Wolves of the Calla

ONE

At around two in the afternoon of that day, the ten of them sat down to what Roland called a rancher's dinner. "During the morning chores, you look forward with love," he told his friends later. "During the evening ones, you look back with nostalgia."

Eddie thought he was joking, but with Roland you could never be completely sure. What humor he had was dry to the point of desiccation.

It wasn't the best meal Eddie had ever had, the banquet put on by the old people in River Crossing still held pride of place in that regard, but after weeks in the woods, subsisting on gun-slinger burritos (and shitting hard little parcels of rabbit turds maybe twice a week), it was fine fare indeed. Andy served out whopping steaks done medium rare and smothered in mushroom gravy. There were beans on the side, wrapped things like tacos, and roasted corn. Eddie tried an ear of this and found it tough but tasty. There was coleslaw which, Tian Jaffords was at pains to tell them, had been made by his own wife's hands. There was also a wonderful pudding called strawberry cosy. And of course there was coffee. Eddie guessed that, among the four of them, they must have put away at least a gallon. Even Oy had a little. Jake put down a saucer of the dark, strong brew. Oy sniffed, said "Coff!" and then lapped it up quickly and efficiently.

There was no serious talk during the meal ("Food and palaver don't mix" was but one of Roland's many little nuggets of wisdom), and yet Eddie learned a great deal from Jaffords and his wife, mostly about how life was lived out here in what Tian and Zalia called "the borderlands." Eddie hoped Susannah (sitting by Overholser) and Jake (with the youngster Eddie was already coming to think of as Benny the Kid) were learning half as much. He would have expected Roland to sit with Callahan, but Callahan sat with no one. He took his food off a little distance from all of them, blessed himself, and ate alone. Not very much, either. Mad at Overholser for taking over the show, or just a loner by nature? Hard to tell on such short notice, but if someone had put a gun to his head, Eddie would have voted for the latter.

What struck Eddie with the most force was how goddam civilized this part of the world was. It made Lud, with its warring Grays and Pubes, look like the Cannibal Isles in a boy's sea-story. These people had roads, law enforcement, and a system of government that made Eddie think of New England town meetings. There was a Town Gathering Hall and a feather which seemed to be some sort of authority symbol. If you wanted to call a meeting, you had to send the feather around. If enough people touched it when it came to their place, there was a meeting. If they didn't, there wasn't. Two people were sent to carry the feather, and their count was trusted without question. Eddie doubted if it would work in New York, but for a place like this it seemed a fine way to run things.

There were at least seventy other Callas, stretching in a mild arc north and south of Calla Bryn Sturgis. Calla Bryn Lockwood to the south and Calla Amity to the north were also farms and ranches. They also had to endure the periodic depredations of the Wolves. Farther south were Calla Bryn Bouse and Calla Staffel, containing vast tracts of ranchland, and Jaffords said they suffered the Wolves as well... at least he thought so. Farther north, Calla Sen Pinder and Calla Sen Chre, which were farms and sheep.

"Farms of a good size," Tian said, "but they're smaller as ye go north, kennit, until ye're in the lands where the snows fall -  so I'm told; I've never seen it myself - and wonderful cheese is made."

"Those of the north wear wooden shoes, or so 'tis said." Zalia told Eddie, looking a little wistful. She herself wore scuffed clodhoppers called shor'boots.

The people of the Callas traveled little, but the roads were there if they wanted to travel, and trade was brisk. In addition to them, there was the Whye, sometimes called Big River. This ran south of Calla Bryn Sturgis all the way to the South Seas, or so 'twas said. There were mining Callas and manufacturing Callas (where things were made by steam-press and even, aye, by electricity) and even one Calla devoted to nothing but pleasure: gambling and wild, amusing rides, and...

But here Tian, who had been talking, felt Zalia's eyes on him and went back to the pot for more beans. And a conciliatory dish of his wife's slaw.

"So," Eddie said, and drew a curve in the dirt. "These are the borderlands. The Callas. An arc that goes north and south for... how far, Zalia?"

" 'Tis men's business, so it is," she said. Then, seeing her own man was still at the embering fire, inspecting the pots, she leaned forward a bit toward Eddie. "Do you speak in miles or wheels?"

"A little of both, but I'm better with miles."

She nodded. "Mayhap two thousand miles so" - she pointed north - "and twice that, so ." To the south. She remained that way, pointing in opposite directions, then dropped her arms, clasped her hands in her lap, and resumed her former demure pose.

"And these towns... these Callas... stretch the whole way?"

"So we're told, if it please ya, and the traders do come and go. Northwest of here, the Big River splits in two. We call the east branch Devar-Tete Whye - the Little Whye, you might say. Of course we see more river-travel from the north, for the river flows north to south, do ya see."

"I do. And to the east?"

She looked down. "Thunderclap," she said in a voice Eddie could barely hear. "None go there."

"Why?"

"It's dark there," said she, still not looking up from her lap. Then she raised an arm. This time she pointed in the direction from which Roland and his friends had come. Back toward Mid-World. "There," she said, "the world is ending. Or so we're told. And there..." She pointed east and now raised her face to Eddie's. "There, in Thunderclap, it's already ended. In the middle are we, who only want to go our way in peace."

"And do you think it will happen?"

"No." And Eddie saw she was crying.

TWO

Shortly after this, Eddie excused himself and stepped into a copse of trees for a personal moment. When he rose from his squat, reaching for some leaves with which to clean himself, a voice spoke from directly behind him.

"Not those, sai, do it please ya. Those be poison flurry. Wipe with those and how you'll itch."

Eddie jumped and wheeled around, grabbing the waistband of his jeans with one hand and reaching for Roland's gun-belt, hanging from the branch of a nearby tree, with the other. Then he saw who had spoken - or what  - and relaxed a little.

