Seeker of the Four Winds: A Galatia Novel Page 2

  “Don’t even pretend that moral superiority is the reason you sat there doing nothing while I helped deliver justice.” Lindsey patted the gun in her holster. “Admit it, you were scared out of your friggin’ head.”

  Josie’s eyes lowered to the ground. Her face had whitened several shades. Shame was rolling off of her in a bad way. Searching for words to comfort her, Lars couldn’t find any that wouldn’t make it worse.

  “Ladies,” Rolf said. “We are not keeping score here.”

  “That’s right,” Loyl added. “Josie didn’t scream or get in the way, so I count that as a win for the young lady. Miss Burning, your shooting skills are exemplary. Have you tried your hand at the bow?”

  “No, I’ve never had access to one, but maybe you can let me handle yours sometime?” Lindsey fluttered her eyelashes.

  “I will do that,” he promised as he turned away toward the hilltop. “But right now, I want to make sure the bandits don’t have any friends waiting for us beyond the rise.”

  “Can Regalans and humans mate?” Lindsey asked the others. Lars, now behind Lindsey, pretended to poke his finger down her throat in hopes of eliciting a smile from Josie.

  “He’s married,” Dante informed Lindsey sharply.

  “What?” Lindsey said as if the information was news to her. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m so sorry,” Josie blurted out tearfully. “I just froze. I don’t know why. I thought I was ready. I thought I could do this.”

  “Don’t worry,” Dante said. “It happens to a lot people during their first fight. We were kind of expecting it.”

  “You were?”

  “Sure,” Dante replied. “It’s practically a right of passage. Just don’t let it happen again.”

  The prince called down to them from the top of the hill, “All clear!”

  .............................

  As they rode into the afternoon, Lars became convinced that Mother Nature was trying to kill him. Prairie grassland transitioned into acres of tangled maroon brambles striped with white lines. A long snake, thicker than Lars’s thigh, with similar coloring to the brambles, slithered under Bolt’s hooves. The horse reared up, forcing Lars to grab at the saddle horn and shove his feet deeper into his stirrups. A few well-placed hoof stamps set the snake slithering away in a hurry. Up ahead waited a thick forest of old-growth Lostwood Trees, with trunks well over twenty feet in diameter. Hogard said that although the place was thick with a particularly vicious strain of wumpers, some as large as large as a house, the humanoid slavers were the biggest threat.

  By mid-afternoon, Loyl halted the group for a much-needed break. While they prepared to eat and relax inside a circle of trees, Rolf took the horses over to a nearby glade of towering yellow stalks covered with pearly white seeds. Josie sat on a tree root away from the rest of the group, picking at her rations, refusing to talk to anyone. When Lars went over to sit with her, she got up with the excuse that she had to pee.

  “Don’t do that, Josie,” he complained.

  “Do what?”

  “Sulk over your failure.”

  “Aha, so you do think I’m a failure.”

  “N-no.”

  Josie stormed off into the woods despite Loyl’s standing rule that only the older members of the squad were allowed to venture off alone. The overly-protective prince seemed to forget that both Lindsey and Josie had been foragers during the exodus to the Promised Land and knew a thing or two about forest survival.

  “Josie just needs time to sulk,” Dante said. “As her brother-in-law, I ought to know. Give it a few hours and she’ll be back to her old self.”

  Lars hoped he was right. Stretching out in the grass, hands behind his head, he began to doze off. In his dream, he stood in a great cathedral. A huge Roman gladiator with feathery white wings pointed to a pair of arched doors, one marked, Good, the other, Evil.

  “It is the conundrum older than time,” the gladiator said. “When the betrayal comes, which will you choose?”

  A pain in his ribcage made his eyes pop open to a pair of horns and a set of watery black eyes. Hogard. The bastard had kicked him in the ribs.

  “The Regalan says it’s time to get a-moving.”

  “I don’t appreciate being woke at the end of your boot.” Lars rubbed his sore ribs, sending Hogard an angry glare.

  The Bulwark looked down his wet black nose at Lars and gave an indifferent belch, fogging the air with the smell of rotten fish. Lars tried to fan the stench away with his hand as the others gathered around Josie beside the creek in the distance.

