to join his fight against a man and his followers who, he believed, actually preferred hostilities to safety.
The second thing he thought of, was that as soon as he was back, he would wash and change then get Tori back to his room. They would need to eat at some point, but that ranked lower in his personal priorities.
Arriving back in the proximity of the town, approaching from the flat, southerly direction, Harrison called out with a noise like the cry of a large bird. On his third cry, he heard it returned in a deeper, distant sounding voice. His sentries knew he was coming, and he knew they were expecting him.
He felt secure in that knowledge; it meant he was less likely to fetch an arrow or three fired from atop the walls.
Breaking through the tree line and into the clearing, where the felled trees had given the ground away to hard-packed dust, they slowed to a walk as they crossed the remaining fifty meters to the gateway. Harrison sniffed the air and looked up to the sky, then glanced to Tori who just nodded her agreement to his unspoken thought. Already people were bringing livestock back inside after their day spent in the pens to feed, and the flow of people returning from their crop fields was steady and kept the gates open, just as the first fat, heavy rain drops of the sudden shower began to fall.
Accepting waves and pats on their shoulders as they returned, Harrison felt a wave of happiness and gratitude wash over him; he genuinely loved his people, even if he didn’t know most of them, and he knew he would do everything he could to make their lives better. There were over a thousand people in their town, and all of them looking ultimately to him for their protection was not a burden he shied away from. Nor did he take it lightly.
He was bombarded with questions, and he knew that the second thought he had when running back was, sadly, going to have to wait. As was the shower he was anticipating, but it seemed that the rainfall would have to suffice. As the crowd of people asking questions of him began to thicken, he stopped trying to force his way through and held up his hands for quiet.
He told them that he had spoken to the people from space, and that they were friendly. He told them that he wanted to assemble the town representatives immediately, which appeased the masses and let him carry on his way. In the press, he had lost Tori who had used the distraction he had caused by speaking to slip away, and she had made it to his room first where he found her already using the shower.
Deciding that the representatives would have to wait, he smiled as he knew the second thought on his mind was back on the table.
An hour later and combining the meeting with food and drink to save on time and discomfort, he apologized to the representatives for both his delay and for eating as they spoke but reminded them that he had covered a great distance in a short time. They allowed him both liberties unquestioningly, mostly as everyone there wanted to know the details.
He gave those details, often allowing Tori to take over and give the descriptions from her point of view which invariably added perceptions which he had missed. He wasn’t conscious of it, but this was one of the main reasons he was such a respected and effective leader at a young age; he listened to his people. He interjected when Tori began to give enthusiastic specifics about the weapons they carried, about the new guns which would give them the edge in a fight against Tanaka, and he deftly steered the subject away from conflict as he had not informed the others of their foray to The Source. Knowing that he had no chance to delay this and hoping that the news would be clouded by the arrival of the others, he told the brief and mostly bloodless story about their skirmish bluntly.
He finished by reassuring them that The Keepers were taken by surprise and that they had removed the bodies, so even when Tanaka found their people missing, he would not be able to directly accuse them.
“As for the others,” he said through a mouthful of tasty, greasy meat wrapped in a freshly cooked flatbread, “we will visit them again after the high