"Andy, it's not really kosher to creep up behind people when they're taking a dump." Then he pointed to a thatch of low green bushes. "What about those? How much trouble will I get into if I wipe with those?"

There were pauses and clicks.

"What?" Eddie asked. "Did I do something wrong?"

"No," Andy said. "I'm simply processing information, sai. Kosher : unknown word. Creeping up . I didn't, I walked, if it do ye fine. Taking a dump , likely slang for the excretion of - "

"Yeah," Eddie said, "that's what it is. But listen - if you didn't creep up on me, Andy, how come I didn't hear you? I mean, there's underbrush . Most people make noise when they go through underbrush."

"I am not a person, sai," Andy said. Eddie thought he sounded smug.

"Guy, then. How can a big guy like you be so quiet?"

"Programming," Andy said. "Those leaves will be fine, do ya."

Eddie rolled his eyes, then grabbed a bunch. "Oh yeah. Programming. Sure. Should have known. Thankee-sai, long days, kiss my ass and go to heaven."

"Heaven," said Andy. "A place one goes after death; a kind of paradise. According to the Old Fella, those who go to heaven sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, forever and ever."

"Yeah? Who's gonna sit at his left hand? All the Tupperware salesmen?"

"Sai, I don't know. Tupperware is an unknown word to me. Would you like your horoscope?"

"Why not?" Eddie said. He started back toward the camp, guided by the sounds of laughing boys and a barking billy-bumbler. Andy towered beside him, shining even beneath the cloudy sky and seeming to not make a sound. It was eerie.

"What's your birth date, sai?"

Eddie thought he might be ready for this one. "I'm Goat Moon," he said, then remembered a little more. "Goat with beard."

"Winter's snow is full of woe, winter's child is strong and wild," said Andy. Yes, that was smugness in its voice, all right.

"Strong and wild, that's me," Eddie said. "Haven't had a real bath in over a month, you better believe I'm strong and wild. What else do you need, Andy old guy? Want to look at my palm, or anything?"

"That will not be necessary, sai Eddie." The robot sounded unmistakably happy and Eddie thought, That's me, spreading joy wherever I go. Even robots love me. It's my ka.

"This is Full Earth, say we all thankya. The moon is red, what is called the Huntress Moon in Mid-World that was. You will travel, Eddie! You will travel far! You and your friends! This very night you return to Calla New York. You will meet a dark lady. You - "

"I want to hear more about this trip to New York," Eddie said, stopping. Just ahead was the camp. He was close enough so he could see people moving around. "No joking around, Andy."

"You will go todash, sai Eddie! You and your friends. You must be careful. When you hear the kammen  - the chimes, ken ya well - you must all concentrate on each other. To keep from getting lost."

"How do you know this stuff?" Eddie asked.

"Programming," Andy said. "Horoscope is done, sai. No charge." And then, what struck Eddie as the final capping lunacy: "Sai Callahan - the Old Fella, ye ken - says I have no license to tell fortunes, so must never charge."

"Sai Callahan says true," Eddie said, and then, when Andy started forward again: "But stay a minute, Andy. Do ya, I beg." It was absolutely weird how quickly that started to sound okay. Andy stopped willingly enough and turned toward Eddie, his blue eyes glowing. Eddie had roughly a thousand questions about todash, but he was currently even more curious about something else.

"You know about these Wolves."

"Oh, yes. I told sai Tian. He was wroth." Again Eddie detected something like smugness in Andy's voice... but surely that was just the way it struck him, right? A robot - even one that had survived from the old days - couldn't enjoy the discomforts of humans? Could it?

Didn't take you long to forget the mono, did it, sugar ? Susannah's voice asked in his head. Hers was followed by Jake's. Blaine's a pain . And then, just his own: If you treat this guy like nothing more than a fortune-telling  - machine in a carnival arcade, Eddie old boy, you deserve whatever you get .

"Tell me about the Wolves," Eddie said.

"What would you know, sai Eddie?"

"Where they come from, for a start. The place where they feel like they can put their feet up and fart right out loud. Who they work for. Why they take the kids. And why the ones they take come back ruined." Then another question struck him. Perhaps the most obvious. "Also, how do you know when they're coming?"

Clicks from inside Andy. A lot of them this time, maybe a full minute's worth. When Andy spoke again, its voice was different. It made Eddie think about Officer Bosconi, back in the neighborhood. Brooklyn Avenue, that was Bosco Bob's beat. If you just met him, walking along the street and twirling his nightstick, Bosco talked to you like you were a human being and so was he - howya doin, Eddie, how's your mother these days, how's your goodfornothin bro, are you gonna sign up for PAL Middlers, okay, seeya at the gym, stay off the smokes, have a good day. But if he thought maybe you'd done something, Bosco Bob turned into a guy you didn't want to know. That Officer Bosconi didn't smile, and the eyes behind his glasses were like puddle ice in February (which just happened to be the Time o' the Goat, over here on this side of the Great Whatever). Bosco Bob had never hit Eddie, but there were a couple of times - once just after some kids lit Woo Kim's Market on fire - when he felt sure that bluesuit mothafuck would have hit him, if Eddie had been stupid enough to smart off. It wasn't schizophrenia - at least not of the pure Detta/Odetta kind - but it was close. There were two versions of Officer Bosconi. One of them was a nice guy. The other one was a cop.

When Andy spoke again, it no longer sounded like your well-meaning but rather stupid uncle, the one who believed the alligator-boy and Elvis-is-alive-in-Buenos-Aires stories Inside View printed were absolutely true. This Andy sounded emotionless and somehow dead.

