Chapter 63: 63 - Contingencies

After the excitement of that first night, there hadn’t been any more incidents between the controlled cave-ins, monitored fires, and a constant, twenty-four hour watch. With the return of relative security, the people were free to concern themselves with other things, like dividing into smaller companies and branching out into settlements. Rogue was especially anxious about getting farming efforts underway as this first season of crops would make or break the colony in the coming winter.

The caravan of twelve thousand two hundred and fourteen civilians were divided into thirty-five companies of three to four hundred people and sent with units of about seventy ex-soldiers each (for protection and labor) with instructions to build settlements spaced ten miles apart from each other along the various streams and rivers winding through the land. The remaining sixteen hundred or so military men were put to work in the area near the caverns, along with the Yudha family and a hand-picked group of tradesmen, to construct a series of bunkers, massive gardens, terraced fields, and, eventually, smaller cabins for the families. Finally, things were going smoothly, and it was truly impressive what a large group of able-bodied men could accomplish under competent leadership.

But food was still a problem. Hunting, fishing and foraging were the primary sources of nutrition, and with each week, those charged with gathering those resources had to search longer and farther to find them. The good news was that Rogue had prepared for this as much as possible, bringing varieties of garden seeds that would produce a harvest quickly — leafy greens, taproots, and tubers — and others that would be harvestable throughout the summer, but, despite the success of those crops easing the nutrition burden, Callida was anxious about starvation and spent considerable time brainstorming ways to further reduce that risk. To date, she’d optimized hunting patterns, studied when fishing was most efficient and what bait was the most successful, begun capturing and breeding the bugs that the fish seemed to like the most, charted the rate of growth of each crop to help time the planting of each subsequent wave of each crop to ensure some of everything was ready for picking as frequently as possible, begun irrigation projects to bring water more efficiently to the crop fields…. This list of projects she was tracking seemed endless.

“What would it take to clear trade routes to the Bear Tribe?” she asked Rogue one summer morning with Ddalu bouncing on her knee. Ddalu was especially big for a nine-month-old with chunky cheeks, fat hands, and chubby arms and legs. His twin brother wasn’t far behind him in size, but Tajam wasn’t quite as broad as Ddalu.

“What are you scheming now?” Rogue cut to the chase as Tajam declared he was done with lunch and squirmed out of his lap to go run after his older brothers.

“Nothing! I was just thinking that some egg fowls would be useful. And maybe some more milking goats? We only have the one to feed the boys with, but, with a few more, we could make cheese and butter and have leftover milk to share. And, honestly, we should probably consider getting livestock for all the settlements anyway. Even just breeding pairs for each one. We have the space for barns and fences. What do you think?”

“We don’t have resources to trade for egg fowls and milking goats yet, especially in the herd quantities you’re suggesting.”

“But we could just purchase them.”

“We don’t have the money for that, do we?”

“We actually do in the Bear Tribe. I moved our accounts, remember?”

“Do you even know what a goat costs? Let alone a whole herd of them!”

“No. Not really. I just know we have a lot of money just sitting in a bank, and I’m tired of stressing about where our next meal is going to come from. It will be a lot easier to purchase animals in the summer than it will be when things start to freeze, and we don’t know when that’s going to be yet. I don’t want to watch people starve this winter, Rogue. I at least feel responsible for the soldiers that came with us, but you know that everyone else will be looking to us to help them out if things don’t go well with their own farming efforts.”

“We are far from starving, Callida. Yes, things are lean right now, but–”

“–but they could be a lot less lean with the right livestock, and we have the resources to make that happen, assuming we can safely travel to the Bear Tribe and back. That’s all I’m saying.”

Rogue sighed and relented. He was tired of trying to assure her that the crops were all doing spectacularly well and that his projections and calculations were promising for the cold months ahead. And, clearly, his assurances were making little difference to her. “What do you propose then?”

“We need to create a functional path to the Bear Tribe eventually anyway. I think it would be wise to do that sooner than later, and then one of us, either you or me, could travel to the Bear Tribe to broker deals with some farmers for the animals we need. And we’ll need to take enough people with us to help herd them back.”

Rubbing his face in agitation, Rogue did his best to not flatly reject this idea. “It’s going to be extremely expensive, and it’s going to take a few weeks, months even to get there, clear a path as we go, conduct the intended business, and then travel back.”

“I know,” she responded simply.

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“And you’re up for that?! Honestly?” Rogue was taken aback and it showed. “One of us will be here, taking care of the settlements, taking care of the boys, running the show all alone while the other of us treks back to the Bear Tribe — more than a full week away without trying to clear a path — with a handful of men to help haul a bunch of animals back with us? Callida, are you serious? Have you thought this through?”

“Yes.”

