Seeker of the Four Winds: A Galatia Novel

by C. D. Verhoff

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  The day of Josie’s first fight in front of a paying crowd had come and she wanted to vomit. It was Lars’s first day too, but his act came later in the show. They would not be allowed to watch any of the other acts except their own. Maybe it was better this way; watching Lars fight for his life might be more than she could handle.

  The trainers ushered all three of the female actors from their cells, brining Big Clo and Willow to Backstage One, and making Josie continue on to Backstage Two, a dim place with walls made of stacked rock that reeked of sweat and fear.

  Being sent to different staging area meant that she could potentially be facing Willow or Big Clo in the ring, making her feel sicker than ever. Now she waited. Her hands were shaking so hard that she could barely sheathe the sword the trainers had given her for the battle.

  “Don’t I get my daggers?” she asked, because she had discovered during the training that she had a natural talent for throwing weapons and lodging them into any chosen target.

  “Before every performance, Mr. Bayloo checks off the weapons each actor is allowed to carry for that performance. The only one he’s checked off for you for this performance is the sword. Oh, by the way, he’s finally assigned you a stage name.”

  “Yeah?” She was hoping for something cool, not that she would live long enough to enjoy it.

  “You are hereby called the Bitch of Galatia.”

  Her mouth fell open with indignation.

  “That’s an awful name. I refuse to be called that!”

  “You don’t have a choice,” the guy smirked. “Bitch.”

  The trainer walked away as he shared a laugh with another trainer who had heard the conversation. This day was just getting better and better—not!

  Her costume looked like a white sheet cinched with a fake gold locket. The head of wardrobes was a handsome Regalan friend of Mr. Bayloo’s, Seleth. His golden mane fringed with black reminded her of a lion. He placed her hair in a thick metal band right smack on the top of her head, making it come down like a fountain.

  “I look stupid,” she said, glancing at her reflection in a fellow actor’s shield.

  “The theater company doesn’t waste money on fancy costumes for newcomers. If the crowd warms to you, and you win a few fights, then the clothes get upgraded. All your bruises, cuts, sprained tendons, and twisted ankles are for this moment,” Seleth said. This moment that she was dreading. “Make it count, honey.”

  “Seleth, Mr. Bayloo wants you.” A Commoner woman in a tight dress came up to Seleth to whisper something in his ear. He frowned and shook his head. “That’s what he gets for refusing to drink the herbal tea I made. Tell him I’ll be out there right away.”

  Seleth followed the woman out of the staging area, leaving Josie’s hair half-teased. She returned her attention to the other actors flexing their muscles, hopping around, even growling to get themselves fired up to kill. She glanced around, hoping to catch a glimpse of Lars before she went on stage, but he was nowhere in sight—probably because he was going to be the last act of the show, while she was the second. She tried to squash the moths flittering in her stomach by thinking about anything other than who or what she would meet in the arena.

  “You’re on deck.” One of the trainers gruffly pushed her toward the wooden doors.

  The crowd seemed bored when she walked in. This was her first real show, and she had heard that Mr. Bayloo enjoyed being the master-of-ceremonies, but right now Seleth was the one standing in the center of the arena. He lacked Mr. Bayloo’s flair, but he was eloquent enough to get the job done.

  “Said to have dropped from a kingdom in the clouds to land in the northlands,” Seleth’s voice echoed across the arena, “we present to you today a warrior like no other. A word of warning to the audience. Don’t look directly into her eyes, because she will hypnotize you into doing her bidding. Now, a nice welcome for one of the prettiest warriors in the land, the Bitch of Galatia!”

  The stadium filled with polite applause. Stepping into the sandy open arena, cold sweat beaded on her forehead as she slid the short sword from its sheath. My god, she thought as her mind flitted back to her civilized life in the bunker, never in million years did I imagine ending up here.

  “That’s the Galatian?” a man yelled out from the crowd. “She’s just a Commoner, scared out of her mind. What is this theater company trying to pull?”

  The crowd started to grumble.

  “Sit down, good sir,” Mr. Bayloo stood in his sectioned-off portion of the bleachers reserved for himself and his entourage, still wrapped in his blanket. “Wait until you see what she’s got.”

