Wolves of the Calla (86 page)

“And’ll move on, leaving bloody ruin behind em, if we’re foolish enough to allow it!” Eben Took roared.

There was a shocked gasp from the crowd. As it died, Wayne Overholser said: “Shut up, ye great mouth-organ.”

Took turned to look at Overholser, the Calla’s big farmer and Took’s best customer, with a look of gaping surprise.

Tian said: “Their dinh is Roland Deschain, of Gilead.” They knew this, but the mention of such
legendary names still provoked a low, almost moaning murmur. “From In-World that was. Would you hear him? What say you,
folken
?”

Their response quickly rose to a shout.
“Hear him! Hear him! We would hear him to the last! Hear him well, say thankya!”
And a soft, rhythmic crumping sound that Tian could not at first identify. Then he realized what it was and almost smiled. This was what the tromping of shor’boots sounded like, not on the boards of the Gathering Hall, but out here on Lady Riza’s grass.

Tian held out his hand. Roland came forward. The tromping sound grew louder as he did. Women were joining in, doing the best they could in their soft town shoes. Roland mounted the steps. Tian gave him the feather and left the stage, taking Hedda’s hand and motioning for the rest of the twins to go before him. Roland stood with the feather held before him, gripping its ancient lacquered stalk with hands now bearing only eight digits. At last the tromping of the shoes and shor’boots died away. The torches sizzled and spat, illuminating the upturned faces of the
folken,
showing their hope and fear; showing both very well. The rustie called and was still. In the east, big lightning sliced up the darkness.

The gunslinger stood facing them.

For what seemed a very long time looking was all he did. In each glazed and frightened eye he read the same thing. He had seen it many times before, and it was easy reading. These people were hungry.
They’d fain buy something to eat, fill their restless bellies. He remembered the pieman who walked the streets of Gilead low-town in the hottest days of summer, and how his mother had called him seppe-sai on account of how sick such pies could make people.
Seppe-sai
meant the death-seller.

Aye,
he thought,
but I and my friends don’t charge
.

At this thought, his face lit in a smile. It rolled years off his craggy map, and a sigh of nervous relief came from the crowd. He started as he had before: “We are well-met in the Calla, hear me, I beg.”

Silence.

“You have opened to us. We have opened to you. Is it not so?”

“Aye, gunslinger!” Vaughn Eisenhart called back. “‘Tis!”

“Do you see us for what we are, and accept what we do?”

It was Henchick of the Manni who answered this time. “Aye, Roland, by the Book and say thankya. Y’are of Eld, White come to stand against Black.”

This time the crowd’s sigh was long. Somewhere near the back, a woman began to sob.

“Calla-
folken,
do you seek aid and succor of us?”

Eddie stiffened. This question had been asked of many individuals during their weeks in Calla Bryn Sturgis, but he thought to ask it here was extremely risky. What if they said no?

A moment later Eddie realized he needn’t have worried; in sizing up his audience, Roland was as shrewd as ever. Some
did
in fact say no—a smattering of Haycoxes, a peck of Tooks, and a small cluster of Telfords led the antis—but most of the
folken
roared out a hearty and immediate
AYE, SAY THANKYA!
A few others—Overholser was the most prominent—said nothing either way. Eddie thought that in most cases, this would have been the wisest move. The most
politic
move, anyway. But this wasn’t most cases; it was the most extraordinary moment of choice most of these people would ever face. If the Ka-Tet of Nineteen won against the Wolves, the people of this town would remember those who said no and those who said nothing. He wondered idly if Wayne Dale Overholser would still be the big farmer in these parts a year from now.

But then Roland opened the palaver, and Eddie turned his entire attention toward him. His
admiring
attention. Growing up where and how he had, Eddie had heard plenty of lies. Had told plenty himself, some of them very good ones. But by the time Roland reached the middle of his spiel, Eddie realized he had never been in the presence of a true genius of mendacity until this early evening in Calla Bryn Sturgis. And—

Eddie looked around, then nodded, satisfied.

And they were swallowing every word.

