“Medical Officer. You’ll need to look at some people.”
The soldier who called him did not look pleased. The fact that someone had survived meant there was someone who could be put back to work.
Ruan stopped in the middle of sorting a bundle of bandages. At the tent entrance, an administrative soldier stood catching his breath.
“Where.”
“Not the evacuation line. It’s a group of returning personnel. They’re all insisting they can’t leave their posts.”
Ruan disliked that word first of all. Insisting. It was always used before the body could answer. Karen was already moving toward the entrance.
The air outside the tent was different from the day before. It was a morning when fewer hands were carrying corpses, and people and supplies had begun flowing back to where they belonged. The evacuation team had stood folded stretchers to one side, and the messenger line was tying together the ropes that had been severed. The work of deciding who could return to which position had just begun.
The administrative soldier led them to an empty patch of ground between the tents and the messenger corps. It was not a place for rest. Two messengers were carrying bundles of documents, several spearmen were setting up straw bundles to mark a temporary line, and boxes of arrows meant to go over to the wall were piled to one side. In the middle of it all stood four familiar faces.
Roen, the messenger with a scorch mark left on his left cheek. A spearman with a crutch, his chin lifted high. An archer standing with one arm in a sling. A low-ranking unit leader who had tightened a new belt over the bandages wrapped around his lower abdomen. All of them were people Ruan had held back from death.
Before feeling glad to see them, Ruan looked at their complexions. Roen was standing, but the color of his lips was still pale. The spearman’s shoulder on the side leaning against the crutch was too stiff. The archer’s problem was not his arm but the sensation in his fingertips, and the low-ranking unit leader was holding himself upright, but whenever he turned, the strength in his lower abdomen lagged.
“Why are you gathered here?”
Roen spoke first.
“We’re reconnecting the messenger line. Two middle relays are empty. I can cover two sections.”
The spearman immediately followed.
“They told me to set up the supply line. Even if I can’t carry a stretcher, I can hold a line.”
The archer spoke briefly.
“I can’t draw a bow, but I can observe.”
The low-ranking unit leader kept his voice suppressed until the end.
“We need to reorganize the stretcher teams and the horse handlers. If I’m out, it won’t be sorted by today.”
There was no lengthy gratitude. If anything, that made it heavier. They had not come to see Ruan. They had come to be judged on how far their bodies could be used again.
Ruan went to Roen first. He touched his neck, counted his pulse, checked the movement of his eyes, then felt the back of his hand.
“No running.”
Roen’s face immediately hardened. “Then the line will break again.”
“Take only two sections. Attach another messenger to the third.”
Roen swallowed the rest of his words. “Understood.”
With the spearman, Ruan checked the length of the crutch first. The skin beneath his armpit was already chafed raw. The wound on his thigh had not reopened, but the way he was putting weight on the leg was bad.
“You can set up the line. Don’t carry stretchers.”
The spearman clenched his teeth. “We have to carry the stretchers too if we’re going to finish today.”
“If you tear yourself open trying to finish, you’ll be out tomorrow too.”
The spearman exhaled roughly and only nodded.
The archer was enduring with his eyes before his arm. Ruan pressed his shoulder, wrist, and fingertips in order.
“No bow.”
The archer’s face stiffened. “Then I have no place.”
“Observe. Count and mark positions. Don’t pull a string.”
For the low-ranking unit leader, he looked at the bandages around his abdomen first.
“You don’t run.”
“If I don’t run, things won’t line up below.”
“Line them up with your mouth. Assign people. Don’t carry anything yourself.”
As soon as the judgments were finished, the flow of the clearing changed. Roen called over two messengers and divided the sections. The spearman on crutches tapped the ground with the end of his crutch and reset the spacing of the supply line. The archer caught a soldier heading toward the wall and confirmed the number of arrow boxes and the markings. The low-ranking unit leader called over two members of the stretcher team and the horse handlers, then redrew their routes.
Not a single one of them was uninjured.
And yet, once those four began to move, the clearing slowly started to fall into order.
Since Roen could not run, he stopped people.
“You, not south—west. Someone was just sent there.”
His voice was still cracked, but his directions were not wrong.
The spearman drew a line in the mud with the end of his crutch.
“Stretchers don’t come inside this line. Send the supply boxes around the outside.”
Because he was not carrying anything himself, soldiers with free hands became visible instead.
The archer narrowed one eye and counted the flags atop the wall.
“Send up only three arrow boxes. If you send them all, they’ll block the way.”
The low-ranking unit leader, one hand wrapped around his abdomen, separated two soldiers holding horse reins.
“Move the spooked horses out first. The carts come after.”
Just then, one of the baggage carts from the evacuation line caught on a lip in the ground and skewed sideways. A messenger was about to rush inside, while two supply soldiers only looked at each other, unsure which side to grab first.
