Seeker of the Four Winds: A Galatia Novel (42 page)

“Why don’t you make a new wall?” Josie cried
out.

“I can’t,” Barrett said with a heavy voice
that reached out to Lars and threatened to pull him under in a
deluge of failure. “In order to build the bridge so rapidly, I
opened the mystical portal to the charisma as wide as it would go.
I’m all torn up inside. Broken apart. I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay, my brother,” Michael said.
“You did well.”

“If you think this is going to make up for
what he did, Barrett…” Lars’s father began to say.

“Arrows, twelve o’clock!” Josie yelled from
the back of the line.

Lars flattened himself as a volley of arrows
swept over the ridge. He glanced back to see how Michael had
managed with Lindsey in his arms. The man was down on one knee, but
left vulnerable. Josie used her body as a shield to protect both,
making Lars grimace. Fate favored the brave, in this instance.
Every arrow missed Josie, but a Galatian man was turned into a
porcupine. He fell off of the ridge and was instantly swept upon by
a fury of soldiers below.

“Hurry!” his father bellowed. They were off
again with spears and arrows flying over them, whizzing past them,
with too many close calls to count.

Barrett had left an arch of open space in
the land bridge, keeping the fence intact. They passed over the
junction between the bridge and the earthen wall surrounding the
city. A mud ramp met them on the inside of the city. Galatian
soldiers reached up to help them climb down. Seeing so many
familiar faces was an overwhelming, but welcome sight.

Josie must have ditched her cloak as they
ran along the ridge, because now she was only wearing her skimpy
armor. Lars’s own cloak was fluttering behind him, leaving his
scantily clad body exposed. Everyone was gawking. A flurry of
conversation broke out. Some people were snickering. At Josie? At
him? He couldn’t be sure.

“Look, the prodigal slut and her man-whore
have returned!” Ryan Penn quipped. Michael was too busy helping
Lindsey to hear his son’s rude comment.

“They look like gladiators from a cheesy
B-movie,” another soldier replied.

A ripple of laughter passed through the
vicinity, causing Lars’s feelings of inadequacy to come rushing
back at him.

But not Josie.

“If you only knew what we have been through
for you assholes, you wouldn’t be laughing!” Josie screamed,
nostrils flaring, tears brimming in her eyes. “If you don’t shut
up, and show a little respect, I’ll kick your asses into the next
kingdom!”

Dante pulled her back and shook his head at
Josie, warning her with a frown to knock it off.

“After all the sacrifices we’ve made,” she
complained bitterly to Dante. “I can’t believe the way they’re
acting.”

Lars could empathize with her words because
he felt exactly the same way.

“Shhh,” Dante said, pulling her into a hug.
“Look around you: most of the Galatians here aren’t laughing—just a
few of the usual idiots—and who cares what they think? When they
learn what you’ve done, they will be ashamed of themselves. Just
let it go.”

“Stretcher!” Lars’s father yelled.

Two teen girls came running with a stretcher
held between them, allowing Michael to set Lindsey down on it.

“Bring her straight to the hospital!”

“Hurry up,” an old man with a white beard
waved at Josie and Lars with his staff. “I need you two to come
with me.”

“Oh, my god, is that Red?” Josie gasped.

Lars squinted. The birthmark was there, but
the middle-aged man was gone, replaced by someone twenty-years
older.

“Mike,” Red was saying, “Bring Dante to the
southwest wall and put him in charge. Simon, I leave the
battlefront efforts in your capable hands. Do you still have the
walkie talkie?”

Lars’s dad held up a black radio.

As the wall started to crumble like a circle
of cascading dynamos, Bulwarks helped it along by smashing it with
their hammers.

Lars saw his brother Luke with Isaiah and
Ryan. They all had crystalline swords. A dark red substance flecked
with shards of light began to spread from the hilts of their swords
into the transparent blades like delicate curling tendrils.
Indescrible thirst parched his throat at the sight of them.

“What’s that red stuff in their swords?”
Josie asked Red.

“Blood and soul.”

Four Deermas leapt out of nowhere to
surround the mayor.

