Surviving Arkadia

The Emergency Council had, as usual, taken over one of the social carriages. There were a tea urn and a coffee pot set up next to a couple of plates of snacks. It might be an emergency meeting but it looked like they were expecting it to go long.

Asser, Jez and I were the last to arrive. Amris had saved space on a sofa for me but not for the others. That was hardly surprising since only one of the engine crew would usually attend and the pilot, Albrecht Klam, was already there. I had a brief moment of panic about who was driving the train before remembering that he’d taken Aubrey Hulland, the Artificer, as an apprentice, so it was probably him.

I sat down next to Amris. Asser opted to sit cross-legged, on the floor in front of me, and Jez perched on the arm of the sofa.

The moment we were in place the Mayor stood up to speak. In the brief moment before he opened his mouth I fought the urge to point out that if we’d known he was going to stand then Asser or Jez could have taken his seat.

“We’ve all been through a lot today,” said the Mayor, to general nodding, “But we can’t rest yet.” That was met with a resigned groan from most of the people present.

“Please just get to the point,” said Ursula.

“I know that it seems like we’ve fought them off but we have to assume that the Ostians are following us,” said the Mayor. I think he expected people to argue the point. Certainly nobody wanted it to be true but everyone was still in crisis mode and no one had the stomach for self deception.

He was met with a very heavy silence before Albrecht spoke up, “Well, obviously. There’s only about a hundred ways to track a Source powered device this big and even if they don’t have trackers they’d just need someone to shadow us on one of those flying horse contraptions.”

I looked around the room, taking in the faces properly for the first time since I’d arrived. Everyone looked exhausted and each face showed some combination of sad, tired, angry and scared. Trudy had been widely beloved and I saw a few people who had definitely been crying.

“As you say,” said the Mayor. “So we can’t simply stop and rest as we would normally do. We need a place of refuge. Fortunately we’ve received encouraging messages from the Citadel and also Ursula has received a Crystal network mail that we think might be good news once Petra deciphers it.”

“What?” I said. I had been listening passively, not expecting to have to say anything.

Ursula passed me a note, transcribed in her own precise handwriting. It was from Jethro and Agnes. It said, “We have spoken to Gertrude and we have a plan. Leave the train in the place where you first opened your eyes. Take everyone to the camp. Trust us.”

“Do you understand this message,” said the Mayor.

“I understand it,” I said. “I’m just not sure it’s a good idea to obey it.”

“You don’t trust them?” said the Mayor, he had doubt in his voice but it was mostly aimed at me.

“I trust them, I just don’t know that they have all the information they need. Do they know how big the train is? Will it actually fit into the place they’re sending us? It is a clearing but it wasn’t nearly big enough the last time I was there. Then we have to take everyone from the train to the camp on foot, while carrying all their gear?”

“They know how big it is,” said Ursula. “They’ve been in contact with Gertrude and I. They know how many people we have, the exact dimensions of the train, what the current rationing plan is.”

“Everyone on the train now walked onto it from the Citadel,” said the Mayor. “It’s just a question of how long they need to be on their feet. How long will the journey take?”

I thought back to that first day. The walk to the camp hadn’t seemed long, maybe half an hour or so. But I’d had nothing to compare it to. I tried to remember the position of the sun in the sky when we set out and when we arrived but that didn’t help much. I would just have to guess.

“I think it took us about thirty minutes but allowing for unloading the train, carrying our gear, and how much slower it is for large groups of people to move around it shouldn’t be much more than two hours. But we can’t just evacuate the entire train just because my friends think it’s a good idea.”

“No. We’re evacuating the train because it’s better than just running from the Ostians full speed until we either run out of food or something breaks. Now you and Albrecht need to get back to the controls and find us a way through those woods.”

I was too stunned to speak up. I felt like I was being moved around the board like a pawn in a game of chess. It was just like when Agnes suddenly decided that it was time for me to leave the camp.

“But we’ve just had a breakthrough,” said Jez.

“Yes!” said Asser. “We know what the Fever is and we think we know what the Ostians want and why.”

“The three of you together?” said the Mayor.

“Yes,” we all said.

“Then the two of you can explain it and Petra can go help drive the train.”

“Just be sure that someone minutes that Petra worked it out first,” said Jez. “I won’t have her achievement overlooked and lost to history just because she’s not an academic.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “I’ll be amazed if anyone remembers it in ten minutes, never mind in perpetuity.”

###

Back in the control room at the front of the train Aubrey Hulland was at the controls, eyes on the periscope. One of the younger scholars was in the cupola, occasionally calling out that the course was fine.

“We’re skirting the edge of the woods just now,” said Aubrey. “We need to find the right track into the woods soon or we’ll be travelling in the dark and I don’t care what the Mayor says, we’ll have to stop.”

“If we run out of daylight we’ll just have to rely on Amris to steer,” said Aubrey, as he unrolled the big map of the woods and charted our position on it.

It took me longer than I’d hoped to find the crossroads where Agnes’ camp was, but once I’d found that it was easy to find the clearing where I’d first woken up. It was pretty deep in the woods but I could trace the network of paths and tracks back to a couple of likely roads to the south of the woods.

Checking the map against the route indicator on Aubrey’s controls I could see that we were already well past one of the roads but the other wasn’t too far ahead and the turn wasn’t even a sharp one.

Albrecht nodded as I showed him, “We’ll make a train driver out of you yet,” he said.

He pulled out a heavy smoking pipe, big and curved like the one Sherlock Holmes smoked in caricatures but never in illustrations, and began packing it with some dried herb that smelled a bit like tobacco and a tiny bit like weed but mostly like something I hadn’t smelled before.

“A little something to keep my hands steady,” said Albrecht as he finished packing the pipe and laid it down so he could input planned route. He lit the pipe with a snap of his fingers, a popular fire cantrip that I’d seen a lot of people use, and took over the controls from Aubrey.

Aubrey knocked on the hatch to the cupola. The young Scholar opened the hatch and looked down at us, “Yes?”

“Your turn to make the tea,” said Aubrey. “Petra is taking over as lookout.”

“I am?” I said.

“You know these woods better than us,” said Albrecht “You’ll see better than us in the dimmer light too.”

I climbed the sloping ladder to the cupola feeling every rung in my bones. I was tired but not in any way drowsy. I reflected, as I wriggled into the seat and tried to get comfortable, that it had been a hell of a week. Before I knew it I was saying out loud, “It’s been one day.”

“What you saying?” said Aubrey from below.

“Never mind,” I said. “It wasn’t important.”