20/08/2001
Dear Constant Reader,
Roland of Gilead--also known as the gunslinger--has finally saddled up again. This time I'm hoping to press on to the very end and publish the remaining volumes all at the same time. That probably means three books, one of them fairly short and one of the other two quite long. As for the time it will take to write them...well, that's ka, isn't it? All I know for sure is that DT5 will almost certainly not be called THE CRAWLING SHADOW, as previously reported here (reported by me, in fact, but I was younger then). If I had to guess, I'd say that the push to completion will take two years, depending on all the usual variables, like sickness, accidents, and--scariest of all--a failure of inspiration. The only thing I know for sure is that all these old friends of mine are as alive as they ever were. And as dangerous.
I'm posting "Calla Bryn Sturgis," the prologue to DT5, to repay the readers of these stories, if only a little, for their patience. And in my own defense, all I can say is that it's never easy to find the doorway back into Roland's world.
Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Oy all wish you well. So do I. And as the residents of the Calla might say, may this do ya fine, tell God thankee.
Steve
|
Tian was blessed (although few farmers would use
such a word) with three patches: River Field, where his family had
grown rice since time out of mind; Roadside Field, where ka-Jaffords
had grown sharproot, pumpkin, and corn for those same long years and
generations; and Son of a Bitch, a thankless tract which mostly grew
rocks and blisters and busted hopes. Tian wasn't the first Jaffords
determined to make something of the twenty acres behind the home
place; his gran-pere, pefectly sane in all other respects, had been
convinced there was gold there. Tian's mother had been equally
positive it would grow porin, a spice of great worth. Tian's insanity
was madrigal. Of course madrigal would grow in Son of a Bitch. Must
grow there. He had gotten hold of a thousand seeds (and a dear penny
they had cost him) which were now hidden beneath the floorboards of
his bedroom. All that remained before planting next year was to break
ground in Son of a Bitch. This was a chore easier spoken of than
accomplished.
Tian was blessed with livestock, including three mules, but a man
would be mad to try using a mule out in Son of a Bitch; the beast
unlucky enough to draw such duty would likely be lying legbroke or
stung to death by noon of the first day. One of Tian's uncles had
almost met this latter fate some years before. He had come running
back to the home place, screaming at the top of his lungs and pursued
by huge mutie wasps with stingers the size of nails.
They had found the nest (well, Andy had found it; Andy wasn't
bothered by wasps no matter how big they were) and burned it with
kerosene, but there might be others. Then there were the holes. You
couldn't burn holes, could you? No. And Son of a Bitch sat on what
the old folks called "loose ground." It was consequently possessed of
almost as many holes as rocks, not to mention at least one cave that
puffed out draughts of nasty, decay-smelling air. Who knew what
boggarts might lurk down its dark throat?
As for the holes, the worst of them weren't out where a man (or a
mule) could see them. Not at all, sir. Never think so, thankee-sai.
The leg-breakers were always concealed in innocent-seeming nestles of
weeds and high grass. Your mule would step in, there would come a
bitter crack like a snapping branch, and then the damned thing would
be lying there on the ground, teeth bared, eyes rolling, braying its
agony at the sky. Until you put it out of its misery, that was, and
stock was valuable in Calla Bryn Sturgis, even stock that wasn't
precisely threaded.
Tian therefore plowed with his sister in the traces. No reason not
to. Tia was roont, hence good for little else. She was a big
girl--the roont ones often grew to prodigious size--and she was
willing, Man Jesus love her. The Old Fella had made her a Jesus-tree,
what he called a crucifix, and she wore it everywhere. It swung back
and forth now, thumping against her sweating skin as she pulled.
The plow was attached to her shoulders by a rawhide harness. Behind
her, alternately guiding the plow by its old ironwood handles and his
sister by the hame-traces, Tian grunted and yanked and pushed when
the blade of the plow dropped down and verged on becoming stuck. It
was the end of Full Earth but as hot as midsummer here in Son of a
Bitch; Tia's overalls were dark and damp and stuck to her long and
meaty thighs. Each time Tian tossed his head to get his hair out of
his eyes, sweat flew out of the mop in a spray.
"Gee, ye bitch!" he cried. "Yon rock's a plow-breaker, are ye
blind?"
Not blind; not deaf, either; just stupid. Roont. She heaved to the
left, and hard. Behind her, Tian stumbled forward with a
neck-snapping jerk and barked his shin on another rock, one he hadn't
seen and the plow had, for a wonder, missed. As he felt the first
warm trickles of blood running down to his ankle, he wondered (and
not for the first time) what madness it was that always got the
Jaffordses out here. In his deepest heart he had an idea that
madrigal would sow no more than the porin had before it, although you
could grow devil-grass; yep, he could have bloomed all twenty acres
with that shit, had he wanted. The trick was to keep it out, and it
was always New Earth's first chore. It--
The plow rocked to the right and then jerked forward, almost pulling
his arms out of their sockets. "Arr!" he cried. "Go easy, girl! I
can't grow em back if you pull em out, can I?"
Tia turned her broad, sweaty, empty face up to a sky full of
low-hanging clouds and honked laughter. Man Jesus, but she even
sounded like a donkey. Yet it was laughter, human laughter. Tian
wondered, as he sometimes couldn't help doing, if that laughter meant
anything. Did she understand some of what he was saying, or did she
only respond to his tone of voice? Did any of the roont ones--
"Good day, sai," said a loud and almost completely toneless voice
from behind him. The owner of the voice ignored Tian's scream of
surprise. "Pleasant days, and may they be long upon the earth. I am
here from a goodish wander and at your service."
Tian whirled around, saw Andy standing there--all twelve feet of
him--and was then almost jerked flat as his sister took another of
her lurching steps forward. The plow's hame-traces were pulled from
his hands and flew around his throat with an audible snap. Tia,
unaware of this potential disaster, took another sturdy step forward.
When she did, Tian's wind was cut off. He gave a whooping, gagging
gasp and clawed at the straps. All of this Andy watched with his
usual large and meaningless smile.
Tia jerked forward again and Tian was pulled off his feet. He landed
on a rock that dug savagely into the cleft of his buttocks, but at
least he could breathe again. For the moment, anyway. Damned unlucky
field! Always had been! Always would be!
Tian snatched hold of the leather strap before it could pull tight
around his throat again and yelled, "Hold, ye bitch! Whoa up if you
don't want me to twist yer great and useless tits right off the front
of yer!"
Tia halted agreeably enough and looked back to see what was what. Her
smile broadened. She lifted one heavily muscled arm--it glowed with
sweat--and pointed. "Andy!" she said. "Andy's come!"
"I ain't blind," Tian said and got to his feet, rubbing his bottom.
Was that part of him also bleeding? He had an idea it was.
"Good day, sai," Andy said to her, and tapped his metal throat three
times with his three metal fingers. "Long days and pleasant
nights."
