The tall chair remained where it was through the night.
Though no one had sat in it, the inside of the tent looked narrower than yesterday. Its back rose higher than the patients’ line of sight, and its armrests jutted a little into the path where stretchers passed. A bucket holding bloodstained cloth caught on one of its legs and rocked once, and Sera, on her way to change the water, stopped and adjusted her footing.
“Can’t we move it?”
Sera asked in a low voice.
Ruan looked at the chair as he wound the bandage in his hand and pulled it tight. The answer was simple, but it did not come easily. Everyone knew who had left it there. No one knew who was supposed to say it should be removed.
“The patients’ space comes first.”
Ruan said.
“When the next stretcher comes in, take it outside.”
Orte nodded, clutching the ledger. But just then, a guard’s voice caught at the entrance of the tent.
“By Commander Aizen’s order. We are to escort Medical Officer Ruan Hesse to the main headquarters tent.”
He had heard the word escort yesterday as well. Now it sounded less like courtesy and more like capture. Karen had already turned toward the entrance. Her hand did not go to her sword hilt, but the eyes with which she measured whoever came inside were cold.
“He does not go alone.”
Karen said.
The messenger glanced around for a moment before answering.
“An escort is permitted to accompany him. However, medical personnel are ordered to remain in the tent.”
Ruan handed the bandage he had not yet tied to Sera. Supporting the wrist of a patient burning with fever, Sera pressed her lips together. Even without asking, her expression was saying it. Whether he could afford to leave now, and if he did, who would fill the empty place.
“I’ll be right back.”
Ruan said so, but he found his own words the hardest to believe.
The main headquarters tent was quieter than the medical tent. Ruan knew that quiet simply brought in the smell of blood later. Red stakes and black lines were densely planted across the map, and Aizen stood waiting among them.
“Sit.”
Aizen said.
Ruan stood without looking at the chair.
“There are patients left in the tent.”
“That is why I won’t keep you long.”
Aizen pushed a small marker on the table with his fingertip. One black line retreated, and two red stakes moved to the side.
“Yesterday, the southern evacuation line held for half a day. Under normal circumstances, it would have collapsed.”
Ruan looked at the map. There were many lines on the map, and few people’s names. It was difficult to find what he had done in it.
Aizen opened a thin roster lying beside the map. Names familiar to Ruan were written there. A shield-bearer who had returned after having his shoulder stitched. A messenger they had kept hold of for ten hours. A supply soldier who had been put on fluids through the night and mounted a horse again. To Ruan, they were still people who remained as the smell of bandages and groans, but on the roster, they had been reduced to the short phrase: troops fit to return.
“These three held the western gate supply line yesterday. These two reconnected the broken messenger line. The people you saved are already saving others outside the tent.”
Ruan could not look at the roster for long. It was a relief that the names were alive. But the moment that relief passed straight into a calculation of fighting strength, the comfort of having saved them grew heavy, like iron rings being fastened around his own hands.
“I do not know what happens outside the tent.”
“You do.”
Aizen answered at once.
“That is why your hands are even more dangerous. Even without looking outside, you change what happens there.”
It was something that could have sounded like praise. But inside it, Ruan heard numbers and deployments before praise. It was a voice calculating which line a recovered soldier would fill, which order a reduced number of deaths would make possible, and where on the map a single breath he handed over inside the tent would be planted.
“I treated patients.”
“The legion moved as a result.”
Karen’s gaze shifted from Aizen’s face to the map. She said nothing, but Ruan knew that silence. A person who said they would protect you always created the place where they stood in your way.
Just then, two voices overlapped outside the tent.
“A request from the Royal Direct Third Army.”
“Emergency at the medical tent. Penetrating chest wound—he’s losing breath!”
Aizen’s eyes narrowed for the briefest moment. He did not allow both messengers in at once.
“The request goes to the adjutant. Where is the patient?”
“In front of the medical tent. The stretcher is blocked. They say they can’t get him in at once because the inner path is too narrow.”
The messenger holding the request withdrew, but still could not let go of the sealed letter in his hand. The crest of the Royal Direct Third Army they had seen yesterday was stamped into the red wax. The hand that had sent in the chair and partition was now pulling at Ruan’s name again with a single sheet of paper.
Ruan turned before he even heard the answer. Karen lifted the tent flap first, and the two of them returned to the medical tent almost at a run. In front of the entrance, two stretchers were crossed at an angle. One was a stretcher meant to move an existing patient, and on the other lay a soldier whose lips had turned blue.
“To the side!”
