Night did not fall quietly.
Even before the sun went down, the wind turned rough.
The wet canvas of the tents kept shuddering, and from afar came the broken sounds of horses neighing and short shouts carried on the wind.
Thanks to separating the feverish patients during the day and even establishing rules for handwashing, the inside of the medical tent was less chaotic than it had been that morning.
But Ruan doubted that order would last long.
Sera said as she wrung out boiled cloth.
“It’s rather noisy outside.”
“It’s probably near the supply line.”
Ruan answered so, but his hands were already moving faster.
He pressed again on the wound of the infantryman whose suturing he had just finished, then checked the foreheads of the two fever patients lying in the left section.
Just then, someone outside shouted until his voice nearly tore apart.
“Fire! The northern supply tent is on fire!”
Sera’s hands stopped.
“Fire?”
Ruan lifted the entrance flap.
A sharp, acrid smell seeped in through the night air.
Far away, beneath the black sky, an orange glow was spreading.
If it was the supply tents, they were not completely removed from here.
Soon after, a sentry rushed in, looking as if he could barely breathe.
“Doctor. Enemy stragglers have come in from the north. The supply line is in chaos.”
“Are they close enough to reach here?”
“Normally, no. But it looks like there are men among them who know the inner paths.”
Sera cursed under her breath. Ruan spoke at once.
“Everyone who can walk, outside. Move the fever patients with their blankets, and leave anyone with open wounds inside.”
The sentry could not even answer before he ran back out.
Sera was already gripping a blanket.
“Should we move Karen too?”
Ruan looked to the side.
Karen was sitting propped against one wall.
The wound in her side had not fully healed yet, but her gaze was already drawn toward the battlefield.
“I can move.”
“You are a patient right now.”
“You look like you’re about to become one yourself.”
Sera cut in.
“Both of you shut up and use your hands first.”
Before she had even finished speaking, a scream burst out from outside.
This time, it was far too close.
Ruan checked the innermost stretcher first.
The boy with the injured lung was still breathing roughly, and the feverish archer had no strength to walk on his own.
Matthias was half unconscious.
They could not get everyone out.
Ruan gritted his teeth and said.
“Three who can walk first. Get them behind the ditch. Sera, I’ll take Matthias. Put two assistants on the boy and carry him together.”
Sera nodded.
At that moment, the entrance flap was violently thrown aside.
A soldier who had been dragging a stretcher fell backward and was shoved inside.
There was a sword graze on his shoulder, and his face had gone deathly pale.
“They’ve made it this far.”
Behind him, someone’s shadow flickered.
Ruan reflexively looked around the floor.
A short blade had fallen in the corner. He picked it up.
It was all right. This time, he had to move.
But his feet stuck in place.
Though the sight of an enemy soldier pushing through the tent entrance was painfully clear, his body would not take a single step forward.
He could drag stretchers inward and hide patients.
But the instant he had to point a blade at a person, some part of his body locked up completely.
Two enemy soldiers forced their way through the entrance.
One held a short axe, and the other gripped a sword with a blood-soaked face.
Neither looked as if they were making a proper charge; it seemed more like they had been frantically searching for a path and had stumbled in here.
Sera stopped pushing Matthias’s stretcher and shouted.
“Ruan!”
Ruan stood frozen, blade in hand.
One of the enemy soldiers kicked the nearest stretcher and pushed deeper inside.
It was the stretcher of the boy with the injured lung.
Only then did Ruan fling himself forward and grab the stretcher.
He pushed the patient back and hid him, but that was all.
He still held the blade, and his feet remained fixed as if nailed in front of the patient.
At that moment, something flashed past beside him.
It was Karen.
She was so fast that he could not see when she had risen or from whose hand she had taken the sword.
Ruan saw only two scenes.
A single glint of metal in the darkness,
and the enemy soldier’s shoulder twisting in an unnatural direction as he collapsed.
Before the first man had even fallen, Karen turned and clashed with the second.
Her movements were so precise that it was hard to believe she was wounded, and yet it was also immediately obvious that she was pushing her body too far.
Every time she stepped, her breath broke harshly.
Ruan still could not leave the front of the stretcher as he watched.
He could not read the path of the blade.
He only knew that someone was standing in front of him, blocking the entire space between the patients and the enemy.
The second enemy soldier’s sword fell diagonally toward Karen.
Ruan shouted on instinct.
“Left!”
Karen’s body dropped low.
The sword tip skimmed past only the ends of her hair.
The movement that followed was too fast to see properly.
After a short clash of metal, the enemy soldier collapsed to the floor.
Immediately, three soldiers rushed in. Reinforcements had arrived late.
They checked the two fallen enemies, then ran back outside.
It meant this was not over yet.
Karen stood where she was, sword still in hand.
Her back was turned toward Ruan.
But the next moment, her shoulder trembled ever so slightly.
Only then did Ruan see it. Beneath the bandage at her side, red was spreading again.
“Karen.”
