Two Empty Water Jugs Beside a Single Truce Document

A single sheet of truce paper lay between two empty water jugs.

Yi Gyeom turned the jugs upside down and smelled the bottoms. The palace guard's jug held the smell of dry earth, the dispatch army's jug held the smell of old oil. Even drawing from the same well, if one jug turned foul the other side could claim poison had been mixed in.

The gruel left in the gate's ration cauldron was thinner than usual. The additional loss and payment for the twelve wet sacks would not be settled until tomorrow's noon recount. What had been filled in today was only the minimum shortfall. Even with shared water access, the grain share did not increase.

The truce document said only "forty eight hours of shared water access." It said nothing about who drew first, who inspected the jugs, or where the night shift would keep their rifles.

Order hated blank spaces. Men holding rifles hated them more.

"If you sign this document as written, we fight again at the first water jug." Yi Gyeom said.

The palace guard officer's face hardened.

"The core of this is that we agreed to stop the attack for two days."

The dispatch army officer across from him answered.

"Water access is a subordinate condition."

"Soldiers die over subordinate conditions."

The corporal Park Sangho, standing below the gate, cut in. He did not step up among the officers, staying where he stood in front of his own company.

"Two jugs. Two inspectors. Six men per round. One meal's length per shift."

The palace guard officer turned toward him.

"Sangho, officers handle the negotiation."

"Soldiers carry the water."

Park Sangho gave a precise salute before continuing.

"That order, how many men does it take to carry out?"

Yi Gyeom did not fold the truce document.

"I will take the gate soldiers' conditions first."

"That sets a precedent that shakes the chain of command." the guard officer said.

"Does the chain of command carry the empty jugs?"

Yi Gyeom held the paper out to Park Sangho. Park Sangho did not write his own opinion first. He went back inside the gate and called men from every post. Fourteen guards came down, and from the dispatch army side twelve soldiers with an interpreter stood on the opposite side of the well.

The rifle muzzles pointed down, but no hand left a stock.

Park Sangho called out numbers.

"Post one. Water remaining."

"Half a jug."

"Time until shift change."

"Two meals' length."

"Wounded."

"Two who cannot walk."

He wrote down, post by post, the water remaining, the hours without sleep, who would carry the jugs, and who would move the wounded. Shoulders and boot counts came before lofty causes.

A dispatch army soldier spoke through the interpreter.

"The path to the well is longer from our side. On the same rotation we will fall behind on the way back."

A palace guard objected.

"There are more sick inside the fortress."

Park Sangho cut both off.

"Not headcount, step count. Measure how many steps it is from here to each post."

Four soldiers walked from the well to both sets of posts. The palace side was short but had stairs, the dispatch army side was flat ground but nearly twice as far. They filled the jugs full and walked the same path again. The time differed from what had been measured with empty jugs.

"Six men a round is too many." the dispatch army soldier said. "Two to carry the jug, two to cover, two to inspect, and the well's edge is already full."

"If the cover men hold rifles, this isn't a truce anymore." the guard said.

"If we leave the rifles behind, they'll be taken on the way back."

Park Sangho drew a line beside the truce document.

"Rifles are set outside the boundary line around the well. One man from each side guards them. Whoever draws water comes in empty handed."

"What if that one man turns his rifle on us?"

"The man from the other side watches him."

Yi Gyeom did not interject. If he had put forward his own clauses first, the soldiers would have simply agreed with the officers' wishes or stayed silent. He did not pick up his brush until Park Sangho had gathered the conditions from the ground.

The first trial water run began. Two guards and two dispatch army soldiers carried the jugs, and one inspector from each camp stood at the well. The jugs were emptied, sniffed, and rinsed once with clear water. The first rinse water was dumped not into the well's own drainage but into a sand pit on the far side.

Park Sangho drew ink lines at the same height on both jugs' mouths. If one jug was bigger, the water ration would differ even with the same number of trips. Since the dispatch army's jug was a finger joint deeper, they decided to fill to the smaller jug's line and leave the extra space in the larger jug empty. The empty space that looked like a loss was the price of preventing the first quarrel.

This was because water that had run off from the wet sacks had mixed into the existing drainage.

"Who inspects this water too?" the guard officer asked.

Park Sangho answered.

"Two inspectors check the color and smell, and if anything seems off, a sample goes to Yun Sunhwa's clinic."

"Does a physician decide the truce?"

"She decides what water is fit to drink."

The first jug went down into the well. The rope creaked as it rubbed against the wet stone. When the dispatch army soldier reached for it, the guard pulled back for a moment. Park Sangho grabbed the rope in the middle.

"Both of you pull together."

If only one side held it, it would look like they were taking it first. Both soldiers set their hands on the same rope. The pace slowed, but the jug came up.

The inspectors split the water into two wooden cups. They checked the smell and any floating matter, and each drank a mouthful first. It was not a procedure of trust, but one where both sides carried the same risk.