Like a real robot, in other words.

"What's your password, sai Eddie?"

"Huh?"

"Password. You have ten seconds. Nine... eight... seven..."

Eddie thought of spy movies he'd seen. "You mean I say something like 'The roses are blooming in Cairo' and you say 'Only in Mrs. Wilson's garden' and then I say - "

"Incorrect password, sai Eddie... two... one... zero." From within Andy came a low thudding sound which Eddie found singularly unpleasant. It sounded like the blade of a sharp cleaver passing through meat and into the wood of the chopping block beneath. He found himself thinking for the first time about the Old People, who had surely built Andy (or maybe the people before the Old People, call them the Really Old People - who knew for sure?). Not people Eddie himself would want to meet, if the last remainders in Lud had been any example.

"You may retry once," said the cold voice. It bore a resemblance to the one that had asked Eddie if Eddie would like his horoscope told, but that was the best you could call it - a resemblance. "Would you retry, Eddie of New York?"

Eddie thought fast. "No," he said, "that's all right. The info's restricted, huh?"

Several clicks. Then: "Restricted : confined, kept within certain set limits, as information in a given document or q-disc; limited to those authorized to use that information; those authorized announce themselves by giving the password." Another pause to think and then Andy said, "Yes, Eddie. That info's restricted."

"Why?" Eddie asked.

He expected no answer, but Andy gave him one. "Directive Nineteen."

Eddie clapped him on his steel side. "My friend, that don't surprise me at all. Directive Nineteen it is."

"Would you care to hear an expanded horoscope, Eddie-sai?"

"Think I'll pass."

"What about a tune called 'The Jimmy Juice I Drank Last Night?' It has many amusing verses." The reedy note of a pitch-pipe came from somewhere in Andy's diaphragm.

Eddie, who found the idea of many amusing verses somehow alarming, increased his pace toward the others. "Why don't we just put that on hold?" he said. "Right now I think I need another cup of coffee."

"Give you joy of it, sai," Andy said. To Eddie he sounded rather forlorn. Like Bosco Bob when you told him you thought you'd be too busy for PAL League that summer.

THREE

Roland sat on a stone outcrop, drinking his own cup of coffee. He listened to Eddie without speaking himself, and with only one small change of expression: a minute lift of the eyebrows at the words Directive Nineteen.

Across the clearing from them, Slightman the Younger had produced a kind of bubble-pipe that made extraordinarily tough bubbles. Oy chased them, popped several with his teeth, then began to get the hang of what Slightman seemed to want, which was for him to herd them into a fragile little pile of light. The bubble-pile made Eddie think of the Wizard's Rainbow, those dangerous glass balls. And did Callahan really have one? The worst of the bunch?

Beyond the boys, at the edge of the clearing, Andy stood with his silver arms folded over the stainless-steel curve of his chest. Waiting to clean up the meal he had hauled to them and then cooked, Eddie supposed. The perfect servant. He cooks, he cleans, he tells you about the dark lady you'll meet. Just don't expect him to violate Directive Nineteen. Not without the password, anyway.

"Come over to me, folks, would you?" Roland asked, raising his voice slightly. "Time we had a bit of palaver. Won't be long, which is good, at least for us, for we've already had our own, before sai Callahan came to us, and after awhile talk sickens, so it does."

They came over and sat near him like obedient children, those from the Calla and those who were from far away and would go beyond here perhaps even farther.

"First I'd hear what you know of these Wolves. Eddie tells me Andy may not say how he comes by what he knows."

"You say true," Slightman the Elder rumbled. "Either those who made him or those who came later have mostly gagged him on that subject, although he always warns us of their coming. On most other subjects, his mouth runs everlastingly."

Roland looked toward the Calla's big farmer. "Will you set us on, sai Overholser?"

Tian Jaffords looked disappointed not to be called on. His woman looked disappointed for him. Slightman the Elder nodded as if Roland's choice of speaker was only to be expected. Overholser himself did not puff up as Eddie might have guessed. Instead he looked down at his own crossed legs and scuffed shor'boots for thirty seconds or so, rubbing at the side of his face, thinking. The clearing was so quiet Eddie could hear the minute rasp of the farmer's palm on two or three days' worth of bristles. At last he sighed, nodded, and looked up at Roland.

"Say thankee. Ye're not what I expected, I must say. Nor your tet." Overholser turned to Tian. "Ye were right to haul us out here, Tian Jaffords. This is a meeting we needed to have, and I say thankee."

"It wasn't me got you out here," Jaffords said. "Was the Old Fella."

Overholser nodded to Callahan. Callahan nodded back, then sketched the shape of a cross in the air with his scarred hand - as if to say, Eddie thought, that it wasn't him, either, but God. Maybe so, but when it came to pulling coals out of a hot fire, he'd put two dollars on Roland of Gilead for every one he put on God and the Man Jesus, those heavenly gunslingers.

Roland waited, his face calm and perfectly polite.

Finally Overholser began to talk. He spoke for nearly fifteen minutes, slowly but always to the point. There was the business of the twins, to begin with. Residents of the Calla realized that children birthed in twos were the exception rather than the rule in other parts of the world and at other times in the past, but in their area of the Grand Crescent it was the singletons, like the Jaffordses' Aaron, who were the rarities. The great rarities.

And, beginning perhaps a hundred and twenty years ago (or mayhap a hundred and fifty; with time the way it was, such things were impossible to pin down with any certainty), the Wolves had begun their raids. They did not come exactly once every generation; that would have been each twenty years or so, and it was longer than that. Still, it was close to that.

