Another interval between bursts. Little Foot Jiang shouted, ‘Hand grenades!’
The machine guns roared again, then fell silent. The Jiao-Gao soldiers hurled at least a dozen grenades over the dike. A mighty explosion was followed by shrieks and cries, and an arm wrapped in fluttering grey cloth sailed through the air. Granddad shouted, ‘It’s Detachment Leader Leng, that son of a bitch Pocky Leng!’
The Jiao-Gao soldiers lobbed another round of grenades. Shrapnel flew, the water in the river rippled, and a dozen columns of smoke rose from behind the dike. Seven or eight intrepid Jiao-Gao soldiers charged the dike, but they had barely reached the ridge when a burst of fire sent them scrambling back, dead and dying jumbled together, until there was no telling who was who.
‘Retreat!’ Little Foot Jiang ordered.
The Jiao-Gao soldiers lobbed another round of grenades, and at the sound of explosions, the survivors crawled out of the pile of dead and beat a hasty retreat northward, shooting as they ran. Little Foot Jiang, helped to his feet by two of his men, fell in behind them.
Sensing the danger in retreating, Granddad stayed where he was. He wanted to get out of there, but this wasn’t the time. Some of his Iron Society soldiers joined the retreat, and the others were beginning to get the same idea. ‘Don’t move,’ he said in a low voice.
Gunsmoke curled up from behind the dike, carrying with it the pitiful cries of wounded men. Then Granddad heard a familiar voice shout: ‘Fire! Machine guns, machine guns!’
It was Pocky Leng’s voice, all right, and Granddad’s lips curled into a grim smile.
Granddad, with Father beside him, joined the Iron Society. He shaved his forehead and knelt before the ancestor on his tiger mount. When he saw the mended spot where his bullet had made a hole, he smiled to himself. It was as though it had happened only yesterday. Father also had the front of his scalp shaved. The sight of the ebony razor in Black Eye’s hand chilled him, for he still had dim memories of the fight that had occurred more than ten years earlier. But Black Eye shaved his scalp without incident, then rubbed it with each of the freakish fetishes – the mule hoof, the monkey claw, and so on. The ceremony completed, Father’s body truly felt rigid, as though his flesh and blood had turned to iron.
Granddad was welcomed enthusiastically by the Iron Society soldiers, who, urged on by Five Troubles, staged a revolt, demanding that Black Eye acknowledge Granddad as his deputy.
Once the issue of second-in-command was resolved, Five Troubles then worked on their fighting spirit. He said that a thousand days of military training came to fruition in a single moment. Now that the Jap aggressors were wreaking havoc on the nation, he asked how long the men planned to practise their ‘iron’ skills without actually going out to kill the dwarf invaders. Most of the society soldiers were hot-blooded young men whose hatred of the Japanese was in the marrow of their bones, and the silver-tongued Five Troubles spoke like an orator, making them crave action on the battleield, to rage potent as an oil fire. Black Eye had no choice but to agree with him. Granddad took Five Troubles aside. ‘Are you sure your “iron” skills are sufficient to withstand bullets?’ Five Troubles just grinned slyly.
The Iron Society’s first battle was small, a brief skirmish with the Gao battalion, a unit of Zhang Zhuxi’s puppet regiment. The Iron Society soldiers, who were about to stage a raid on the Xia Family Inn blockhouses, met up with the Gao battalion as it was returning from a raid on grain stores. The two armies stopped and sized each other up. The Gao raiding party, made up of sixty or seventy men in apricot-coloured uniforms, was heavily armed. Canvas cartridge belts were slung across the men’s chests. Intermingled with the troops were dozens of donkeys and mules carrying sacks of grain. The black-clad Iron Society soldiers were armed only with spears, swords, and knives, except for a few dozen with pistols tucked in their belts.
‘What unit are you?’ a fat Gao-battalion officer asked from his horse.