  “It’s about time you got here,” Josie said. In her hand was a golden starburst pendant flecked with green. Its cord wound several times around her wrist. A glassy blue and brown stone the size of a walnut served as the centerpiece. “I’m about to release the Seeker of the Four Winds.”

  Lars and Loyl had seen the Seeker in action before, but this was a first for everyone else. Place a fragment of an object in the hollow of the stone and it would seek out the whole from which that fragment came. Just before the squad had left Galatia, Josie had placed a tiny piece of the Blood Map inside the stone.

  “Release the Seeker,” Loyl ordered.

  Pushing up the right sleeve of her army jacket, Josie unsnapped the leather bracelet that held the starburst pendant and its stone down. Immediately, they floated upward like a helium balloon on a short golden cord.

  “What is that thing?” Lindsey gasped.

  “It’s a homing stone,” Josie said smugly. Dante Armstrong reached out to poke it with his finger. It swayed, but returned to pulling in a southward direction.

  “Cool,” Lindsey said, taking a turn at jabbing it. “What’s it supposed to do?”

  “If all goes to plan, it will lead us to the missing half of the Blood Map, saving Galatia. And only I know how to use it.”

  “Your mayor didn’t say nothing about no magic on this mission.” Hogard’s furry reddish brow bristled with anger. “Bandits I can bash. Slivens I can smash. But I didn’t sign up for no magical hooey-blooey.”

  “There’s nothing magical about it,” Josie explained. “It’s an alien artifact—that’s all. This stone, the pendant and chain, each come from a different quadrant of the galaxy. There’s no hooey-blooey involved. It can all be explained scientifically.”

  “You speak in riddles, cow,” Hogard replied.

  “Quit calling me a cow.”

  “Are you not female? We call our females cows; I mean no insult by it.”

  “The Seeker must have come to Earth with the Celeruns,” Dante said, clearly interested to learn more. “I bet one of them dropped it during the cleansing.”

  Hogard frowned at the Seeker while slapping the head of his hammer into his palm as if contemplating its destruction. Josie snatched the pendant out of the air to clutch it against her chest.

  “Don’t even think about it, Bulwark!”

  The prince stepped between Josie and the Bulwark, using his body as a shield against any possible aggression. “Hogard, if you destroy it, we might as well all go home.” Hogard mumbled something unintelligible in response. “Do you think that the good doctor would send his son on a mission guided by a magic?”

  “Doc is a smart man.” Hogard slid the handle of his hammer back in its loop across his back. “I s’pose not. “

  “Can I hold it for a while?” Lindsey asked.

  “Carrying the Seeker of the Four Winds is my sacred human duty,” Josie proclaimed.

  “Sacred human duty, my ass,” Lindsey said, turning to Loyl. “She’s just being selfish. Make her give someone else a turn.”

  “It is not my decision,” Loyl replied.

  “C’mon, Josie. Just for a couple of hours.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “If you must know, I can’t get it off.”

  Lindsey guffawed. “You mean it’s stuck on your arm?”

  “Back in Galatia, I tied the cord around my wrist and made t
he most horrendous knot I could manage.” Tears welled up in Josie’s eyes. “Red, Michael, and even Prince Loyl tried to cut it off me, but the Celerun was right—nothing on Earth can cut the sunmurtain material the chain’s made of. I’m either going to have to cut off my hand or wear this thing forever.”

  “She speaks the truth,” Loyl confirmed. “No weapon in my arsenal could break it.”

  “What if the chain gets tighter?” Rolf’s eyes widened. “Aren’t you worried about it cutting off your circulation?”

  “Yeesss, I’m worried,” Josie said, the vexation growing in her voice. “But I thought I’d be able to untie my own knot!”

  “Be glad you didn’t tie it around your neck,” Hogard said. “Tis better to lose a hand than a head.”

  Josie looked to Lars for help as if he were the only sane person in the area.

  “Can’t you see it’s upsetting her?” Lars chastised the group, wrapping an arm around her waist, pulling her to his side, giving a reassuring squeeze.

