Chapter 230 – How to Heal an Army

Oriphusa takes a few seconds to switch over to the other two healers. Maybe I should have just asked them myself; I am meant to be in charge.

That's going to be my biggest challenge, telling people what to do instead of just following orders.

"Esta Dacan, would you like to go next," Oriphusa finally says. Moving the conversation onto one of the two wood elves.

Both have a moderate chest. Nothing like my wives, but they would be normal to see around the ground floor of the brothel.

"Yes, thank you Lady Oriphusa," Esta says. "I don't have any special healing Skills when I'm not dealing with curses. And even with curses, I can only take a single patient at a time. It is good to meet you, Alzi. I know I've heard a lot about your healing at the brothel. The stories about how the entire building would randomly feel like they were being healed were interesting, and I'm glad you'll get to use that ability for real now. The world can always use another healer."

"Thanks," I mumble, glad more than my body made it into the stories.

"Kali Papetor," Oriphusa says.

"Poisons are my specialty," Kali starts. "I have a few group cleansing spells that work against certain classes of poison. Mostly the natural kind. I know that Azula De Vil is likely to show up, and she can use more poisons than I can group heal. But if you can keep them stable, I can go around and finish the healing for them if needed."

"That is good," I say. Alzi, you can do better than that. Be a leader! "I'll need your help to know what needs to happen with them. I haven't dealt with poisons much." If you don't count my Mother.

"Worst case, just flushing them with life mana works," Oriphusa adds. "It isn't very mana efficient, but you don't always get the chance to do everything the best way."

"About your Skills," Kali says. "If needed, I would be willing to do it with you. Poisons are more common than curses, so I may not have enough mana when Oriphusa leaves to handle what the army needs. Just something to think about; I'm not demanding you do it."

"If we need to get more mana, I will remember that," I say. "I know it would be weird to suddenly have to have sex."

"Well, the nobles all paid to have you do it with them before. I think we can handle you forcing it on us to save lives," Kali says, looking to the floor. "They would still be getting the better end of the deal in that exchange."

"I suppose," I say. I'm a walking brothel at this point, but at least she knows.

"But we seem to have poisons well taken care of right now, and we all will be getting a lot of levels, so we may get even more mana before Oriphusa leaves," Kali says.

I guess that shifty bitch has the Princess scared. Two of the four healers can handle poisons well, and they claim that just flushing the women with life mana can heal them.

I should ask if they've found a way to get certain Skills or if they just got lucky. I did get my wish for mana regeneration, but I'm a champion. I doubt the others get their wishes fulfilled. The Goddesses should give me something for not protecting me from being enslaved.

Yes, Goddess, if you are listening, give me a poison healing Skill that doesn't require sexual pleasure or me to be naked.

That probably isn't going to work again, but whatever. The current issue is that my Skills have still stifled the conversation, or maybe Oriphusa isn't someone people like to talk around. I'm okay with that around my wives, as their job is to make me like them, but here, it's a little strange.

"Oriphusa, I never got to work with you in a shop," I say. "Can you talk about it for me? I hope I can still do that after the war."

"After this war, I don't think you'll have a need to work with me. But I would love to have you come by," Oriphusa says. "A work day depends on how many visitors you get and what your help is like. The smaller shops in the cities, like Esta and Kali run, are busy with small issues that they manage themselves for the most part. My shop, and the one that you would run from the manor, sees fewer patients in a day, but the issues will be more serious. Missing limbs, curses that take a few days to clear out, or adventurer groups that had a mission go bad. I have a maid handling most of the business side of things, though I check over the money side; the Queen would come for my title, not the maids if the taxes are wrong, but day to day, it's a maid running it. If they can pay or it's a charity case, I have a few rooms set up to do the initial checkup, using my Skills to find the list of ailments and make sure what they paid for is actually a problem. Then I get to heal them."

"Just a few a day?" I ask. "There can't be that many that have serious issues."

"You would be surprised," Oriphusa chuckles. "All nobles have a period where they have to fight, and they'll come back hurt. Then, there's the fact that people will travel quite far for good healing. Most can't regrow a limb, and this is the only army to have two women who can manage that. Then you have groups that get hurt during nature raids, and they'll pull money together to come by. You'll have a lot of quiet days, but then, all of a sudden, you'll have no mana for anything but healing for a month. You'll have your maid open the front door for you if you even have a moment to step outside. Then you have the older women who are really struggling with the fact that their time is finally coming. They'll have problem after problem that you can heal, but it never solves their age."

