Seeker of the Four Winds: A Galatia Novel Page 3

  Seeming to forget her troubles, Josie was laughing so hard she snorted a few times, while the rest of the squad told jokes at Lars’s expense.

  “What did Bolt say when Lars fell off his back?” Lindsey yelled across the ravine. “The dweeb has fallen and can’t giddyup!”

  Lars’s cheeks burned as he found his footing. As he looked for his fallen dignity, Josie seemed to have found her courage. She backed Buckwheat a little way from the ravine to get a running start, and closing her eyes, dug her heels into the horse’s flanks. Horse and rider soared over the ravine. Everybody whooped when she landed safely on the other side. The way her face beamed with the thrill of accomplishment made Lars go to mush inside. God, she was pretty. Now, Josie was looking at him from across the divide, expecting that he would join her.

  Crap.

  If he hesitated to make the jump, everyone would know that he was using Josie’s fear to mask his own. He climbed back on Bolt and circled around once to prepare for a running start, but it was really a guise to gather his nerve. Digging his heels into the horse’s sides, he let out a loud, “Yah!” Bolt leaped forward into a gallop and in three strides had reached full stride. By five…they were up and over…

  He glanced at the creek passing beneath them. Bad idea. His stomach felt like it had dropped out of the soles of his feet, but before he could fall, Bolt had landed safely on the other side. Heart pounding furiously in his chest, Lars struggled to play it off as if jumping the ravine hadn’t scared him at all.

  “See, Hogard,” Dante said smugly, as Hogard placed a silver coin into his palm. “I told you Galatian men are tougher than that. You weren’t afraid for one second—were you, Lars?”

  “Nah,” Lars said nonchalantly, trying to hide his shaky limbs. “Nothing to it.”

  “Good job,” Loyl said. “That was a dangerous jump for inexperienced riders, but you had to learn some time.”

  “On my first mission,” Lindsey said with a toss of her auburn curls. “I didn’t hesitate on my first jump and it was twice as wide as this one. Dr. Steelsun said I was a natural equestrian.”

  “You want a gold medal or something?” Josie retorted. “Oh, wait, you have plenty of medals—stolen and otherwise.”

  “I have never stolen anything in my life,” Lindsey said with a gasp.

  “Two words: talent show. Five more words: you stole my trophy.”

  “That’s only four words.”

  “My mistake. You stole my trophy, bitch.”

  “If I stole your trophy, Albright, then why did the school put my name on it?”

  “It should have been mine and you know it.”

  “You’re just a sore sport. My dance and tumbling team won three years in a row. Did you really think a silly children’s song about country bumpkins and frosty pumpkins could beat us?”

  “It was a love song, stupid.” Josie’s eyes turned into furious blue storm clouds. She slid off her horse and marched over to Lindsey. “Saboteurs might get the trophy, but they never win.”

  “What do you mean by saboteur?”

  “Saboteur: a person who commits sabotage.”

  “I know the definition, but I don’t see how it applies to me.”

  “Get off your high horse and let me tell you.”

  “I don’t think so, Albright.”

  “What’s the matter—are you afraid to talk with the big girls?”

  “Fine,” Lindsey replied tartly, swinging a leg over the saddle to land a couple of feet in front of Josie. She crossed her arms. “Well?”

  “Admit it, Burning.” Josie narrowed her blue eyes. “You sabotaged my act because you knew mine was better.”

  Loyl made a move to intervene in the argument, but Dante blocked the prince’s path with an outstretched arm, shaking his head. “This has been a long time in coming,” Dante said. “If they don’t work it out now, they never will.” The girls were so wrapped up in their argument, Lars thought that the ridge could have caved in and they wouldn’t have noticed.

  “You’re crazy, Albright,” Lindsey said.

  “The hell I am. My guitar was on the backstage risers, right where I put it before every rehearsal. But when they called my name—it’s gone. Nowhere to be seen. I’m panicking. The teachers are panicking. Everyone is rushing around helping me look for it—everyone except your teammates, that is. They’re standing off by themselves, laughing like my ruination is the funniest thing in the world. The clock is ticking, so I’m forced to go out onstage without my guitar. Mrs. Ormistand accompanies me on the piano instead, but she’s never played Country Bumpkin before. I’d have been better off without any accompaniment at all.”