Although Tia had surely heard the standard response to this--And may
you have twice the number--a thousand times or more, all she could do
was once more raise her broad idiot's face to the sky and utter her
donkey laugh. Tian felt a surprising moment of pain, not in his arms
or throat or outraged ass but in his heart. He vaguely remembered her
as a little girl: as pretty and quick as a dragonfly, as smart as
ever you could wish. Then--
But before he could finish the thought, a premonition came. Except
that was too fine a word for it. In fact, it was time. Overtime. Yet
he felt a sinking in his heart. The news would come while I'm out
here, too, he thought. Out in this godforsaken patch where nothing is
well and all luck is bad.
"Andy," he said.
"Yes!" Andy said, smiling. "Andy, your friend! Back from a goodish
wander and at your service. Would you like your horoscope, sai Tian?
It is Full Earth. The moon is red, what is called the Huntress Moon
in Mid-World that was. A friend will call! Business affairs prosper!
You will have two ideas, one good and one bad--"
"The bad one was coming out here to turn this field," Tian said.
"Never mind my goddam horoscope, Andy. Why are you here?"
Andy's smile probably could not become troubled--he was a robot,
after all, the last one in Calla Bryn Sturgis or for miles and wheels
around--but to Tian it seemed to grow troubled, just the same. The
robot looked like a young child's stick-figure of an adult,
impossibly tall and impossibly thin. His legs and arms were silvery.
His head was a stainless steel barrel with electric eyes. His body,
no more than a cylinder seven feet high, was gold. Stamped in the
middle--what would have been a man's chest--was this legend:
NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS, LTD.
IN ASSOCIATION WITH LaMERK INDUSTRIES
PRESENTS
ANDY
Design: MESSENGER (Many Other Functions)
Serial # DNF 34821 V 63
Why or how this silly thing had survived when all the rest of the
robots were gone--gone for generations--Tian neither knew nor cared.
You were apt to see him anywhere in the Calla (he would not venture
beyond its borders) striding on his impossibly long silver legs,
looking everywhere, occasionally clicking to himself as he stored (or
perhaps purged--who knew?) information. He sang songs, passed on
gossip and rumor from one end of town to the other--a tireless walker
was Andy the robot--and seemed to enjoy the giving of horoscopes
above all things, although there was general agreement in the village
that they meant little.
He had one other function, however, and that meant much.
"Why are ye here, ye bag of bolts and beams? Answer me! Is it the
Wolves? Are they coming from Thunderclap?"
Tian stood there looking up into Andy's stupid smiling metal face,
the sweat growing cold on his skin, praying with all his might that
the foolish thing would say no, then offer to tell his horoscope
again, or perhaps to sing "The Green Corn A-Dayo," all twenty or
thirty verses.
But all Andy said, still smiling, was: "Yes, sai."
"Christ and the Man Jesus," Tian said (he'd gotten an idea from the
Old Fella that those were two names for the same thing, but had never
bothered pursuing the question). "How long?"
"One moon of days before they arrive," Andy replied, still
smiling.
"From full to full?"
"Yes, sai."
Thirty days, then. Thirty days to the Wolves. And there was no sense
hoping Andy was wrong. No one kenned how the robot could know they
were coming out of Thunderclap so far in advance of their arrival,
but he did know. And he was never wrong.
"Fuck you for your bad news!" Tian cried, and was furious at the
waver he heard in his own voice. "What use are you?"
"I'm sorry that the news is bad," Andy said. His guts clicked
audibly, his eyes flashed a brighter blue, and he took a step
backward. "Would you not like me to tell your horoscope? This is the
end of Wide Earth, a time particularly propitious for finishing old
business and meeting new people--"
"And fuck your false prophecy, too!!" Tian bent, picked up a clod of
earth, and threw it at the robot. A pebble buried in the clod clanged
off Andy's metal hide. Tia gasped, then began to cry. Andy backed off
another step, his shadow trailing out spider-long in Son of a Bitch
field. But his hateful, stupid smile remained.
"What about a song? I have learned an amusing one from the Manni far
north of town; it is called ‘In Time of Loss, Make God Your
Boss.' " From somewhere deep in Andy's guts came the wavering honk of
a pitch-pipe, followed by a ripple of piano keys. "It goes--"
Sweat rolling down his cheeks and sticking his itchy balls to his
thighs. Tia blatting her stupid face at the sky. And this idiotic,
bad-news-bearing robot getting ready to sing him some sort of Manni
hymn.
"Be quiet, Andy." He spoke reasonably enough, but through clamped
teeth.
"Sai," the robot agreed, then fell mercifully silent.
Tian went to his bawling sister, put his arm around her, smelled the
large (but not entirely unpleasant) work-smell of her. He sighed,
then began to stroke her trembling arm.
"Quit it, ye great bawling cunt," he said. The words might have been
ugly but the tone was kind in the extreme, and it was tone she
responded to. She began to quiet. Her brother stood with the flare of
her hip pushing into him just below his ribcage (she was a full foot
taller), and any passing stranger would likely have stopped to look
at them, amazed by the similarity of face and the great dissimilarity
of size. The resemblance, at least, was honestly come by: they were
twins.
He soothed his sister with a mixture of endearments and
profanities--in the years since she had come back roont from the
west, the two modes of expression were much the same to Tian
Jaffords--and at last she ceased her weeping. And when a rustie flew
across the sky, doing loops and giving out the usual series of ugly
blats, she pointed and laughed.
A feeling was rising in Tian, one so foreign to his nature that he
didn't even recognize it. "Ain't right," he said. "Nossir. By the Man
Jesus and all the gods that be, it ain't." He looked to the west,
where the hills rolled away into a rising membranous darkness that
might have been clouds but wasn't. It was the borderland between
Mid-World and End-World. The edge of Thunderclap.
"Ain't right what they do to us."
"Sure you wouldn't like to hear your horoscope, sai? I see many
bright coins and a beautiful dark lady."
"The dark ladies will have to do without me," Tian said, and began
pulling the harness off his sister's broad shoulders. "I'm married,
as I'm sure ye very well know."
"Many a married man has had his jilly," Andy observed. To Tian he
sounded almost smug.
"Not those who love their wives." Tian shouldered the harness (he'd
made it himself, there being a marked shortage of tack for human
beings in most livery barns) and turned toward the home place. "And
not farmers, in any case. Show me a farmer who can afford a jilly and
I'll kiss your shiny ass. Go on, Tia."
"Home place?" she asked.
"That's right."
"Lunch at home place?" She looked at him in a muddled, hopeful way.
"Taters?" A pause. "Gravy?"
"Shore," Tian said. "Why the hell not?"
Tia let out a whoop and began running toward the house. There was
something almost awe-inspiring about her when she ran. As their
father had once observed, not long before the brain-storm that
carried him off, "Bright or dim, that's a lot of meat in motion."
Tian walked slowly after her, head down, watching for the holes which
his sister seemed to avoid without even looking, as if some strange
deep part of her had mapped the location of each one. That strange
new feeling kept growing and growing. He knew about anger--any farmer
who'd ever lost cows to the milk-sick or watched a summer hailstorm
beat his corn flat knew plenty about anger--but this was deeper. This
was rage, and it was a new thing. He walked slowly, head down, fists
clenched. He wasn't aware of Andy following along behind him until
the robot said, "There's other news, sai. Northwest of town, along
the path of the Beam, strangers from Out-World--"
"Bugger the Beam, bugger the strangers, and bugger your good self,"
Tian said. "Let me be, Andy."
