Seeker of the Four Winds: A Galatia Novel
Read Seeker of the Four Winds: A Galatia Novel Online
Authors: C. D. Verhoff
Tags: #romance, #angels, #adventure, #paranormal, #religion, #magic, #midwest, #science fiction, #sorcery, #series, #hero, #quest, #ohio, #sword, #christian fantasy, #misfits
Book Two
Four Winds
A Galatia Novel
Four Winds
A Galatia Novel
~Book Two~
Copyright 2014 by C. D. Verhoff
This is a work of fiction. Name, characters,
places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or
locales is entirely coincidental.
Published by C. D. Verhoff. Smashwords
Edition. All rights reserved. Seeker of the Four Winds, a Galatia
Novel, and the Galatia Series are trademarks of the author. No part
of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written
permission.
For additional information about this book or
the author:
Website and Blog:
http://cdverhoff.blogspot.com/p/books.html
Facebook Page:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/C-D-Verhoff-Author/106424996172224
1. The main category of the book — Fantasy.
2. Another subject category — Epic Fantasy 3. More categories —
Paranormal, Dystopian, Science Fiction, Adventure, Religion.
Glossary: Characters
,
Places
,
Things
(Michael Penn)
A bell tolled in the distance as the last
ember winked out in the small hearth. I prayed for a miracle, but
the upcoming battle seemed inevitable. The stone walls of my
holding cell sucked up every bit of warmth, leaving behind a damp
chill. As I sat at an unvarnished table fresh from the workshop, I
lowered my BIC pen to a spiral notebook, and wrote:
Is this the
end of the human race—again?
My rheumatic right hand screamed
for aspirin, but none was to be found in this miserable place.
I went over to the window, pressed my face
against the frost-covered bars, hoping to see what was happening
down below. Buildings with stone foundations and wooden walls at
various stages of construction lined the cobblestone street. Their
beams looked like skeletal limbs reaching from the grave toward the
silvery light of the waxing moon. Primitive street lamps stood like
an honor guard in symmetrical formation along the sidewalk. Our
engineers were still working on a way to power them. So the city of
Galatia remained dark, but hopeful.
I flinched as hundreds of voices rose in a
shouting match. From my vantage point, I couldn’t see a damn thing,
but it sounded like an entire stadium of spectators was about to
riot. The language was English, so I knew that tension between the
citizens of Galatia had finally built to a head—and it couldn’t
have come at a worse time. My mother, the beloved matriarch of
Galatia, was on her deathbed. The armies of the Western Alliance
were camped on the borders of our capital. If we failed to prove
our right to settle this land by sunup tomorrow, they would march
into Galatia with swords, spears, bows and war hammers to tear her
down.
I began to pace in front of the window. How
did I—a former altar boy from Ohio, with a penchant for puppies,
Pokémon cards, and cheeseburgers—land in the middle of a war
against our humanoid descendants?
“Lord,” I looked past the wooden beams in the
ceiling, “hasn’t the human race paid for its crimes in full? Why do
you continue to play with us like a cat torturing little blind
mice? If you are truly a merciful God, save us or end us, once and
or all.”
The shouting outside was getting closer. I
tried to catch a glimpse at what was happening below—couldn’t see a
thing, though my ears told me that disorder was erupting a few
blocks to the north. Knowing that two of my brothers were at the
center of the conflict, opposed to one another in their political
ideologies, I worried about their safety.
“Is anybody out there?” I called through the
window, my voice echoing down the row of newly constructed
shops.
I yanked on the bars. Designed to withstand
the strength of Gargoes, my efforts were useless. This wasn’t an
official jail cell—just a holding room for interviewing witnesses
or possible suspects. The furnishings were meager—a cot, a blue
blanket with a white IPFW University logo, a stadium chair, a
wood-burning stove, my notebook, and a box of tissues.
Was it my imagination or did the cold wind
bite harder here on future Earth than it had back when I was a boy
living in the modern age? The nights were definitely a deeper dark
and the brilliant stars contrasted against the black more
intensely. Change no longer surprised me; over the course of
fifty-plus years, I had learned that nothing in this life was
permanent, not even the mountains themselves.
However, there was one torch amid the gloom,
and that was my charismatic vision of the missing Josie Albright
and Lars Steelsun. As long as they were alive, I had hope that our
beloved Galatia might survive events of the morrow, but doubt
gnawed on my innards. How could two ordinary kids from our
sheltered underground bunker accomplish what kings, queens,
scholars, and magicians had failed to do? All a man in my position
could do was pray and wait.