Eddie thought of asking Overholser and Slightman how the Old People could have shut Andy's mouth concerning the Wolves if the Wolves had been raiding out of Thunderclap for less than two centuries, then didn't bother. Asking what couldn't be answered was a waste of time, Roland would have said. Still, it was interesting, wasn't it? Interesting to wonder when someone (or some thing) had last programmed Andy the Messenger (Many Other Functions).

And why.

The children, Overholser said, one of each set between the ages of perhaps three and fourteen, were taken east, into the land of Thunderclap. (Slightman the Elder put his arm around his boy's shoulders during this part of the tale, Eddie noticed.) There they remained for a relatively short period of time -  mayhap four weeks, mayhap eight. Then most of them would be returned. The assumption made about those few who did not return was that they had died in the Land of Darkness, that whatever evil rite was performed on them killed a few instead of just ruining them.

The ones who came back were at best biddable idiots. A five-year-old would return with all his hard-won talk gone, reduced to nothing but babble and reaching for the things he wanted. Diapers which had been left forgotten two or three years before would go back on and might stay on until such a roont child was ten or even twelve.

"Yer-bugger, Tia still pisses herself one day out of every six, and can be counted on to shit herself once a moon, as well," Jaffords said.

"Hear him," Overholser agreed gloomily. "My own brother, Welland, was much the same until he died. And of course they have to be watched more or less constant, for if they get something they like, they'll eat it until they bust. Who's watching yours, Tian?"

"My cuz," Zalia said before Tian could speak. "Heddon n Hedda can help a little now, as well; they've come to a likely enough age - " She stopped and seemed to realize what she was saying. Her mouth twisted and she fell silent. Eddie guessed he understood. Heddon and Hedda could help now, yes. Next year, one of them would still be able to help. The other one, though...

A child taken at the age of ten might come back with a few rudiments of language left, but would never get much beyond that. The ones who were taken oldest were somehow the worst, for they seemed to come back with some vague understanding of what had been done to them. What had been stolen from them. These had a tendency to cry a great deal, or to simply creep off by themselves and peer into the east, like lost things. As if they might see their poor brains out there, circling like birds in the dark sky. Half a dozen such had even committed suicide over the years. (At this, Callahan once more crossed himself.)

The roont ones remained childlike in stature as well as in speech and behavior until about the age of sixteen. Then, quite suddenly, most of them sprouted to the size of young giants.

"Ye can have no idea what it's like if ye haven't seen it and been through it," Tian said. He was looking into the ashes of the fire. 'Ye can have no idea of the pain it causes them. When a babby cuts his teeth, ye ken how they cry?"

"Yes," Susannah said.

Tian nodded. "It's as if their whole bodies are teething, kennit."

"Hear him," Overholser said. "For sixteen or eighteen months, all my brother did was sleep and eat and cry and grow. I can remember him crying even in his sleep. I'd get out of my bed and go across to him and there'd be a whispering sound from inside his chest and legs and head. 'Twere the sound of his bones growing in the night, hear me."

Eddie contemplated the horror of it. You heard stories about giants - fee-fi-fo-fum, and all that - but until now he'd never considered what it might be like to become a giant. As if their whole bodies are teething , Eddie thought, and shivered.

"A year and a half, no longer than that and it were done, but I wonder how long it must seem to them, who're brought back with no more sense of time than birds or bugs."

"Endless," Susannah said. Her face was very pale and she sounded ill. "It must seem endless."

"The whispering in the nights as their bones grow," Overholser said. "The headaches as their skulls grow."

"Zalman screamed one time for nine days without stopping," Zalia said. Her voice was expressionless, but Eddie could see the horror in her eyes; he could see it very well. "His cheekbones pushed up. You could see it happening. His forehead curved out and out, and if you held an ear close to it you could hear the skull creaking as it spread. It sounded like a tree-branch under a weight of ice.

"Nine days he screamed. Nine. Morning, noon, and in the dead of night. Screaming and screaming. Eyes gushing water. We prayed to all the gods there were that he'd go hoarse - that he'd be stricken dumb, even - but none such happened, say thankee. If we'd had a gun, I believe we would have slew him as he lay on his pallet just to end his pain. As it was, my good old da' was ready to slit 'een's thr'ut when it stopped. His bones went on yet awhile - his skellington, do ya - but his head was the worst of it and it finally stopped, tell gods thankya, and Man Jesus too."

She nodded toward Callahan. He nodded back and raised his hand toward her, outstretched in the air for a moment. Zalia turned back to Roland and his friends.

"Now I have five of my own," she said. "Aaron's safe, and say thankee, but Heddon and Hedda's ten, a prime age. Lyman and Lia's only five, but five's old enough. Five's..."

She covered her face with her hands and said no more.

FOUR

Once the growth-spurt was finished, Overholser said, some of them could be put to work. Others - the majority - weren't able to manage even such rudimentary tasks as pulling stumps or digging postholes. You saw these sitting on the steps of look's General Store or sometimes walking across the countryside in gangling groups, young men and women of enormous height, weight, and stupidity, sometimes grinning at each other and babbling, sometimes only goggling up at the sky.

They didn't mate, there was that to be grateful for. While not all of them grew to prodigious size and their mental skills and physical abilities might vary somewhat, there seemed to be one universal: they came back sexually dead. "Beggin your pardon for the crudity," Overholser said, "but I don't b'lieve my brother Welland had so much as a piss-hardon after they brought him back. Zalia? Have you ever seen your brother with a... you know..."

Zalia shook her head.

"How old were you when they came, sai Overholser?" Roland asked.

