When dawn came, another smell settled over the stench of blood.
It was the smell of melted candles.
The night raid that had shaken the medical area all night had passed, but the air inside the tent had not grown any lighter.
The torches had yet to be put out, and two more sentries had been posted at the entrance.
The damp floor was stained even blacker than yesterday, and dirt and clots of blood had hardened around every stretcher leg.
Luan Hesse began checking from the innermost stretcher.
The boy with the injured lung had barely made it through the night, and Matthias’s fever, which had risen again, had gone down a little.
On the other hand, two soldiers carried in during the raid had not seen the dawn.
One had been cut deep below the neck, and the other had been brought in with a spear piercing his side, clinging only to breath, before finally going cold.
Luan lifted the wet cloth and checked their faces one last time.
Then he took out wooden tags and wrote down their names and units.
He corrected the spelling once more and added brief notes on their facial features.
If the records became tangled later, the wrong body must not be returned to a family.
Sera asked from beside him.
“Sit down, even if it’s just for a moment. You haven’t slept a wink all night.”
“I need to finish the register first.”
“The dead won’t run away.”
The tip of Luan’s pen paused for the briefest moment.
“Even so, their names must be held on to first.”
Sera sighed and did not try to stop him further.
Instead, she put fresh water on to boil and counted the cloth they had left.
By now, she knew too.
At times like this, Luan looked longer at the dead than at the living.
That there were moments when his feet were heavier turning toward a stretcher where a face was growing cold than going to check on a patient he had just saved.
The flap at the entrance lifted, and a low cough sounded.
A soldier entered first and cleared the way.
Behind him appeared a man with yellow dust settled over a black monk’s robe.
He looked to be around forty.
An old, worn wooden holy symbol hung around his neck, and in his hands he carried a small writing board and two short candles.
Sera frowned first.
“So you’re nowhere to be seen when we’re short of hands, then show up once it’s over.”
The man lowered his head with an expression that seemed used to such words.
“I haven’t come because it’s over. I’ve only just been able to get this far.”
He looked around the inside once, then stopped his gaze on Luan.
“I am Orte. A military friar.”
Luan gave a short nod.
He had heard the name before.
The man in charge of prayers for the dying and recording last words.
The one who came latest when the front was pushed back, and became most needed as the dead piled up.
Sera said bluntly,
“Then start over there. Two went out at dawn.”
Without a word, Orte went to the two stretchers.
He did not pull the cloths away completely.
He opened them only enough to reveal their faces, touched their foreheads with his fingertips, and recited a prayer in a small voice.
His movements were neither fast nor slow.
They were the movements of someone who had repeated them for so long they had become part of his body.
Luan watched him for a moment, then lowered his gaze back to the records.
Even so, his ears were listening to Orte’s voice.
It was a low sound, not distinct, yet strangely unobtrusive.
A voice that did not make death heavier, but quietly covered what was already heavy.
When Orte finished the prayer, he came straight to Luan.
“The names of these two?”
Luan handed over the writing board.
“One is Tobin. Second Spearman Company. The other is Herman, supply unit.”
Orte wrote down the names, then paused briefly.
“You wrote down their facial features as well.”
“So the bodies won’t get mixed up later.”
Instead of answering, Orte looked at Luan for a moment.
A face weighed down by exhaustion, the backs of his hands wet from the night, fingers stained with ink and blood together.
After that brief look, he asked quietly,
“Do you always write them yourself like this?”
“There must be no omissions in the records.”
“You must have plenty of records for the living as well.”
Luan answered indifferently,
“You can’t ask the dead later.”
Sera heard the exchange and let out a hollow breath.
“That’s why I say he’s the biggest problem. He won’t even feed the living, but he makes sure to look after the names of the dead first.”
Orte did not laugh at her words at all.
Rather, he nodded very slightly, as if he understood.
Just then, a thin, rough cough burst from the outermost stretcher.
One of the soldiers brought in during the raid was half turning over.
Thick gauze was wrapped beneath his throat, and blood-tinged phlegm rattled with every breath.
Luan immediately moved to the stretcher.
He pressed the wound again and felt the pulse with his fingertips.
It was very weak. He would not last long.
The soldier looked at Luan with clouded eyes and moved his lips.
“Doctor…”
“Don’t speak. Save your breath.”
“No… friar…”
Orte came to his side at once and knelt.
He opened his writing board and bent his head close to the soldier’s ear.
“I am listening.”
Only after swallowing several breaths did the soldier barely continue.
“South… wheatfield village… Riena… my sister…”
His voice broke off.
His chest heaved up once, greatly, then sank.
Luan pressed the wound and calculated inwardly.