The first one rammed him with his antlers,
but Red lifted his staff just in time to cleave the Deerma in two.
Guts came spilling out. Josie jumped on the back of the second
Deerma, and ran her sword through the back of its neck. Lars broke
off its antlers with a swipe of his blade. The last Deerma leapt
away like a stag in retreat.

“Sick!” Josie said as if it were a
compliment. “That’s a real cool weapon you have there, Mayor
Wakeland!”

“And now that I hold it, I am no longer
mayor of Galatia, I’m her general.”

Regalans began to stream in over the pile of
rubble left by the fallen wall, their sharp eyes going left, and
then right, searching for something or someone. One of them
resembled Prince Loyl, with a similar mane of hair and ivory
complexion, but his face was more lined. Lars knew it must be
Prince Gerard. Prince Loyl had talked of his oldest brother
often.

Prince Gerard’s green eyes fell on them
both. He raised his clawed hand and his archers lined up in an arc,
aiming their arrows right at them. “Lohowin daborlhoth elle
bandor!” Prince Gerard yelled. “Josie Albright zel aber Lars
Steelsun.”

“They know about the map,” Lars had
immediately sensed their desire to take it away, but they didn’t
know which of the two had it.

A wave of Galatians armed with crystalline
swords spread over the area, overwhelming the archers. At this
close proximity, the Regalans were forced to trade their bows for
swords. The Galatians’ angelic blades flowed with the blood and
soul of their owners, dominated every weapon they came up against.
Cutting the heads off Bulwark hammers, breaking antlers, snapping
Regalan blades. As the enemy soldiers surged into the city, the
angelic blades shredded them like cabbage against a grater.

Red pushed Josie and Lars along, ordering
them to come with him.

The three of them hurried deeper into the
city, where Lars was taken aback by the tall buildings lining the
street. The city had sprung up like a cornfield overnight. They
came to a white poured-cement edifice.

“That’s the National Building,” Red said.
“We’re heading to its rooftop.”

As they entered the National Building, Lars
reached back to take Josie’s hand. Even if he died, at least for a
while he had been part of something bigger than himself. They ran
over hallway floors made of gray marble. The walls were hewn from a
similar material, but halfway up, they changed to white plaster. A
colorful mural of an ancient Earth city with skyscrapers,
commercial jets in the air, parks filled with balloons and kites,
and a beautiful suspension bridge in the distance was half
completed. He and Josie followed the mayor down to the end of the
hall, where he flung open a set of double doors to the stairwell.
They sprang up several flights and burst onto the roof top.

Gizmo froze on the spot with an armload of
extension cords. Electronic equipment was set up on dura-shelves.
An elderly man in blue jeans, with a crystal sword laying on the
ground beside him, was down on all fours, plugging cords into a
power strip.

“Grandpa Nathan?” Lars questioned. The
elderly man’s head jerked around. His eyes widened and a smile of
recognition lit his face.

“Lars!” he stood and threw up his hands.

The two of them flung themselves into an
embrace. Squeezing Lars tight, Grandpa patted his back, stroking
his head as if Lars was the most precious object the world.

“Sorry to rain on the family reunion, Mr.
Steelsun,” Gizmo jabbed a cord impatiently at Grandpa Nathan. “But
I still need your help.

“Can’t you see I’m in the middle of
something, kid?” Grandpa growled, wiping his eyes with his
forearm.

Red impatiently cleared his throat. “Help
the engineer out, Nate.”

“Okay, okay. What else do I need to do?”

Gizmo barked out instructions and everyone
frantically strung wires, plugged them in, and arranged equipment.
When they were through, eight metal speakers shaped like megaphones
were up on wooden poles, facing out in every direction.

“We’re running of time,” Red said, looking
nervously toward the southern front, sweat beading on his
forehead.

“But I haven’t run a test for the speakers
hidden out in the fields. And I need to finish the...”

“Test or no test, we have to do this now.”
Red said. “Begin.”

Grandpa Steelsun held a plug expectantly in
each hand. “Ready for the juice, kid?”

“Okay, okay, okay.” Gizmo was panting like a
woman in labor. “Everything is going to work.” He pressed a few
buttons on his control panel and said, “Okay, Mr. Steelsun. Do your
stuff.”