"First time, ye mean. Welland and I were nine." Overholser now spoke rapidly. It gave what he said the air of a rehearsed speech, but Eddie didn't think that was it. Overholser was a force in Calla Bryn Sturgis; he was, God save us and stone the crows, the big farmer. It was hard for him to go back in his mind to a time when he'd been a child, small and powerless and terrified. "Our Ma and Pa tried to hide us away in the cellar. So I've been told, anyway. I remember none of it, m'self, to be sure. Taught myself not to, I's'pose. Yar, quite likely. Some remember better'n others, Roland, but all the tales come to the same: one is took, one is left behind. The one took comes back roont, maybe able to work a little but dead in the b'low the waist. Then... when they get in their thirties..."

When they reached their thirties, the roont twins grew abruptly, shockingly old. Their hair turned white and often fell completely out. Their eyes dimmed. Muscles that had been prodigious (as Tia Jaffords's and Zalman Hoonik's were now) went slack and wasted away. Sometimes they died peacefully, in their sleep. More often, their endings weren't peaceful at all. The sores came, sometimes out on the skin but more often in the stomach or the head. In the brain. All died long before their natural span would have been up, had it not been for the Wolves, and many died as they had grown from the size of normal children to that of giants: screaming in pain. Eddie wondered how many of these idiots, dying of what sounded to him like terminal cancer, were simply smothered or perhaps fed some strong sedative that would take them far beyond pain, far beyond sleep. It wasn't the sort of question you asked, but he guessed the answer would have been many. Roland sometimes used the word delah , always spoken with a light toss of the hand toward the horizon.

Many.

The visitors from the Calla, their tongues and memories untied by distress, might have gone on for some time, piling one sorry anecdote on another, but Roland didn't allow them to. "Now speak of the Wolves, I beg. How many come to you?"

"Forty," Tian Jaffords said.

"Spread across the whole Calla?" Slightman the Elder asked. "Nay, more than forty." And to Tian, slightly apologetic: "You were no more'n nine y'self last time they came, Tian. I were in my young twenties. Forty in town, maybe, but more came to the outlying farms and ranches. I'd say sixty in all, Roland-sai, maybe eighty."

Roland looked at Overholser, eyebrows raised.

"It's been twenty-three years, ye mind," Overholser said, "but I'd call sixty about right."

"You call them Wolves, but what are they really? Are they men? Or something else?"

Overholser, Slightman, Tian, Zalia: for a moment Eddie could feel them sharing khef, could almost hear them. It made him feel lonely and left-out, the way you did when you saw a couple kissing on a streetcorner, wrapped in each other's arms or looking into each other's eyes, totally lost in each other's regard. Well, he didn't have to feel that way anymore, did he? He had his own ka-tet, his own khef. Not to mention his own woman.

Meanwhile, Roland was making the impatient little finger-twirling gesture with which Eddie had become so familiar. Come on, folks , it said, day's wasting .

"No telling for sure what they are," Overholser said. "They look like men, but they wear masks."

"Wolf-masks," Susannah said.

"Aye, lady, wolf-masks, gray as their horses."

"Do you say all come on gray horses?" Roland asked.

The silence was briefer this time, but Eddie still felt that sense of khef and ka-tet, minds consulting via something so elemental it couldn't even rightly be called telepathy; it was more elemental than telepathy.

"Yer-bugger!" Overholser said, a slang term that seemed to mean You bet your ass, don't insult me by asking again . "All on gray horses. They wear gray pants that look like skin. Black boots with cruel big steel spurs. Green cloaks and hoods. And the masks. We know they're masks because they've been found left behind. They look like steel but rot in the sun like flesh, buggerdly things."

"Ah."

Overholser gave him a rather insulting head-cocked-to-one side look, the sort that asked Are you foolish or just slow ? Then Slightman said: "Their horses ride like the wind. Some have ta'en one babby before the saddle and another behind."

"Do you say so?" Roland asked.

Slightman nodded emphatically. "Tell gods thankee." He saw Callahan again make the sign of the cross in the air and sighed. "Beg pardon, Old Fella."

Callahan shrugged. "You were here before I was. Call on all the gods you like, so long as you know I think they're false."

"And they come out of Thunderclap," Roland said, ignoring this last.

"Aye," Overholser said. "You can see where it lies over that way about a hundred wheels." He pointed southeast. "For we come out of the woods on the last height of land before the Crescent. Ye can see all the Eastern Plain from there, and beyond it a great darkness, like a rain cloud on the horizon. 'Tis said, Roland, that in the far long ago, you could see mountains over there."

"Like the Rockies from Nebraska," Jake breathed.

Overholser glanced at him. "Beg pardon, Jake-soh?"

"Nothing," Jake said, and gave the big farmer a small, embarrassed smile. Eddie, meanwhile, filed away what Overholser had called him. Not sai but soh. Just something else that was interesting.

"We've heard of Thunderclap," Roland said. His voice was somehow terrifying in its lack of emotion, and when Eddie felt Susannah's hand creep into his, he was glad of it.

" 'Tis a land of vampires, boggarts, and taheen, so the stories say," Zalia told them. Her voice was thin, on the verge of trembling. "Of course the stories are old - "

"The stories are true," Callahan said. His own voice was harsh, but Eddie heard the fear in it. Heard it very well. "There are vampires - other things as well, very likely - and Thunderclap's their nest. We might speak more of this another time, gunslinger, if it does ya. For now, only hear me, I beg: of vampires I know a good deal. I don't know if the Wolves take the Calla's children to them - I rather think not - but yes, there are vampires."

"Why do you speak as if I doubt?" Roland asked.

Callahan's eyes dropped. "Because many do. I did myself. I doubted much and..." His voice cracked. He cleared his throat, and when he finished, it was almost in a whisper. "... and it was my undoing."

Roland sat quiet for several moments, hunkered on the soles of his ancient boots with his arms wrapped around his bony knees, rocking back and forth a litde. Then, to Overholser: "What o' the clock do they come?"