The spearman on crutches shouted first.
“Clear the left side first. Don’t unload the boxes. Just free the wheel.”
Before he had even finished speaking, Roen sent another messenger to the northern line.
“Don’t block that side. Detour through the empty line.”
The archer swept his gaze once over the arrow boxes piled beneath the wall and immediately pointed.
“Clear the right passage. If that gets blocked, the upper side stops too.”
The low-ranking unit leader beckoned two stretcher bearers and had them support the back of the cart.
“Only two lift. The rest, move the horses.”
The tangled line slowly came undone. Ruan did not step into the middle of it. He only watched to see who would misuse their body first.
In the end, the first one to cross the line was the spearman. When the tilting box shook even harder, he reflexively tried to push himself in. His crutch slipped once, and the wrong kind of strength went into his thigh, turning his face white.
“Stop.”
Ruan’s voice flew out first.
The spearman froze in place. Ruan pointed at the two soldiers beside him.
“You two support it. You, line them up with your voice.”
Clenching his teeth, the spearman used his voice instead of his hands to set the line again.
“Not there, the back. Lift the back.”
The box did not collapse, and the cart stood straight again. But the spearman needed one more beat to catch his breath. Ruan went closer and pressed once at the end of the bandage around his thigh.
“Do only that much. Push any harder and it’ll tear.”
The spearman said lowly, “Yes, sir.”
Roen was also the kind who endured. When he tried to change the third section again, he braced one hand against a wall for a moment. It took no short time before he removed it. Ruan did not miss it.
“You. Leave the third section.”
Roen immediately lifted his head. “We’re short on people.”
“If you collapse, we’ll be shorter.”
Roen clenched his teeth once, then called another messenger. “You take the north.”
Karen watched the scene in silence. It was different from when she had only watched who lowered their heads before Ruan. Now the hands, legs, and eyes he had saved were scattered across different places, supporting the legion. When Roen connected the line at a pace that did not run, the transmission that had been breaking off held together. When the spearman on crutches set the line, the steps of the tangled supply soldiers loosened. When the archer who could not raise his arm pointed out markings and distances, one young bowman’s flustered hands stopped shaking. The low-ranking unit leader restored the flow of people and horses without carrying anything himself.
Each of them was moving on the time Ruan had held in place for them.
Ruan could not see it in any other way. He was still only calculating the line their bodies could endure. Who could hold out for how much longer, in which place, and how late he could lay them down again. He believed that was the extent of his work.
A short while later, the low-ranking unit leader returned with two people in tow. Instead of gripping the stretcher handles himself, he was only turning the horses. Just as Ruan had told him. And yet, with that one instruction, the tangled horses, stretchers, and supplies gradually came undone. The archer held a record board with one hand and spoke briefly to two soldiers by the wall.
“Match your eyes first. The bow comes after.”
Roen caught his breath, clutching a bundle of envelopes to his chest, and crossed the second section. His speed was slow, but it did not break off.
He did not run.
Instead, he did not stop even once.
Ruan had no choice but to acknowledge that the slower pace endured longer.
The clearing gradually began to function again. But watching it only made Ruan more tired. Surviving was not the end. Being driven back into one’s own place was also part of what came after survival.
For an instant, he wanted to lay those four back down.
At least for one more day.
Until the fever had fully gone down, until the wounds pulled less, until the skin beneath the crutches was less raw.
But he could also see, right before his eyes, that if that one day was taken away, another line would break.
The survivors filled the empty spaces again before they could even rest.
The battlefield offered vacancies first, even to those who had lived.
Ruan did not like that order.
There should have been a clear line between saving a patient and keeping them lying down, and saving them only to stand them back up.
But the battlefield trampled over that line with muddy boots every time.
The person who had been a patient only moments ago immediately carried another patient, and the messenger who had rambled in fever yesterday was delivering orders today.
Being alive did not mean having rested.
Only after a long while did a brief empty space appear in the middle of the clearing. Roen had returned to his own line, and the spearman leaned against the wall, setting his crutch upright. The archer rested a hand on the record board, closing and opening only his eyes. The low-ranking unit leader stood at a distance, watching only to see if the line became disordered.
Ruan was about to call the next person, then closed his mouth. His body was still waiting for the next fever and the next bleeding, but for a moment, he could not see a place where he needed to put his hands. A gap with nowhere to put his hands felt strange instead.
Karen swept her gaze once around the edge of the clearing and said quietly,
“It’s empty for now.”
No sooner had she finished speaking than a messenger hurried over from the outer relay line. He was clutching a damp envelope to his chest.
“This came for you, Medical Officer.”
Ruan disliked the envelope from the start. The mud-stained corner had not yet fully dried.