Andy stood where he was for a moment, surrounded by the rocks and
weeds and useless knobs of Son of a Bitch, that thankless tract of
Jaffrey land. Relays inside him clicked. His eyes flashed. And he
decided to go and talk to the Old Fella. The Old Fella never told him
to bugger his good self. The Old Fella was always willing to hear his
horoscope.
And he was always interested in strangers.
Andy started toward town and Our Lady of Serenity.
2
Zalia Jaffords didn't see her husband and sister-in-law come back
from Son of a Bitch; didn't hear Tia plunging her head repeatedly
into the rain-barrel outside the barn and then blowing moisture off
her lips like a horse. Zalia was on the south side of the house,
hanging out wash and keeping an eye on the children. She wasn't aware
that Tian was back until she saw him looking out the kitchen window
at her. She was surprised to see him there at all and much more than
surprised at the look of him. His face was ashy pale except for two
bright blots of color high up on his cheeks and a third glaring in
the center of his forehead like a brand.
She dropped the few pins she was still holding back into her clothes
basket and started for the house.
"Where goin, Ma?" Heddon called, and "Where goin, Maw-Maw?" Hedda
echoed.
"Never mind," she said. "Just keep a eye on your ka-babbies."
"Why-yyy?" Hedda whined. She had that whine down to a science. One of
these days she would draw it out a little too long and her mother
would clout her over the hills and far away.
"Because ye're the oldest," she said.
"But--"
"Shut your mouth, Hedda Jaffords."
"We'll watch em, Ma," Heddon said. Always agreeable was her Heddon;
probably not quite so bright as his sister, but bright wasn't
everything. Far from it. "Want us to finish hanging the wash?"
"Hed-donnnn..." From his sister. That irritating whine again. But she
had no time for them. She just took one glance at the others: Lyman
and Lia, who were five, and Aaron, who was two. Aaron sat naked in
the dirt, happily chunking two stones together. He was the rare
singleton, and how the women of the village envied her on account of
him! Because Aaron would always be safe. The others, however, Heddon
and Hedda...Lyman and Lia...
She suddenly understood what it might mean, him back at the house in
the middle of the day like this. She prayed to the gods it wasn't so,
but when she came into the kitchen and saw the way he was looking out
at the kiddies, she feared it was.
"Tell me it isn't the Wolves," she said in a dry and frantic voice.
"Say it's not."
"It is," Tian replied. "Thirty days, Andy says--moon to moon. And on
that Andy's never--"
Before he could go on, Zalia Jaffords clapped her hands to her
temples and voiced a shriek. In the side yard, Hedda jumped up. In
another moment she would have been running for the house, but Heddon
held her back.
"They won't take any as young as Lymon and Lia, will they?" she asked
him. "Hedda or Heddon, maybe, but surely not the babbies? Not my
little ones? Why, they won't see their sixth for another
half-year!"
"The Wolves have taken em as young as three, and you know it," Tian
said. His hands opened and closed, opened and closed. That feeling
inside him continued to grow--the feeling that was deeper than mere
anger.
She looked at him, tears spilling down her face.
"Mayhap it's time to say no." Tian spoke in a voice he hardly
recognized as his own.
"How can we?" she whispered. "Oh, T, how in the name of all the gods
can we?"
"Dunno," he said. "But come here, woman, I beg you."
She came, throwing one last glance over her shoulder at the five
children in the back yard--as if to make sure they were still all
there, that no Wolves had taken them yet--and then crossed the living
room. Gran-pere sat in his corner chair by the dead fire, head bent
over, dozing and drizzling from his folded, toothless mouth.
From this room the barn was visible. Tian drew his wife to the window
and pointed. "There," he said. "Do you mark em, woman? Do you see em
very well?"
Of course she did. Tian's sister, six and a half feet tall, now
standing with the straps of her overalls lowered and her big breasts
sparkling with water as she splashed them from the rain-barrel.
Standing in the barn doorway was Zalman, Zalia's very own brother.
Almost seven feet tall he was, big as Lord Perth and as empty of face
as the girl. A strapping young man watching a strapping young woman
with her breasts out on show like that might well have been sporting
a bulge in his pants, but there was none in Zally's. Nor ever would
be. He was roont.
She turned back to T. They looked at each other, a man and woman not
roont, but only because of dumb luck. So far as either of them knew,
it could just as easily have been Zal and Tia standing in here and
watching Tian and Zalia out by the barn, grown large of body and
empty of head.
"Of course I see," she told him. "Does ye think I'm blind?"
"Don't it sometimes make you wish you was?" he asked. "To see em
so?"
Zalia made no reply.
"Not right, woman. Not right. Never has been."
"But since time out of mind--"
"Bugger time out of mind, too!" Tian cried. "They's children! Our
children!"
"Would you have the Wolves burn the Calla to the ground, then? Leave
us all with our throats cut? That or worse? For it's happened in
other places. You know it has."
He knew, all right. And who would put matters right, if not the men
of Calla Bryn Sturgis? Certainly there were no authorities, not so
much as a sheriff, either high or low, in these parts. They were on
their own. Even long ago, when the Inner Baronies had glowed with
light and culture, they would have seen precious little sign of that
bright-life out here. These were the borderlands, and life here had
always been strange. Then the Wolves had begun coming and life had
grown far stranger. How long ago had it begun? How many generations?
Tian didn't know, but he thought "time out of mind" was too long. The
Wolves had been raiding into the borderland villages when Gran-pere
was young, certainly--Gran-pere's own twin had been snatched as the
two of them sat in the dust, playing at jacks. "Dey tuk eem cos he
closah to de rud," Gran-pere had told them (many times). "Eef Ah come
out of dee house firs' da' day, Ah be closah to de rud an dey take
me, God is good!" Then he would kiss the wooden cross the Old Fella
had given him, hold it skyward, and cackle.
Yet Gran-pere's own Gran-pere had told him that in his day--which
would have been five or perhaps even six generations back, if Tian's
calculations were right--that there had been no Wolves sweeping out
of Thunderclap on their horrible gray horses. Once Tian had asked the
old man, And did all but a few of the babbies come in twos back then?
Did yer Old Fella ever say? Gran-pere had considered this long, then
had shaken his head. No, he couldn't remember that his Gran-pere had
ever said about that, one way or the other.
Zalia was looking at him anxiously. "Ye're in no mood to think of
such things, I wot, after spending your morning in that rocky
patch."
"My frame of mind won't change when they come or who they'll take,"
Tian said.
"Ye'll not do something foolish, T, will you? Something foolish and
all on your own?"
"No," he said.
