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 could be right about
that—but they looked willing enough to listen.
"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 Luke, 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 to have 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."
"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. 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 sissa, 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 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 in town 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. He wore a long black coat. There was a
scar on his forehead. None of the men, including Tian, noticed. They were watching the Manni.
"Hear what the Book of Manni says: When the Angel of Death passed over Ayjip, 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 east,
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, Henchick, 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. " 'Tis a terrible idea, aye. 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—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—Buckyjavier. 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 west? All the way to the west branch of the Big River, mayhap?"
There was a moment of considering silence at this bold idea. The west branch of the Whye 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, 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 Henchick
clamped a gnarled hand on the young man's arm. The young one 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 litde
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—"
Tar, 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. He took off his spectacles, wiped them with a bandanna, and set
them back on his face. "I seen him settin on the steps in front of Tooky's when I rode down-street. Seen him
very well. Him and some others equally empty-brained."
"But—"
"I know," Slightman said. "It's a hard decision. Some empty-brained's maybe better than all dead." He
paused. "Or all taken instead of just half."
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 mustache, 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 west—
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 'twere 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,
a few bows and bahs? Maybe four rusty old sof 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 em. 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 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," Overholser 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 the big farmer.
"I must because sai Overholser is old enough to be my Da'. His children are grown, do ye kennit, 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
