It had been two days since the rain stopped, but the damp smell inside the medical tent showed no sign of leaving.
Cloth that had drunk blood spread its stench again no matter how far to one side it was piled.
The place where stretchers came and went was always slippery with mud and blood.
A man might endure while his wound was being stitched, but that did not stop the fever that came afterward.
Ruan Hesse had seen that far too many times.
The first patient of the morning was an archer whose shoulder had been stitched the day before.
The sutures were intact, but his face was flushed.
His breathing was short, and his forehead was hot.
As Ruan took his pulse, Sera asked beside him,
“The wound looks all right, though.”
“It isn’t the wound. It’s the fever.”
The archer let out a dry-lipped, hollow laugh.
“I’m just a little cold, then hot, that’s all.”
Instead of answering, Ruan pressed the edge of the wound.
Fluid glistened between the red, swollen flesh.
A similar smell rose from the stretcher beside him.
The infantryman whose thigh had been stitched had suffered chills all night, and Matthias, the adjutant whose abdomen had been sutured, had been breaking out in cold sweat since dawn.
If it was one man, it could be bad luck. If it was two, it might be an unlucky day.
But when three, four, five overlapped, it was no longer luck.
Ruan slowly looked around the tent.
A pile of wet bandages was still stacked beside the entrance.
Water buckets that had not been boiled were being used in the same place as the handwashing basin.
The newly brought-in severely wounded and those recovering after sutures lay mixed together in one row,
and the orderlies, citing urgency, wiped their bloodied hands roughly and grabbed the next stretcher.
Fever came later than the wound.
That was why it was more persistent.
Ruan spoke briefly.
“Sera. Empty the tent.”
Sera’s eyes widened.
“Now?”
“Now.”
“How much of it?”
“All of it.”
At those words, one of the orderlies grinding herbs across from them muttered with a blank face,
“How are we supposed to empty anything with this many patients?”
Ruan was already moving.
He pushed an empty crate near the entrance aside to widen the passage.
Then he dragged one stretcher and moved it to the very back.
“Fever patients over there. Newly arrived severe cases here. Those finished with sutures go to the outside tent.”
Sera followed him as she asked,
“The outside tent leaks and it’s cold.”
“It’s still better than making them lie beside the smell of rot.”
Bern Dalt was watching the scene from behind.
He was silent for a moment, then asked,
“What are you thinking?”
“If we lay them all in one tent, the fever will start going around. It isn’t the wound that kills first. It’s what comes after.”
Bern looked once at Ruan’s face, then once at the feverish archer.
His reply was short.
“Continue.”
Once that single word fell, Sera asked no more questions.
She immediately called two orderlies and had them move the pile of wet cloth first.
Ruan changed the positions of the water buckets.
He separated the handwashing basin from the water for cleaning wounds, and set aside a separate pot meant to hold only boiled water.
Near the entrance, he made a place to temporarily set bloodied stretchers, and inside, he laid only the patients immediately after suturing.
One orderly grumbled,
“If we divide all this up, it’ll slow us down.”
Without even turning around, Ruan said,
“Slow, they live. Right now, fast, they die.”
His words were neither sharp nor loud, but strangely hard to refute.
Sera did not miss that opening and shouted at once,
“You heard him. New arrivals to the right. Fever patients to the left. Don’t leave bloodied cloth inside. Boil it outside and bring it back in.”
Karen leaned against one side of the tent and watched the scene.
Her body had not fully recovered yet, but her eyes were far clearer than the day before.
She had already seen that Ruan was a man who could not even hold a sword properly.
And yet now, with only a few words and gestures, that same man was changing the entire flow inside the tent.
He did not even raise his voice, but before anyone knew it, everyone was moving according to the places he had set.
Before noon, Ruan personally checked the handwashing sequence twice.
Once before opening a wound, once after closing it.
When the orderlies looked annoyed, instead of arguing, he showed them three feverish patients in turn.
Red, swollen wounds and hot foreheads, dry lips and trembling breaths.
It was faster than an explanation.
When Matthias tossed and turned in his fever, Sir Edwin hurried over.
“Has the wound opened again?”
Ruan shook his head.
“Not yet. But he can’t stay here any longer.”
“Why?”
“The fever is going around. Even recovering patients have to be separated from each other.”
Edwin looked, for a moment, as if he did not understand.
To a noble knight, the battlefield was usually explained by swords and shields.
And yet the youngest military physician before him was saying that the placement of tents, water buckets, and the order of washing hands determined whether men lived or died.
It was the sort of thing that could have sounded strange.
But the instant Edwin saw Matthias’s cold sweat, he asked no more.
“What do you need?”
“Dry cloth. And a place with sunlight.”
Edwin immediately turned outside and called the guards.
A little later, two knights personally emptied one tent and offered it for recovering patients.
Sera watched the scene and muttered softly,
“Just a few days ago, they were calling the medical corps a slaughterhouse, and now they’re giving us tents.”
Instead of answering, Ruan took Matthias’s pulse again.
As afternoon approached, the number of fever patients increased further.
Ruan quickly wrote down the order in which fevers appeared and the types of wounds.