No hesitation. He's already begun to lay plans, she thought, and
allowed herself a thin gleam of hope. Surely there was nothing Tian
could do against the Wolves--nothing any of them could do--but he was
far from stupid. In a farming village where most men could think no
further than hoeing the next row or planting their stiffies on
Saturday night, Tian was something of an anomaly. He could write his
name; he could write words which said I LOVE YOU ZALLIE (and had won
her by so doing, even though she couldn't read them there in the
dirt); he could add the numbers and also call them back from big to
small, which he said was even more difficult. Was it possible...?
Part of her didn't want to complete that thought. And yet, when she
turned her mother's heart and mind to Hedda and Heddon, Lia and
Lyman, part of her wanted to hope. "What, then?"
"I'm going to call a meeting at the Town Gathering Hall," he said.
"I'll send the feather. "
"Willl they come?"
"When they hear this news, every man in the Calla will turn up. We'll
talk it over. Mayhap they'll want to fight this time. Mayhap they'll
want to fight for their babbies."
From behind them, a cracked old voice said, "Ye foolish killin."
Tian and Zalia turned, hand in hand, to look at the old man. Killin
was a harsh word, but Tian judged the old man was looking at them--at
him--kindly enough.
"Why d'ye say so, Gran-pere?" he asked.
"Men'd go forrad from such a meetin as ye plan on and burn down hat'
countryside, were dey in drink," the old man said. "Men sober--" He
shook his head. "Ye'll never move such."
"I think this time you might be wrong, Grand-pere," Tian said, and
Zalia felt cold terror squeeze her heart. He believed it. He really
did.
3
There would have been less grumbling if he'd given them at least one
night's notice, but Tian wouldn't do that. One moon of days before
they arrive, Andy had said, and that was all the horoscope Tian
Jaffords needed. They didn't have the luxury of even a single fallow
night. And when he sent Heddon and Hedda with the feather, they did
come. He'd known they would. It had been over twenty years since the
Wolves last came calling to Calla Bryn Sturgis, and times had been
good. If they were allowed to reap this time, the crop would be a
large one.
The Calla's Gathering Hall was an adobe at the end of the village
high street, beyond Took's General Store and cater-corner from the
town pavillion, which was now dusty and dark with the end of summer.
Soon enough the ladies of the town would begin decorating it for
Reap, but they'd never made a lot of Reaping Night in the Calla. The
children always enjoyed seeing the stuffy-guys thrown on the fire, of
course, and the bolder fellows would steal their share of kisses as
the night itself approached, but that was about it. Your fripperies
and festivals might do for Mid-World and In-World, but this was
neither. Out here they had more serious things to worry about than
Reaping Day Fairs.
Things like the Wolves.
Some of the men--from the well-to-do farms to the east and the three
ranches to the south--came on horses. Eisenhart of the Lazy B even
brought his rifle and wore crisscrossed ammunition bandoliers. (Tian
Jaffords doubted if the bullets were any good, or that the ancient
rifle would fire even if some of them were.) A delegation of the
Manni folk came crammed into a buckboard drawn by a pair of mutie
geldings--one with three eyes, the other with a pylon of raw pink
flesh poking out of its back. Most of the Calla's menfolk came on
donkeys and burros, dressed in their white pants and long colorful
shirts. They knocked their dusty sombreros back on the tugstrings
with callused thumbs as they stepped into the Gathering Hall, looking
uneasily at each other. The benches were of plain pine. With no
womenfolk and none of the roont ones, the men filled less than thirty
of the ninety benches. There was some talk, but no laughter at
all.
Tian stood out front with the feather now in his hands, watching the
sun as it sank toward the horizon, its gold steadily deepening to a
color that was like infected blood. When it touched the hills, he
took one more look up the high street. It was empty except for three
or four roont fellas sitting on the steps of Took's. All of them huge
and good for nothing more than yanking rocks out of the ground. He
saw no more men, no more approaching donkeys. He took a deep breath,
let it out, then drew in another and looked up at the deepening
sky.
"Man Jesus, I don't believe in you," he said. "But if you're there,
help me now. Tell God thankee."
Then he went inside and closed the Gathering Hall doors a little
harder than was strictly necessary. The talk stopped. A hundred and
forty men, most of them farmers, watched him walk to the front of the
hall, the wide legs of his white pants swishing, his shor'-boots
clacking on the hardwood floor. He had expected to be terrified by
this point, perhaps even to find himself speechless. He was a farmer,
not a stage performer or a politician. Then he thought of his
children, and when he looked up at the men, he found he had no
trouble meeting their eyes. The feather in his hands did not tremble.
When he spoke, his words followed each other easily, naturally, and
coherently. They might not do as he hoped they would--Gran-pere might
be right about that--but he saw they were willing enough to listen.
And wasn't that the necessary first step?
"You all know who I am," he said as he stood there with his hands
clasped around the reddish feather's ancient stalk. "Tian Jaffords,
son of Alan Jaffords, husband of Zalia Hoonik that was. She and I
have five, two pairs and a singleton."
Low murmurs at that, most probably having to do with how lucky Tian
and Zalia were, how lucky with their Aaron. Tian waited for the
voices to die away.
"I've lived in the Calla all my life. I've shared your khef and you
have shared mine. Now hear what I say, I beg you."
"We say thankee-sai," they murmured. It was little more than a stock
response, yet Tian was encouraged.
"The Wolves are coming," he said. "I have this news from Andy. Thirty
days from moon to moon and then they're here."
More low murmurs. Tian heard dismay and outrage, but no surprise.
When it came to spreading news, Andy was extremely efficient.
"Even those of us who can read and write a little have almost no
paper to write on," Tian said, "so I cannot tell ye with any real
certainty when last they came. There are no records, ye ken, just one
mouth to another. I know I was well-breeched, so it's longer than
twenty years--"
"It's twenty-four," said a voice in the back of the room.
"Nay, twenty-three," said a voice closer to the front, and Reuben
Caverra stood up. He was a plump man with a round, cheerful face. The
cheer was gone from it now, however, and it showed only distress.
"They took Ruth, my sissy: hear me, I beg."
A murmur--really no more than a vocalized sigh of agreement--came
from the men sitting crammed together on the benches. They could have
spread out, but had chosen shoulder-to-shoulder instead. Sometimes
there was comfort in discomfort, Tian reckoned.
Reuben said, "We were playing under the big pine in the front yard
when they came. I made a mark on that tree each year after. Even
after they brung her back, I went on with em. It's twenty-three marks
and twenty-three years." With that he sat down.
"Twenty-three or twenty-four, makes no difference," Tian said. "Those
who were babbies--or kiddies--when the Wolves came last time have
grown up since and had kiddies of their own. There's a fine crop here
for those bastards. A fine crop of children." He paused, giving them
a chance to think of the next idea for themselves before speaking it
aloud. "If we let it happen," he said at last. "If we let the Wolves
take our children into Thunderclap and then send them back to us
roont."
"What the hell else can we do?" cried a man sitting on one of the
middle benches. "They's not human!" At this there was a general (and
miserable) mumble of agreement.
One of the Manni stood up, pulling his dark blue cloak tight against
his bony shoulders. He looked around at the others with baleful eyes.
They weren't mad, those eyes, but to Tian they looked a long league
from reasonable. "Hear me, I beg," he said.