Right now, the man needed to speak less. And yet, in moments like this, people always searched for the words they had to say.
Before prayer, before pain relief, before even leaving their own name behind.
Orte said in a low voice,
“Slowly. I will write it down.”
The soldier opened his mouth again with difficulty.
“The money I owe… inside the sole of my boot… with that… get through the winter…”
Luan felt the pulse slipping away beneath his palm.
He would not hold out much longer.
He gripped the soldier’s shoulder and said shortly,
“Don’t close your eyes.”
Even after hearing him, the soldier looked not at Luan, but toward Orte.
“My name… write it… properly.”
Orte’s pen stopped.
He answered very clearly.
“I am already writing it.”
The soldier’s eyes trembled very slightly.
Whether it was relief or merely his strength leaving him, Luan could not tell.
In that brief span, his breath collapsed once, heavily.
Luan put more strength into his hand.
Even so, the pulse did not return.
After a moment of silence, Orte reached out and closed the soldier’s eyes.
Luan remained as he was, unable to take his hand away.
The sensation of the warmth that had been alive just moments ago draining away beneath his palm was always the same.
And yet he never grew used to it.
Orte wrote the final sentence on his writing board.
“His name?”
Luan answered in a low voice.
“Berik. Third Archer Company.”
Orte nodded and wrote it down.
Southern wheatfield village. Sister Riena. Inside the sole of his boot. Use it to get through the winter. Name, Berik. Third Archer Company.
When that short record was finished, Sera let out a small breath.
“You write down every last word too?”
“If I leave them out, this man disappears twice.”
Orte answered so and closed his writing board.
Hearing those words, Luan slowly withdrew his hand.
Disappears twice.
Strangely, the phrase lingered with him.
It sounded as if saying that without a name, a person died once, and then died again from memory.
Until now, Luan had known that fact only in his own way.
That was why he wrote name tags and facial features, and insisted on searching to the end even for strangers.
But Orte was saying nearly the same thing in another language.
Orte washed his hands and turned back toward Luan.
“You look longer at those you failed to save than those you saved.”
Sera’s head snapped up.
Few people said such things outright.
Luan did not answer. He could not deny it either.
Orte continued,
“The more a person saves lives, the more he gathers death upon himself as his own fault.”
Those words were neither reprimand nor comfort.
They sounded simply like a fact known by someone who had watched for a long time.
Only after a long while did Luan open his mouth.
“Because my hands touched them.”
“Even so, not all of it is your fault.”
“If I start calculating that, my hands become slow.”
At that answer, Orte fell silent for a very brief moment.
Then, without even a small smile, he said,
“Then I will do the calculating.”
For the first time, Luan looked straight at him.
Orte’s face was weary, but his gaze was steady.
They were the eyes only someone who had long stood beside the dead could possess, though he was neither one who fought nor one who stitched wounds.
Sera muttered from one side,
“You two will get along well. One tries to save them to the end, and the other tries to write them down to the end.”
Orte let her words pass and opened his writing board again.
“From today on, I will also leave records of the names of those standing before death. Who held their hand at the end, and what words they heard. So they can be sent to their families, if they wish.”
For a moment, Luan could not say anything.
Until now, he had only written the patients’ names, wounds, and time of death. Even that much had been overwhelming.
But if their final words could be left behind as well, then at least they would not be completely erased.
“That would be… good.”
At that short answer, Orte only nodded.
From outside came the sound of another stretcher.
This time, the man was still breathing, an infantryman with a long cut across his thigh.
Luan immediately turned toward him.
Orte moved with him as well. He no longer stood only beside the dead.
While Luan checked the wound, Orte asked first for the man’s name and unit from beside him.
When the infantryman stumbled over his answer, Orte asked again slowly in the same voice.
Watching the scene, Sera changed out the water bucket.
“The tent’s going to get even noisier now.”
“Why?”
“Because now there are three of us. One asking names, one asking about wounds, and one telling everyone to wash their hands.”
Even so, at the end of her voice there was the faintest trace of relief.
As the night deepened, the smell of candles gradually began to mingle inside the medical tent.
Amid the scents of blood, herbs, and damp cloth drifted a subtle fragrance of beeswax.
As Luan smelled it, he suddenly realized something.
For the first time today, even after covering the face of the dead, his fingertips felt a little less cold.
Orte quietly closed his writing board and said,
“When a name remains, those left behind go a little less mad.”
Luan did not answer those words.
Instead, as he opened the next patient’s wound, he said shortly,
“Sera. Water.”
“Here.”
“Friar Orte. Please get his name first.”
“Understood.”
The inside of the tent began to move again.
This time, names began to remain alongside the screams.