Spear wounds, incised wounds, burns, amputation surfaces.
He recorded which wounds rotted faster, who suffered chills first, even how much water they had drunk.
Beside Ruan, Sera kept herbs, boiled water, and wet cloth moving without interruption.
The orderlies grumbled at first, but once the areas were divided, they soon realized the stretcher routes became far less tangled.
Even so, dissatisfaction remained.
Around sunset, a senior military physician entered the tent and frowned.
“Who changed the patient assignments without permission?”
Sera started to answer, then stopped.
Ruan rose first.
“I did.”
The senior military physician looked over the place where the pile of wet cloth had been moved outside and the separated stretchers.
“That is not something a junior military physician should be doing.”
“The fever is spreading.”
“What tent on a battlefield doesn’t have fever?”
“Even so, if we keep them mixed together, they die faster.”
The other man snorted with displeasure.
“What are you, some plague officer?”
At that moment, Bern spoke bluntly from behind.
“If he slows the rate at which they die, that’s a military physician.”
The senior military physician closed his mouth for a moment.
Bern shook the end of one sleeve and came closer.
“If you don’t like it, go count the number of men dying in your own tent. I’ll take charge here.”
Once those words fell, there was no further quarrel.
In the end, the senior military physician turned away with only a twisted expression on his face.
Sera gave a small laugh as she watched his back.
“Today, Physician Bern is the most refreshing one here.”
Instead of replying, Bern pushed the boiled water bucket toward Ruan.
“Stop flapping your mouth and wash your hands first.”
Ruan silently washed his hands.
The water quickly turned cloudy, and the smell of blood soaked into the backs of his hands did not leave easily.
Even so, it was different from not washing at all.
He went back to the next patient.
By evening, the breathing of the archer whose fever had first risen began to even out a little.
The infantryman with the thigh wound was no longer chattering his teeth as he had in the morning.
Matthias’s fever was still high, but his chills had lessened.
On the other hand, signs of fever appeared in two new patients who had seemed fine at first.
Ruan immediately moved those two to the left section and replaced the wet cloth on them.
Karen watched him for a while, then said in a low voice,
“You had a more frightening face than someone holding a sword.”
Ruan looked back.
“Who did?”
“You. When you told them to wash their hands.”
Sera burst into laughter.
“That’s right. With that expression, even enemy soldiers would wash their hands first.”
Ruan pretended not to hear and undid the next bandage.
But Karen continued,
“I’ve been watching all day. You may be hopeless at cutting people down, but you aren’t clumsy at moving them.”
As Ruan pressed the edge of the wound, he answered calmly,
“If they don’t move, they die.”
Karen added no more jokes to those brief words.
She, too, understood that commands here were not about dignity, but survival.
Before night fell, Ruan had a small wooden board hung at the entrance of the tent.
New patients, fever patients, recovering patients.
The writing was clumsy, but the distinctions were clear.
Looking at it, Sera asked,
“Do you think the soldiers will remember all this?”
“If they don’t, we’ll keep making them memorize it.”
“Your throat’s going to be gone by the end of today alone.”
“That’s better than dying.”
Hearing that, Sera looked at Ruan for a moment, then walked back toward the pot where the bloodied cloth was being boiled.
Her hands did not stop.
Outside the tent, darkness quickly fell.
Once night came, stretchers actually came in more often.
But inside, it was less tangled than it had been in the morning.
They were slowly beginning to find their places—where to lay patients, which water to use, who had to wash their hands first.
It was not perfect yet.
Still, it collapsed less.
After placing a wet cloth on the forehead of the last feverish patient, Ruan briefly caught his breath.
His fingertips were heavy, and his back ached.
Even so, the urgent anxiety that had continued all day had become a little thinner than it had been in the morning.
As Sera changed the water bucket, she muttered,
“When today’s work is over, everyone will start spreading strange rumors again.”
“What kind of rumor this time?”
“Not that the white-haired military physician heals you with a touch, but that if the white-haired military physician makes you wash your hands, you won’t die.”
Ruan looked at Sera.
“That isn’t a rumor. It’s a rule.”
“To the soldiers, that’ll sound even scarier.”
Just then, the voices of two supply soldiers chatting drifted in from the entrance of the tent.
“Doesn’t it seem like the feverish ones are groaning less now that they’ve been separated?”
“Right? If we do what that youngest one says, maybe people really will die less.”
Ruan pretended not to hear.
It had only been one day. The way to save people did not change in a single day.
Only, it was clear that if they did not do this, men would die faster.
He washed his hands again beside the water bucket.
The boiled water was hot, and the backs of his hands flushed red.
Even so, only after washing to the end did he turn toward the next stretcher.
The heat inside the tent had not yet faded.
The smell was still there.
More people would die from now on.
Still, from today on, they could fight differently.
Not with swords or spears, but with water, cloth, and the order of hands.
Ruan briefly caught his breath and said,
“Bring in the next patient. This time, wash your hands before you come in.”
As soon as those words fell, the orderlies moved almost by reflex.
A pot lid opened, a water bucket was lifted, and wet cloth was carried outside.
The night in the medical tent was beginning again.