"We say thankee-sai." Respectful but reserved. To see a Manni up
close was a rare thing, and here were eight, all in a bunch. Tian was
delighted they had come. If anything would underline the deadly
seriousness of this business, the appearance of the Manni would do
it.
The Gathering Hall door opened and one more man slipped inside. None
of them, including Tian, noticed. They were watching the Manni.
"Hear what the Book says: When the Angel of Death passed over Aegypt,
he killed the firstborn in every house where the blood of a
sacrificial lamb hadn't been daubed on the doorposts. So says the
Book."
"Praise the Book," said the rest of the Manni.
"Perhaps we should do likewise," the Manni spokesman went on. His
voice was calm, but a pulse beat wildly in his forehead. "Perhaps we
should turn these next thirty days into a festival of joy for the wee
ones, and then put them to sleep, and let their blood out upon the
earth. Let the Wolves take their corpses into the West, should they
desire."
"You're insane," Benito Cash said, indignant and at the same time
almost laughing. "You and all your kind. We ain't gonna kill our
babbies!"
"Would the ones that come back not be better off dead?" the Manni
responded. "Great useless hulks! Scooped-out shells!"
"Aye, and what about their brothers and sisters?" asked Vaughn
Eisenhart. "For the Wolves only take one out of every two, as ye very
well know."
A second Manni rose, this one with a silky-white beard flowing down
over his breast. The first one sat down. The old man looked around at
the others, then at Tian. "You hold the feather, young fella--may I
speak?"
Tian nodded for him to go ahead. This wasn't a bad start at all. Let
them fully explore the box they were in, explore it all the way to
the corners. He was confident they'd see there were only two
alternatives, in the end: let the Wolves take one of every pair under
the age of puberty, as they always had, or stand and fight. But to
see that, they needed to understand that all other ways out were dead
ends.
The old man spoke patiently. Sorrowfully, even. "To take those who
would have been left behind as well as those who'd come back to us
spoiled forever...aye, it's a terrible thing to consider. But
think'ee this, sais: if the Wolves were to come and find us
childless, they might leave us alone ever after."
"Aye, so they might," one of the smallhold farmers rumbled--Tian
believed his name was Jorge Estrada. "And so they might not.
Manni-sai, would you really kill a whole town's children for what
might be?"
A strong rumble of agreement ran through the crowd. Another
smallholder, Garrett Strong, rose to his feet. His pug-dog's face was
truculent. His thumbs were hung in his belt. "Better we all kill
ourselves," he said. "Babbies and grown-ups alike."
The Manni didn't look outraged at this. Nor did any of the other
blue-cloaks around him. "It's an option," the old man said. "We would
speak of it if others would." He sat down.
"Not me," Garrett Strong said. "It'd be like cuttin off your damn
head to save shaving, hear me I beg."
There was laughter and a few cries of Hear you very well. Garrett sat
back down, looking a little less tense, and put his head together
with Vaughn Eisenhart. One of the other ranchers, Diego Adams, was
listening in, his black eyes intent.
Another smallholder rose--Bucky Javier. He had bright little blue
eyes in a small head that seemed to slope back from his goatee'd
chin. "What if we left for awhile?" he asked. "What if we took our
children and went back east? All the way to the Big River,
mayhap?"
There was a moment of considering silence at this bold idea. The Big
River was almost all the way back to Mid-World...where, according to
Andy, a great palace of green glass had lately appeared and even more
lately disappeared again. Tian was about to respond himself when Eben
Took, the storekeeper's son, did it for him. Tian was relieved. He
hoped to be silent as long as possible. When they were talked out,
he'd tell them what was left.
"Are ye mad?" Eben asked. "Wolves'd come in, see us gone, and burn
all to the ground--farms and ranches, crops and stores, root and
branch. What would we come back to?"
"And what if they came after us?" Jorge Estrada chimed in. "Do'ee
think we'd be hard to follow, for such as the Wolves? They'd burn us
out as Took says, ride our backtrail, and take the kiddies
anyway!"
Louder agreement. The stomp of shor'-boots on the plain pine
floorboards. And a few cries of Hear him, hear him!
"Besides," Neil Faraday said, standing and holding his vast and
filthy sombrero in front of him, "they never steal all our children."
He spoke in a frightened let's-be-reasonable tone that set Tian's
teeth on edge. It was this counsel he feared above all others. Its
deadly-false call to reason.
One of the Manni, this one younger and beardless, uttered a sharp and
contemptuous laugh. "Ah, one saved out of every two! And that make it
all right, does it? God bless thee!" He might have said more, but
White-Beard clamped a gnarled hand on the young man's arm. That
worthy said no more, but he didn't lower his head submissively,
either. His eyes were hot, his lips a thin white line.
"I don't mean it's right," Neil said. He had begun to spin his
sombrero in a way that made Tian feel a little dizzy. "But we have to
face the realities, don't we? Aye. And they don't take em all. Why my
daughter, Georgina, she's just as apt and canny--"
"Yar, and yer son George is a great empty-headed galoot," Ben
Slightman said. Slightman was Eisenhart's foreman, and he did not
suffer fools lightly. "I seen him settin on the steps in front of
Tooky's when I rode downstreet. Seen him very well. Him and some
others equally empty-brained."
"But--"
"I know," Slightman said. "You have a daughter who's as apt as an ant
and canny as the day is long. I give you every joy of her. I'm just
pointin out, like, that if not for the Wolves, you'd mayhap have a
son just as apt and canny. Nor would he eat a peck a day, winter and
summer, to no good end for ye, not even a brace o' grandbabbies."
Cries of Hear him and Say thankee as Ben Slightman sat down.
"They always leave us enough to go on with, don't they?" asked a
smallhold farmer whose place was just west of Tian's, near the edge
of the Calla. His name was Louis Haycox, and he spoke in a musing,
bitter tone of voice. Below his moustache, his lips curved in a smile
that didn't have much humor in it. "We won't kill our children," he
said, looking at the Manni. "All God's grace to ye, gentlemen, but I
don't believe even you could do so, came it right down to the
killin-floor. Or not all of ye. We can't pull up bag and baggage and
go east--or in any other direction--because we leave our farms
behind. They'd burn us out, all right, and come after the children
just the same. They need em, gods know why.
"It always comes back to the same thing: we're farmers, most of us.
Strong when our hands are in the soil, weak when they ain't. I got
two kiddies of my own, four years old, and I love em both well.
Should hate to lose either. But I'd give one to keep the other. And
my farm." Murmurs of agreement met this. "What other choice do we
have? I say this: it would be the world's worst mistake to anger the
Wolves. Unless, of course, we can stand against them. If t'were
possible, I'd stand. But I just don't see how it is."
Tian felt his heart shrivel with each of Haycox's words. How much of
his thunder had the man stolen? Gods and the Man Jesus!
Wayne Overholser got to his feet. He was Calla Bryn Sturgis's most
successful farmer, and had a vast sloping belly to prove it. "Hear
me, I beg."
"We say thankee-sai," they murmured.
