demanded.

“I want to help rescue Father, too!” Yuan Gaezhen replied stubbornly. “I sent people to your residence asking you to take me along, but you pretended not to know.”

“My dear sister, this is no game! This is the battlefield where life and death are decided—how could I bring you?” Yuan Gaesomun said anxiously. “Go back to Pyongyang at once!”

“I won’t!” Yuan Gaezhen retorted. “There’s no one to talk to in Pyongyang. Everyone I meet greets me with either fake smiles or obsequious bows, calling me ‘Miss’—it’s all meaningless.” She picked up her fallen helmet with her spear, brushed off the mud, replaced it on her head, and rode back to the ranks, ignoring him.

Yuan Gaesomun trembled with fury but could not lose his temper at his sister. His anger was reduced to a long sigh, trampled and scattered by the marching hooves.

Yuan Taizao, working through the night, ordered his secretary to draft and post notices throughout the city, recruiting eight thousand laborers to help repair Liaodong’s defenses. He also ordered some houses dismantled for defensive materials and spread rumors of Sui brutality, warning that the city would be massacred if it fell. Through such measures, he managed to steady morale and unite the people against the Sui.

Yuwen Shu, having failed to take the city the previous day and suffering heavy losses—particularly from the giant crossbows atop the walls that destroyed many siege towers—was incensed. Overnight, he had ten more siege crossbows brought from the old city of Liaodong, which arrived at the front lines by morning and were being assembled.

At this time, Yang Guang visited the front camp to hear Yuwen Shu’s report. Upon learning that the Goguryeo defenders had destroyed more than ten siege towers with their giant crossbows, he frowned and questioned their origin. Yuwen Shu replied, “Your Majesty, according to the accounts of ten centurions who participated in the assault, the Goguryeo crossbows appear to be those left behind by us during the withdrawal in the Kaihuang era.”

After seeing off the emperor, Yuwen Shu ordered the troops to prepare for another assault. Amid the thunder of drums, a vanguard of over a thousand stormed forward, using siege towers and scaling ladders to attack Liaodong City again. The defenders responded with a rain of arrows, just as before. Watching the troops deploy, Yuwen Shu said to a deputy, “Begin. If we can breach a section today, we can take the city sooner.”

The deputy departed, leading his sappers to dig tunnels in hopes of breaking into the city. Within the dark, narrow tunnels, the air grew stale and torches flickered. An old sapper whispered, “General, the air is bad—let’s bore a vent to the surface.” The deputy nodded, and men were sent to do so. Soon, the stuffiness dissipated and the torches burned brighter, so they continued digging toward Liaodong.

“Daedaero, the listening jar team under the wall has detected the Sui digging tunnels into the city,” a Goguryeo soldier breathlessly reported to Yuan Taizao.

The listening jar technique was a city defense learned from the Central Plains: a clay jar buried under the wall, covered with thin animal skin, with a man listening for digging sounds within a certain range—meant to detect enemy sappers.

“Prepare large amounts of firewood and combustibles. As soon as they break through, light fires at the tunnel mouth and burn them out,” Yuan Taizao ordered. He had already received a pigeon post from his son Yuan Gaesomun, who was marching with the nation’s forces toward the Yalu River and would arrive at Liaodong in two or three days at the earliest, five at the latest.

Yuan Gaesomun’s army made a forced march to the Yalu, commandeered local boats, and began crossing. Reluctant though he was, he could not object in front of his officers. Thus, with the combined urging of Yuan Taizao’s and King Yingyang’s confidants, the crossing began.

Xue Ju and Li Wenyuan happened to be patrolling the area with only a few dozen men; most of their cavalry rested, concealed in a nearby forest. Seeing more than a hundred civilian boats ferrying troops across, but only about two thousand so far landed, they exchanged a smile—what battle could be more tempting? They sent a carrier pigeon to the Liaodong headquarters to report that Goguryeo reinforcements were crossing the Yalu, then returned to the woods.

When Li Wenyuan rode back with his men, the second wave of boats was just leaving the far shore, and the two thousand on this side had posted no sentries, resting by the riverbank, some building a makeshift dock with gathered timber. Riding his red steed and clad in white armor, Li Wenyuan led his five hundred cavalry in a bold charge against the fresh arrivals.

The exhausted Goguryeo soldiers, having just crossed the river after days of forced march, were caught off guard by the thunder of approaching horsemen. Looking up, they saw a wave of cavalry bearing down upon them. Before they could react, the Sui riders were upon them, and in the first clash, heads flew and bodies fell, trampled into pulp by the onrushing horses.

From the eastern bank, Yuan Gaesomun watched in horror, powerless to help, as the Sui cavalry slaughtered the Goguryeo troops on the western shore. Following their victory, Xue Ju, as was his custom, had the heads of the fallen piled into a grisly mound before Yuan Gaesomun’s eyes.

His hand gripping the reins, Yuan Gaesomun’s veins bulged in fury, but he could do nothing against the Sui on the far shore. He could not even make out the opposing general, only the great Sui banner. Turning to the ministers who had insisted on the direct crossing, he snapped, “Is this what you wanted? To send our brave Goguryeo men to die in vain? I warned you not to underestimate the Sui, and now we can’t even reclaim our dead—only watch as the enemy casts their bodies into the river!”

He then ordered, “Take these Sui spies who delayed our plans and behead them by the river, to appease the souls of our fallen!”

At that moment, Yuan Gaezhen rode forward and called out, “Wait!” Turning to her brother, she pleaded, “Brother, you can’t do this. In a time of national crisis, they only acted out of desperation to rescue Father. What crime have they committed? As long as I am here, I won’t let you commit such injustice.”

“Fine, fine, fine!” Yuan Gaesomun replied through gritted teeth. He drew out a command baton and tossed it to his sister. “No army moves without provisions. The grain supply is key to this campaign and must not be lost. I order you to take charge of the supply lines and set out immediately.”

Seeing her brother so dismissive, Yuan Gaezhen glanced at the ashen-faced ministers, sighed in frustration, and said bitterly, “I accept.” As she turned away, she heard the sound of heads dropping into the water behind her.

Yuan Gaezhen knew well her brother’s ambitions, but was powerless to stop him. All she could do was try her utmost to save their father, trusting that he would find a way to resolve matters. She gathered her troops, left the main force, and hurried back toward Pyongyang to coordinate with the grain convoys.

Yuan Gaesomun, watching the busy Sui on the opposite bank, was secretly delighted—the outward display of anger was only for show. He had been seeking every excuse to delay, and now, at last, had a perfect reason. Just as he thought this, someone beside him asked, “Commander, what should we do next?”

Feigning deep thought, Yuan Gaesomun replied, “We’ll wait for nightfall, then force the crossing of the Yalu.”