"It's my brother!" Francine was shouting at him. "He fell down! He got his foot caught in a hole!"
Roland suddenly dropped out of sight.
Francine looked around, not frightened, exactly, but uncomprehending. "What--?"
"Wait," Jake said, because that was all he knew to say. He had no other ideas. If that was true of the gunslinger as well, they'd probably die here.
"My ankle . . . burning," Frank Tavery gasped.
"Shut up," Jake said.
Benny laughed. It was shock-laughter, but it was also real laughter. Jake looked at him around the sobbing, bleeding Frank Tavery . . . and winked. Benny winked back. And, just like that, they were friends again.
TWELVE
As she lay in the darkness of the hide with Eddie on her left and the acrid smell of leaves in her nose, Susannah felt a sudden cramp seize her belly. She had just time to register it before an icepick of pain, blue and savage, plunged into the left side of her brain, seeming to numb that entire side of her face and neck. At the same instant the image of a great banquet hall filled her mind: steaming roasts, stuffed fish, smoking steaks, magnums of champagne, frigates filled with gravy, rivers of red wine. She heard a piano, and a singing voice. That voice was charged with an awful sadness. "Someone saved, someone saved, someone saved my li-iife tonight," it sang.
No! Susannah cried to the force that was trying to engulf her. And did that force have a name? Of course it did. Its name was Mother, its hand was the one that rocked the cradle, and the hand that rocks the cradle rules the w--
No! You have to let me finish this! Afterward, if you want to have it, I'll help you! I'll help you have it! But if you try to force this on me now, I'll fight you tooth and nail! And if it comes to getting myself killed, and killing your precious chap along with me, I'll do it! Do you hear me, you bitch?
For a moment there was nothing but the darkness, the press of Eddie's leg, the numbness in the left side of her face, the thunder of the oncoming horses, the acrid smell of the leaves, and the sound of the Sisters breathing, getting ready for their own battle. Then, each of her words articulated clearly from a place above and behind Susannah's left eye, Mia for the first time spoke to her.
Fight your fight, woman. I'll even help, if I can. And then keep your promise.
"Susannah?" Eddie murmured from beside her. "Are you all right?"
"Yes," she said. And she was. The icepick was gone. The voice was gone. So was the terrible numbness. But close by, Mia was waiting.
THIRTEEN
Roland lay on his belly in the ditch, now watching the Wolves with one eye of imagination and one of intuition instead of with those in his head. The Wolves were between the bluff and the hill, riding full-out with their cloaks streaming behind them. They'd all disappear behind the hill for perhaps seven seconds. If, that was, they stayed bunched together and the leaders didn't start to pull ahead. If he had calculated their speed correctly. If he was right, he'd have five seconds when he could motion Jake and the others to come. Or seven. If he was right, they'd have those same five seconds to cross the road. If he was wrong (or if the others were slow), the Wolves would either see the man in the ditch, the children in the road, or all of them. The distances would likely be too great to use their weapons, but that wouldn't much matter, because the carefully crafted ambush would be blown. The smart thing would be to stay down, and leave the kids over there to their fate. Hell, four kids caught on the arroyo path would make the Wolves more sure than ever that the rest of them were stashed farther on, in one of the old mines.
Enough thinking, Cort said in his head. If you mean to move, maggot, this is your only chance.
Roland shot to his feet. Directly across from him, protected by the cluster of tumbled boulders which marked the East Road end of the arroyo path, stood Jake and Benny Slightman, with the Tavery boy supported between them. The kid was bloody both north and south; gods knew what had happened to him. His sister was looking over his shoulder. In that instant they looked not just like twins but Kaffin twins, joined at the body.
Roland jerked both hands extravagantly back over his head, as if clawing for a grip in the air: To me, come! Come! At the same time, he looked east. No sign of the Wolves; good. The hill had momentarily blocked them all.
Jake and Benny sprinted across the road, still dragging the boy between them. Frank Tavery's shor'boots dug fresh grooves in the oggan. Roland could only hope the Wolves would attach no especial significance to the marks.
The girl came last, light as a sprite. "Down!" Roland snarled, grabbing her shoulder and throwing her flat. "Down, down, down!" He landed beside her and Jake landed on top of him. Roland could feel the boy's madly beating heart between his shoulderblades, through both of their shirts, and had a moment to relish the sensation.
