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 unsheathe 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; his 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
