Seeker of the Four Winds: A Galatia Novel (40 page)

She clasped his spectral hand and led him
back to their bodies behind the boulder. Dante, Rolf and Lindsey
were not in Mind Wanders, but to Josie’s eyes they appeared as
lovely neon blue against the night. After she and Lars returned to
their flesh, they both revived bleary-eyed, sluggish, but
coherent.

“So,” Dante hovered over them, wringing his
hat, “what did you find out?”

“I don’t know where to start,” Lars said,
shaking his head.

“Give us the bad news first,” Dante
suggested.

“It’s all bad news.”

The members of the squad sucked in
simultaneous sharp breaths, to exchange anxious glances.

“Give us the worst first,” Dante said.

“Red Wakeland is dead.”

“Wh-wh-what?” Josie asked.

“The mayor of Galatia is dead.”

A moment of silence followed. Josie finally
blurted out, “How did it happen?”

“A mob threw him into the Mouth of God.”

“A mob of what—” Dante asked, “Commoners,
Bulwarks, what?”

“No—a mob of Galatians.”

Josie’s hands slapped her cheeks.

The color drained from Rolf’s face.

“No,” Lindsey said, holding her stomach.
“You must be mistaken.”

Dante punched the nearest boulder, knocking
a chunk of it away with his charisma, and let out a string of swear
words. Unfortunately, Lars wasn’t through. He quickly filled them
in on recent events in Zena City. After he was finished, nobody
spoke for a couple of minutes.

“Who am I supposed to give the map to now?”
Josie finally asked, tears of frustration prickling her eyes.

“How did you come by all of this
information, Lars,” Dante demanded to know. “Is the source
reliable?”

“Elizabeth Wakeland.”

“You can’t get more reliable than that,”
Lindsey replied. “We’ll give the map to her.”

“Not possible.” Lars shook his head.
“Elizabeth was poisoned by Feenie. Her body is in a comatose state
as we speak, which is why I was able to communicate with her. She’s
been roaming around the city and battle grounds in a Mind Wander. I
tell you, that woman knows more about what is going on than anyone.
The peace between the allied nations is hanging by a thread. She
told me that if the map should turn up, King Doyl has ordered
Prince Gerard to destroy it.”

“See,” Josie replied. “I was right not to
give it to Loyl.”

“If Chief Krom gets his hands on it—same
outcome,” Lars continued. “Elizabeth wants us to bring the map into
Zena City and give it to the Council of Elders so they can present
to the nations simultaneously. That way none of the other nations
can try to suppress its presence.”

“Which brings us back where we started,”
Rolf said. “How are we going to get the map into the city?”

Everyone looked at Lars for the rest of the
plan.

Smiling weakly, he said, “Uh, I think
Lindsey’s idea about stealing some uniforms had merit.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.” Dante’s dark
eyes smoldered with irritation. “I expected something better than
that from the Dread of the West.”

Lars shrugged, but Josie was pissed.

“Don’t you dare use that
name around here! And that goes for
Bitch
of Galatia,
too.”

“Turn down the drama,” Lindsey said,
stepping between them, and poking a finger into Josie’s chest. “He
didn’t mean anything by it. Why do you insist and making everything
about you?”

Josie grabbed her wrist and gave her shove.
“I’m so sick of you, and how you always think the worst of me, I
want to projectile vomit in your face.”

Rolf crawled up to the knoll to escape the
bickering. As he ascended the slope, the ground began to shake.
Pebbles rolled down the knoll, bouncing at their feet.

“Earthquake,” Lindsey said. “Everybody get
into a doorway!”

“That’s only if you’re indoors, you nit,”
Josie harshly reminded.

“Guys,” Rolf interrupted, “Get up
here—something weird’s happening in the city.”

Lindsey and Josie followed Dante and Lars up
the incline. They peered over its peak to see a mound of golden
clouds covering the city. Flashes of light illuminated them from
within. Billowy edges expanded and began to unfold like an enormous
angel spreading out its wings.

Meanwhile, the armies had fallen quiet as
every face was turned upward toward the mountain of white and gold
forming over Zena City.

“Sweet mother of mercy,” Dante said. “What
on earth is happening?”

Indescribable wonder pierced Josie’s heart,
washing away all the fears and cares of the evening.