  The man sat down, protesting to his friends about being duped, while Mr. Bayloo signaled for Seleth to cut the speech short and bring out the competition. The doors at the opposite side of the arena swung open.

  Even as a shadow, Josie instantly recognized the tuft of hair wrapped around the bone.

  “Oh, no,” she said, taking a step back. It was Big Clo, with a steel club in one hand and a spear in the other.

  As trained to do, the two women met in the middle of the arena to do the customary fist tap.

  “Big Clo,” Josie said tearfully. “What do we do now?”

  “Fight,” Clo said in her simple way.

  “No,” Josie said. “Let’s put down our weapons and refuse.”

  “No fight, no stogie. Me fight.”

  “Let the battle begin!” Seleth shouted. The crowd clapped, while Josie backed away, shaking her head.

  “I can’t do this, Clo. Not to you.”

  Clo moved forward like a freight train, swinging her club. Josie ducked and felt the power in that swing eddy the flyaway hairs on the top of her head. A smattering of applause went through the crowd.

  As much as Josie didn’t want to fight, she wanted even less to die. Damn Big Clo’s stogie addiction. Until now, she hadn’t realized how deep it went.

  Josie’s resolve to die for the sake of her convictions was beginning to unravel. Opening the Excito within, in her mind’s eye she saw an endless ocean beneath a tangerine sky. An island covered with lush green foliage, rising up and up, disappeared into the golden clouds. White birds flittered all around. Josie could smell the clean salt spray mixed with a sweet perfume unlike anything on Earth. The vaporous ocean breeze filled her up. Invigorated, teeming with energy and power, she saw a flash of white and the vision was gone. She was no longer straddling two worlds, but firmly standing in only one, but the Excito still reached into that other realm, sending her vital energy.

  Big Clo was too dumb to be culpable for her actions. Determined to disarm her, rather than kill her, Josie tried to reason with her one more time.

  “Don’t do this, Clo. We’re friends.”

  “Love stogies.”

  “Today, if you win, what will you get? Ten smokes maybe? Haven’t I given you at least twenty stogies? Do the math. You’ll get more stogies if I live.”

  “Hate math.” Clo replied and threw a spear straight at her head.

  Josie snatched the spear out of the air. The crowd jumped to its feet with a roar of approval, but nobody was more surprised than Josie by her impossibly fast reflexes. Thank god for the charisma. She took the spear and broke its shaft over her knee.

  “I will not fight you, Clo.”

  “Stogies,” Clo said, coming at her with the club again. The Gargo swung straight down, intending to crush Josie’s head, but she rolled out of the way. Clo was strong, but her brain didn’t work very fast. The club smacked the ground so hard it bounced back up to hit her own face.

  “Ow.” Her thumbtack eyes instantly drooped. Clo fell backward unconscious, hitting the ground like a tree trunk.

  “Timber!” some smartass shouted from the crowd.

  The crowd laughed so hard that Josie couldn’t hear herself think; people were slapping their knees, doubling over and falling in between the bleachers holding their stomachs. Josie knelt next to Big Clo i
n concern. Dark red blood was flowing out of her gaping mouth, bulbous nose and Dumbo ears. She leaned in next to Big Clo’s mouth to listen. Yes, she was still breathing.

  Glancing up at Mr. Bayloo in his lofty perch, he made the motion of breaking his pretend stick. Angry that he had caused this senseless suffering, no way would she comply. Standing again, she cupped a hand to her mouth and shouted up to him.

  “Take your imaginary stick and shove it down your throat, Mr. Bayloo!”

  She flung her sword across the arena at the painted billboard of Mr. Bayloo. It lodged symbolically right in the center of his laughing mouth. The crowd was on their feet, cheering.

  The real Mr. Bayloo stood up, blanket falling around his feet, face beet red and mouth in a tight angry line. His goons marched through the sand to grab her. The crowd busted out with more applause, and riotous laughter.

  “Punish the Bitch, punish the Bitch, punish the Bitch,” the spectators chanted.