Grandpa’s hands began to glow with blue
light. The air sizzled all around him. The sound of a huge
explosion vibrated the entire city and probably beyond. Even though
Lars had his ears firmly covered with his palms, the sound went
right through them, making him scrunch his eyes in pain. Another
louder explosion followed, shaking the building, and probably the
whole damn planet.

Gizmo rushed to adjust the volume. “Heh,
heh—sorry about that. Now for something completely different. How
about a little Zeppelin?” The speakers came to life again, this
time with a man’s wailing cry, as John Bonham’s drum riff rolled
over the land like a train thundering through the mountains.

“The
Immigrant Song
rules,” Josie said as
Gizmo banged his head along with the music.

The mayor, er....general, pulled out a
military-style walkie talkie—or was it a phone?—from the pocket of
his flannel shirt and texted someone below.

A reply appeared
from
Doc
:

I’m on the wall. Music coming through loud
and strong.

Enemy confused. Fighting at a
standstill.

Let the music play on.

At General Red’s command,
Gizmo switched to
an instrumental version
with choir accompaniment of Johann Sebastian Bach’s
Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring
. A minute later, his father messaged the general
again:

Calm and quiet on every
front.

Now is the time. Now is
the time.

Gizmo handed the mayor a
microphone. Red began in English, but later reports claimed every
soldier on that field heard Red Wakeland speaking in his or her own
tongue.

“I am the General of
Galatia, one of the last survivors of the human race. Before the
first Deerma, before the first Regalan, before the first Bulwark,
and before the first Commoner took a breath—I was here and so were
my people.

“According to your own
laws, that makes this land ours, your land ours, and the whole
world. But we don’t want the whole world, just the piece of it we
have here. After all, you are our descendants, our legacy, and we
wish you health and happiness. It is my hope that someday we can
come together in peace and love, united as the family we are meant
to be.

“That being said, you have
demanded that we prove ourselves the rightful heirs of the
Northlands under the law set forth by the Western Alliance. That is
why we have gone to great length to secure the Blood Map. As I
speak, it is here in my hands. So, I cordially invite the leaders
of the nations’ armies surrounding us now to come inside our walls,
to witness the truth, and ratify the Galatians right to settle
these lands.” Josie reached for Lars’s hand as they gazed toward
the front, wondering if the general’s
words were having effect. “Kings, chiefs, queens, generals,
commanders, princes and princesses—you have fifteen minutes to
enter our gate with no more than two witnesses of your own
choosing.”

Red handed the microphone
back to Gizmo. “Now play something soothing and
uplifting.”

A women’s choir began to
hum Pachelbel’s
Canon in
D
, their voices disappearing into a
symphony of strings. The gentle sound drifted across the city and
surrounding countryside. Josie looked up at Lars, her blue eyes
searching his face. Did she see what he saw reflected in her
gaze—their lives stretching together into the horizon?

“General Wakeland, you’ll
want to get down here with the map STAT,” Lars’s father’s voice
came over the walkie talkie. “The cease fire is holding—none of the
leaders want to be left out of the proceedings here. But Prince
Gerard was hit in the head by a war hammer; my stretcher bearers
are loading him up now. Chief Krom is here. Things are pretty tense
between Chief Krom and the Regalans, but Prince Loyl just arrived
to sort things out. And that warrior princess from Cantowin is
hissing at me...
hey, princess, is that
really necessary?
And here comes Prince
Valdor.”

“Put Mike in charge and
attend to Gerard. Remember, our relationship with his father will
have a large impact on Galatia’s future, so don’t let him
die.”

“Understood.”

“I’ll be down there as
quick as I can. Over-and-out.”

(Josephine Rose Albright)

On the general’s orders, Josie and Lars went
to the baseball diamond with Gizmo, where they set up an old opaque
projector. Grandpa Nathan waited by the pitcher’s mound ready to
power it up. As the elders from the council, the leaders of the
alliance and their two chosen guests, began to gather on the
diamond, all non-essential personnel were shooed away behind the
chain link fence. That included Josie and Lars who opted to watch
from the bleachers behind first base. Holding hands in the
nosebleed seats, they hungrily eyed the tables of food spread out
near the batting area.