Now the hoofbeats were coming hard and strong, swelling every second. Had they been seen by the lead riders? It was impossible to know, but they would know, and soon. In the meantime they could only go on as planned. It would be tight quarters in the hide with three extra people in there, and if the Wolves had seen Jake and the other three crossing the road, they would all no doubt be cooked where they lay without a single shot fired or plate thrown, but there was no time to worry about that now. They had a minute left at most, Roland estimated, maybe only forty seconds, and that last little bit of time was melting away beneath them.
"Get off me and under cover," he said to Jake. "Right now."
The weight disappeared. Jake slipped into the hide.
"You're next, Frank Tavery," Roland said. "And be quiet. Two minutes from now you can scream all you want, but for now, keep your mouth shut. That goes for all of you."
"I'll be quiet," the boy said huskily. Benny and Frank's sister nodded.
"We're going to stand up at some point and start shooting," Roland said. "You three--Frank, Francine, Benny--stay down. Stay flat." He paused. "For your lives, stay out of our way."
FOURTEEN
Roland lay in the leaf-and dirt-smelling dark, listening to the harsh breathing of the children on his left. This sound was soon overwhelmed by that of approaching hooves. The eye of imagination and that of intuition opened once more, and wider than ever. In no more than thirty seconds--perhaps as few as fifteen--the red rage of battle would do away with all but the most primitive seeing, but for now he saw all, and all he saw was exactly as he wanted it to be. And why not? What good did visualizing plans gone astray ever do anyone?
He saw the twins of the Calla lying sprawled like corpses in the thickest, wettest part of the rice, with the muck oozing through their shirts and pants. He saw the adults beyond them, almost to the place where rice became riverbank. He saw Sarey Adams with her plates, and Ara of the Manni--Cantab's wife--with a few of her own, for Ara also threw (although as one of the Manni-folk, she could never be at fellowship with the other women). He saw a couple of the men--Estrada, Anselm, Overholser--with their bahs hugged to their chests. Instead of a bah, Vaughn Eisenhart was hugging the rifle Roland had cleaned for him. In the road, approaching from the east, he saw rank upon rank of green-cloaked riders on gray horses. They were slowing now. The sun was finally up and gleaming on the metal of their masks. The joke of those masks, of course, was that there was more metal beneath them. Roland let the eye of his imagining rise, looking for other riders--a party coming into the undefended town from the south, for instance. He saw none. In his own mind, at least, the entire raiding party was here. And if they'd swallowed the line Roland and the Ka-Tet of the Ninety and Nine had paid out with such care, it should be here. He saw the bucka waggons lined up on the town side of the road and had time to wish they'd freed the teams from the traces, but of course this way it looked better, more hurried. He saw the path leading into the arroyos, to the mines both abandoned and working, to the honeycomb of caves beyond them. He saw the leading Wolves rein up here, dragging the mouths of their mounts into snarls with their gauntleted hands. He saw through their eyes, saw pictures not made of warm
human sight but cold, like those in the Magda-seens. Saw the child's hat Francine Tavery had let drop. His mind had a nose as well as an eye, and it smelled the bland yet fecund aroma of children. It smelled something rich and fatty--the stuff the Wolves would take from the children they abducted. His mind had an ear as well as a nose, and it heard--faintly--the same sort of clicks and clunks that had emanated from Andy, the same low whining of relays, servomotors, hydraulic pumps, gods knew what other machinery. His mind's eye saw the Wolves first inspecting the confusion of tracks on the road (he hoped it looked like a confusion to them), then looking up the arroyo path. Because imagining them looking the other way, getting ready to broil the ten of them in their hide like chickens in a roasting pan, would do him no good. No, they were looking up the arroyo path. Must be looking up the arroyo path. They were smelling children--perhaps their fear as well as the powerful stuff buried deep in their brains--and seeing the few tumbled bits of trash and treasure their prey had left behind. Standing there on their mechanical horses. Looking.
Go in, Roland urged silently. He felt Jake stir a little beside him, hearing his thought. His prayer, almost. Go in. Go after them. Take what you will.