  The trainers were getting closer. Josie didn’t try to run. It’d be futile anyway. They took her by both arms and led her off the field through the waiting area. This must be what it felt like to walk to the gallows. The grim-faced actors stepped out of the way as the trainers led her past the cells down another corridor into a large windowless room with walls hewn from dirt and rocks. A couple of torches burned on the wall. Wooden tables of varying height and shapes, some covered in spikes, others affixed with ropes, pulleys and leather straps, filled the room. A shelf holding caged snakes, rodents, and various insects sat in the corner of the room.

  A grayish mole of a humanoid, with a pink nose and white whiskers, wearing a monocle over one pink eye, stood behind a wheeled aluminum cart filled with rusting metal instruments—scalpels, scissors, forceps, needles, metal halos and more.

  Josie tried to pull away from the trainers, but their grasp remained firm. This isn’t the time to panic, she told herself in the face of pending torture. Concentrate, open the doors to the mystical ocean, and you will find a way out of this jam. But a moment later, a commotion at the door broke her concentration.

  Mr. Bayloo, dressed in yellow tights, purple pantaloons, and a maroon jacket, elbowed his way into the room. His face remained red. Curses were coming out of his mouth so fast, they seemed to be strangling him.

  “Strap her in.”

  Josie flung open the internal doorway to her charisma, but was only partially immersed in its power when the trainers tightened their grips. She knocked a Commoner over and smashed a Bulwark’s nose, but there were simply too many people to fight. Before she knew it, they had carried her over to one of the tables and were strapping her down.

  “By the gods, bitch,” one of them said as he struggled to get her last limb into the strap. “How can someone so little small be so much strong?”

  Her chest was heaving in a mixture of frustration, fear and anger, as it took three of them to finally secure her right arm, leaving her unable to move anything but her head. Calm down and try to open the mystical doorway again. The room fell quiet as Mr. Bayloo came to stand over her, leaning threateningly close to her face.

  “When I break the stick, you follow through.”

  “I will not!”

  “Oh, yes, you will.”

  “I’d rather die than fill your pockets with the blood of innocent people.”

  “Start with her little toe, Mrs. Snippy,” Mr. Bayloo said to the mole-like humanoid standing behind the cart. Mrs. Snippy held up a pair of scissors, while the others stood back a little ways. She felt one of the scissor’s cold metal blades glide between her fourth and fifth toe.

  “Please, no, don’t,” Josie pleaded.

  “Then go back in and finish off your opponent.”

  “I can’t,” Josie shook her head vigorously, “Clo’s thoughts are those of a child. How can you live with yourself forcing someone like that to fight?”

  Bayloo nodded at Snippy, who in turn, pressed the scissors together.

  Incredible pain lightning through her foot.

  A woman screamed.

  Oh, god. Josie realized the screams were her own.

  Her entire foot seemed to throb like a heart held in boiling oil, while the mole woman brought up the severed toe to Josie’s face so she could see it better.

  “Goodbye, cute little toesie,” Snippy said with a giggle, before tossing it to a cage of rats in the corner. The rodents fought over the toe nugget, rapidly devouring it. “Don’t worry, my little pets, there’s plenty for everyone. One down, nine to go, how delightful!”

  “Are you ready to follow my directions?” Mr. Bayloo asked. Not wanting him to see her cry, she turned her face away from him as a single tear slid down her cheek, dropping to the dusty floor. “Do a finger this time,” Mr. Bayloo suggested. “Make her look normal.”

  “I’m more authentically Galatian with five on each hand and that will bring you more customers—” Josie desperately tried to appeal to his love of money. “If I only have four fingers, people will accuse you of tricking them with a mere Commoner—right?”

  “That’s true,” Mr. Bayloo said, scratching his chin. “But it’s difficult to tell the difference between four fingers and five from up in the stands. And as long as one hand still has five…so go ahead, Mrs. Snippy, do a pinky.”

  “No, no, no...”

  The mole-woman wiped the blood off the scissors with a greasy rag and arranged the blades around Josie’s left pinky.

