Chapter 8. Tent Raid
Chapter 8. Tent Raid
The night did not descend quietly.
Even before the sun set, the wind grew rough first.
The wet tent fabric trembled incessantly, and from afar, horse neighs and short shouts came through the wind, intermittently heard.
Thanks to separating the feverish patients during the day and establishing hand-washing rules, the inside of the Medical Tent was less chaotic than in the morning.
But Ruan felt that this orderly appearance wouldn't last long.
Sera said as she wrung out boiled cloth.
"It's a bit noisy outside."
"It's probably from the supply line."
Ruan answered like that, but his hands were already moving faster.
He pressed down again on the wound of the infantryman he had just finished suturing, and checked the foreheads of two fever patients lying in the left section.
Then someone outside shouted at the top of their lungs.
"Fire. A fire has broken out at the north supply tent."
Sera stopped her hands.
"Fire?"
Ruan pushed aside the entrance.
A pungent smell seeped into the night air.
In the distance, under the black sky, an orange glow was spreading.
If it was the supply tent side, it wasn't a place completely separated from here.
Soon after, a sentry ran in with a breathless face.
"Medical Officer-nim. Enemy remnants have entered from the north. The supply line is shaken."
"Is it a distance that will reach here?"
"Normally no. But it seems some bastards who know the inner paths are mixed in."
Sera cursed quietly. Ruan immediately spoke.
"All who can walk, go outside. Move the fever patients with their blankets, and those with open wounds stay inside."
The sentry couldn't even answer and ran out again.
Sera was already grabbing blankets.
"Should we move Karen too?"
Ruan looked to the side.
Karen was sitting leaning against one wall.
Her side wound wasn't completely healed yet, but her gaze was already tilted toward the battlefield.
"I can move."
"Right now, you're a patient."
"You look like you'll soon be a patient yourself."
Sera interjected.
"Both of you shut up and use your hands first."
Before those words even ended, a scream erupted outside.
This time, it was too close.
Ruan checked the innermost stretcher first.
The boy with a lung wound was still breathing roughly, and the feverish archer had no strength to walk on his own.
Mathias was half-unconscious.
They couldn't take everyone and escape.
Ruan clenched his teeth and said.
"Only three who can walk first. Evacuate behind the ditch. Sera, I'll take Mathias. The boy, have two orderlies carry him together."
Sera nodded.
At that moment, the entrance tent flap was roughly pushed aside.
A soldier who had been pulling a stretcher fell backward and was pushed inside.
There was a sword graze on his shoulder, and his face was deathly pale.
"They've come this far."
Behind him, someone's shadow flickered.
Ruan reflexively looked around the floor.
A short sword was lying in the corner. He picked it up.
It's okay. This time, I have to move.
But his feet were stuck.
Even though the scene of enemy soldiers pushing through the tent entrance and coming inside was so vivid, his body didn't take a single step forward.
He could pull the stretcher further inside and hide the patients.
But the moment it came to pointing the blade at a person, some part of his body completely locked up.
Two enemy soldiers squeezed through the entrance.
One carried a short axe, and the other, with a blood-soaked face, held a sword.
Both seemed less like a proper assault and more like they had been frantically searching for a way and barged in here.
Sera stopped pushing Mathias's stretcher and shouted.
"Ruan."
Ruan stood frozen, holding the sword, unable to move.
One enemy soldier kicked the nearest stretcher and pushed his way further inside.
It was the stretcher of the boy with the lung wound.
Only then did Ruan lunge forward as if throwing himself, grabbing the stretcher.
He pushed the patient back to hide him, but that was as far as he got.
He was still holding the sword, and his feet were fixed as if embedded in front of the patient.
At that moment, something brushed past from the side.
It was Karen.
She was so fast that it was impossible to see when she had gotten up or from whose hand she had snatched the sword.
Ruan only saw two scenes.
A flash of metallic light in the darkness,
And the sight of the enemy soldier's shoulder bending in an odd direction as he collapsed.
Before the first bastard even fell, Karen twisted her body and engaged the second.
Her movements were so precise that it didn't seem like someone wounded, yet at the same time, it was immediately obvious that her body was being overexerted.
Every time she stepped, her breath came in rough, interrupted gasps.
Ruan still couldn't leave the front of the stretcher and watched the scene.
He couldn't read the trajectory of the sword.
He only knew that someone was standing in front of him, completely blocking the space between the patients and the enemy.
The second enemy soldier's sword slanted down toward Karen.
Ruan reflexively shouted.
"Left."
Karen's body dropped low.
The tip of the sword passed by, barely brushing the ends of her hair.
The following motion was too fast to see clearly.
After a short clash, the enemy soldier collapsed to the floor.
Immediately, three soldiers ran in. It was late-arriving support.
They checked the two downed enemies and ran back outside.
It meant it wasn't over yet.
Karen stood there, still holding the sword.
Her back was facing Ruan.
But the next moment, her shoulders trembled very slightly.