"Do you never handle small things?"

"I do," Oriphusa says. "Just not often. I'm just not that convenient to get to. It's much easier to get to someone living in the city than to a manor. The families of the sailors you healed traveled far to get to you and only did that because it was free. The group likely shared the travel cost to make it worth the time to get out there. If you want to deal with smaller issues, you have to move into the city; otherwise, you'll only get to treat them when you happen to be around."

"What happens if you run out of mana?" I ask. "I guess that would be a question for all of you."

"We don't have a way to get more," Esta says. "If I have a potion, I offer that; otherwise, I do what I can to keep them stable, then go to bed and hope it is something I can handle in the morning."

"That is what I was hoping to keep you from having to deal with," Oriphusa says. "I know we didn't focus much on non-mana healing, but it is an important thing that can help in a lot of situations. It should make it so you have less praying to do to keep a woman alive until you have the mana to deal with her problem. Something I expect all of you to check up on. Most of the medical work is done by those without mana, and it would be best to add you three to the mix, but another thing we all need to do is keep some mana in reserve so we can get all the women stable. Our first goal is to get the nobles back in fighting shape and then stabilize the commoners. If we have the chance, we get commoners into fighting shape as well. With Alzi and her Skills, that should be possible more often, but we need to be prepared for a noble to come in. Each morning, we'll heal any noble we weren't able to finish healing the night before, and then we'll check for any women who may be dying. Then, as the bodies come in from the fighting that day, we heal. While traveling, we will be doing the extra healing of the commoners. Starting with the least hurt until they are in fighting shape to help our numbers. Most that lose a limb will be sent home so that we don't have to worry about providing food for someone who isn't likely to be able to fight again."

"So we send them off to war and ruin their life, and then just send them back when they are no longer needed?" I ask. "Broken and destroyed because they are commoners? Not worth enough for you?"

"War requires sacrifice," Oriphusa says. "We four are the only healers here for forty thousand women. Only two of us can heal a limb. You may be able to heal ten limbs a day; I can heal five. What happens when we get a hundred of them or a thousand? What happens when I have to leave because other armies have even less healing than we do?"

"Do they at least have a promise that we'll come back to help them?"

"We don't have the time for that."

"Time to help those fighting for us? We are the people with the power to call off this war. We force them to make time to fight for us, and we can't even take the time to heal them afterward?"

"Will you give up the kid? Will you heal the Princess?"

"Everyone should just let the stupid bitch die! She came after me and told me to get her pregnant. I got her pregnant, and now it's too much for her. She gave me a kid by force and couldn't hold onto it. Why is everyone else paying for her fucking mistakes? But yes. I would give up this kid to go home to my Mommy. I didn't think it would end up like this when everyone asked me before. And then, everyone stopped asking me what I wanted and turned it into this."

I wonder if anyone can hear our discussion. Would it change anything? I'm guessing it is just the other healers and maybe a few nobles near us, so probably not.

We aren't even moving yet. They are likely still getting all the poor women into lines to march down the road. I hope they won't force them to walk through the snow.

"Well, Lady Alzi, your kids are a bit more special," Oriphusa says. "More so when royalty is involved."

"I'm glad they have a reason to fuck everyone over, and I can safely say this isn't my fault. Why ask me if I would give up the child if the Queen wouldn't even let me?"

"We can do what we can," Esta says. "If we both help you regenerate mana, you can heal more women, though we'll need to test how much mana it recovers for us. We can try handling a lot of the simple tasks for you so you can focus on the injuries we can't do anything about. Most healers are unable to do anything for a lost limb, Lady Alzi. So even a lot of nobles don't get their limbs fixed for weeks or until after the war."

"But they get fixed," I mumble.

"Yes," Kali says. "They have the money to pay for it. The Queen sponsors healing shows, and the Royal healer does some work to help the soldiers when they return. But we could do better."

The Princess didn't do too badly getting Esta and Kali; I can work with them. But I can't wait until Oriphusa leaves.

"I'm glad some people are working with me," I say, looking out the window. The camp is still getting organized, but it should be close to moving out, I hope. I don't really know what it takes to get an army marching.