“What’s happening in Galatia isn’t of this
world,” she whispered. But a sadness descended. She was missing out
on something fantastic, something holy. This must be what it felt
like to be locked outside and looking through the window at your
own birthday party.

“It’s the breath of God,” Rolf said, rising
to full height, eyes dreamy as if he wanted to float down the knoll
toward the city. The others stood, eager to join him.

The call to go to the Mouth of God was so
strong, Josie contemplated walking through the enemy troops to get
there.

“Get down,” Dante angrily ordered the squad,
snapping them from their hypnotic fixation on the city. “I feel the
call too, but we can’t give into it. We have come too far to throw
away the map and our lives now.”

“My hands ache for the sword, the sword of
swords,” Rolf said, uncharacteristically formal, “but the one
forged for me shall never be mine.”

The shockwave of an explosion, like a
hundred thunderbolts, bowled the armies to the ground. A whoosh of
hurricane force wind whipped over the squad, sucking Josie’s breath
from her lungs, knocking her back. When she pulled herself to her
feet, the cloud was gone.

The enemy soldiers below were woozily
finding their footing.

“Is everybody okay?” Dante asked, standing
up and brushing himself off.

“Shit fire and save your matches—what in
blazes was that?” Josie gasped.

“Some kind of bomb,” Dante suggested. “I
wonder if it was meant for the alliance, but went off prematurely
in the city.”

“That was no bomb,” Lindsay said, shaking
her head. “It was God.”

“If it was God,” Lars replied, “He seems to
have left in a big hurry.”

Excited voices rose up from the battlefield.
The Hunterdons, and every other enemy soldier, had been just as
transfixed by the cloud as the squad, unsure and unnerved at the
sight of it. Now that it had dissipated, leaving the armies of the
Alliance unharmed, it appeared that the Galatians weapon, whatever
it was, had failed.

The soldiers were now moving into attack
positions.

“This is it,” Lars said. “I can feel the
anticipation, the blood lust, and the fear. Hold tight to your
swords guys—the battle is about to begin.”

(Chief Krom: He Who Rules With An Iron
Fist)

Chief Krom: He Who Rules With an Iron Fist
sat at his planning table, smoking from the hollowed-out horn of an
old rival he had killed in a head-butting match. His thoughts kept
settling on the leader of the Galatians—Mayor Wakeland. In other
circumstances, he might have a drink with a guy like that, because
delusional people were so damn entertaining.

Chief Krom had been laughing ever since he’d
met the leader of the Galatians. Wakeland had tried to tell Chief
Krom that the Bulwark gods were pesky ants compared to the God of
the Galatians, and that their God had promised them the a large
plot in the Northlands, but that was just a big pile of moosalope
shit. The mayor talked big as the sky, but his breath was a bag of
dry bones. Crazy as a drunken Gargo bitch in heat—that one.

The fool and his
Wittelsbach
32-carat
blue diamond would soon be parted. And those sparkly 24-carat
cushion-cut diamond earrings, the
Golcondas
, too.

Since handling the jewels in the mayor’s
brother’s kitchen, they were all Krom could think about. They would
be a shining testament to Shaldoah’s wealth and power. Wakeland had
bragged that these pieces were just the tip of the mountain of
riches hidden in Galatia’s vault. Didn’t the fool know that bad
things happen to people who show Bulwarks their treasure? The way
the economy had taken a downturn, Chief Shaldoah was burning to
refill his depleted coffers. Only the Galatian vaults could satiate
him.

Now that he had met the leader of the
Galatians, Krom was no longer worried about them being a new force
in the West. The Regalans and Tectonians were the Bulwarks’ only
real competition. Surely King Doyl and King Elrod were scheming
together, given how they’d colluded in the latest meeting, planning
to rob Shaldoah of the spoils of the impending battles.

“We’ll see about that,” Krom fumed. “One way
or another, Shaldoah will get the best loot.”

The concern over getting his fair share had
grown exponentially since the day Wakeland had let him fondle the
Wittlesbach in his very own hands. His stomach turned to goo when
he contemplated snooty Regalans, shifty Commoners, and even those
damn silly Deermas beating him to the treasure vault.

