Before the dawn fog had even lifted, the smell of ink that had not dried all night still lingered inside the main camp’s medical bureau.
Those marks remained for a long time.
Along the edges of the roster, names changed through the night had been written over. The crossed-out lines and the newly written lines blurred together in the same ink.
Beside the newly written names, small dots had been marked. They signified stretchers that had yet to be moved. Ruan counted those dots first.
It was the roster from the previous night.
Three wills.
Two entrusted rings.
Fourteen soldiers who had asked for their names to be called first if they returned.
And the final line.
Three stretchers damaged.
Ruan could not take his eyes off that line for a long while.
Beside him, Sera closed the lid of a water bucket and said,
“If you count the ones that need their straps replaced, there are only five in proper condition.”
“The evacuation teams?”
“They said they’d add more last night, but it’s still the same.”
Ruan did not close the roster.
The names written on the paper looked as if they had already been set upon a long road, though they had not yet even been wounded.
Karen, leaning against the doorway, asked,
“What do you see this time?”
“It’s not that I see it.”
Ruan pushed the paper toward her.
“At this rate, the evacuation will break down first.”
Karen was the sort to remember faces more than numbers, but from Ruan’s voice alone, she knew this was no ordinary matter.
“Call Bereun.”
A short while later, Bereun came in, looked once at the roster and once at Ruan’s face, then immediately frowned.
“Don’t tell me that’s the face of someone planning to storm into headquarters again.”
“We’re short on stretchers.”
“I know. That’s why they’re being repaired.”
“Repairs won’t be enough.”
Only then did Ruan raise his head for the first time.
“Today, they’ll spread wide.
“If the wounded come in all at once, even those who can walk won’t make it back.
“Those who can’t walk go without saying.”
Bereun clicked his tongue.
“When everyone else talks about spears and shields, you’re always talking about that.”
“Because people don’t die only at the tips of spears.”
Before he had even finished speaking, the tent flap was lifted.
One of Aijen’s staff officers showed his face.
“Medical Officer Ruan Hese.
“The commander is calling for you.”
Ruan picked up the roster and the stretcher inventory note just as they were.
Karen followed without a word.
Inside the command tent, the air was already filled with voices.
“We need more spearmen on the far end of the left wing.”
“Supplies are delayed behind the northern corridor.”
“If we pull in more vanguard reserves—”
Everyone was talking about what to send forward.
Ruan walked right into the middle of it and said,
“Reinforcing the evacuation teams and securing stretchers comes first.”
For an instant, everything inside the tent cut off.
No one had expected the first words a low-ranking medical officer would say in front of the battle map to be that.
Aijen lifted his gaze.
“Your basis.”
Ruan unfolded the note he had brought.
“Half the soldiers who left their names last night were assigned to the far end of the left wing and the northern corridor.
“If they are overwhelmed there all at once, the recovery line becomes too long.
“With our current number of stretchers, empty ones won’t return in time.”
One officer asked with a sneer,
“The battle hasn’t even begun, and you’re already worrying about the wounded?”
“Yes.”
Ruan did not hesitate.
“Those who can walk will come, even if they’re late.
“The problem is those who can’t.
“If we bring them in late, they’ll die before the operating tables.”
“How would you know that?”
“I listened to the breathing of the men who walked here since last night.”
Ruan’s voice was not loud.
That made it sound all the firmer.
“They all told us where they were likely to collapse.
“We can’t endure that distance with five stretchers.”
Another officer cut in with an offended look.
“The front lines are already stretched thin, and you want to increase the evacuation teams first?”
“You can’t stand dead men back up.”
Ruan spoke without looking at the officer.
“And even if a severely wounded man who arrives late survives, his return to duty is delayed.
“It isn’t just one line going empty. It remains empty.”
Aijen tapped one side of the battle map with his finger.
“Required numbers.”
“At least two more evacuation teams.
“And twice as many stretchers as we have now.”
A short breath burst from somewhere inside the tent.
It meant the request was absurd.
Ruan knew what that reaction meant, but he continued.
“All you need to do is empty two supply wagons.
“What we need now isn’t more hands to send forward, but hands to bring people back.”
“Is a medical officer now discussing the battle situation?”
This time, Aijen cut those words off.
“Not the battle situation. The evacuation line.”
He turned to his staff officer.
“Empty two supply wagons on the left wing side.
“Prioritize loading stretchers, and pull evacuation teams from the northern reserves.”
“Commander. If you do that, the vanguard supplies—”
“The vanguard cannot use supplies on dead soldiers.”
That one sentence ended all objections.
Aijen looked at Ruan again.
“You will draw up the recovery routes.”
“I am not a commander.”
“That is precisely why.”
Aijen did not waver in the slightest.
“You look not at where to place men, but at where they will die if they are delayed.”
Ruan did not like those words.
Even so, he could not refuse.
In his head, he was already calculating how much one ditch, one plank, and one slope would delay a stretcher.