  She nuzzled against him like a warm kitten, arousing him. That wasn’t what he had intended. Why did she have that effect on him at the most inopportune moments?

  He was glad when Prince Loyl immediately ordered them to hit the trail again.

  ..............................

  That evening they camped under the cover of fragrant blue spruce trees with red-tipped needles. Nocturnal butterflies flitted among the branches, wings faintly glowing in shades of phosphorescent greens and blues. Using her Scouring Pad charisma, Josie sped up the surface molecules of a stick she held. Within seconds, it started to smoke, a flame appeared, and she handed it over to Lars who was in charge of tonight’s fire.

  “That’s cheating,” Lindsey complained. “Prince Loyl said you need to learn how to make fire the regular way. It’s for your own good.”

  “Mind your own business,” Josie retorted.

  “Out here we depend on each other. Ineptitude among any of the squad members is all of our business.”

  “She’s right, you know,” Prince Loyl said from above in the tree top, startling the three of them. He regularly climbed tall trees with his claws to take in a bird’s eye view of the area, but ten minutes earlier he had climbed one thirty or forty feet away. That’s when Lars realized that the Regalan must have leapt from tree limb to tree limb to land in this one. “Even I know that Galatian charisma isn’t always reliable. It’s wise to learn the natural ways of making fire.”

  Lindsey sent Josie a smug grin, prompting Josie to roll her eyes.

  Later, after Lars had coaxed a flame made the old-fashioned way to grow a little bigger, he set up the tripod and stew pot for Rolf, who added a sack of dry beans. Loyl’s skillfully placed arrows provided them with squirrel meat. Well, the yellow beak was a dead giveaway that it wasn’t squirrel per se, but they jumped like squirrels and they chittered like squirrels and they flicked their fuzzy puffball tails like squirrels, so that’s what the Galatians called them.

  When the meal was finished, Prince Loyl had Josie sit on a log while he tried to free her wrist from the Seeker. Working the blade of a dagger beneath the sunmurtain cord, sawing back and forth while being careful not to break her skin, he worked at it for a long while. Unfortunately, all he managed to do was scratch his blade.

  “I’ve never seen nothing but a diamond scratch a Regalan blade before,” Hogard marveled, while he lifted up his hammer to strike the cord. “Let me see that.”

  Jumping to her feet, Josie screamed and held her wrist protectively against her chest. “Get back, you crazy s.o.b.! You’ll break the stone and my bones along with it!”

  Hogard belched in her face.

  “EEWW, gross!” she shrieked, pinching shut her nostrils. “Get a breath mint, why don’t you?”

  He shrugged and waddled away.

  Lindsey took a more civilized approach, spending a full hour plucking at the knot with her delicate fingers to unthread it, but eventually gave up.

  “Sorry, Albright,” she shrugged. “That knot is not coming out, but try to look at from the bright side.”

  “What bright side is that?” Josie said despondently.

  “You don’t have to worry about losing it.”

  “Well, that’s true,” Josie agreed. “And at least it’s pretty.”

  “Lars,” Rolf came from his post at the edge of the camp. “Your turn for watch.”

  After everyone else fell asleep, Lars was wide awake leaning against a tree about six yards away from the smoldering fire, thinking about his family, wondering how they were doing, hoping that Mom had forgiven him for leaving without saying goodbye. What would they think if they could see him now? Learning to start fires without a lighter, hunting small game, defending defenseless women from angry Bulwarks. He chuckled at the thought...Josie was about as helpless as a hungry river croc. There she was just a few yards away, sleeping next to Lindsey, looking like a lovely pixie from one of Gracie’s cartoons. As he contemplated Josie’s sleeping form, he longed to kiss those luscious pink lips. But the Regalan prince, even in his sleep, seemed to have a sixth sense whenever Lars tried to make a move. So for now, Lars had to be content to hold her in his dreams.

  Chapter Three

  (Larsen Drey Steelsun)

  The next week, on a cool morning that smelled of rain, sunrise painted the sky in intense hues of magenta. The foliage below was vastly less impressive—a wide meadow choked with thorns and scrubby black pines. Loyl took the lead position through it with Josie riding next to him if space allowed.