"When they took Welland, my brother, it was morning," the farmer said. "Breakfast not far past. I remember, because Welland asked our Ma if he could take his cup of coffee into the cellar with him. But last time... the time they come and took Tian's sister and Zalia's brother and so many others..."

"I lost two nieces and a nephew," Slightman the Elder said.

"That time wasn't long after the noon-bell from the Gathering Hall. We know the day because Andy knows the day, and that much he tells us. Then we hear the thunder of their hooves as they come out of the east and see the rooster-tail of dust they raise - "

"So you know when they're coming," Roland said. "In fact, you know three ways: Andy, the sound of their hoofbeats, the rise of their dust."

Overholser, taking Roland's implication, had flushed a dull brick color up the slopes of his plump cheeks and down his neck. "They come armed, Roland, do ya. With guns - rifles as well as the revolvers yer own tet carries, grenados, too - and other weapons, as well. Fearsome weapons of the Old People. Light-sticks that kill at a touch, flying metal buzz-balls called drones or sneetches. The sticks burn the skin black and stop the heart - electrical, maybe, or maybe - "

Eddie heard Overholser's next word as ant-NOMIC . At first he thought die man was trying to say anatomy. A moment later he realized it was probably "atomic."

"Once the drones smell you, they follow no matter how fast you run," Slightman's boy said eagerly, "or how much you twist and turn. Right, Da'?"

"Yer-bugger," Slightman the Elder said. "Then sprout blades that whirl around so fast you can't see em and they cut you apart."

"All on gray horses," Roland mused. "Every one of em the same color. What else?"

Nothing, it seemed. It was all told. They came out of the east on the day Andy foretold, and for a terrible hour - perhaps longer - the Calla was filled with the thunderous hoofbeats of those gray horses and the screams of desolated parents. Green cloaks swirled. Wolf-masks that looked like metal and rotted in the sun like skin snarled. The children were taken. Sometimes a few pair were overlooked and left whole, suggesting that the Wolves' prescience wasn't perfect. Still, it must have been pretty goddam good, Eddie thought, because if the kids were moved (as they often were) or hidden at home (as they almost always were), the Wolves found them anyway, and in short order. Even at the bottom of sharproot piles or haystacks they were found. Those of the Calla who tried to stand against them were shot, fried by the light-sticks - lasers of some kind? - or cut to pieces by the flying drones. When trying to imagine these latter, he kept recalling a bloody little film Henry had dragged him to. Phantasm , it had been called. Down at the old Majestic. Corner of Brooklyn and Markey Avenue. Like too much of his old life, the Majestic had smelled of piss and popcorn and the kind of wine that came in brown bags. Sometimes there were needles in the aisles. Not good, maybe, and yet sometimes - usually at night, when sleep was long in coming - a deep part of him still cried for the old life of which the Majestic had been a part. Cried for it as a stolen child might cry for his mother.

The children were taken, the hoofbeats receded the way they had come, and that was the end of it.

"No, can't be," Jake said. "They must bring them back, don't they?"

"No," Overholser said. "The roont ones come back on the train, hear me, there's a great junkpile of em I could show'ee, and - What? What's wrong?" Jake's mouth had fallen open, and he'd lost most of his color.

"We had a bad experience on a train not so very long ago," Susannah said. "The trains that bring your children back, are they monos?"

They weren't. Overholser, the Jaffords, and the Slightmans had no idea what a mono was, in fact. (Callahan, who had been to Disneyland as a teenager, did.) The trains which brought the children back were hauled by plain old locomotives (hopefully none of them named Charlie , Eddie thought), driverless and attached to one or perhaps two open flatcars. The children were huddled on these. When they arrived they were usually crying with fear (from sunburns as well, if the weather west of Thunderclap was hot and clear), covered with food and their own drying shit, and dehydrated into the bargain. There was no station at the railhead, although Overholser opined there might have been, centuries before. Once the children had been offloaded, teams of horses were used to pull the short trains from the rusty railhead. It occurred to Eddie that they could figure out the number of times the Wolves had come by counting the number of junked engines, sort of like figuring out the age of a tree by counting the rings on the stump.

"How long a trip for them, would you guess?" Roland asked. "Judging from their condition when they arrive?"

Overholser looked at Slightman, then at Tian and Zalia. "Two days? Three?"

They shrugged and nodded.

"Two or three days," Overholser said to Roland, speaking with more confidence than was perhaps warranted, judging from the looks of the others. "Long enough for sunburns, and to eat most of the rations they're left - "

"Or paint themselves with em," Slightman grunted.

" - but not long enough to die of exposure," Overholser finished. "If ye'd judge from that how far they were taken from the Calla, all I can say is I wish'eejoy of the riddle, for no one knows what speed the train draws when it's crossing the plains. It comes slow and stately enough to the far side of the river, but that means little."

"No," Roland agreed, "it doesn't." He considered. "Twenty-seven days left?"

"Twenty-six now," Callahan said quietly.

"One thing, Roland," Overholser said. He spoke apologetically, but his jaw was jutting. Eddie thought he'd backslid to the kind of guy you could dislike on sight. If you had a problem with authority figures, that was, and Eddie always had.

Roland raised his eyebrows in silent question.

"We haven't said yes." Overholser glanced at Slightman the Elder, as if for support, and Slightman nodded agreement.

"Ye must ken we have no way of knowing y'are who you say y'are," Slightman said, rather apologetically. "My family had no books growing up, and there's none out at the ranch - I'm foreman of Eisenhart's Rocking B - except for the stockline books, but growing up I heard as many tales of Gilead and gunslingers and Arthur Eld as any other boy... heard of Jericho Hill and such blood-and-thunder tales of pretend... but I never heard of a gunslinger missing two of his fingers, or a brown-skinned woman gunslinger, or one who won't be old enough to shave for years yet."

