Chapter 4. The Awakened Knight
Chapter 4. The Awakened Knight
The rumors grew outside the tent, but the inside of the medical tent remained the same.
Stretchers came in without pause, and blood was always in short supply.
The boiled water quickly cooled, and clean cloth couldn't last half a day before running out.
Ruan Hesse spent past noon stitching two spear wounds,
pressed and bandaged the exposed ribs of an infantryman's chest,
and reopened a shoulder with an arrowhead still embedded.
His hands didn't slow, but his eyes grew heavier.
Bern Dalt, beside him, after taking a patient's pulse, said quietly.
"Switch hands. Your eyes are glazing over."
Ruan pretended not to hear and tried to move to the next stretcher.
Sera grabbed his wrist firmly.
"If you misplace the needle now, you'll ruin the patient and your hand too."
"I'm still fine."
"You've said that more than ten times today alone."
Bern said nothing more.
Instead, the sound of him placing the forceps on the table conveyed his meaning well enough.
Ruan reluctantly stepped back.
Only then did he realize that his fingertips were trembling slightly.
It was a tremor that others might not notice, but for someone who had held a needle for long, it was an uncontrollable shake.
At that moment, a faint groan came from the innermost stretcher of the tent.
Sera turned her head first.
"That person seems to have woken up."
Ruan also raised his gaze.
In the innermost spot lay a severely wounded person who had been carried in last night almost like a corpse.
Even after removing the shattered armor and wrapping bandages, the depth of the wounds was obvious at a glance.
A sword cut that grazed below the neck.
A wound that tore lengthwise across the right flank.
A slash extending to the thigh.
It was a body that would have died if even one wound had been deeper.
The woman slowly opened her eyes.
Her pupils wavered briefly with the light, then soon scanned the surroundings.
Past the tent ceiling, the lamp, the stretchers, and the blood-stained floor, the place where she finally stopped was Ruan.
Her eyes were too clear for a patient.
The eyes of someone who already knew where she was and what she needed to check first.
Ruan approached and said.
"Don't move. Your flank will tear open again."
Instead of answering, the woman checked her own body first.
She examined the bandaged shoulder, flank, thigh, and finally her fingertips.
The way she checked her senses was so familiar that even Sera clicked her tongue quietly.
"Soon as she opens her eyes, she checks where she's been stitched up."
The woman opened her mouth.
Her throat was hoarse, but her pronunciation was clear.
"Did you save me?"
Ruan looked at her for a moment, then answered calmly.
"The medical unit saved you."
"Who."
"Me and Bern Dalt-nim."
Behind, Bern snorted.
"Don't lie. All I did was apply pressure."
Sera looked between the two and raised the corners of her mouth.
Ruan pretended not to hear and took the woman's pulse.
Her consciousness was clear, but her body was still in danger.
Especially the flank sutures—a single twist could rip them open again.
"If a fever rises, I may have to reopen it. Don't talk today—just rest."
At that, the woman let out a breath that was almost a laugh.
"So I didn't die."
"Not yet."
At that short answer, the woman's expression wavered for a moment.
It was the face of someone who had expected that answer, but hearing it directly made it sound different.
She murmured very quietly.
"It wasn't luck."
Before Ruan could ask back, the woman's body went limp.
As if the tension she had barely maintained while awake collapsed all at once, her neck tilted to the side.
Sera flinched, but Ruan immediately checked her eyelids and breathing and shook his head.
"She's fainted. She has a pulse."
Bern examined the wounds again.
After a long silence, he lifted the edge of the bandage and said low.
"Do you remember these wounds?"
I remember.
Last night, as soon as Bern saw this woman, he nearly withdrew his hands.
Seeing the depth that narrowly missed the lung and the amount of blood already lost,
it was a wound that would be hard to survive with realistic treatment alone.
Ruan knew that too.
So in the quietest moment of dawn, he placed his hands one last time.
He also knew why his temples were now pricking like needles.
Bern continued.
"It wasn't at a level that could be explained by luck."
Sera asked.
"What?"
Bern pointed at the flank suture line.
"Here. Looking at the torn grain, it should have opened just from breathing."
Sera was silent for a moment, then looked at Ruan.
Her face was devoid of playfulness.
Ruan didn't avoid her gaze and said.
"There are lucky days."
"Today, both the courier and this person—everyone's lucky."
At that, Ruan's hand paused very briefly.
Sera saw that tremor but didn't ask further.
What mattered now wasn't suspicion, but the patient.
From outside, the sound of stretchers came again.
An assistant soldier urgently pushed aside the entrance.
