Seeker of the Four Winds: A Galatia Novel (4 page)

“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 was 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.

(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. T
he 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 burs were only a layer of brown
shaving cream.