"Tell you what we're going to do," he said, looking around. "What we
always done, that's what. Do any of you want to talk about standing
against the Wolves? Are any of you that mad? With what? Spears and
rocks and a few bows? Maybe four rusty old soft-calibers like that?"
He jerked a thumb toward Eisenhart's rifle.
"Don't be making fun of my shooting-iron, son," Eisenhart said, but
he was smiling ruefully.
"They'll come and they'll take the children," Overholser said,
looking around. "Some of the children. Then they'll leave us alone
again for a generation or even longer. So it is, so it has been, and
I say leave it alone."
Disapproving rumbles rose at this, but Overholser waited them
out.
"Twenty-three years or twenty-four, it don't matter," he said when
they were quiet again. "Either way it's a long time. A long time of
peace. Could be you've forgotten a few things, folks. One is that
children are like any other crop. God always sends more. I know that
sounds hard. But it's how we've lived and how we have to go on."
Tian didn't wait for any of the stock responses. If they went any
further down this road, any chance he might have to turn them would
be lost. He raised the opopanax feather and said, "Hear what I say!
Would ye hear, I beg!"
"Thankee-sai," they responded. Overholser was looking at Tian
distrustfully.
And you're right to look at me so, the farmer thought. For I've had
enough of such soft and cowardly common sense, so I have.
"Wayne Overholser is a smart man and a successful man," Tian said,
"and I hate to speak against his position for those reasons. And for
another, as well: he's old enough to be my Da'."
"'Ware he ain't your Da'," Garrett Strong's only farmhand--Rossiter,
his name was--called out, and there was general laughter. Even
Overholser smiled at this jest.
"Son, if ye truly hate to speak agin me, don't ye do it," he said. He
continued to smile, but only with his mouth.
"I must, though," Tian said. He began to walk slowly back and forth
in front of the benches. In his hands, the rusty-red plume of the
opopanax feather swayed. Tian raised his voice slightly so they'd
understand he was no longer speaking just to Overholser.
"I must because sai Overholser is old enough to be my Da'. His
children are grown, ye ken, and so far as I know there were only two
to begin with, one girl and one boy." He paused, then shot the
killer. "Born two years apart." Both singletons, in other words. Both
safe from the Wolves. The crowd murmured.
Overholser flushed a bright and dangerous red. "That's a rotten
goddamned thing to say! My get has nothing to do with this whether
single or double! Give me that feather, Jaffords. I got a few things
to say."
But the boots began to thump down on the boards, slowly at first,
then picking up speed until they rattled like hail. Overholser looked
around angrily, now so red he was nearly purple.
"I'd speak!" he shouted. "Would'ee not hear me, I beg?"
Cries of No, no and Not now and Jaffords has the feather and Sit and
listen came in response. Tian had an idea sai Overholser was
learning--and remarkably late in the game--that there was often a
deep-running resentment of a village's richest and most successful.
Those less fortunate or less canny might tug their hats off when the
rich folk passed in their buckboards or lowcoaches, they might send
thank-you delegations when the rich folk loaned their hired hands to
help with a house- or barn-raising, the well-to-do might be cheered
at Year End Gathering for helping to buy the piano that now sat in
the pavillion's musica. Yet the men of the Calla tromped their
shor'-boots to drown Overholser out with a certain savage
satisfaction. Even those who undoubtedly supported what he'd said
(Neil Faraday, for one) were tromping hard enough to break a
sweat.
Overholser, unused to being balked in such a way--flabbergasted, in
fact--tried one more time. "I'd have the feather, do ye, I beg!"
"No," Tian said. "In your time, but not now."
There were actual cheers at this, mostly from the smallest of the
smallhold farmers and some of their hands. The Manni did not join in.
They were now drawn so tightly together that they looked like a dark
blue inkstain in the middle of the hall. They were clearly bewildered
by this turn. Vaughn Eisenhart and Diego Adams, meanwhile, moved to
flank Overholser and speak low to him.
You've got a chance, Tian thought. Better make the most of it.
He raised the feather and they quieted.
"Everyone will have a chance to speak," he said. "As for me, I say
this: we can't go on this way, simply bowing our necks and standing
quiet when the Wolves come and take our children. They--"
"They always return them," a hand named Farren Posella said
timidly.
"They return husks!" Tian cried, and there were a few cries of Hear
him. Not enough, however, Tian judged. Not enough by far. Not yet.
The bulk of his work was yet to do.
He lowered his voice again--he did not want to harangue them.
Overholser had tried that and gotten nowhere, a thousand acres or
not.
"They return husks. And what of us? What is this doing to us? Some
might say nothing, that the Wolves have always been a part of our
life in Calla Bryn Sturgis, like the occasional cyclone or
earthshake. Yet that is not true. They've been coming for six
generations, at most. But the Calla's been here a thousand years and
more."
The old Manni with the bony shoulders and baleful eyes half-rose. "He
says true, folken. There were farmers here--and Manni-folk among
em--when the darkness in Thunderclap hadn't yet come, let alone the
Wolves."
They received this with looks of wonder. Their awe seemed to satisfy
the old man, who nodded and sat back down.
"So the Wolves are almost a new thing," Tian said. "Six times have
they come over mayhap a hundred and twenty or a hundred and forty
years. Who can say? For as ye ken, time has softened, somehow."
A low rumble. A few nods.
"In any case, once a generation," Tian went on. He was aware that a
hostile contingent was coalescing around Overholser, Eisenhart, and
Adams. These men he would not move even if he were gifted with the
tongue of an angel. Well, he could do without them, maybe. If he
caught the rest. "Once a generation they come, and how many children
do they take? Twelve? Eighteen? Maybe as many as thirty?
"Sai Overholser may not have babbies this time, but I do--not one set
of twins but two. Heddon and Hedda, Lyman and Lia. I love all four,
but in a month of days, two of them will be taken away. And when
those two come back, they'll be roont. Whatever spark there is that
makes a complete human being, it'll be out forever."
Hear him, hear him swept through the room like a sigh.
"How many of you have twins with no hair except that which grows on
their heads?" Tian demanded. "Raise yer hands!"
Six men raised their hands. Then eight. A dozen. Every time Tian
began to think they were done, another reluctant hand went up. In the
end, he counted twenty-two hands. He could see that Overholser was
dismayed by such a large count. Diego Adams had his hand raised, and
Tian was pleased to see he'd moved away a little bit from Overholser
and Eisenhart. Three of the Manni had their hands up. Jorge Estrada.
Louis Haycox. Many others he knew, which was not surprising, really;
he knew these men. Probably all of them except for a few wandering
fellows working smallhold farms for short wages and hot dinners.
"Each time they come and take our children, they take a little more
of of our hearts and our souls," Tian said.
"Oh come on, now, son," Eisenhart said. "That's laying it on a bit
th--"
"Shut up, Rancher," a voice said. It was shocking in its anger and
contempt. "He's got the feather. Let him speak out to the end."
Eisenhart whirled around, as if to mark who had spoken to him so.
Only bland faces looked back.