Granddad reached into his belt and, as he drew his pistol, shouted, ‘The one that kills traitors!’ He fired.
The fat officer tumbled off his horse, his head a bloody gourd.
‘Amalai amalai amalai,’ the Iron Society soldiers chanted in unison as they launched a fearsome charge. Frightened donkeys and mules broke and ran. The panicky puppet soldiers tried to escape, but the slower ones were hacked to death by the Iron Society soldiers’ knives and swords. Those who managed to get away began coming to their senses when they’d run about the distance of an arrow’s flight. Quickly forming up ranks, they opened fire – pipa papa. But the undaunted Iron Society soldiers, having tasted blood, raised their chant and launched a ferocious charge.
‘Spread out!’ Granddad shouted. ‘Crouch!’
His shouts were drowned out by the sonorous chants of men charging in closed ranks, heads high, chests thrust forward.
The puppet soldiers fired a salvo of bullets, cutting down more then twenty Iron Society soldiers. Fresh blood sprayed the air as the shrill wails of wounded soldiers swirled around the feet of their surviving comrades.
The Iron Society soldiers were stunned. Another salvo, and more of them fell.
‘Spread out!’ Granddad yelled. ‘Flatten out!’
Now the puppet soldiers mounted a countercharge. Granddad rolled onto his side and jammed a clip into his pistol. Black Eye raised himself halfway up and bellowed, ‘Get up! Chant! Iron head iron arm iron wall iron barrier iron heart iron spleen iron sheet keep away bullets don’t dare approach iron ancestor riding tiger urgent edict amalai…’
A bullet whizzed over his head, and he hit the ground like a dog scrounging for shit.
With a sneer, Granddad grabbed the pistol out of Black Eye’s trembling hand and shouted, ‘Douguan!’
Father rolled over next to him. ‘Here I am, Dad!’
Granddad handed him Black Eye’s pistol. ‘Hold your breath, and don’t move. Don’t shoot till they’re closer.’
Then he shouted to his men, ‘If you’ve got a gun, get it ready. Don’t shoot till they’re almost on top of you!’
The puppet soldiers rushed boldly forward.
Fifty yards, forty yards, twenty, ten… Father could see their yellow teeth.
Granddad jumped to his feet, guns blazing right and left. Seven of eight puppet soldiers bowed deeply, all the way to the ground. Father and Five Troubles fired with the same degree of accuracy. The puppet soldiers turned tail and ran, offering up their backs as inviting targets. Finding his pistols inadequate for his purposes, Granddad picked up a rifle abandoned by a fleeing soldier and opened fire.
This minor skirmish established Granddad as the unchallenged leader of the Iron Society. The cruel, unnecessary deaths of so many of its soldiers had laid bare the folly of Black Eye’s sorcery. From then on they shunned the iron-body ceremony that had been forced upon them. Guns? Those were needed. Sorcery and magic couldn’t stop bullets.
Pretending to be recruits, Granddad and Father joined the Jiao-Gao regiment and kidnapped Little Foot Jiang in broad daylight. Next they joined the Leng detachment and kidnapped Pocky Leng.
The exchange of the two hostages for weapons and warhorses fortified Granddad’s leadership of the now-awesome Iron Society. Black Eye became superfluous, a man in the way. Five Troubles wanted to get rid of him, but Granddad always stopped him.
Following the kidnappings, the Iron Society became the most powerful force in all of Northeast Gaomi Township, while the prestige of the Jiao-Gao and Leng regiments was silenced once and for all. Peace having settled upon the land, Granddad’s thoughts turned to the grand funeral for Grandma. From then on it was a process of accumulating wealth by whatever means, including the appropriation of a coffin and the murder of anyone who got in the way; the glory of the Yu family spread like an oil fire. But Granddad forgot the simple dialectic that a bright sun darkens, a full moon wanes, a full cup overflows, and decay follows prosperity. Grandma’s grand funeral would be yet another of his great mistakes.