  “She did make a lot of mistakes, but that’s not my fault.”

  “And the next morning, while your team is basking in your stolen glory, my guitar mysteriously turns up at my front door with a sticky note saying Better Luck Next Year, Sucker.”

  “It did not say sucker.”

  “Ah-ha!” Josie jabbed her finger violently in the air. “You did write it!”

  “Did not!” Lindsey shot back.

  “Then how did you know it didn’t say sucker?”

  “Uh,” Lindsey stumbled over her words. “I figured you were just being overly dramatic like usual. I wasn’t even backstage when your guitar went missing.”

  “But your teammates were and everyone knew they bowed to your every whim.”

  The girls were jabbing fingers in one another’s faces.

  “Uh, ladies,” Lars tried to be the voice of reason. “It happened so long ago, in a life that no longer exists, so who cares?”

  “Shut up, Lars,” Lindsey said.

  “Yeah, you stay out of this,” Josie agreed, turning her attention back onto her nemesis. “Say what you want, Burning, but I know without a doubt that you were behind the theft of my guitar. And my trophy.”

  “You have a high opinion of your talent.”

  “And so do you—that’s why you went to so much trouble to ruin my performance. That guitar didn’t grow legs! And you know it!”

  “Get over yourself.”

  “That’s funny coming from an attention-whore like you. Flipping your hair around, flirting with the prince like a common trollop, strutting around with that gun, thinking you’re a bad ass. Well, I got news—you are bad and you act like an ass, but you’re no bad ass. Just a wanna-be.”

  Lindsey shoved Josie in the chest. Josie stumbled backwards. By the time she caught her footing, her face was flushed red. Her blue eyes were thunderstorms.

  She shoved Lindsey in return, knocking her butt to the ground where Josie sprang on top of her. A moment later it was an explosion of elbows and fists as the two girls rolled around on the ground, dangerously close to the ravine. Dante tried to pull Josie off Lindsey, but got an elbow in the nose. Rolf tried to pull Lindsey off Josie, but received a kick in the crotch for his efforts. With a grunt and a grimace, poor Rolf tipped over onto the ground holding his groin.

  Josie’s charisma kicked in. A second later Lindsey was thrown into the tree branches. In a swish of auburn hair, she deftly cherry-flipped to the ground, where she picked up a hundred pound fallen log and swung it at Josie’s head. Josie flattened herself to the ground just in time.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Dante said. “No charisma! You’ll kill each other!” He ducked as the log flew over where his own head had been, and ricocheted off the tree behind him.

  The men regrouped to pull the girls apart. Rolf and Dante each had one of Lindsey’s arms. Hogard and Lars had Josie’s. The two cussed hatefully at each other.

  The tension was broken by a rich vibrato voice lifting to the trees, carrying sweetly in the wind—Prince Loyl singing a Regalan ballad. The startled girls forgot their dispute for a moment, carried away in the beauty of his song.

  Lars had no idea what the words to the song meant, but he felt stirred anyway. The hostility between the girls seemed to slink back into the forest with its tail between its legs. When Prince Loyl wa
s through, Lars about fainted when Lindsey made a partial confession.

  “Okay, I’m tired of the bad blood between us.” She looked down at the ground. “I may have had something to do with the incident in question, but I didn’t take your guitar. Melissa did.”

  “And you put her up to it,” Josie said through gritted teeth.

  “Could I help it the girl was a total suck-up? I said it would be a hoot if your guitar went missing, but I didn’t think she would actually do it; she just wanted to make nice with me.”

  Josie’s chest heaved. Her hands went out in front of her as if she intended to strangle Lindsey there on the spot. Lars held on tighter to Josie’s arm as she lunged at Lindsey.

  Dante stood between them, spreading his arms like a referee. “Remember what the mayor said about putting away our petty differences?” he said.

  “I know we shouldn’t have interfered with your act,” Lindsey said. “But our tumbling routine had gotten stale. I saw first place slipping away and I panicked.”

  “Why would that make you panic?”

  “I don’t want to be a loser.”