He sat back in his roughly constructed chair and stared at her long and hard. “You are serious. It really means that much to you,” he realized out loud.

“We have the resources, Rogue,” she reasoned as he stood up to pace his way through his own jumbled thoughts and feelings. “It feels irresponsible not to use them and just hope that the crops are as fruitful as you are projecting.” She paused, waiting for him to comment, but continued when he didn’t. “Look, as a commanding officer, it was my job to prepare as many contingencies as possible in case something failed. I don’t screw around with the survival of my men, and I don’t like leaving anything to chance if I can help it. If that means flying solo for a little while in order to prepare those contingencies, so be it! I’ve come up with everything I can to increase our chances of survival without leaving home, and it’s done very little to improve our odds. It’s time to look into external options.”

Rogue stopped pacing about the small, recently completed, three room cabin, turning to look at his wife. “You said ‘home’.”

“I… huh?”

“Callida, you just called this place home? Is it starting to feel like home to you here?”

“It’s a turn of phrase. I said, ‘I’ve done everything I can without leaving home.’”

“Right. Which suggests that this — this place, this house, this colony — is now home to you.”

“I mean, we live here now.”

“So it’s home!” he insisted, a smile cracking through his earlier consternation.

“What do you want me to say, Rogue?!”

He laughed as she got defensive. “Callida, does this place feel like home? Do you think of this place as home now?”

She rolled her eyes and turned her face away from him to stare at the log wall while she debated her answer, and Rogue found it funny how stubborn and petty she was being about this. “I’m doing what I can to make the best of our situation.”

“That’s not what I asked, M’lady. Is this place home?”

Ddalu squawked to say he too was done eating, and Callida hastily wiped his hands and face with a damp rag before loosing the child fighting to slide out of her lap and onto the floor. She stood up with a stretch and attempted to use the interruption as an excuse to move on from his question without answering it. “How many goats and egg fowls do you think we’d need to breed our own herd?”

Rogue chuckled and walked the handful of steps to capture her face and peck her forehead. “It wasn’t a complicated question, M’lady. Is this place home?”

“You’re here.”

“True, but that’s not what I asked.”

“Our family’s here. Our friends. Primordials! We built a house here!”

“Callida, be still. Just answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’.”

“I’m trying, Rogue. Really, I am. I’m trying to feel like this is home, even though this isn’t what I wanted for our family.” Much of the affectionate humor he felt was lost as she continued. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. It feels dangerous and insecure, like I’m just waiting for the next unknown monster to crawl over those mountains, or an unexpectedly early frost to kill all the crops, or an unanticipated wave of insane prophecy people to turn up and further strain our thin resources, or… or something! I know you want to hear that I’ve settled in, but I’m just waiting for the other boot to drop, and I want to be as ready as possible when it does. This is unknown territory for me, both literally and figuratively, and… I don’t like it. These aren’t the types of battles I know how to fight! I have no sense for how well or how poorly we are actually doing, but I can’t shake this feeling that we’re nowhere close to where we need to be. And I hope I’m wrong, but–”

“Ok. Ok, Callida, I get it,” Rogue cut her off as gently as he could with his own frustrations and anxieties surging. He sighed and drew her into a hug that would hopefully help them both to calm down, and he took a few deep breaths, turning his head so his nose could catch the scent of her hair. It was less obviously citrusy these days, the result of not having her favored hair products available, but she still somehow smelled like oranges to him, at least, she had a naturally floral scent that reminded him of orange blossoms — or perhaps that’s just what he perceived because that’s the smell he expected from her. Regardless, her familiar scent was comforting, and it made him feel both stronger and more protective. “What do you want to do?”

She took a shaky breath and leaned back to meet his eyes. “I already told you.”

“Goats and egg fowls?”

She nodded solemnly. “It would be wise to replenish our seed supply too, in case the crops do fail before they can go to seed. Maybe we should consider buying sheep for wool? And if we’re going anyway, we should put together a shopping list of supplies that– mnph.”

He kissed her, remaining insistent through her immediate protests until she was convinced to kiss him back. “Put a list together so we can go over it together. Do you want to be the one to go to the Bear Tribe, or do you want to stay here?”

“Do you have a preference?” she asked.

“Not really.”

“Then… I have a lot of things I’m tracking here — a lot of data I’m trying to collect.”

He understood. “I’m not sure how well the boys would handle you being gone for that long anyway.”

“Thank you, Rogue,” she offered quietly.

“Are you going to be ok here by yourself?”

“I’ll manage. Will you be ok traveling? You could take some of the guys with you?”

“Maybe, but I need to leave enough of them behind to keep you in check,” he teased, earning him another eye roll. “Hey. I love you.” She smiled and tugged his collar.