"No problem." the guard's inspector said.

The dispatch army's inspector did not agree right away. Only after holding the cup up to the sunlight did he hang his own marker stick on the jug's cord. Both markers had to be present before the jug could be carried across the boundary line.

The palace guard officer pressed.

"If the trial is over, let's sign."

Park Sangho shook his head.

"We need to see it through a shift change."

"At this pace the sun will set."

"They eat, then they move. If they stand watch without sleep, the rifles come out first on the second day."

He wrote down how long it took for the first water team to return. Empty jug inspection, rinsing, joint hauling, marking, return. Each round took longer than expected. At one meal's length per shift, not every post could receive water.

The soldiers changed the order of water delivery. First the post with the least water, then the post with wounded who could not walk, then the farthest post. Rank or officers' quarters did not come first.

The guard officer protested.

"If the command post's water runs out, orders stop."

Park Sangho said.

"An empty cauldron cannot read rank insignia. The command post is third."

Yi Gyeom transferred that order into the negotiation document. Left to his own judgment, he would have placed the command post first. He had thought that the chain of command had to stay alive for the truce itself to hold. But if the soldiers collapsed from dehydration, there would be no bodies left to protect the chain of command.

"It's one or the other." Yi Gyeom said to the officers. "Either we buy time by accepting the imperfect order the soldiers set, or we keep a perfect command order and fight again today."

The dispatch army officer asked.

"Is this same order applied to our side too?"

"The same standard. Water remaining, wounded, distance."

"Who verifies the figures?"

"The two water teams do not enter each other's posts. Each side submits its own roster, and the other side cross checks only by the arrival time of the jugs."

It was not a complete verification. Either camp could inflate its wounded count. Letting them inspect each other's posts directly would carry more risk of infiltration than of truce. Yi Gyeom did not hide the weakness, and wrote it into the document. "Figures inside each post are each camp's own responsibility. Only arrival times and jug counts are mutually confirmed."

Park Sangho added another condition.

"A rotating soldier does not carry water at the same post twice in a row."

"Why?"

"If he collapses carrying water, there's no one left to hold a rifle."

"What if there aren't enough people?"

"The officer's runner and the ration corporal fill in."

He wrote his own name in the first line of substitutes. He did not place the burden on the soldiers alone.

The dispatch army's corporal also had the interpreter write his own name down. Two lines of field responsibility appeared that had not existed in the officers' agreement.

Yi Gyeom did not recopy the truce document from scratch. Beneath the original phrase "shared water access," he added the conditions the soldiers had set, and left a column for dissenting signatures at every place he amended. The guard officer objected to excluding the command post from priority, and the dispatch army officer objected to keeping post figures undisclosed. The truce began despite the objections, but what remained was who would raise which problem again in two days.

They turned over two hourglasses measuring forty eight hours at the same moment. One was placed inside the gate, one at the dispatch army's camp. Whether the sand amounts matched had been weighed and sealed on an empty scale by two inspectors before the start.

Yi Gyeom looked at the copy of the six hundred sack order lying beside the truce document. The three seals stamped on the same order were shaped differently. One had pressed deep into the paper, one was shallow only at the edges, and the third had a use time recorded in a separate log that did not match. He transferred only the visible shape, pressure, and recorded time into the comparison sheet.

"That was a chance to demand full surrender." the guard officer said in a low voice.

"Do you have the military strength to hold what you'd take?"

"We could charge."

"Could you win?"

The officer did not answer.

"Between a reckless charge and full surrender, we bought water and two days." Yi Gyeom said.

The first water team returned. The soldiers did not cheer. They counted the jugs, checked that both markers were attached, and woke the next team. Park Sangho wrote down the names of the four who had returned alive and one soldier whose shoulder had been rubbed raw.

There was no gunfire during the truce's first hour. Three wounded were carried to the joint boundary line, and stretcher bearers from Yun Sunhwa's side received them. The dispatch army also sent out two wounded along the same path.

At that moment a messenger arrived from the telegraph bureau. It was a brief notice that Jang Munsu had received an order to investigate the northern line. He was trying to take the forged code copy and three envelopes with him.

"What are those envelopes?" Yi Gyeom asked.

The messenger had not opened the seals.

"I was only told they were for confirming the return of three seals. They're to be sent by three different routes."

Neither their contents nor their final destination were written down. Yi Gyeom looked again at the three seals stamped on the copy of the six hundred sack order. All he could confirm was that the same number of envelopes were headed north.

Outside the gate, three horses were made ready. Jang Munsu wrapped the forged code copy in oiled paper and did not load all three envelopes onto a single horse. One he kept on his own body, one went to the telegraph bureau's messenger, and one went to a trading house's relay rider.

The moment the second jug of the first joint water run came up, Jang Munsu's horse set off on the northern road.

Not a single handful of sand in the truce hourglasses had run out yet, and none of the three envelopes' seals had been opened.