As soon as he left the tent, he drew lines across the plank map.
Red marks before ditches.
Below a slope where horses often slipped, he stationed two more evacuation soldiers.
He forced apart the line that went straight to the operating tables and the line for those who were still breathing but could walk.
The battle erupted before the sun had even climbed high.
The first thing to arrive was not screaming, but dust.
Next came the cries of horses.
Then came the stretchers.
The recovery line that, in the past, would have tangled into a single file before the entrance was split in two that day and moved like a living thing.
The line from the far end of the left wing.
The line from behind the northern corridor.
Even as Ruan stood before the operating tables, he kept checking only the same things.
“How many empty stretchers?”
“Four!”
“How far is the next line?”
“They’ve crossed the ditch!”
“Send those who can walk to the back.
“Load the ones losing blood first.”
Sera answered and ran.
The assistants took up her words and passed them along.
Around midday, an archer who had entrusted his will to them the previous night was carried in, covered in mud.
His left shoulder was deeply torn, and though he was still breathing, his eyes were unfocused.
“This man.
“The one who entrusted his ring last night—”
“I know.”
Ruan was already looking at the wound.
“Breathing first.
“The arm comes after.”
Right behind him came the infantryman who had told them his name twice, saying he was worried about his weak lungs.
Ordinarily, he would have collapsed midway while trying to walk back.
Today, he reached the entrance on a stretcher.
Ruan heard that difference in the patient’s breath.
A breath that had nearly snapped was still clinging to the back of his throat.
At the operating table beside him, Bereun lifted his bloodstained hands and muttered,
“So now stitching people up isn’t the only job.”
Ruan did not answer.
A messenger was losing his breath with blood bubbling in his mouth.
“Did he drink water?”
“No!”
“Good.
“We open him immediately.
“Don’t try to steady his breathing.”
Outside the tent, the shouting faltered several times, then rose again.
Some said the left wing was being pushed back, and some said the north had opened.
But what was clearer inside the medical bureau was that the sound of stretcher wheels did not stop.
“Two more from the left wing!”
“Empty stretchers?”
“They’re coming back!”
At those words, Ruan exhaled very softly for the first time.
In the past, those two would already have been too late on the way back.
By the time the sun began to tilt, the first critical juncture had passed.
They said the far end of the left wing had nearly buckled but barely held, and the northern corridor had shaken halfway but remained connected.
The day, as seen from inside the medical bureau, was simpler.
People who would not have reached the operating tables before had reached them today.
There were faces they could not save, but the number of faces lost because they were late had clearly decreased.
When he found a brief moment, Ruan opened the roster from the previous night.
He drew short lines beside several names.
Arrived.
Operated.
Survived.
They were not marks of death, but at the very least, it meant those spaces had not been left blank.
Outside the door, a different sort of talk was spreading.
“I thought the left wing was finished, but I heard it didn’t break.”
“They say that medical officer secured the stretchers first.”
“Wherever that man is, the line doesn’t break.”
Ruan did not properly hear those words.
His face looked as though fatigue had risen all the way into his bones.
Karen held out water to him.
“Drink.”
Ruan took a few sips, then raised his head again.
From far away, the sound of wheels was rising once more.
“It isn’t over yet.”
“You look like you’re the one who’ll be over first.”
“We have to see to them first.”
That night, Aijen received the summarized results.
“Percentage of severely wounded on the left flank capable of returning to duty has risen.”
“Deaths from evacuation delays in the northern corridor have decreased.”
“The medical bureau’s recovery line was not lost.”
The staff officer hesitated briefly at the final report.
“Among the soldiers... there is talk that the morning deployment prevented defeat in advance.”
Aijen did not even blink.
“He did not see it in advance.
“He likely counted the speed of delay.”
Near midnight, at the handoff line by the corridor entrance, one evacuation team came running back in.
“Even when one horse went down, the line didn’t break.”
Helmadeu asked shortly,
“How?”
“Two empty stretchers took the wounded at the front immediately.
“If they hadn’t been set aside in the morning, the whole line would have been pushed back.”
A little later, an officer with a torn shoulder insignia was carried in.
Normally, by that hour, it would already have been too late, but this time there was still color left in his lips.
Looking at that face, Ruan thought only to himself.
If there had not been stretchers that returned in time, that color would not have remained in his lips.
The simple fact that he had arrived while still breathing made the complexion of his face different.
The difference had not been decided by a special treatment, but by arrival time.
War always pretended to be decided only at the tips of spears,
but the lines that did not collapse often barely held on from somewhere behind them.
Who reached the operating table in time?
Who kept breathing long enough to rise again?
Ruan did not hear such words to the end that day either.
As he tied the bandage on the final patient, what he checked was still the entrance.
Two empty stretchers were returning.
Those who would have arrived a little too late had reached them in time today.
Ruan had no intention of calling that difference a miracle.
“Next.”
He reached out his hand again.