Only then did Ruan see. The area under her side bandage was reddening again.
"Karen."
She spoke without turning around.
"Patients first."
"You are more urgent."
"Don't lie."
Those words were lacking strength.
Still, her gaze remained fixed on the entrance.
Ruan belatedly looked down at his own hand. The sword was still in his hand.
But the tip of the sword hadn't moved forward at all, only trembling.
He clenched his teeth and threw the sword to the floor.
Sera gasped for breath and said.
"There's no time to argue about who's first right now."
Ruan moved immediately.
First, he pushed the boy's stretcher further inside, covered Mathias again with the cloth he had dropped, and untangled the stuck wheel of the feverish archer's stretcher.
Only after finishing that brief tidying did he turn back to Karen.
Outside, another enemy soldier passed by the entrance as if brushing past.
He didn't manage to come inside. Someone cut off his scream short, as if slitting his throat.
It was clear that the night raid had truly pushed all the way to the medical area.
Ruan pressed on Karen's side bandage.
She swallowed a low breath.
"It's opened again."
"I won't die from that."
"Whether you live or die now is for me to decide."
Sera brought a water canteen and new cloth, muttering.
"Now you two are really going to drive me crazy."
Instead of answering, Ruan unwrapped the bandage.
The wound hadn't completely burst open, but one side of the suture was pulled badly.
He immediately picked up the needle.
Karen didn't let go of the sword.
"Put that down."
"No."
"Your hand is shaking."
"Still, it's better to hold it."
Ruan let out a short breath. That claim was hard to refute.
If someone needed to stand in front of the patients in this tent right now, it was more fitting for Karen than for himself.
It stung.
Every time the needle pierced skin, the sounds from outside grew clearer.
But what Ruan could do inside the tent was always the same.
Close the torn flesh, stop the bleeding, and keep the patient from dying.
When the suture was about halfway done, Karen spoke quietly.
"I thought you didn't run away."
Ruan's hand paused for a very brief moment.
"What do you mean?"
"Just now. You didn't back away from the patients."
Ruan couldn't retort.
It wasn't that he hadn't backed away.
He simply couldn't move.
He had frozen in place because he couldn't step forward while holding the sword.
But Karen had seen that scene differently.
She continued looking forward as she spoke.
"Usually at moments like that, everyone looks out for their own life first. You didn't."
Ruan pulled the thread and answered briefly.
"That's how you saw it."
"Are my eyes wrong?"
There was no answer to that question.
Ruan simply tied the knot.
No matter how Karen saw it, what remained inside him was only helplessness.
The hand that had held a sword but couldn't do anything. Only the fact that he had seen it clearly again remained.
The commotion subsided only after a long while.
Two northern supply tents had burned down, and three wounded soldiers were brought in anew.
As soon as he finished suturing Karen, Ruan went to the new patients.
After the night grew deep and all sounds gradually faded, two temporary torches were set up in front of the Medical Tent.
Four soldiers stood guard in shifts.
Sera threw away the completely cooled water and said.
"No one will be able to sleep tonight."
Ruan washed his blood-stained hands in silence.
Hot water flowed over the back of his hand, but the sensation of being unable to move even while holding the sword from a moment ago wouldn't wash away.
Karen was again sitting leaning against the tent wall.
Her face was pale, and no more blood showed beneath the freshly wrapped bandage.
Still, the sword remained within arm's reach.
"Now you understand."
Ruan turned around.
"What?"
"Why a person who wields a sword is needed by your side."
Ruan was silent for a moment, then spoke quietly.
"If you hadn't moved today, we all would have died."
"That could have been."
"But still, you overexerted yourself again."
Karen laughed.
"You were the same."
Ruan didn't answer that.
He hadn't overexerted himself; he had been stopped.
Karen would ultimately interpret that difference differently.
That was even more frustrating.
Sera looked back and forth between the two of them and sighed.
"Today's conclusion is one. Ruan doesn't run away only in front of patients, and Karen almost died again because of patients."
"I didn't die."
"Yes. That's why it's more troublesome."
Sera picked up the water bucket and went outside.
After checking the forehead of the last patient, Ruan looked back toward the entrance.
Soldiers were moving back and forth through the torchlight.
The front of the Medical Tent was being guarded more tightly than before.
Karen said quietly.
"From today, I'll stand at the door."
"You're a patient."
"I'll stand anyway."
"That's only if your body can endure it."
"Then make me endure. That's your job, isn't it?"
Ruan looked incredulous, but this time he couldn't immediately argue back.
Because he still hadn't forgotten the back that had stood blocking in front of him just moments ago.
The sound of a guard shift change came from outside.
The torch embers swayed long in the wind.
Ruan closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and moved his steps toward the next stretcher.
His hands were still heavy, and the inside of his chest was even heavier.
Yet the patients remained.
So he had to move.
The night in the Medical Tent was not yet over.
But it seemed that from now on, someone would be standing at the door.