“Last time I was on this stage before you,” Roland began, “I danced the commala. Tonight—”

George Telford interrupted. He was too oily for Eddie’s taste, and too sly by half, but he couldn’t fault the man’s courage, speaking up as he did when the tide was so clearly running in the other direction.

“Aye, we remember, ye danced it well! How dance ye the mortata, Roland, tell me that, I beg.”

Disapproving murmurs from the crowd.

“Doesn’t matter how I dance it,” Roland said, not in the least discommoded, “for my dancing days in the Calla are done. We have work in this town, I and mine. Ye’ve made us welcome, and we say thankya. Ye’ve bid us on, sought our aid and succor, so now I bid ye to listen very well. In less of a week come the Wolves.”

There was a sigh of agreement. Time might have grown slippery, but even low
folken
could still hold onto five days’ worth of it.

“On the night before they’re due, I’d have every Calla twin-child under the age of seventeen there.” Roland pointed off to the left, where the Sisters of Oriza had put up a tent. Tonight there were a good many children in there, although by no means the hundred or so at risk. The older had been given the task of tending the younger for the duration of the meeting, and one or another of the Sisters periodically checked to make sure all was yet fine.

“That tent won’t hold em all, Roland,” Ben Slightman said.

Roland smiled. “But a bigger one will, Ben, and I reckon the Sisters can find one.”

“Aye, and give em a meal they won’t ever forget!” Margaret Eisenhart called out bravely. Good-natured laughter greeted this, then sputtered before it caught. Many in the crowd were no doubt reflecting that if the Wolves won after all, half the children who spent Wolf’s Eve on the Green wouldn’t be able to remember their own names a week or two later, let alone what they’d eaten.

“I’d sleep em here so we can get an early start the next morning,” Roland said. “From all I’ve been told, there’s no way to know if the Wolves will come early, late, or in the middle of the day. We’d look the fools of the world if they were to come extra early and catch em right here, in the open.”

“What’s to keep em from coming a
day
early?” Eben Took called out truculently. “Or at midnight on what you call Wolf’s Eve?”

“They can’t,” Roland said simply. And, based on Jamie Jaffords’s testimony, they were almost positive this was true. The old man’s story was his reason for letting Andy and Ben Slightman run free for the next five days and nights. “They come from afar, and not all their traveling is on horseback. Their schedule is fixed far in advance.”

“How do’ee know?” Louis Haycox asked.

“Better I not tell,” Roland said. “Mayhap the Wolves have long ears.”

A considering silence met this.

“On the same night—Wolf’s Eve—I’d have a dozen bucka wagons here, the biggest in the Calla, to draw the children out to the north of town. I’ll appoint the drivers. There’ll also be child-minders to go with em, and stay with em when the time comes. And ye needn’t ask me where they’ll be going; it’s best we not speak of that, either.”

Of course most of them thought they already knew where the children would be taken: the old Gloria. Word had a way of getting around, as Roland well knew. Ben Slightman had thought a little further—to the Redbird Two, south of the Gloria—and that was also fine.

George Telford cried out: “Don’t listen to this,
folken,
I beg ye! And even if’ee
do
listen, for your souls and the life of this town, don’t
do
it! What he’s saying is madness! We’ve tried to hide our children before,
and it doesn’t work
! But even if it did, they’d surely come and burn this town for vengeance’ sake, burn it flat—”

“Silence, ye coward.” It was Henchick, his voice as dry as a whipcrack.

Telford would have said more regardless, but his eldest son took his arm and made him stop. It was just as well. The clomping of the shor’boots had begun again. Telford looked at Eisenhart unbelievingly, his thought as clear as a shout:
Ye can’t mean to be part of this madness, can ye?

The big rancher shook his head. “No point looking at me so, George. I stand with my wife, and she stands with the Eld.”

Applause greeted this. Roland waited for it to quiet.

“Rancher Telford says true. The Wolves likely
will
know where the children have been bunkered. And when they come, my ka-tet will be there to greet them. It won’t be the first time we’ve stood against such as they.”

Roars of approval. More soft clumping of boots. Some rhythmic applause. Telford and Eben Took looked about with wide eyes, like men discovering they had awakened in a lunatic asylum.

