The soldier who first brought it up was laughing as if it were a joke.
After the west gate shield line held, a little watered wine was handed out in one corner of the barracks. Too many men had been hurt to call it a victory, and the road was still open, so it could not be called a defeat. The soldiers did not know what to call a day like that, so they simply laughed quietly, as if it were a day they had survived.
“I mean, think about it.”
A shield-bearer with a bandage wrapped around his shoulder lifted his wooden cup and spoke.
“We raised our shields, the commander gave his orders, and that army surgeon put men who should have died back on their feet. At that point, isn’t he practically a god of the battlefield?”
Laughter burst out around him. Someone sprayed his drink, and someone else clapped as if he liked the sound of it. At first, it was clearly a joke. An exaggeration tossed out to cover the smell of blood, a swollen jest meant to hide hands that were still trembling.
But words born on a battlefield, even if they began lightly, did not end lightly.
“A god of the battlefield, huh.”
“Come to think of it, I woke up in that tent too.”
“He looked too thin to be a god. Like he was about to collapse.”
“That’s what makes him even more like one. He doesn’t even eat—he just saves people.”
The laughter spread again. Yet beneath it, a little sincerity had mixed in. Those who had watched men they thought were doomed move their fingers, grip spear shafts again, and return behind the shields could not easily distinguish the border between a joke and belief.
Before evening, the words reached the medical tent.
Ruan was laying a damp cloth across the forehead of a patient burning with fever. His right wrist was still wrapped in bandages, and even after Karen had dried his hair, the white streak on one side had not completely hidden itself. Sera came in from outside carrying a water bucket and bit her lip.
“What is it?”
Ruan asked.
Sera could not answer right away. Orte cleared his throat in her place.
“There’s a strange rumor going around outside.”
“Another request from the Third Army?”
“Not from them. Among the soldiers.”
Karen was already looking toward the entrance. Amid the low laughter outside, she had heard Ruan’s name mixed in. And she had heard the words attached to that name.
“God of the Battlefield.”
Ruan’s hand stopped.
“What?”
Sera spoke quietly.
“I think it started as a joke.”
“Then it should end as a joke.”
Ruan immediately stepped outside the tent. Karen followed after him. The three soldiers standing in front of the tent straightened the moment they saw him. One of them was a messenger who had survived a fever only a few days ago. He had been laughing until just now, but when Ruan appeared, his face suddenly turned guilty.
“Who is saying that?”
Ruan asked.
The soldiers looked at one another. None of them could open his mouth first. In the end, the messenger answered quietly.
“They didn’t mean anything bad by it.”
“It’s more troublesome if they meant something good.”
“So many people lived because of you, Medical Officer…”
“I am an army surgeon. Not a god, and not a miracle. Don’t say things like that.”
Ruan’s voice was not loud. He wanted to be angry, but when he saw the faces of the soldiers before him, he could not. They were people who had needed a name to cling to in front of death.
The messenger lowered his head.
“I’m sorry. But everyone knows. If it hadn’t been for you…”
“Don’t say that either.”
Only after cutting him off did Ruan realize his own voice had trembled a little. He could not tell whether it was because of his wrist, because of exhaustion, or because that name was too heavy.
One soldier spoke cautiously.
“We know you’re being humble.”
Ruan felt his breath catch.
“This isn’t humility.”
“Yes. I understand.”
His face did not look as if he understood at all. If anything, the soldier grew even more solemn. It was the moment when denial failed to land as denial and instead changed into modesty or fear. Ruan shut his mouth, feeling that if he said any more, he would only sink deeper.
Karen spoke in a low voice.
“Go back inside.”
“We have to stop that talk.”
“The more you try to stop it, the farther it’ll spread.”
Her words were cold, but they were not wrong. When people could not look directly at something frightening, they gave it a name. Once it had a name, it moved faster than the truth.
Before night even fell, the title had traveled farther. A soldier waiting in the supply line said it, the horse handlers heard it, and the night watch passed it on to other posts. Someone said it with a laugh, someone murmured it under his breath. Someone, with a bandage wrapped around the back of his hand, repeated the name like a talisman.
The first thing the title changed was the sound. Usually, after sunset, groans and curses settled first around the medical tent. That day was different. One soldier carried in on a stretcher, his teeth chattering, still said to the man beside him,
“Hold on. If you made it this far, you’ll live.”
“Who says?”
“They say it’s the tent of the God of the Battlefield.”
Hearing that, Ruan nearly dropped the medicine bottle. Sera caught it first. The soldier did not even realize his words had pierced Ruan; he gasped for breath and laughed. It was the face of someone laughing because he was afraid.