  Mrs. Snippy slammed the scissors closed. There was no pain at all. At least not for five seconds. Then it hit Josie like a grenade, exploding up her arm. She screamed so loud that some of the goons flinched and held their ears. Her pinky didn’t come all the way off, so Mrs. Snippy wiggled it back and forth trying to break it off the last splinters of bone.

  Agony.

  “Hold on a moment,” Mr. Bayloo said.

  Mrs. Snippy let go, while Josie’s finger was left dangling by a splinter of bone and a few tendons.

  “Now will you go out and finish what you started, Bitch of Galatia?”

  “My name is Josephine Albright,” she hissed, glaring her defiance.

  “Why not take the hand this time?” Mrs. Snippy suggested as she ran her hairy gray fingers along the Seeker’s chain. “Then you can take her lovely pendant.”

  Mr. Bayloo struck the mole woman’s hand with his decorative cane. Mrs. Snippy let out a shrill cry and pulled her hand away.

  “No one touches my merchandise without permission.”

  Mrs. Snippy’s head tilted back, chin quivering, as if she were having a major orgasm.

  “Oh, Mr. Bayloo, that hurt so wonderfully.”

  “The girl belongs to me, which means the pendant is already mine. The longer she remains alive, that’s just butter and syrup on the flap jacks. For now, she remains in one piece.”

  “But I thought you wanted me to slice her up?”

  “Only the non-vital pieces,” Mr. Bayloo said with a chuckle. “A toe, a finger, an ear...losing a few of them won’t diminish her fighting skills, so snip away.”

  “May the Angel of Galatia smite you,” Josie panted hatefully through her pain, glaring at everyone in the room. “You and your whole damn theater company!”

  “I’ll burn that sass out of you yet, Galatian. Mrs. Snippy, get the hot iron.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  (Larsen Drey Steelsun)

  The show had started over an hour ago. When it was halfway through, the trainers escorted Lars to one of the staging areas for his debut fight. As they led him through the stone hallways his mind whirled a mile a minute. How had Josie done? Was she hurt? Would his opponent be a person, a beast or both? Would he lose a limb? Would he live to see another day?

  When he arrived in the staging area, Crash was standing there surrounded by small humanoids with light brown skin, pointed ears and large brown eyes—wood elves. Too small and weak to be effective fighters—they took care of many of the menial jobs around the theater company. Currently, they were
polishing Crash’s chest armor to a black shine. Other fighters were there, some in deep meditation, others huddled together in conversations. The actors and trainers instantly quieted at Lars’s arrival.

  “What?” Lars couldn’t help but ask.

  A hand on his shoulder made him jump. He turned to see a blue-green face slashed with old battle scars grinning at him—Slaughterhouse.

  “Mr. Bayloo has a special surprise for you in the armor room, Dread of the West,” he said.

  “Dread of the West?”

  “That’s your new stage name, Galatian,” Slaughterhouse informed.

  “No fair!” one of the other actors protested. “I had to win ten fights in a row before I got real armor.”

  Lars knew that his skills had impressed everyone, but he didn’t expect this little honor so soon. He chastised himself for caring, for getting wrapped up in theater life, but a sprout of pride shot up when the other slaves regarded him with jealous eyes.

  This was a cell block he hadn’t seen before. The room was dank and dim like the rest of them. Other than dirty straw on the floor, it was completely empty. No armor in sight. Some of the other trainers entered the room and when they circled around, danger bells began to ring.

  “Wh-what’s going on?”

  Slaughterhouse sucker punched him in the stomach.

  Lars doubled over with a grunt.

  “What I did I do?” he said, holding his stomach, trying to catch his breath.

  “You were born,” Slaughterhouse replied and turned to the other trainers in the room. “Now let’s show this dirty Galatian a good time.”

  The charisma wasn’t in him when the humanoids turned on him like a pack of vicious dogs. Before he could fling open the Excito Fortitudo, the trainers already had his ankles and wrists clamped in metal cuffs and chains.

  “Can’t be too careful when it comes to the Galatians,” Slaughterhouse said. “They’re weak one second, the next they’re strong. They’re slow one second, then they’re fast. But they’re always crafty. Dread is unpredictable, so don’t let your guard down.”