When the Pavilion was quiet again, Roland said: “Some from town have agreed to stand with us,
folka
with good weapons. Again, it’s not a thing you need to know about just now.” But of course the feminine construction told those who didn’t already know about the Sisters of Oriza a great deal. Eddie once
more had to marvel at the way he was leading them; cozy wasn’t in it. He glanced at Susannah, who rolled her eyes and gave him a smile. But the hand she put on his arm was cold. She wanted this to be over. Eddie knew exactly how she felt.

Telford tried one last time. “People, hear me!
All this has been tried before!
”

It was Jake Chambers who spoke up. “It hasn’t been tried by gunslingers, sai Telford.”

A fierce roar of approval met this. There was more stamping and clapping. Roland finally had to raise his hands to quiet it.

“Most of the Wolves will go to where they think the children are, and we’ll deal with them there,” he said. “Smaller groups may indeed raid the farms or ranches. Some may come into town. And aye, there may be some burning.”

They listened silently and respectfully, nodding, arriving ahead of him to the next point. As he had wanted them to.

“A burned building can be replaced. A roont child cannot.”

“Aye,” said Rosalita. “Nor a roont heart.”

There were murmurs of agreement, mostly from the women. In Calla Bryn Sturgis (as in most other places), men in a state of sobriety did not much like to talk about their hearts.

“Hear me now, for I’d tell you at least this much more: We know exactly what these Wolves are. Jamie Jaffords has told us what we already suspected.”

There were murmurs of surprise. Heads turned. Jamie, standing beside his grandson, managed to straighten his curved back for a moment or two and
actually puff up his sunken chest. Eddie only hoped the old buzzard would hold his peace over what came next. If he got muddled and contradicted the tale Roland was about to tell, their job would become much harder. At the very least it would mean grabbing Slightman and Andy early. And if Finli o’ Tego—the voice Slightman reported to from the Dogan—didn’t hear from these two again before the day of the Wolves, there would be suspicions. Eddie felt movement in the hand on his arm. Susannah had just crossed her fingers.

“There aren’t living creatures beneath the masks,” Roland said. “The Wolves are the undead servants of the vampires who rule Thunderclap.”

An awed murmur greeted this carefully crafted bit of claptrap.

“They’re what my friends Eddie, Susannah, and Jake call
zombis
. They can’t be killed by bow, bah, or bullet unless struck in the brain or the heart.” Roland tapped the left side of his chest for emphasis. “And of course when they come on their raids, they come wearing heavy armor under their clothes.”

Henchick was nodding. Several of the other older men and women—
folken
who well remembered the Wolves coming not just once before but twice—were doing the same. “It explains a good deal,” he said. “But how—”

“To strike them in the brain is beyond our abilities, because of the helmets they wear under their hoods,” Roland said. “But we saw such creatures in Lud. Their weakness is here.” Again he tapped his
chest. “The undead don’t breathe, but there’s a kind of gill above their hearts. If they armor it over, they die. That’s where we’ll strike them.”

A low, considering hum of conversation greeted this. And then Gran-pere’s voice, shrill and excited: “‘Tis ever’ word true, for dinna Molly Doolin strike one there hersel’ wi’ the dish, an’ not even dead-on, neither, and yet the creetur’ dropped down!”

Susannah’s hand tightened on Eddie’s arm enough for him to feel her short nails, but when he looked at her, she was grinning in spite of herself. He saw a similar expression on Jake’s face.
Trig enough when the chips were down, old man,
Eddie thought.
Sorry I ever doubted you. Let Andy and Slightman go back across the river and report
that
happy horseshit!
He’d asked Roland if they (the faceless
they
represented by someone who called himself Finli o’ Tego) would believe such tripe.
They’ve raided this side of the Whye for over a hundred years and lost but a single fighter,
Roland had replied.
I think they’d believe anything. At this point their
really
vulnerable spot is their complacence
.

“Bring your twins here by seven o’ the clock on Wolf’s Eve,” Roland said. “There’ll be ladies—Sisters of Oriza, ye ken—with lists on slateboards. They’ll scratch off each pair as they come in. It’s my hope to have a line drawn through every name before nine o’ the clock.”