There was a loud clack! sound from one of the Wolves. This was followed by a brief blurt of siren. The siren was followed by the nasty warbling whistle Jake had heard out at the Dogan. After that, the horses began to move again. First there was the soft thud of their hooves on the oggan, then on the far stonier ground of the arroyo path. There was nothing else; these horses didn't whinny nervously, like those still harnessed to the buckas. For Roland, it was enough. They had taken the bait. He slipped his revolver out of its holster. Beside him, Jake shifted again and Roland knew he was doing the same thing.
He had told them the formation to expect when they burst out of the hide: about a quarter of the Wolves on one side of the path, looking toward the river, a quarter of their number turned toward the town of Calla Bryn Sturgis. Or perhaps a few more in that direction, since if there was trouble, the town was where the Wolves--or the Wolves' programmers--would reasonably expect it to come from. And the rest? Thirty or more? Already up the path. Hemmed in, do ya.
Roland began counting to twenty, but when he got to nineteen decided he'd counted enough. He gathered his legs beneath him--there was no dry twist now, not so much as a twinge--and then pistoned upward with his father's gun held high in his hand.
"For Gilead and the Calla!" he roared. "Now, gunslingers! Now, you Sisters of Oriza! Now, now! Kill them! No quarter! Kill them all!"
FIFTEEN
They burst up and out of the earth like dragon's teeth. Boards flew away to either side of them, along with dry flurries of weeds and leaves. Roland and Eddie each had one of the big revolvers with the sandalwood grips. Jake had his father's Ruger. Margaret, Rosa, and Zalia each held a Riza. Susannah had two, her arms crossed over her breasts as though she were cold.
The Wolves were deployed exactly as Roland had seen them with the cool killer's eye of his imagination, and he felt a moment of triumph before all lesser thought and emotion was swept away beneath the red curtain. As always, he was never so happy to be alive as when he was preparing to deal death. Five minutes' worth of blood and stupidity, he'd told them, and here those five minutes were. He'd also told them he always felt sick afterward, and while that was true enough, he never felt so fine as he did at this moment of beginning; never felt so completely and truly himself. Here were the tag ends of glory's old cloud. It didn't matter that they were robots; gods, no! What mattered was that they had been preying on the helpless for generations, and this time they had been caught utterly and completely by surprise.
"Top of the hoods!" Eddie screamed, as in his right hand Roland's pistol began to thunder and spit fire. The harnessed horses and mules reared in the traces; a couple screamed in surprise. "Top of the hoods, get the thinking-caps!"
And, as if to demonstrate his point, the green hoods of three riders to the right of the path twitched as if plucked by invisible fingers. Each of the three beneath pitched bonelessly out of their saddles and struck the ground. In Gran-pere's story of the Wolf Molly Doolin had brought down, there had been a good deal of twitching afterward, but these three lay under the feet of their prancing horses as still as stones. Molly might not have hit the hidden "thinking-cap" cleanly, but Eddie knew what he was shooting for, and had.
Roland also began to fire, shooting from the hip, shooting almost casually, but each bullet found its mark. He was after the ones on the path, wanting to pile up bodies there, to make a barricade if he could.
"Riza flies true!" Rosalita Munoz shrieked. The plate she was holding left her hand and bolted across the East Road with an unremitting rising shriek. It clipped through the hood of a rider at the head of the arroyo path who was trying desperately to rein his horse around. The thing fell backward, feet up to heaven, and landed upside down with its boots in the road.
"Riza!" That was Margaret Eisenhart.
"For my brother!" Zalia cried.
"Lady Riza come for your asses, you bastards!" Susannah uncrossed her arms and threw both plates outward. They flew, screaming, crisscrossed in midair, and both found their mark. Scraps of green hooding fluttered down; the Wolves to whom the hoods had belonged fell faster and harder.
Bright rods of fire now glowed in the morning light as the jostling, struggling riders on either side of the path unsheathed their energy weapons. Jake shot the thinking-cap of the first one to unsheath and it fell on its own bitterly sizzling sword, catching its cloak afire. Its horse shied sideways, into the descending light-stick of the rider to the direct left. Its head came off, disclosing a nest of sparks and wires. Now the sirens began to blat steadily, burglar alarms in hell.