"Medical officer-nim. You need to see this side first."
Ruan was about to turn around when he stopped at a very small sound.
The woman who had just lost consciousness again let something slip through lips that weren't fully closed.
"...I'll remember."
It was so quiet that even Sera and Bern seemed not to have heard.
Only Ruan was close enough.
When he turned, the woman was already completely settled.
It was even ambiguous whether the words he just heard were real.
But strangely, that one phrase lingered in his ears.
Not gratitude, not a vow—words that would surely return as something later.
Sera asked.
"What is it? Why did you stop?"
"It's nothing."
"How many times is that today?"
Ruan didn't reply and picked up the needle again.
The next patient was a spearman with a deep cut on the back of his neck.
Stop the bleeding first, check if he's still breathing, then stitch, and watch for fever.
It was the usual order.
His hands moved at their familiar speed again, but in one corner of his mind, the innermost stretcher remained.
A severely wounded knight of unknown identity.
A body whose very survival defied explanation.
And the eyes that had sought him out as soon as she woke.
Toward evening, Ruan went to the innermost stretcher one more time.
This time, Sera didn't joke either.
Under the lamplight, the grain of the wound was clearer.
The flank suture line was still dangerously taut, and a deep bruise spread below the shoulder.
Yet her fever had come down a little.
It was a body that stubbornly held on.
He replaced the wet cloth and with his fingertips checked the lung breath sounds again.
Amid the rough friction sounds, her breath continued without breaking.
It was clearly the sound of a living body.
Even while unconscious, Karen occasionally twitched her fingers.
Like someone aiming at a throat, or like someone refusing to let go of a sword hilt.
Sera asked in a small voice.
"Is she a knight?"
"Looking at her hands, yes."
"Does she seem like a noble too?"
Ruan briefly recalled the mark he had glimpsed on the inside of her wrist.
There was a dark mark visible beneath the cloth.
He couldn't see the shape clearly. It could be a crest or an old brand.
He soon dismissed the thought.
"Even if I knew, there's nothing good in it."
Sera nodded.
"Right. Patients with complicated identities usually only bring trouble."
Bern approached from behind.
A shadow with an empty sleeve end swayed long in the lamplight.
He looked down at Karen, then spoke to Ruan.
"That woman will ask again when she wakes. Who saved her."
"Then I'll give the same answer."
"I said she's not the kind of eyes that will let it go with the same answer."
Instead of replying, Ruan folded a cloth and put it in the water basin.
Bern didn't say more, but that silence lingered longer.
He seemed not to be interrogating, but rather like someone who had seen it and was pretending not to.
That was more exhausting.
Ruan looked down at his fingertips once.
Until a moment ago, those hands had held someone's torn flesh and spurting blood.
But why had those hands created an inexplicable life?
He wanted to ask that more than anyone.
But on the battlefield, the next patient came before the answer.
So it was easier to pretend not to know.
In the distance, someone else swallowed a scream.
Sera opened the lid of the pot boiling new needles,
and Bern wordlessly headed toward the next stretcher.
Only Karen, with her eyes closed again in the innermost spot,
lay quietly as if she was still not missing any sound in this tent.
Just before night fully settled, Karen opened her eyes once more.
This time, her gaze wasn't blurry.
She scanned the tent ceiling, the lamp, the needles and medicine bottles on the table, even the other patients groaning in the distance, and finally stopped her gaze on Ruan again.
"Is this the front-line medical unit?"
"Yes."
"Quieter than I expected."
Sera laughed incredulously.
"If you'd come during the day, you wouldn't have said that."
Karen didn't answer that. Instead, she asked slowly.
"How long did I sleep?"
"About a day and a half."
"That's like dying and coming back, then."
"Usually, yes."
Karen was silent for a moment.
After that short silence, she looked at Ruan again.
"I have a good memory. I don't easily forget favors, debts, or faces."
He couldn't explain why those words sounded ominous.
Ruan deliberately chose a nonchalant tone.
"Then start by remembering how to rest. If you try to get up again today, I'll really have to reopen you."
This time, Karen didn't argue.
But until just before closing her eyes, she didn't withdraw her gaze.
As if she was trying to engrave the face of the person who spoke, rather than the words themselves.
Only then did Ruan turn around.
Outside the tent, a cold wind seeped in,
and inside, the smell of blood and herbs mixed and drifted.
He moved his steps toward the next patient and said to himself.
That woman will leave soon.
When her wounds heal, she'll return to her own battlefield.
Today's strange gaze will end there too.
Yet strangely, that premonition didn't come at all.