"Thankee sai," Tian said evenly. "I've almost come to the end. I keep
thinking of trees. Strong trees. You can strip the leaves of a strong
tree and it will live. Cut its bark with many names and it will live
to grow its skin over them again. You can even take from the
heartwood and it will live. But if you take of the heartwood again
and again and again, year after year, there will come a time when
even the strongest tree must die. I've seen it happen on my farm, and
it's an ugly thing. They die from the inside out. You can see it in
the leaves as they turn yellow from the trunk to the tips of the
branches. And that's what the Wolves are doing to this little village
of ours. What they're doing to our Calla."
"Hear him!" cried Freddy Rosario from the next farm over. "Hear him
very well!" Freddy had twins of his own, although they were still on
the tit and so probably safe.
"You say that if we stand and fight, they'll kill us all and burn the
Calla from west-border to east."
"Yes," Overholser said. "So I do say. Nor am I the only one." And
from all around him came rumbles of agreement.
"Yet each time we simply stand by with our heads lowered and our
hands open while the Wolves take what's dearer to us than any crop or
house or barn, they scoop a little more of the heart's wood from the
tree that is this village!" Tian spoke strongly, now standing still
with the feather raised high in one hand. "If we don't stand and
fight soon, we'll be dead, anyway! This is what I say, Tian Jaffords,
son of Alan! If we don't stand and fight soon, we'll be roont
ourselves!"
Loud cries of Hear him! Exuberant stomping of shor'-boots. Even some
applause.
George Telford, another rancher, whispered briefly to Eisenhart and
Overholser. They listened, then nodded. Telford rose. He was
silver-haired, tanned, and handsome in the weatherbeaten way women
seemed to like.
"Had your say, son?" he asked kindly, as one might ask a child if he
had played enough for one afternoon and was ready for his nap.
"Yar, reckon," Tian said. He suddenly felt dispirited. Telford wasn't
a rancher on a scale with Vaughn Eisenhart, but he had a silver
tongue. Tian had an idea he was going to lose this, after all.
"May I have the feather, then?"
Tian thought of holding onto it, but what good would it do? He'd said
his best. He had an idea it wouldn't be good enough--not once Telford
got finished shredding his arguments with that smooth voice of
his--but he'd tried. Perhaps he and Zalia should pack up the kids and
go out east themselves. Moon to moon before the Wolves came,
according to Andy. A person could get a hell of a head start on
trouble in thirty days.
He passed the feather.
"We all appreciate young sai Jaffords's passion, and certainly no one
doubts his courage," George Telford was saying. He spoke with the
feather held against the left side of his chest, over his heart. His
eyes roved the audience, seeming to make eye contact--friendly eye
contact--with each man. "But we have to think of the kiddies who
would be left as well as those who would be taken, don't we? In fact,
we have to protect all the kiddies, whether they be twins, triplets,
or singletons like sai Jaffords's Aaron."
Telford turned to Tian now.
"What will you tell your children as the Wolves shoot their mother
and mayhap set their gran-pere on fire with one of their
light-sticks? What can you say to make the sound of those shrieks all
right? To sweeten the smell of burning skin and burning crops? That
it's souls we're a-saving? Or the heart's wood of some make-believe
tree?"
He paused, giving Tian a chance to reply, but Tian had no reply to
make. He'd almost had them...but he'd left Telford out of his
reckoning. Smooth-voiced sonofabitch Telford, who was also far past
the age when he needed to be concerned about the Wolves calling into
his dooryard on their great gray horses.
Telford nodded, as if Tian's silence was no more than he expected,
and turned back to the benches. "When the Wolves come," he said,
"they'll come with fire-hurling weapons--the light-sticks, ye
ken--and guns, and flying metal things. I misremember the name of
those--"
"The drones," someone called.
"The sneetches," called someone else.
"Stealthies!" called a third.
Telford was nodding and smiling gently. A teacher with good pupils.
"Whatever they are, they fly through the air, seeking their targets,
and when they lock on, they put forth whirling blades as sharp as
razors. They can strip a man from top to toe in five seconds, leaving
nothing around him but a circle of blood and hair. So my own
gran-pere told me, and I have no reason not to believe it."
"Hear him, hear him well!" the men on the benches shouted. Their eyes
had grown huge and frightened.
"The Wolves themselves are terrible fearsome, so 'tis said," Telford
went on, moving smoothly from one campfire story to the next. "They
look sommat' like men, and yet they are not men but something bigger
and far more awful. And those they serve in far Thunderclap are more
terrible by far. Vampires, I've heard. Broken-helm undead ronin.
Warriors of the Scarlet Eye."
The men muttered. Even Tian felt a cold scamper of rat's paws up his
back at the mention of the Eye.
"So I've been told," Telford went on, "and while I don't believe it
all, I believe much. Never mind Thunderclap, though. Let's stick to
the Wolves. The Wolves are our problem, and problem enough.
Especially when they come armed to the teeth!" He shook his head,
smiling grimly. "What would we do? Perhaps we could knock them from
their greathorses with hoes, sai Jaffords? D'ee think?"
Derisive laughter greeted this.
"We have no weapons that can stand against them," Telford said. He
was now dry and businesslike, a man stating the bottom line. "Even if
we had such, we're farmers and ranchers and stockmen, not fighters.
We--"
"Stop that talk, Telford. You ought to be ashamed of yourself."
Shocked gasps greeted this chilly pronouncement. There were cracking
backs and necks as men turned to see who had spoken. Slowly, then, as
if to give them exactly what they wanted, a white-haired figure in a
long black coat and a turned-around collar rose slowly from the bench
at the very back of the room. The scar on his forehead--it was in the
shape of a cross--was very bright in the light of the kerosene lamps.
It was the fellow who had slipped in unnoticed while the Manni elder
was going on about Aegypt and sacrificial lambs and the Angel of
Death.
It was the Old Fella.
Telford recovered himself with relative speed, but when he spoke,
Tian thought he still looked shocked. "Beg pardon, Pere Callahan, but
I have the feather--"
"To hell with your heathen feather and to hell with your cowardly
counsel," Pere Callahan said. He stepped into the aisle and began to
hobble down the center aisle, stepping with the grim gait of
arthritis. He wasn't as old as the Manni elder, nor nearly so old as
Tian's gran-pere (who claimed he was the oldest person not only here
but in Calla Lockwood to the south), and yet he seemed somehow older
than both. Older than the ages. Some of this no doubt had to do with
the haunted eyes that looked out at the world from below the scar on
his foreheard (according to Zalia, it had been self-inflicted). More
had to do with the sound of him. Although he had been here long and
long--enough years to build his strange Man Jesus church and convert
half the Calla to his way of spiritual thinking--not even a stranger
would have been fooled into believing Pere Callahan was from here.
His alienness was in his flat and nasal speech and in the often
obscure slang he used ("street-jive," he called it). He had
undoubtedly come from one of those other worlds the Manni were always
babbling about, although he never spoke of it and Calla Bryn Sturgis
was now his home. He had been here since long before Tian Jaffords
was born--since town elders like Wayne Overholser and Vaughn
Eisenhart had worn short pants--and no one disputed his right to
speak, with or without the feather.