  When the mission had first began, Lars expected the hunt for the Blood Map to nourish their budding romance, not to kill it. Unfortunately, things were not working out as expected. He wondered if she shared his frustration about never having a chance to be alone together.

  No matter how the path wound, the Seeker always pulled to the south. Josie complained that the cord dug into her wrist more whenever the Seeker was in float mode, so she held it down with the leather bracelet whenever she could. Sometimes Loyl asked her to take the bracelet off and let the pendant float free, when he needed to confirm the direction, usually before they set out on a new leg of the journey, and more often if the terrain forced them to do a lot of backtracking and course corrections.

  Just ahead of Lars, Lindsey rode along with a solar charger on her head, secured in place by a stretchy green headband. The faint sound of techno music from her MP3 player drifted back to him. Occasionally, he caught Loyl thumping his head to the beat, which for some reason Lars found amusing.

  “Who’s in charge up there?” Hogard growled at Lars from behind for allowing Bolt to stop and nibble at a strand of leafy clover. “You or your horse?”

  In the evening, all the work involved in preparing camp for the night—finding dry wood, starting a fire, finding fresh food to conserve their rations, checking perimeter security, feeding and watering the horses, checking their coats, removing burs, checking each other for ticks, and personal hygiene, left little opportunity for interacting with Josie in the way he craved. His mind frequently went back to Galatia’s founding day, how they wandered their new homeland hand-in-hand, danced in the meadow, and later shared the sweetest kiss down by Spitfire Creek. But out on the road there was less opportunity for that kind of socializing. He had never spent more time with Josie, but felt less able to reach her.

  “Halt.” Loyl held up a hand.

  The squad had come to a deep ravine obscured by heavy brush at the top of the rise; less experienced riders might not have seen it until it was too late. Everyone in the squad, but Josie and Lars cleared the ravine with ease. Now Josie clung to Buckwheat’s reins, shaking her head vigorously, refusing to let the horse take her over. Under the guise of giving morale support, he remained by her side, but the truth was his riding skills weren’t up to the task either.

  “I can’t do it,” Josie said, echoing Lars’s unspoken sentiments, jaw set firm. “I’ll find another way around.”

  “That could tak
e weeks,” Loyl said. “You must jump it.”

  “No way on God’s green earth am I going over that thing!” she hollered back to him.

  “Get your frilly hide over here,” Hogard joined in. “And quit wasting everybody’s time, ya stubborn cow!”

  The prince held out his hand, indicating that the Bulwark wasn’t helping.

  “Remember, hold tight, heels down, toes up.” Rolf offered. “Keep your body centered and upright. Buckwheat wants to live as much as you do. He’s not going to do anything stupid. Trust him to carry you over.”

  “Are you going to let Lindsey Burning show you up again?” Lars appealed to her sense of pride.

  “What do you mean again?” she snarled.

  He didn’t say another word, but he could almost see the vitriol spreading behind her eyes.

  “What’s the matter?” Lindsey called from across the ravine. “Little Josie Rosie’s scared to ride with the big boys?” Josie held up a middle finger. “Classy, Albright,” Lindsey mocked. “Real classy.”

  “The only comeback in this situation is to jump this ravine,” Lars said quietly enough that only Josie could hear it.

  She bit her lower lip and glanced at the ten-foot-wide crevice. A creek had cut into the earth like a razor blade, creating a three- or four-story drop-off.

  “And Lars?” Rolf called to him from across the ravine. “Remember what I told you about keeping Bolt’s head up. Don’t let him eat whenever he feels like it. Show him who’s boss!”

  “I know what I’m doing,” Lars said, confidently. “Bolt knows who’s in charge.” A moment later, Bolt reared up. Lars found himself flat on his back in the brambles, gasping for air. “Damn, horse!” he groaned through his teeth. “I swear he did that on purpose.”

  “Of course he did,” Dante yelled through his cupped hands. “And it was hilarious!”

  “If that’s how you ride when you know what you’re doing,” Rolf razzed. “I’d hate to see what happens when you don’t!”