“You don’t send a prince to do a king’s job,”
he had told his senior warriors in the war room back in Glandorf
Hall. The fact that the Chief had personally come to Galatia,
instead of some still-suckling-his-mother’s-titty prince like
Gerard or Valdor, was an extra ring on the horn for the Bulwarks.
In the game of war, the spoils go to those who say to hell with the
rules. He wasn’t going to wait for no stinking Summer Solstice. A
two-minute jump on the competition would make all of the
difference.

He sent the word down his chain-of-command,
warning them to prepare to charge the fence before sunup. The
Bulwarks had been mocking that strand of flimsy wire since they
first saw it. One blow from a metal hammer and its puny little
wires would snap in two. Might as well surround the city with
sewing thread for all the good that fence would do.

The chief’s only nagging doubt came from
information brought back by the Bulwarks that had helped build Zena
City. Don’t underestimate that Red Wakeland, they said. Don’t
underestimate any of his people. We have seen unimaginable
things—pictures that move, barrels that propel metal balls into an
enemy quicker than the eye can see, thin wafers that capture songs
and play them back again. Just more fairytale shit to muck up the
truth as far as Krom was concerned.

“I ought to know better than to trust the
word of building contractors who spend too much time on hot roofs
with the sun cooking their brains,” the chief grumbled as he sat
down
at his planning table. He was unrolling a
map of the terrain his cartographer had drawn for him, when his
best warriors came storming into his tent, trembling and
breathless.

“I said no interruptions.” Chief Krom’s
nostrils flared.

“But the God of Galatia has risen!”

“What nonsense is this?” Chief Krom yelled,
while his warriors looked down at the ground in submission to his
authority. Bowing out of the tent, he stepped into the dewy morning
air.

The sky span was black with deep purple
around the edges. A cloud burning with golden light had engulfed
the city. Chief Krom’s normally fearless troops were huddled
together, their eyes filled with trepidation. His stout legs wanted
to stampede out of Galatia, but pride held him fast. A chief didn’t
run from man, beast, or gods.

The cloud suddenly exploded, bowling over
his troops. Chief Krom tumbled as he was blown backwards. Bright
light pouring out of the city pained his eyes. The wind howled over
him and the land like the souls of the damned, turning his flesh
into bumps.

“God of the Galatians, spare me!” He covered
his head with his arms and trembled.

But when the world went deathly quiet again,
he dared to look up. The cloud was gone. Everything looked as it
always had. Embarrassed at having given in to stupid fear, Chief
Krom grunted his annoyance as he found his feet again.

“Their God has run away,” Chief Krom said
loudly, rocking back on his heels, pointing at Zena City with his
sledgehammer hand. “The Galatian God is all bluster and no
brawn.”

The Bulwarks snorted like bulls ready to
charge. With an upward sweep of his arms, Chief Krom commanded his
troops to line up and ready their swords and war hammers.

Heart pounding with excitement, chest
heaving in anticipation, the chief lived for moments like this,
when death hung in the air like an intoxicating perfume.
Remembering the Wittelsbach Diamond, he licked his mucousy snout.
His name would be on the tongues of Bulwarks for millennia. Songs
would praise him as the chief who returned both pride and
prosperity to Shaldoah after a drought of honorable deeds.

With a downward sweep of his sledge hand,
ten thousand Bulwark soldiers stormed the flimsy fence. The first
to reach the fence bashed the wires with their metal hammers, but
upon making contact, their bodies convulsed. Smoke poured from
their eyes, their ears, and their mouths until their flesh turned
into flame. And Bulwarks who’d rushed up to pull their fellow
soldiers away themselves trembled and smoked until the air smelled
like bacon.

“Great thunder!” Chief Krom bellowed,
backing a step away from the carnage for fear of catching the
spreading affliction. “A plague of magic!”

When the Regalans saw how the Bulwarks had
tried to storm the city first in the hopes of getting the best
plunder, instead of storming the fence, they sent a volley of
arrows into the Bulwark army, turning them into pin cushions.

The Hunterdons were so enraged by the
Bulwarks’ greed, and the Regalans’ response, they tossed their
spears at both Regalans and the Bulwarks. One pierced the head of
Chief Krom’s second-in-command, his very own cousin who had been
with Krom for ages. Great thunder, this was not how the chief had
planned it.