Younger than Tian's gran-pere he might be, but Pere Callahan was
still the Old Fella.
4
Now he surveyed the men of Call Bryn Sturgis, not even glancing at
George Telford. The feather sagged in Telford's hand. He sat down on
the first bench, still holding it.
Callahan began with one of his slang-terms, but they were farmers and
no one needed to ask for an explanation.
"This is chickenshit."
He surveyed them longer. Most would not return his look. After a
moment, even Eisenhart and Adams dropped their eyes. Overholser kept
his head up, but under the Old Fella's dry and bitter gaze, the
rancher looked petulant rather than defiant.
"Chickenshit," the man in the black coat and turned-around collar
repeated. A small gold cross gleamed below the notch in the backwards
collar. On his forehead, that other cross--the one he'd supposedly
carved in his flesh with his own thumbnail in partial penance for
some awful sin--glared under the lamps like a tattoo.
"This young man isn't one of my flock, but he's right, and I think
you all know it. You know it in your hearts. Even you, Mr.
Overholser. And you, George Telford."
"Know no such thing," Telford said, but his voice was weak and
stripped of its former persuasive charm.
"All your lies will cross your eyes, that's what my mother would have
told you." Callahan offered Telford a thin smile Tian wouldn't have
wanted it pointed in his direction. And then Callahan did turn to
him. "I never heard it put better than you put it tonight, boy.
Thankee-sai."
Tian raised a feeble hand and managed an even more feeble smile. He
felt like a character in a silly festival play, saved at the last
moment by some improbable supernatural intervention.
"I know a bit about cowardice," Callahan said, turning to the men on
the benches. "I have personal experience, you might say. I know how
one cowardly decision leads to another...and another...and
another...until it's too late to turn around, too late to change. Mr.
Telford, I assure you the tree of which young Mr. Jaffords spoke is
not make-believe. The Calla is in dire danger. Your souls are in
danger."
"Hail Mary, full of grace," said someone on the left side of the
room, "the Lord is with thee. Blessed is the fruit of thy womb,
J--"
"Bag it," Callahan snapped. "Save it for Sunday." His eyes, blue
sparks in their deep hollows, studied them. "For this night, never
mind God and Mary and the Man Jesus. Never mind the sneetches and
light-sticks of the Wolves, either. You must fight. You're the men of
the Calla, are you not? Then act like men. Stop behaving like dogs
crawling on their bellies to lick the boots of a cruel master."
Overholser went dark red at that, and began to stand. Diego Adams
grabbed his arm and spoke in his ear. For a moment Overholser
remained as he was, frozen in a kind of crouch, and then he sat back
down. Adams stood up.
"Sounds good, padrone," Adams said in his heavy accent. "Sounds
brave. Yet there are still a few questions, mayhap. Haycox asked one
of em. How can ranchers and farmers stand against armed killers out
of the west?"
"By hiring armed killers of our own," Callahan replied.
There was a moment of utter, amazed silence. It was almost as if the
Old Fella had lapsed into another language. At last Diego Adams
said--cautiously, "I don't understand."
"Of course you don't," the Old Fella said. "So listen and gain
wisdom. Rancher Adams and all of you, listen and gain wisdom. Not six
days' ride northeast of us, and bound southwest along the Path of the
Beam, come three gunslingers and one 'prentice." He smiled at their
amazement--their utter and complete amazement. Then he turned to
Tian. "The 'prentice isn't much older than your Heddon and Hedda, but
he's already as quick as a snake and as deadly as a scorpion. The
others are quicker and deadlier by far. You want hard calibers?
They're at hand. I set my watch and warrant on it."
This time Overholser made it all the way to his feet. His face burned
as if with a fever. His great pod of a belly trembled. "What
children's goodnight story is this?" he asked. "If there ever were
such men, they passed out of existence with Gilead. And Gilead has
been dust in the wind for a thousand years."
There were no mutterings of support or dispute. No mutterings of any
kind. The crowd was still frozen, caught in the reverberation of that
one mythic word: gunslingers.
"You're wrong," Callahan said, "but we don't need to fight over it.
We can go and see for ourselves. A small party will do, I think.
Jaffords here...myself...and what about you, Overholser? Want to
come?"
"There ain't no gunslingers!" Overholser roared.
Behind him, Jorge Estrada stood up. "Pere Callahan, God's grace on
you--"
"--and you, Jorge."
"--but even if there were gunslingers, how could three stand against
forty or sixty? And not forty or sixty normal men, but forty or sixty
Wolves?"
"Hear him, he speaks sense!" Eben Took, the storekeeper's son, called
out.
"And why would they fight for us?" Estrada continued. "We make it
from year to year, but not much more. What could we offer them,
beyond a few hot meals? And what man agrees to die for his
dinner?"
"Hear him, hear him!" Telford, Overholser, and Eisenhart cried in
unison. Others stamped rhythmically up and down on the boards.
The Old Fella waited until the stomping had quit, and then said: "I
have books in the Rectory. Half a dozen."
Although most of them knew this, the thought of books--all that
paper--still provoked a general sigh of wonder.
"According to one of them, gunslingers were forbidden to take reward.
Supposedly because they descend from the line of Arthur Eld."
"The Eld! The Eld!" the Manni whispered, and several raised fists
into the air with the first and fourth fingers raised. Hook em horns,
the Old Fella thought. Go, Texas. He managed to stifle a laugh, but
not the smile that rose on his lips.
"Are ye speaking of hardcases who wander the land, doing good deeds?"
Telford asked in a gently mocking voice. "Surely you're too old for
such tales, Pere."
"Not hardcases," Callahan said patiently, "gunslingers."
"How do you know, Pere?" Tian heard himself ask. "And how can three
men stand against the Wolves?"
One of the gunslingers was actually a woman, but Callahan saw no need
to muddy the waters further (although an impish part of him wanted
to, just the same). "I know because I know," he said. "As for how
three may stand against many--three and an apprentice,
actually--that's a question for their dinh. We'll ask him. And they
wouldn't be fighting just for their dinners, you know. Not at
all."
"What else, then?" Bucky Javier asked.
Callahan knew they were there because he had seen them. He had seen
them because the thing under the church floor had awakened. They
would want the thing under the floor, and that was good because the
Old Fella, who had once run from a town called Jerusalem's Lot in
another world, wanted to be rid of it. If he wasn't rid of it soon,
it would kill him.
Ka had come to Calla Bryn Sturgis. Ka like a wind.
"In time, Mr. Javier," Callahan said. "All in good time, sai."
Meantime, a whisper had begun in the Gathering Hall. It slipped along
the benches like from mouth to mouth, a breeze of hope and fear.
Gunslingers.
Gunslingers to the east, come out of Mid-World.
And it was true, God help them. Arthur Eld's last deadly children,
moving toward Calla Bryn Sturgis along the Path of the Beam. Ka like
a wind.
"Time to be men," Pere Callahan told them. Beneath the scar on his
forehead, his eyes burned like lamps. Yet his tone was not without
compassion. "Time to stand up, gentlemen. Time to stand and be
true."
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