  “It’s easy to be a gracious winner. The true test of character is how good you are at losing. If there was a contest for being a gracious loser, you’d get last place.”

  “You’re not such a gracious loser yourself,” Lindsey countered, wiping a dribble of blood from her nose with the back of her hand. “Hating me all these years over a trophy. Puh-leez.”

  “Oh, now you’re a better loser than me?” Josie’s nostrils flared.

  “I felt kind of guilty about what happened. I’m glad it’s finally off of my chest.”

  “Only because I tricked you into admitting it.”

  “Maybe I could have handled it differently, sure. I’m starting to realize that those girls just wanted to ride on the coattails of my popularity and probably weren’t real friends. If I still had the trophy, I’d give it to you. But I don’t. So how long are you going to carry on about it?”

  Josie raised her fist, but it hovered in mid-air.

  “As much as I’d like to break your face,” she said, letting her fist fall to her side, “we promised Red we would get along and that’s what we will do.”

  “Does this mean you forgive me?”

  “I’ll never forgive you, but let’s call a truce. Because it’s in the best interest of Galatia.”

  “Of course,” Lindsey raised her fists like the cheerleader she once was. “Let’s give a shout out for the home team—yeah, Galatia!”

  “Yeah, for Galatia!” Dante bellowed, raising his own fist. He motioned for the other men to get into the spirit.

  Lars and Rolf did a fist bump. “For Galatia!” they bellowed.

  Chapter Four

  (Larsen Drey Steelsun)

  In Lars’s opinion, the only attractive thing about a Bulwark was the boasting rings. Bulwarks who proved their courage in battle or their craftiness in business affairs, were rewarded with rings for their horns by a commander, business associate or chief. The more decorated the horns—the greater a Bulwark’s status. Hogard had more boasting rings than the handful of Bulwarks Lars had met, but if he wanted to impress the squad, he ought to start by getting some manners. The guy emitted a cacophony of farts, belches and other eructations all day long. At least Lars was downwind from him this morning.

  Lindsey Burning, the opposite of the Bulwark in every way, rode directly in front of Lars. Clean, gorgeous, and smelling of wild berries—her silky curls bounced along her back with each stride of the horse’s trot. Since her fight with Josie, she hadn’t said a whole lot, but Lars felt the occasional strong emotion coming from her—regret, but mostly embarrassment.

  As for Josie, for the first couple of days Lars had felt red hot anger boiling from every pore of her body. Gradually, it had turned to steam and dissipated into the air. Today, he felt nothing coming from her at all. After all of these years, her guitar conspiracy theory had been vindicated. It was her time to simmered in a stew of smug justification. Lars was sure that Josie would eventually forgive Lindsey. Did it mean they would be friends? Nah, he couldn’t see that, but Josie’s brother-in-law had been wise to let them get the bad blood out in the open and fight it out.

  In camp that evening, Lars stoked the fire under the stew pot suspended from its tripod of sticks. Rolf had caught a hogbit, which was a cross between a pig and rabbit. Dante commented that the meat tasted like old billy goat. Lars disagreed. Compared to the rubbery pseudo meat they ate in the bunker, it melted on the palate. When mixed with the wild onions and herbs the girls had foraged, Lars found himself in food heaven.

  Waiting for the others to get their fair share, Lars hoped there would be enough for second helpings. He watched Dante fill his bowl to the brim before carefully sitting down on a bedroll near the fire. Like Rolf, the big man had lived on Future Earth for ten years before the Wakeland Group had arrived, and has acquired an arsenal of survival skills. But after the conversations they’d had with him sitting around the fire at night, Lars understood that Future Earth still didn’t feel like home to him. Despite all the muscle, and fierce looks, Dante was an intelligent and gentle soul who missed the old way of life. In the bunker he had been a computer geek, a gamer, a devoted husband and father, who was working his way to a top position as systems manager. Then the earthquake struck, disrupting his happy little family. Regardless, the man was a wealth of information about the new world.