“This is a medical tent.”
Ruan said.
“If you want to live, listen to me first. If you have time to look for a god, match your breathing.”
The soldier nodded. Yet his eyes hardened even more in the direction of belief. Even Ruan’s anger seemed to him like a possibility of survival. He matched his breathing as Ruan instructed, and thanks to that, the treatment became a little easier.
Ruan gripped the medicine bottle again. His fingertips slipped.
Orte closed the logbook and said,
“I won’t write it in the official records.”
“Of course you shouldn’t.”
Ruan said.
“But it seems to have already been recorded unofficially.”
Ruan could not answer that. There were records that remained even if they were never written on paper. The mouths of soldiers carried such records faster than anything.
Karen looked at the white side of Ruan’s hair. Whenever that name circulated, the soldiers did not look at Ruan’s wrist. They did not look at his white hair either. What remained was only the convenient phrase that he pushed death away.
“I hate it.”
Karen said.
Ruan looked at her.
“I hate that name.”
“I hate it too.”
“But denial alone won’t make it disappear.”
He hated those words even more. Ruan looked at the patients inside the tent. One soldier whose fever had just broken was lying with his eyes closed. When he woke, he would try to find the reason he had survived.
Sera carefully opened her mouth.
“Still… the patients struggled less today.”
When Ruan looked at her, Sera immediately lowered her head.
“I don’t mean it’s a good thing. It’s just that when they’re terrified and thrash around, treatment becomes difficult. But strangely, everyone endured a little more today. If a single name can do that, that makes it even more frightening.”
Orte also spoke quietly.
“It may not be something we can leave in the records, but the phenomenon exists. The object of the soldiers’ belief is shifting to the medical tent itself.”
“Stop.”
Ruan spoke wearily.
“Please don’t choose only the words I least want to hear and say them so accurately.”
Sera closed her mouth. Orte pushed the logbook farther away. But outside the tent, the soldier who had just been treated was telling another stretcher the same thing. Just hold on a little longer. If you make it here, you’ll live.
Ruan wished he could deny that sentence, at least. But if that sentence made someone match his breathing, swallow his terror, and endure the knife, then he would not be able to deny it so easily either.
Aizen called for Ruan late that day. In the main camp tent, there was no smell of wine, only the cold smell of maps. Aizen already knew about the title.
“I hear it’s spreading.”
“Please stop it.”
“How?”
Ruan could not answer immediately.
Aizen pressed his fingertip against the west gate shield line on the map.
“Because of that name today, three men on night watch did not abandon their posts. They heard that the men who returned from the west gate were still holding on. Their fear lessened.”
“You’re making them hold on with a lie.”
“There are not many soldiers who can survive the night holding only the truth.”
“Are you saying you intend to use me?”
“You are already being used.”
Aizen did not hide that fact. That made it colder.
“We simply have to decide the direction. If the higher-ups seize it first, you become a miracle. If the church seizes it first, you become proof. If the enemy seizes it first, you become a target. Keeping it contained within the corps is the least dangerous option.”
The words least dangerous did not mean safe. Ruan now understood that difference.
“I can’t save people with a name like that.”
“I know.”
“Then why leave it alone?”
“The soldiers are getting through the night with that name.”
Ruan fell silent. With words he had not wanted, a belief he could not bear was beginning to save people.
On the way back to the tent, Ruan heard low voices from all around the barracks. No one shouted it openly. That made the sound linger all the longer.
God of the Battlefield.
Someone said it with a laugh, and someone else said it like a prayer. Someone whispered it while wiping the forehead of a sleeping comrade. Each time, Ruan wanted to say it was not true. But a name born from many mouths could not be taken back by one man’s denial.
Karen was waiting in front of the medical tent. Without a word, she lifted the flap for him. Ruan was about to go inside when he suddenly stopped.
“Do you really think it won’t disappear?”
Karen looked out at the darkness.
“Not today.”
Ruan went into the tent. The patients’ breathing continued in a low rhythm. His wrist hurt, and one side of his hair was still damp and cold. He was not a god, but a tired army surgeon.
That name did not go out all night. And at dawn, on the first line of an unsealed report that arrived at the main camp, the same name was written.
God of the Battlefield.
The sender was neither the Third Corps nor the main camp.
And so, it was already too late for Ruan to stop that name.
He did not fold the first line of the report. Even if he folded it, the name would not disappear. Instead, Ruan looked first at the number of wounded on the next line. More urgent than the word god were the numbers of those still breathing.