"Well, you're welcome to look at the golems and keep your tail to yourself," I mentally advised them.
At the entrance to the village a delegation of fifty men with rifles and some kind of bludgeon were already waiting for me, and there was the Tin Man with his pierced shield and his hammer, now resting at his feet on the ground.
- Where is everybody? - The men pounced on me with questions. - Where...?
- Oh, they're following me," I poked my hand to the rear. - Are they blind?
The convoy lagged ten minutes behind me. A lorry was wheeling along in the center, and a samurai was standing at the front of its body, with his leg propped up on the cab, his armor gleaming. He was leaning on a spear, which I had taken from Chappy and handed to him. He looked more formidable with it, and the long shaft of the weapon complemented his brutal appearance, unlike his trademark axe, which was not at all in tune with his appearance.
Waving off the questions, I rushed to his place, leaving Oliver and his companions to answer them.
But even at home I had no peace. As soon as I rinsed myself in the basin and changed my clothes, I heard from the street:
- Uncle Alex!
- What happened there! - I hissed. Then I went to the window and looked from the second floor. - What do you want?
In the street, just outside the boundary, which I had marked with milestones as my home territory, stood a boy I knew. Noah, I think.
- Uncle Jack wants to see you, he really wants you to come!
My first thought was to send both him and the head, but I managed to restrain my desires. Now that they found out about the other mages, one of whom turned out to be hostile, they would start pulling me every now and then. There's no way out of this if I don't want to alienate the whole village. Now it remains to think through my behavior, all the steps to prevent myself from being twisted. If I were thirty years old, everything would be easier, but now everyone at the sight of me already imagines himself capable of showing me my place, or even ordering me around. Should I blow up a couple of houses with golems, so that they would be afraid?
With these thoughts I reached Smith's house.
There were more than twenty people in his yard, all sitting around a large table outside near the gazebo.
- Hello," - I said hello to everyone. Some of the gathered people were unfamiliar to me.
- Hello, Alex," - Jack answered for me, some just nodded, and a smaller part didn't even do that. Well, not everyone likes me here.
Sitting down on the chair his wife brought me, I looked at Smith with a mute question.
- Do you know that there are already strangers here, with whom we had a conflict immediately? - He asked.
- Yes. Why?
- Hmm. They demanded we give them some houses, to take everybody in the settlement, and that's a lot of things. Their boss, a little older than you, by the way, he was very impudent. Instead of asking, he demanded and threatened, promised to burn the place down.
- What do you want from me? Golems? - I guessed.
- Yes, Alex, - he nodded, - that's right. Better let them collect fireballs and bullets than the living humans.
- How did it all begin in the first place? I wouldn't believe a warlock would just throw a spell around like that. You know, I suddenly remembered being greeted here by some of your neighbors. They came with a gun and a pistol and a club," I said. - And I responded with force for force. That's pretty much what I'm hearing now.
- You're a different subject...
- Come on, Jack," one of the men at the table interrupted him, "it was almost the same. In fact, if you hadn't sicced the golem on the mage, nothing would have happened.