  Tonight the conversation turned to the variety of intelligent life here, and Dante commented that at least on Future Earth, skin color had faded to the least of the reasons for discrimination. Deermas didn’t trust any race without antlers but were persecuted because they walked on four legs instead of two. Bulwarks looked down on the non-warring races. And Regalans thought all other races were complete ignoramuses...at least until the humans came along. But the prejudices were endless. One must constantly be on guard because hatred could rear up in unexpected places. That’s why Dante had spent his years on Future Earth honing his fighting skills.

  “My father says you’re the best swordsman in all of Galatia,” Lars said to Dante as Josie went around camp adding an extra ladle of soup into everyone’s bowls. The broth was thick with meat and greens. Loyl passed around a salt shaker, which he reminded them to add sparingly.

  “I’m not the best,” Dante chuckled, his eyes reflecting inward. “That position belongs to Dr. Simon Steelsun—I mean your father, Lars. He has the mind of a sage, the reflexes of a teenager, and the strength of an ox.”

  “My dad is good at everything.” Lars wasn’t bragging, it was just a fact. “Unfortunately, none of his talent rubbed off on me.”

  “Nonsense,” Dante had said, between spoonfuls, “Give it a few years and he’ll only be the second-best swordsman in all of Galatia.”

  “You planning on knocking him out of position?”

  “No,” Dante replied in all seriousness. “His only real competition is you.”

  “Me?” Lars pointed to his own chest in surprise.

  “Yeah, kid—you.”

  Lars had tried to hide the grin, but it refused to stop growing.

  The next morning, they were on the trail again. The autumn air was a little cooler each morning, so Lars bundled deeper into his army jacket, but as they moved southward, the vegetation was already becoming thicker. Trees with fern-like branches and roots curling up out of the ground clung to the Kalida River’s muddy banks. Over the weeks of travel, the group had moved into a region in which the hills had become taller, bluer, and steeper. The trees were spaced out more, but thickets choked out any discernible trail. Fortunately, the Regalan prince had a knack for finding the path of least resistance, helping the squad avoid hopeless entanglements in the thorn beds. At the end of the day, they came out of a mile-wide thicket with their skin scratched, their clothing torn and coated with burs. Hogard showed them a trick of scraping the burs away from themselves and their horses with a flattened stick as if the b
urs were only a layer of brown shaving cream.

  As they moved out of a briar patch into flat land covered with blue grass, Josie rode at the prince’s side, with the Seeker of the Four Winds floating a foot above her wrist. When the trail narrowed, everyone went single file, with Josie directly behind Loyl. She had developed a grace in the saddle, her body swaying in rhythm with her horse, and Lars longed to ride next to her, but the fussy Regalan prince insisted they maintain their assigned position in line.

  In camp that evening, even Dante and Lindsey were walking stiffly bow-legged. At least Lars wasn’t the only one suffering—looking like a softie. Josie had campfire duty this week. After she gathered the wood, she gripped a choice stick until her charisma started it smoking. Then she added it to the pile of dried grasses and wood. Lars was skinning a squirrel, looking forward to sitting by a nice warm fire, thinking it would go a long way in loosening his tight muscles, noticing that scruffy Rolf with the greasy blond hair was the only Galatian who didn’t appear to be affected by today’s rough ride.

  Sure, Rolf was the resident horse expert, but there seemed to be more to it than that. After Rolf finished watering the animals, giving them feed, he took a seat near the fire, which was growing larger and warmer under Josie’s careful supervision. Eyes half-closed, Rolf sat cross-legged, hands on his knees, looking like the poster child of relaxation.

  “How come you’re not sore?” Lindsey pouted to Rolf as she pulled the last of the season’s berries from a twig and placed them in a Tupperware bowl.

  “You’re forgetting, I was eleven years old when I came to the future,” he said, flicking a strand of straggly long hair out of his eyes. “Riding’s as easy as walking to me.”

  “Eleven years old, huh,” Lindsey said thoughtfully, brushing her auburn curls away from her face. “A few months ago, you were six years younger than me—a cute, little, seventh grader. Now, you’re four years older than me. How weird is that?”

  Rolf grinned, showing the gap between his two front teeth. Lindsey artlessly curled a strand of her hair with her index finger and sent Rolf a winsome smile. “Why is it you never seem to sleep?” Lindsey asked him. Lars wondered the same thing, so he listened with interest.