His son looked shocked, and in an agony of embarrassment as well. Slightman looked rather embarrassed himself, but pushed on.

"I cry your pardon if what I say offends, indeed I do - "

"Hear him, hear him well," Overholser rumbled. Eddie was starting to think that if the man's jaw jutted out much further, it would snap clean off.

" - but any decision we make will have long echoes. Ye must see it's so. If we make the wrong one, it could mean the death of our town, and all in it."

"I can't believe what I'm hearing!" Tian Jaffords cried indignantly. "Do you think 'ese're a fraud? Good gods, man, have'ee not looked at him? Do'ee not have - "

His wife grasped his arm hard enough to pinch white marks into his farmer's tan with the tips of her fingers. Tian looked at her and fell quiet, though his lips were pressed together tightly.

Somewhere in the distance, a crow called and a rustie answered in its slightly shriller voice. Then all was silent. One by one they turned to Roland of Gilead to see how he would reply.

FIVE

It was always the same, and it made him tired. They wanted help, but they also wanted references. A parade of witnesses, if they could get them. They wanted rescue without risk, just to close their eyes and be saved.

Roland rocked slowly back and forth with his arms wrapped around his knees. Then he nodded to himself and raised his head. "Jake," he said. "Come to me."

Jake glanced at Benny, his new friend, then got up and walked across to Roland. Oy walked at his heel, as always.

"Andy," Roland said.

"Sai?"

"Bring me four of the plates we ate from." As Andy did this,

Roland spoke to Overholser: "You're going to lose some crockery. When gunslingers come to town, sai, things get broken. It's a simple fact of life."

"Roland, I don't think we need - "

"Hush now," Roland said, and although his voice was gentle, Overholser hushed at once. "You've told your tale; now we tell ours."

Andy's shadow fell over Roland. The gunslinger looked up and took the plates, which hadn't been rinsed and still gleamed with grease. Then he turned to Jake, where a remarkable change had taken place. Sitting with Benny the Kid, watching Oy do his small clever tricks and grinning with pride, Jake had looked like any other boy of twelve - carefree and full of the old Dick, likely as not Now the smile had fallen away and it was hard to tell just what his age might have been. His blue eyes looked into Roland's, which were of almost the same shade. Beneath his shoulder, the Ruger Jake had taken from his father's desk in another life hung in its docker's clutch. The trigger was secured with a rawhide loop which Jake now loosened without looking. It took only a single tug.

"Say your lesson, Jake, son of Elmer, and be true."

Roland half-expected either Eddie or Susannah to interfere, but neither did. He looked at them. Their faces were as cold and grave as Jake's. Good.

Jake's voice was also without expression, but the words came out hard and sure.

"I do not aim with my hand; he who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I aim with my eye. I do not shoot with my hand - "

"I don't see what this - " Overholser began.

"Shut up," Susannah said, and pointed a finger at him.

Jake seemed not to have heard. His eyes never left Roland's. The boy's right hand lay on his upper chest, the fingers spread. "He who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I shoot with my mind. I do not kill with my gun; he who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father."

Jake paused. Drew in breath. And let it out speaking.

"I kill with my heart."

"Kill these," Roland remarked, and with no more warning than that, slung all four of the plates high into the air. They rose, spinning and separating, black shapes against the white sky.

Jake's hand, the one resting on his chest, became a blur. It pulled the Ruger from the docker's clutch, swung it up, and began pulling the trigger while Roland's hand was still in the air. The plates did not seem to explode one after the other but rather all at once. The pieces rained down on the clearing. A few fell into the fire, puffing up ash and sparks. One or two clanged off Andy's steel head.

Roland snatched upward, open hands moving in a blur. Although he had given them no command, Eddie and Susannah did the same, did it even while the visitors from Calla Bryn Sturgis cringed, shocked by the loudness of the gunfire. And the speed of the shots.

"Look here at us, do ya, and say thankee," Roland said. He held out his hands. Eddie and Susannah did the same. Eddie had caught three pottery shards. Susannah had five (and a shallow cut on the pad of one finger). Roland had snatched a full dozen pieces of falling shrapnel. It looked like almost enough to make a whole plate, were the pieces glued back together.

The six from the Calla stared, unbelieving. Benny the Kid still had his hands over his ears; now he lowered them slowly. He was looking at Jake as one might look at a ghost or an apparition from the sky.

"My... God ," Callahan said. "It's like a trick in some old Wild West show."

"It's no trick," Roland said, "never think it. It's the Way of the Eld. We are of that an-tet, khef and ka, watch and warrant. Gunslingers, do ya. And now I'll tell you what we will do." His eyes sought Overholser's. "What we will do, I say, for no man bids us. Yet I think nothing I say will discomfort you too badly. If mayhap it does - " Roland shrugged. If it does, too bad , that shrug said.

He dropped the pottery shards between his boots and dusted his hands.

"If those had been Wolves," he said, "there would have been fifty-six left to trouble you instead of sixty. Four of them lying dead on the ground before you could draw a breath. Killed by a boy." He gazed at Jake. "What you would call a boy, mayhap." Roland paused. "We're used to long odds."

"The young fella's a breathtaking shot, I'd grant ye," said Slightman the Elder. "But there's a difference between clay dishes and Wolves on horseback."

"For you, sai, perhaps. Not for us. Not once the shooting starts. When the shooting starts, we kill what moves. Isn't that why you sought us?"

"Suppose they can't be shot?" Overholser asked. "Can't be laid low by even the hardest of hard calibers?"