Without even looking back, she said.
“The patients first.”
“You are more urgent.”
“Don’t lie.”
Her words had lost their strength.
Even so, her gaze remained fixed on the entrance until the end.
Ruan belatedly looked down at his own hand. The blade was still in it.
But its tip had not moved forward at all; it was only trembling.
He gritted his teeth and threw the blade to the floor.
Sera said, gasping for breath.
“This isn’t the time to argue over who comes first.”
Ruan moved at once.
First, he pushed the boy’s stretcher farther inside, covered Matthias again with the cloth he had dropped, and untangled the wheel of the feverish archer’s stretcher.
Only after finishing that brief bit of order did he turn back to Karen.
Outside, another enemy soldier brushed past the entrance.
He did not make it inside. Somewhere, a scream was cut off short, as if a throat had been slit.
It was clear that the night raid had truly pushed all the way into the medical area.
Ruan pressed down on the bandage at Karen’s side.
She drew in a low breath.
“It’s opened again.”
“This much won’t kill me.”
“I am the one who decides whether you die right now or not.”
Sera brought over a water bucket and fresh cloth, muttering.
“Now the two of you really are going to drive me mad.”
Instead of answering, Ruan loosened the bandage.
The wound had not completely burst open, but one side of the sutures had been pulled badly.
He picked up a needle at once.
Karen did not let go of the sword.
“Put that down.”
“No.”
“Your hand is shaking.”
“It’s still better to be holding it.”
Ruan let out a short breath. That was hard to refute.
If someone in this tent had to stand in front of the patients right now, Karen was more suited to it than he was.
It stung.
Each time the needle pierced flesh, the sounds outside grew clearer.
But the work Ruan could do inside the tent was always the same.
Join torn flesh, stop the bleeding, and hold on so that breath did not cease.
When the suturing was about halfway done, Karen said quietly.
“I thought you didn’t run.”
Ruan’s hand stopped for the briefest moment.
“What?”
“Just now. You didn’t back away from the patient.”
Ruan could not answer.
It was not that he had not backed away.
He had simply been unable to move.
He had frozen there because he could not step forward with a blade in his hand.
But Karen had seen that scene differently.
Still looking ahead, she said.
“Most people look after their own lives first in moments like that. You didn’t.”
Ruan pulled the thread and answered briefly.
“That’s just how you saw it.”
“Are you saying my eyes were wrong?”
There was no answer to that question.
Ruan only tied the knot.
No matter how Karen had seen it, all that remained inside him was helplessness.
A hand that could do nothing even while holding a blade. Only the fact that he had seen it clearly again remained.
The commotion settled only much later.
Two northern supply tents had burned down, and three newly injured soldiers were carried in.
As soon as Ruan finished suturing Karen, he went to the new patients.
When the night had deepened and every sound had grown a little more distant, two makeshift torches were set up in front of the medical tent.
Four soldiers took turns standing guard.
As Sera poured out the water that had gone completely cold, she said.
“No one’s sleeping tonight.”
Ruan said nothing as he washed his bloodstained hands.
Hot water flowed over the backs of his hands, but it could not wash away the sensation of having gripped a blade and still being unable to move.
Karen was once again sitting propped against the tent wall.
Her face was pale, and no more blood showed beneath the newly wrapped bandage.
Even so, the sword was still placed within reach of her hand.
“Now you know.”
Ruan looked back.
“Know what?”
“Why you need someone who can wield a sword beside you.”
Ruan was silent for a moment before saying in a low voice.
“If you hadn’t moved today, we all would have died.”
“That might have happened.”
“And yet you overdid it again.”
Karen smiled.
“So did you.”
Ruan did not answer that.
He had not overdone it. He had stopped.
Karen would continue to interpret that difference otherwise until the end.
That was even more frustrating.
Sera looked back and forth between the two of them, then sighed.
“So today’s conclusion is one thing. Ruan only doesn’t run away in front of patients, and Karen nearly died again because of patients.”
“I didn’t die.”
“Yes. That’s why it’s even more troublesome.”
Sera picked up the water bucket and went outside.
Ruan checked the last patient’s forehead, then looked back toward the entrance.
In the torchlight, soldiers were coming and going.
The front of the medical tent was being guarded more tightly than before.
Karen said quietly.
“From today on, I’ll stand at the door.”
“You are a patient.”
“I’ll stand there anyway.”
“That depends on whether your body can endure it.”
“Then make it endure. That’s your job.”
Ruan looked as if he found that absurd, but this time he could not immediately argue.
Because he still could not forget the back that had stood between him and danger a moment ago.
Outside, the sound of the guard changing shifts rang out.
The torch flames swayed long in the wind.
Ruan briefly closed and opened his eyes, then moved toward the next stretcher.
His hands were still heavy, and the inside of his chest was heavier still.
Even so, patients remained.
So he had to move.
The night in the medical tent was not yet over.
But from now on, it seemed someone would be standing at the door.