Ruan shouted.
But there was no space to move aside. The tall chair left behind was biting into the inner path, and the partition folded yesterday had been leaned against the wall, pushing one medicine box out of place. The moment Sera set down the water bucket and pulled at the chair’s armrest, the stretcher leg caught beneath it. The soldier’s body tilted crookedly, and his wet breathing shortened by another beat.
A wet breath leaked from the soldier’s chest. It was a short, hollow sound.
“Needle. The long one.”
Ruan held out his hand.
Orte started toward the medicine box, then hesitated. He had to twist his body between the chair and the stretcher. That single beat was late. Sera dropped to her knees first and shoved the box, and Karen silently seized the back of the chair and dragged it aside. The sound of the floor scraping cut through the tent.
“Now.”
Ruan tore open the soldier’s clothes and pressed between his ribs. Blood and air pushed out together. The soldier’s body jolted once, hard. Karen pressed down on his shoulder, and Sera passed over cloth. Feeling his fingertips slip, Ruan drove the needle in.
The blocked breath opened again. Rough air burst from the soldier’s mouth.
Only then did Ruan realize Aizen was standing behind him. He was so quiet that Ruan had no idea when he had followed. Aizen’s gaze rested on the path before the soldier. The entrance, the stretcher, the chair, the medicine box, the spot where Sera knelt, the width where Orte had stepped aside with the ledger held to his chest.
“Did you see?”
Aizen said.
Ruan wiped his bloodstained hands on a cloth.
“There is a patient in front of me right now.”
“That is why I am saying this.”
Aizen pointed with his fingertip at the chair remaining in the middle of the tent.
“One chair blocked the path. One request tied your feet to headquarters. One messenger disrupted the order at the entrance. And yet the Third Army said they would seat you beside one person.”
Ruan did not answer. The soldier’s breathing was still uneven.
“If you are absent, that empty place cannot be filled by a single army physician. Triage slows, evacuation tangles, and soldiers who could have been kept alive die on the road. After that, the shield line thins, messengers are cut off, and the supply line is pushed back.”
Aizen’s voice was not loud. Because it was not loud, it was colder.
“That is why the legion needs your hands.”
Ruan raised his head.
“Are the words ‘need’ and ‘confine’ different?”
The inside of the tent went quiet. Sera stopped with wet cloth in her hand, and Orte lowered the hand that had been writing. Only Karen was looking straight at Aizen.
Aizen did not look at Ruan for long. Instead, he turned his gaze to the messenger by the entrance.
“All external requests go to my tent. Do not deliver them directly to Ruan Hesse.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Readjust the access line to the medical tent. No one enters except medical personnel and patient transport. The guards take one step back from the entrance. Keep the inner path clear.”
The orders were quick and precise. They were also words that untangled, one by one, the places that had just been blocked. But Ruan heard the parts that bound him more loudly than the parts they freed. Requests would not come to him. The line speaking to the outside would go to Aizen. The path inside would be cleared, but the way out would grow narrower.
“What will you answer the Third Army?”
Ruan asked.
“I will tell them to send the patient if they must. You are not going.”
“What about my will?”
This time, Aizen did not answer immediately. After a short silence, he looked at the bloodstained floor and the soldier’s chest, still trembling.
“Before I ask your will, I must first count the people who will die when your hands are gone.”
Ruan could not say those words were wrong. That made it harder to breathe. He had just saved one person, and because of that fact, he had been bound among the names of even more people.
Karen spoke low.
“You called it protection.”
“I did.”
“Then leave the person being protected enough room to breathe.”
Aizen looked at Karen. A blade-like silence hung between the two of them. But Aizen did not get angry.
“That is why I am removing that chair.”
He called the stretcher-bearers. At last, the tall chair was pushed out of the tent. Only a long scrape remained on the floor. Looking at that mark, Ruan could not, strangely, feel relieved. The object had gone out, but the hand that had brought it in and the hand that said it would protect him both remained just outside the tent.
Before leaving, Aizen stopped beside Ruan.
“From today onward, you will not receive external requests directly. If necessary, I will call you.”
Ruan looked down at his bloodstained hands. They were still warm.
“In the end, I will know even less about what happens outside the tent.”
“Even so, the state of the war passes through your hands.”
Leaving only those words behind, Aizen went out.
When the tent flap fell, the sound of the guards’ footsteps outside took its place again.
The stretcher passed through.
But the moment Ruan tried to take a step toward the outside, the long scrape on the floor felt cold, as if it had touched his ankle first.