Nine Months Earlier
(Larsen Drey Steelsun)
The members of the Red Squad guided their
horses along a wide hollow of rippled earth. Lars surmised the
formation was a result of a volcanic eruption that had occurred
sometime between the destruction of Galatians Bunker and the
present, during that hundred fifty thousand year time span his
people had leapt over quite by accident. To his right, a waterfall
of black rock rose up forty or fifty feet. Ivy studded with
beautiful white blooms garlanded its length. Prince Loyl warned
Lars and the handful of riders in his company not to get too close.
The ivy was a carnivorous clonal life form that hunted by
entangling its victims and digesting them over the course of
several months .
“I never would have guessed,” Josie replied,
visibly shuddering. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
Besides Prince Loyl, Lars and Josie, the
group also included Lindsey Burning, a beautiful red-head and
talented sharp shooter; Rolf Marshall, the expert outdoorsman and
equestrian with the shaggy blond hair; and Dante Armstrong, a
muscular fighter of African descent who also happened to be Josie’s
brother-in-law. Taking the rear position was a Bulwark warrior,
Hogard: Basher of a Hundred Skulls. Hogard had reddish fur, a
stocky build, with arms as thick as tree trunks and two horns like
a Brahma bull’s. His skills as a tracker and fighter made him a
valued member of the group.
Lars guided his horse away from the
dangerous vines and stopped at Prince Loyl’s command. The Regalan’s
cat-like eyes scanned the horizon with a look of deep concern.
Following his gaze up the trail ahead, Lars only saw lemony
sunlight spilling over bushy hilltops textured like gigantic mounds
of green popcorn. Behind the squad, thick green stalks topped by
purple and pink foliage as big as basketballs swayed in a gentle
breeze. The scenery was breath-taking, that couldn’t be denied, but
his appreciation of the natural world was tempered by the loss of
modern conveniences. The food and shelter that had come so easily
in the posh underground city where he had grown up was a real bitch
to find up here on the surface. And of course, up here the risk of
death was a constant.
A dozen shadowy figures on
horseback emerged on the crest of the next hill. Now what? Lars
thought, hand going to the hilt of his sword as a wave of greed,
lust and violence burned through him. It wasn’t his own emotions
that he was feeling, but those his charismatic ability had picked
up coming from the shadowy figures. Lars mystically rode the most
violent current of emotion to its owner—a Commoner in a duster who
was running his fingers along the edge of a short sword. The man
was literally thirsting to take a life. Was this what people meant
by
blood lust
?
Lars didn’t know, but he found it disturbing to know a man could
feel such things. Touching such a person’s psyche was like diving
into a cesspool of sludge, leaving the taste of shit and vinegar in
his mouth. If sin had substance, odor, and weight—Lars felt like he
was rolling around it like a dog.
“You disgust me,” Lars
muttered under his breath, which made the Commoner’s hands fly to
his ears.
Did he just hear that?
Lars marveled. The Commoner crouched in the
saddle as if the hand of God was coming to slap him off the face of
the Earth. Eager to cut his connection to the revolting man, Lars
let his consciousness snap back into his own body.
Prince Loyl of the House of the White Rose
put a finger to his thin lips for silence, swiveling his pointed
ears to catch noises far fainter than humans could hear. Dante held
up his hand to halt the other Galatians as more men appeared at the
top of the hill behind the original group.
“These guys are bad news,” Lars found himself
saying. “They’re going to attack us.”
“Lars is right,” Loyl said. “I can hear them
talking; they plan to rob us, have their way with the women, and
then kill us.”
Dante cursed under his breath, reaching over
his shoulder to unsheathe the long sword on his back. The bandits
moved a little closer and the leader emerged ahead of the pack with
two of his bandits flanking him.
“Give us your horses, and your women if you
know what’s good for you,” the leader yelled down the hillside.
Loyl asked calmly, “And why would we want to
that?”
“Because you have five men—women don’t
count—and we have twenty. You’re outnumbered three to one.”
“Uh, boss, that’s four to one,” another
bandit corrected.
“Shut the fuck up, Redding,” the boss
snapped. “So, hairball, you can make this hard, or you can make
this easy. What’s it gonna be?”