The canvas flap of the hospital tent did little to stop the cold, but it trapped the smell. A thick, layered stench of antiseptic, sweat, and something metallic and sweet that Sineus knew too well. He stepped inside, his boots sinking slightly into the muddy floorboards. His goal was simple. See to his men. The sounds were muted here, a chorus of low groans and pained, sleeping breaths that was worse than the sharp crack of battle. This was the ledger for the whole sector. More than fifty men lay on cots. His own victory at the rail junction had added its share to the count.
He moved down the narrow aisle, his eyes scanning the faces. Some were bandaged so heavily they were no longer faces at all. Just shapes in the dim, yellow light of the swaying lanterns. He saw a medic, a tired-looking woman with dark circles under her eyes, changing a dressing with practiced, impersonal movements. She was the only one moving with any speed. Everyone else was caught in the slow, thick gravity of pain.
He found Boris Kulagin near the back of the tent. His Sergeant Major was kneeling on one knee beside a cot, his broad back to the aisle. The man on the cot was a boy, no more than 19, his face pale and slick with sweat. His breath came in shallow, rattling gasps. Kulagin, the hardened veteran of three wars, was holding the boy’s hand. Sineus stopped a few meters away, giving the man his space. This was a private moment, and the tent was a public place of suffering.
The boy’s eyes fluttered open. They were wide with a terror that no training could erase.
— I’m afraid, Sergeant Major, — the voice was a dry whisper, a rustle of dead leaves.
Kulagin leaned closer. His own voice was rough, but the tone was gentle. A tone Sineus had heard him use only a handful of times, and always in moments like this.
— The hard right is harder for a reason, son. Anyone can do the easy thing.
The words hung in the air, simple and heavy as stone. A debt is a debt. It must be paid. Sineus felt a presence to his left and turned his head slightly. Pavel Morozov stood there, observing. The political officer. He was a man who always seemed clean, even here. His uniform was perfectly pressed, his face sharp and intelligent. He did not belong. Morozov’s eyes flickered from Kulagin to the dying boy, and then he took a small notebook and a pencil from his breast pocket. He made a short, precise entry. Noting it down. Another doctrinal impurity from a front-line soldier.
A flicker of pure contempt went through Sineus. He hated the watchers. The men who carried notebooks instead of rifles, who measured loyalty in paragraphs and reports. They were a different kind of enemy, one that fought with ink and whispers. He saw Morozov glance at him, a cool, appraising look. The political officer knew he was being watched in turn.
Sineus suppressed the feeling, locking it down. He was a commander. He could not afford such divisions. He gave Kulagin a slow, deliberate nod. An affirmation. An act of solidarity that Morozov would be sure to note in his little book. The price was more scrutiny. He accepted it. Kulagin was his man.
The medic arrived at the cot. She checked the boy’s pulse, her expression unchanging.
— There is nothing more, — she said, her voice flat and exhausted. She prepared a syringe of morphine.
— Make it easy for him, — Kulagin said, not looking up.
The medic administered the dose. The boy’s breathing eased. The tension went out of his thin body. A few moments later, he was gone. Kulagin gently placed the boy’s hand back on the cot and stood up, his knees cracking. He looked at Sineus, his face grim.
— That’s the last of them from the assault.
Sineus looked at the still form on the cot, then back at his sergeant.
— What is the count on our other wounded?
— Seventeen, Commander. From the company. Most are stable. Four are serious. We lost eight, plus this one.
Nine men. For a rail junction. The math of war was a brutal, simple thing. Sineus felt the dull throb of the headache from the battle return, a faint echo of the pressure behind his eyes. He pushed it away.
He saw his reflection for a moment in the polished metal of a surgical tray. A gaunt, tired face. The image seemed to waver, the lines of his jaw and cheekbones momentarily indistinct, as if the man looking back was not quite solid. He turned away from it.
The tent flap was thrown open, letting in a blast of frigid air and a flurry of snow. Pavel Morozov stood there, his greatcoat dusted with white. The political officer’s face was sharp, impassive. He spotted Sineus and moved through the cots with a clean, deliberate purpose that did not belong in this place of messy suffering.
— Commander, — Morozov said. His voice was crisp, cutting through the low groans of the wounded.
Sineus met his gaze. He said nothing.
— Your travel papers. General Volkov is not a patient man. You are to report to his headquarters at once.
He held out a sealed folder. The urgency of the summons had followed Sineus from the battlefield into the quiet despair of the hospital. It was a hook that had been set, and now the line was being pulled.
Sineus took the folder. He looked at Kulagin, then back at Morozov. He was a man caught between two loyalties: to the man beside him, and to the system that watched them both. He was being pulled from the front. Pulled away from his men, from the only war he understood.
The air smelled of canvas and damp wool. A single drop of water fell from the tent’s ceiling and landed on the back of his hand, cold as ice.