Roland had thought the Wolves closest to town might try to break off and flee toward the Calla. Instead the nine on that side still left--Eddie had taken six with his first six shots--spurred past the buckas and directly toward them. Two or three hurled humming silvery balls.
"Eddie! Jake! Sneetches! Your right!"
They swung in that direction immediately, leaving the women, who were hurling plates as fast as they could pull them from their silk-lined bags. Jake was standing with his legs spread and the Ruger held out in his right hand, his left bracing his right wrist. His hair was blowing back from his brow. He was wide-eyed and handsome, smiling. He squeezed off three quick shots, each one a whipcrack in the morning air. He had a vague, distant memory of the day in the woods when he had shot pottery out of the sky. Now he was shooting at something far more dangerous, and he was glad. Glad. The first three of the flying balls exploded in brilliant flashes of bluish light. A fourth jinked, then zipped straight at him. Jake ducked and heard it pass just above his head, humming like some sort of pissed-off toaster oven. It would turn, he knew, and come back.
Before it could, Susannah swiveled and fired a plate at it. The plate flew straight to the mark, howling. When it struck, both it and the sneetch exploded. Sharpnel rained down in the corn-plants, setting some of them alight.
Roland reloaded, the smoking barrel of his revolver momentarily pointed down between his feet. Beyond Jake, Eddie was doing the same.
A Wolf jumped the tangled heap of bodies at the head of the arroyo path, its green cloak floating out behind it, and one of Rosa's plates tore back its hood, for a moment revealing the radar dish beneath. The thinking caps of the bear's retinue had been moving slowly and jerkily; this one was spinning so fast its shape was only a metallic blur. Then it was gone and the Wolf went tumbling to the side and onto the team which had drawn Overholser's lead waggon. The horses flinched backward, shoving the bucka into the one behind, mashing four whinnying, rearing animals between. These tried to bolt but had nowhere to go. Overholser's bucka teetered, then overturned. The downed Wolf's horse gained the road, stumbled over the body of another Wolf lying there, and went sprawling in the dust, one of its legs jutting off crookedly to the side.
Roland's mind was gone; hi
s eye saw everything. He was reloaded. The Wolves who had gone up the path were pinned behind a tangled heap of bodies, just as he had hoped. The group of fifteen on the town side had been decimated, only two left. Those on the right were trying to flank the end of the ditch, where the three Sisters of Oriza and Susannah anchored their line. Roland left the remaining two Wolves on his side to Eddie and Jake, sprinted down the trench to stand behind Susannah, and began firing at the ten remaining Wolves bearing down on them. One raised a sneetch to throw, then dropped it as Roland's bullet snapped off its thinking-cap. Rosa took another one, Margaret Eisenhart a third.
Margaret dipped to get another plate. When she stood up again, a light-stick swept off her head, setting her hair on fire as it tumbled into the ditch. And Benny's reaction was understandable; she had been almost a second mother to him. When the burning head landed beside him, he batted it aside and scrambled out of the ditch, blind with panic, howling in terror.
"Benny, no, get back!" Jake cried.
Two of the remaining Wolves threw their silver deathballs at the crawling, screaming boy. Jake shot one out of the air. He never had a chance at the other. It struck Benny Slightman in the chest and the boy simply exploded outward, one arm tearing free of his body and landing palm-up in the road.
Susannah cut the thinking-cap off the Wolf which had killed Margaret with one plate, then did for the one who had killed Jake's friend with another. She pulled two fresh Rizas from her sacks and turned back to the oncoming Wolves just as the first one leaped into the ditch, its horse's chest knocking Roland asprawl. It brandished its sword over the gunslinger. To Susannah it looked like a brilliant red-orange tube of neon.
"No you don't, muhfuh!" she screamed, and slung the plate in her right hand. It sheared through the gleaming saber and the weapon simply exploded at the hilt, tearing off the Wolf's arm. The next moment one of Rosa's plates amputated its thinking-cap and it tumbled sideways and crashed to the ground, its gleaming mask grinning at the paralyzed, terrified Tavery twins, who lay clinging to each other. A moment later it began to smoke and melt.