"Why do you waste time when time is short?" Roland asked evenly. "You know they can be killed or you never would have come out here to us in the first place. I didn't ask, because the answer is self-evident."

Overholser had once more flushed dark red. "Cry your pardon," he said.

Benny, meanwhile, continued to stare at Jake with wide eyes, and Roland felt a minor pang of regret for both boys. They might still manage some sort of friendship, but what had just happened would change it in fundamental ways, turn it into something quite unlike the usual lighthearted khef boys shared. Which was a shame, because when Jake wasn't being called upon to be a gunslinger, he was still only a child. Close to the age Roland himself had been when the test of manhood had been thrust on him. But he would not be young much longer, very likely. And it was a shame.

"Listen to me now," Roland said, "and hear me very well. We leave you shortly to go back to our own camp and take our own counsel. Tomorrow, when we come to your town, we'll put up with one of you - "

"Come to Seven-Mile," Overholser said. "We'll have you and say thankee, Roland."

"Our place is much smaller," Tian said, "but Zalia and I - "

"We'd be so pleased to have'ee," Zalia said. She had flushed as deeply as Overholser. "Aye, we would."

Roland said, "Do you have a house as well as a church, sai Callahan?"

Callahan smiled. "I do, and tell God thankya."

"We might stay with you on our first night in Calla Bryn Sturgis," Roland said. "Could we do that?"

"Sure, and welcome."

"You could show us your church. Introduce us to its mysteries."

Callahan's gaze was steady. "I'd welcome the chance to do that."

"In the days after," Roland said, smiling, "we shall throw ourselves on the hospitality of the town."

"You'll not find it wanting," Tian said. "That I promise ye." Overholser and Slightman were nodding.

"If the meal we've just eaten is any sign, I'm sure that's true. We say thankee, sai Jaffords; thankee one and all. For a week we four will go about your town, poking our noses here and there. Mayhap a bit longer, but likely a week. We'll look at the lay of the land and the way the buildings are set on it. Look with an eye to the coming of these Wolves. We'll talk to folk, and folk will talk to us - those of you here now will see to that, aye?"

Callahan was nodding. "I can't speak for the Manni, but I'm sure the rest will be more than willing to talk to you about the Wolves. God and Man Jesus knows they're no secret. And those of the Crescent are frightened to death of them. If they see a chance you might be able to help us, they'll do all you ask."

"The Manni will speak to me as well," Roland said. "I've held palaver with them before."

"Don't be carried away with the Old Fella's enthusiasm, Roland," Overholser said. He raised his plump hands in the air, a gesture of caution. "There are others in town you'll have to convince - "

"Vaughn Eisenhart, for one," said Slightman.

"Aye, and Eben Took, do ya," Overholser said. "The General Store's the only thing his name's on, ye ken, but he owns the boarding house and the restaurant out front of it... as well's a half-interest in the livery... and loan-paper on most of the smallholds hereabouts.

"When it comes to the smallholds, 'ee mustn't neglect Bucky Javier," Overholser rumbled. "He ain't the biggest of em, but only because he gave away half of what he had to his young sister when she married." Overholser leaned toward Roland, his face alight with a bit of town history about to be passed on. "Roberta Javier, Bucky's sissa, she's lucky," he said. "When the Wolves came last time, she and her twin brother were but a year old. So they were passed over."

"Bucky's own twin brother was took the time before," Slight-man said. "Bully's dead now almost four year. Of the sickness. Since then, there ain't enough Bucky can do for those younger two. But you should talk to him, aye. Bucky's not got but eighty acre, yet he's trig."

Roland thought, They still don't see .

"Thank you," he said. "What lies directly ahead for us comes down to looking and listening, mostly. When it's done, we'll ask that whoever is in charge of the feather take it around so that a meeting can be called. At that meeting, we'll tell you if the town can be defended and how many men we'll want to help us, if it can be done."

Roland saw Overholser puffing up to speak and shook his head at him.

"It won't be many we'd want, in any case," he said. "We're gunslingers, not an army. We think differently, act differently, than armies do. We might ask for as many as five to stand with us. Probably fewer - only two or three. But we might need more to help us prepare."

"Why?" Benny asked.

Roland smiled. "That I can't say yet, son, because I haven't seen how things are in your Calla. But in cases like this, surprise is always the most potent weapon, and it usually takes many people to prepare a good surprise."

"The greatest surprise to the Wolves," Tian said, "would be if we fought at all."

"Suppose you decide the Calla can't be defended?" Over-holser asked. "Tell me that, I beg."

"Then I and my friends will thank you for your hospitality and ride on," Roland said, "for we have our own business farther along the Path of the Beam." He observed Tian's and Zalia's crestfallen faces for a moment, then said: "I don't think that's likely, you know. There's usually a way."

"May the meeting receive your judgment favorably," Over-holser said.

Roland hesitated. This was the point where he could hammer the truth home, should he want to. If these people still believed a tet of gunslingers would be bound by what farmers and ranchers decided in a public meeting, they really had lost the shape of the world as it once was. But was that so bad? In the end, matters would play out and become part of his long history. Or not. If not, he would finish his history and his quest in Calla Bryn Sturgis, moldering beneath a stone. Perhaps not even that; perhaps he'd finish in a dead heap somewhere east of town, he and his friends with him, so much rotting meat to be picked over by the crows and the rusties. Ka would tell. It always did.

Meanwhile, they were looking at him.

Roland stood up, wincing at a hard flare of pain in his right hip as he did so. Taking their cues from him, Eddie, Susannah, and Jake also got to their feet.

"We're well-met," Roland said. "As for what lies ahead, there will be water if God wills it."

Callahan said, "Amen."