Surviving Arkadia

I’m not going to go into the day-to-day details of life in the Citadel. The days dragged into each other. The boredom of skill grinding was peppered with constant low level fear and anxiety and occasional outbreaks of panic. None of the panics came to anything but that didn’t stop them from being horrifically draining.

The Citadel drifted south. It wasn’t moving in a straight line but meandered eccentrically and unpredictably as if it was looking for something. Like an aircraft in level flight we remained at the same height regardless of the ground below us. Whenever our drifting path took us close to high ground I had permission to use the Emergency Gondolas to take survival skill teams down to the ground.

It was as much about teaching them skills as it was about actually coming back with anything. I was shocked by the number of people that had to be prevented from punching trees. On the first few stops a lot of people made a lot of mostly useless twine. They used the twine to make a lot of mostly useless stone axes but once they’d unlocked the metal version it was time to scavenge for metal scrap. We had skilled blacksmiths on the Citadel. Asser Mottram had taken charge of building a smithy and installing a couple of forges but there wasn’t a lot of raw iron to play with.

While the scavengers looked for metal, the foragers had a harder time finding food. There’s not a lot of food just hanging about on hill tops. People are drawn to them because they’re defensible, not because they’re good for farming. However, as the weeks went on the Citadel took us South following the long string of hills that ran down the spine of the Talian Peninsula.

There were a lot of abandoned villages on those peaks. Gertrude told me that they were all that was left from a more warlike time. They were durable and easy to defend but, as alliances were made and Talia became largely peaceful, the population grew. It became hard to supply enough food and the fertile land of the valleys began to look more attractive. The larger villages grew into towns and became administrative centres but many of the smaller villages were abandoned.

These ghost villages had been mostly picked clean long before we got there, but the gardens and orchards had grown wild since they were abandoned by their people. Every visit to those lonely places resulted in basket upon basket of fresh fruit, vegetables and nuts. There was rarely enough for everyone but it was great for morale and helped to stave off scurvy and other diseases of malnutrition.

It seemed odd that the Citadel never approached any of the towns and cities. We had no control over the course but something within the Citadel seemed to know where people were and kept us away from them.

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When I wasn’t leading foraging and scavenging trips I was grinding skills. And if I wasn’t grinding skills then I was doing skills committee work or overseeing the food supplies. On those rare occasions when I had any free time I spent it in the hospital.

Most of the staff had moved into the hospital. It saved space in the Safehold and meant that they could work longer hours to cover for the staff shortages. The hospital worked a three shift system but there had only been one shift present when the attack started. A few people from the other shifts made it to the Citadel before it detached but that wasn’t enough. Fortunately a lot of the academics from the University had some anatomical knowledge and were able to quickly cross skill to cover for some of the gaps.

A lot of other people were willing to join the hospital staff, some for altruistic reasons, and some of them simply to avoid boredom. The finest Chef in the city was at work in the hospital kitchen. He produced meals not just for the patients and staff but extra meals that were available to everyone else on a lottery system.

Many of the older children in the hospital had made their first skills medical or caring skills. Most of them were too young to take a type or class but that didn’t stop them learning how to make a bed or brew fever tea.

My first trip back to the hospital was for the funeral of Barney Treseder. That was the boy that I’d helped Nurse Trudy take to the Cryo Room on my very first visit to the hospital. I took Asser Mottram with me, to meet Master Armstrong, and he stood awkwardly next to me as she spoke.

“He was such a brave boy,” she said, tears flowing freely down her face and saturating her moustache. “He fought so hard. I really thought he’d make it.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” I said. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to hear the details but I knew that she might need to talk about it.

“He died on the day of the Invasion. It was over so quickly. It seemed like one minute he was fine,” she stopped and I saw her searching for a more accurate way to describe the situation. “Not fine really, but as stable as any of them are after they come to the Cryo Room. Suddenly he was burning.” She tapped the urn holding his ashes. “He burned so brightly, so quickly. It’s always like that and I never get used to it. A brief, bright flash and then straight to ash.”

Barney’s family hadn’t made it to the Citadel but his brother Tommy, who I’d last seen unconscious and wrapped in cooling blankets, had recovered enough to attend. He was accompanied by another familiar figure.

Master Armstrong introduced her to me as Angela Malkan. She was the girl of about twelve that I remembered from my first trip to the hospital. She’d been reading to the younger children. Now she had her arm around Tommy, helping him to walk. I could see that she was fully recovered from the Fever but I could also see the deeper wounds. She was old beyond her years and had a kind of ingrained compassion that I recognised from Nurse Trudy.

The funeral was led by one of the Priests of the Source. Doctor Rolly Henning and Nurse Trudy each said a few words. Then Angela helped Tommy up to the podium.

He steadied himself, gripping the sides of the podium with trembling hands. “Thank you Dr Henning, Sister Luschin and Master Armstrong. I know that you did everything in your power to help my brother and I know that Barney knows that too. He’s grateful that you tried so hard to save him. Please keep trying for the others. It really matters that you try. They know that you’re trying. We all know that you’re trying and that’s important. I miss Barney a lot. I’d like to stop talking now.”

Angela helped Tommy carry the urn of ashes to one of the remaining empty alcoves in the Hospital’s garden of Remembrance.

Master Armstrong stood behind Tommy as he placed the urn. She tried to sob quietly but Tommy heard her and once he’d set down the urn he turned around and gave her a hug.

The Garden of Remembrance must have been very dusty that day because I saw a lot of usually stoic adults with very watery eyes.

After the funeral Asser Mottram cornered me and demanded to know, “What the fuck is going on?” So I told him about the Fever.

I might have felt guilty about inflicting such trauma on him but I’d just attended the funeral of a 10 year old boy at which his twin brother thanked all the people who couldn’t save him. I felt like there was plenty of trauma to go around. To his credit, Asser did not blame me for it. Less than a week later Asser was learning about cold runes from Master Armstrong and making toys for the children in the hospital in his spare time.