Chapter 95: A Loop

The morning after the *Lex Medica* was hammered into law, the streets and tenements of Gaul erupted into an uproar.

The Forge Master had thrown a torch into centuries of Roman patriarchy.

In the taverns near the foundries, the arguments were fierce...

"Did you hear the madness pouring from the praetorium?" an ironworker sneered over his ale. "They are letting women march to the front lines. What is next? Giving a gladius to a goat? The Gothic queen has lost her mind."

In the apartments of the plebeian districts, the debates were personal.

"I will not allow it," a father roared, slamming his fist against a table. "No daughter of my blood is going to scrub mud and gore from a dying legionary’s tunic! You will stay in this house, Cassia. Do you want the street to think I am a beggar who forces his women to work for his bread?"

But in the slums, economic reality was crushing pride...

"The Forge Master pays in silver, husband," a mother pleaded, clutching her husband’s tunic. "If Julia goes to the medical camps, her wages will buy us a stone hearth before winter. She wants to go. The recruiters promise they will be kept behind the shield walls."

The husband, a laborer whose back was failing from years in the sulfur mines, stared at the dirt floor.

Roman pride was a luxury the starving could not afford. The Syndicate was offering an escape from poverty. He let out an exhale. "Pack her things. I will walk her to the registration tables myself."

This scene played out thousands of times across the province...

The patricians scoffed at the degradation of Roman values, but the poor recognized a lifeline.

Unmarried women, widows, and refugee girls who had survived by weaving baskets or begging in the forums flocked to the recruitment stations.

By the end of the week, the tallies were brought to the praetorium.

Isolda stood over the desk in the war room, her eyes scanning the stack of wax tablets.

She looked up, a smile breaking across her face.

"Fifteen thousand," Isolda announced, dropping the tablet onto the desk. "We opened four thousand positions for the medical corps, and fifteen thousand women defied their fathers to sign their names."

Lucius leaned over the table, impressed.

The numbers shattered the logistical projections of his military advisors. He had underestimated the ambition of a populace that had been subjugated for centuries.

"It seems your gamble paid off, Director," Lucius murmured. He pulled a sheet of vellum toward him. "But fifteen thousand recruits are useless if they do not know how to suture an artery. I am drafting the expropriation orders."

Lucius signed a mandate.

He seized three estates previously owned by loyalist senators who had fled to Rome.

These villas... located in Civitas Aurelia, Massilia, and Vienna were stripped of their tapestries and statues, repurposed into the *Scholae Medicae*.

...

A week later, the gates of the confiscated estate in Civitas Aurelia swung open.

Tullia clutched her canvas sack to her chest, her eyes wide as she stepped into the courtyard. She was barely eighteen, a refugee from the northern frontier. When the Seventh Legion had marched through her village months ago, they had burned her family’s farm to ash in the name of imperial requisition. She had survived by fleeing south, finding work in one of the Syndicate’s textile mills.

The moment she heard the town criers announcing the *Lex Medica*, Tullia hadn’t hesitated. She had no husband to forbid her and no parents left to shame. She wanted the silver, and she wanted to be part of the machine that was going to tear the Roman Senate to pieces.

Tullia joined a river of nearly five thousand women flowing into the estate. The peristyles and gardens had been overhauled. Rows of wooden cots filled the colonnades.

After dropping her belongings on an assigned cot, Tullia was herded into the villa’s courtyard, alongside three hundred other recruits.

Standing on the marble dais was a tired Greek physician named Galenus.

Galenus was one of Kallias’s chemical engineers, hand-picked to drill the Forge Master’s medical doctrines into the recruits.

"Listen closely," Galenus barked. "I know most of you cannot read. I know none of you have ever held a scalpel. We do not have the luxury of time, and we will not be discussing the four humors or philosophical anatomy today. You are here to learn how to stop a man from bleeding to death, and you are going to learn it right now."

Galenus gestured to two attendants.

They carried a stretcher onto the dais.

Lying on the canvas was a laborer from the foundries, his face pale and contorted in agony.

His right thigh was wrapped in a blood-soaked rag.

Several women in the front row gasped. Two of them turned white and fainted, collapsing onto the marble.

Tullia did not look away... She forced herself to stare at the blood, her jaw clenched.

"This is a laceration caused by a shattered gear tooth," Galenus explained, peeling the bloody rag away to reveal a jagged gash. "You will see hundreds of these when Legate Rufinus brings his swords south. The first step is stabilizing the patient’s nervous system."

Galenus held up a dark glass vial.

"This is a concentrated tincture of poppy, refined by the Syndicate’s chemical division," Galenus projected, passing the vial to the front row. "You administer exactly three drops under the tongue. No more, or you will stop his heart. It neutralizes the pain and prevents the soldier from thrashing while you work."

The physician leaned over, administering the drops to the groaning laborer.

Within seconds, the man’s breathing slowed.

His eyes glazed over, the tension melting from his muscles as the narcotic took hold.

"The second step is the most critical," Galenus continued, producing a flask filled with a clear liquid. "The physicians will tell you to pack the wound with dung or mud to stop the bleeding. If I catch any of you doing that, I will have you flogged. You will flush the wound with this."

He poured the clear liquid into the open gash.

The liquid bubbled and hissed on contact with the blood. The laborer barely flinched, sedated by the poppy.

"It is a distilled ethanol wash," Galenus explained, pointing to the foam. "This alcohol burns the decay away. It stings, but it prevents the black rot from claiming the limb."

Tullia watched with focus. She memorized the colors of the vials...

Dark glass for the pain, clear glass for the cleansing fire.

"Finally, we close the flesh," Galenus said, producing a curved iron needle and a length of white thread. "You will use boiled silk. The body accepts it cleanly. You stitch the muscle and the skin tight, keeping the rot out."

He pushed the needle through the laborer’s thigh, his hands moving in a blur as he sutured the flesh back together.

"There is an alternative," Galenus noted, holding up a yellowish string. "This is catgut. Spun from sheep intestines. It dissolves inside the body over time, making it ideal for internal ruptures where you cannot remove the stitches later. However, it is expensive and difficult to manufacture. You will use the silk for external battlefield wounds. Leave the gut for the master surgeons."

The demonstration concluded, and the bandaged laborer was carried away to a recovery ward.

These practical lectures were occurring across all three *Scholae Medicae*.

The curriculum was stripped of ancient superstition, focusing on sterilization, pain management, and suturing.

The women were subjected to twelve-hour shifts of practical application.

The patients they trained on were real.

Lucius had orchestrated a loop...

Injured laborers, who historically would have been fired and left to die in the slums, were now offered free medical treatment at the academies.

In exchange for saving their lives, the laborers served as training material for Isolda’s new medical corps...