Wolves of the Calla Read online

  Roland rummaged through his purse for his tobacco pouch, found it, and built himself a cigarette with Callahan's fresh, sweet tobacco. Rosalita had added her own present, a little stack of delicate cornshuck wraps she called "pulls." Roland thought they wrapped as good as any cigarette paper, and he paused a moment to admire the finished product before tipping the end into the match Eisenhart had popped alight with one horny thumbnail. The gunslinger dragged deep and exhaled a long plume that rose but slowly in the evening air, which was still and surprisingly muggy for summer's end. "Good," he said, and nodded.

  "Aye? May it do ya fine. I never got the taste for it myself."

  The barn was far bigger than the ranchhouse, at least fifty yards long and fifty feet high. The front was festooned with reap-charms in honor of the season; stuffy-guys with huge sharproot heads stood guard. From above the open bay over the main doors, the butt of the head-beam jutted. A rope had been fastened around this. Below, in the yard, the boys had built a good-sized stack of hay. Oy stood on one side of it, Andy on the other. They were both looking up as Benny Slightman grabbed the rope, gave it a tug, then retreated back into the loft and out of sight. Oy began to bark in anticipation. A moment later Benny came pelting forward with the rope wrapped in his fists and his hair flying out behind him.

  "Gilead and the Eld!" he cried, and leaped from the bay. He swung into the red sunset air with his shadow trailing behind him.

  "Ben-Ben!" Oy barked. "Ben-Ben-Ben!"

  The boy let go, flew into the haystack, disappeared, then popped up laughing. Andy offered him a metal hand but Benny ignored it, flopping out onto the hardpacked earth. Oy ran around him, barking.

  "Do they always call so at play?" Roland asked.

  Eisenhart snorted laughter. "Not at all! Usually it's a cry of Oriza, or Man Jesus, or 'hail the Calla,' or all three. Your boy's been filling Slightman's boy full of tales, thinks I."

  Roland ignored the slightly disapproving note in this and watched Jake reel in the rope. Benny lay on the ground, playing dead, until Oy licked his face. Then he sat up, giggling. Roland had no doubt that if the boy had gone off-course, Andy would have snagged him.

  To one side of the barn was a remuda of work-horses, perhaps twenty in all. A trio of cowpokes in chaps and battered shor'boots were leading the last half-dozen mounts toward it. On the other side of the yard was a slaughter-pen filled with steers. In the following weeks they would be butchered and sent downriver on the trading boats.

  Jake retreated into the loft, then came pelting forward. "New York!" he shouted. "Times Square! Empire State Building! Twin Towers! Statue of Liberty!" And he launched himself into space along the arc of the rope. They watched him disappear, laughing, into the pile of hay.

  "Any particular reason you wanted your other two to stay with the Jaffordses?" Eisenhart asked. He spoke idly, but Roland thought this was a question that interested him more than a little.

  "Best we spread ourselves around. Let as many as possible get a good look at us. Time is short. Decisions must be made." All of which was true, but there was more, and Eisenhart probably knew it. He was shrewder than Overholser. He was also dead set against standing up to the Wolves--at least so far. This didn't keep Roland from liking the man, who was big and honest and possessed of an earthy countryman's sense of humor. Roland thought he might come around, if he could be shown they had a chance to win.

  On their way out to the Rocking B, they had visited half a dozen smallhold farms along the river, where rice was the main crop. Eisenhart had performed the introductions good-naturedly enough. At each stop Roland had asked the two questions he had asked the previous night, at the Pavilion: Will you open to us, if we open to you? Do you see us for what we are, and accept us for what we do? All of them had answered yes. Eisenhart had also answered yes. But Roland knew better than to ask the third question of any. There was no need to, not yet. They still had over three weeks.

  "We bide, gunslinger," Eisenhart said. "Even in the face of the Wolves, we bide. Once there was Gilead and now there's Gilead nummore--none knows better'n you--but still we bide. If we stand against the Wolves, all that may change. To you and yours, what happens along the Crescent might not mean s'much as a fart in a high wind one way or t'other. If ye win and survive, you'll move along. If ye lose and die, we have nowhere to go."

  "But--"

  Eisenhart raised his hand. "Hear me, I beg. Would'ee hear me?"

  Roland nodded, resigned to it. And for him to speak was probably for the best. Beyond them, the boys were running back into the barn for another leap. Soon the coming dark would put an end to their game. The gunslinger wondered how Eddie and Susannah were making out. Had they spoken to Tian's Gran-pere yet? And if so, had he told them anything of value?

  "Suppose they send fifty or even sixty, as they have before, many and many-a? And suppose we wipe them out? And then, suppose that a week or a month later, after you're gone, they send five hundred against us?"

  Roland considered the question. As he was doing so, Margaret Eisenhart joined them. She was a slim woman, fortyish, small-breasted, dressed in jeans and a shirt of gray silk. Her hair, pulled back in a bun against her neck, was black threaded with white. One hand hid beneath her apron.

  "That's a fair question," she said, "but this might not be a fair time to ask it. Give him and his friends a week, why don't you, to peek about and see what they may see."

  Eisenhart gave his sai a look that was half humorous and half irritated. "Do I tell'ee how to run your kitchen, woman? When to cook and when to wash?"

  "Only four times a week," said she. Then, seeing Roland rise from the rocker next to her husband's: "Nay, sit still, I beg you. I've been in a chair this last hour, peeling sharproot with Edna, yon's auntie." She nodded in Benny's direction. "It's good to be on my feet." She watched, smiling, as the boys swung out into the pile of hay and landed, laughing, while Oy danced and barked. "Vaughn and I have never had to face the full horror of it before, Roland. We had six, all twins, but all grown in the time between. So we may not have all the understanding needed to make such a decision as you ask."

  "Being lucky doesn't make a man stupid," Eisenhart said. "Quite the contrary, is what I think. Cool eyes see clear."

  "Perhaps," she said, watching the boys run back into the barn. They were bumping shoulders and laughing, each trying to get to the ladder first. "Perhaps, aye. But the heart must call for its rights, too, and a man or woman who doesn't listen is a fool. Sometimes 'tis best to swing on the rope, even if it's too dark to see if the hay's there or not."

  Roland reached out and touched her hand. "I couldn't have said better myself."

  She gave him a small, distracted smile. It was only a moment before she returned her attention to the boys, but it was long enough for Roland to see that she was frightened. Terrified, in fact.

  "Ben, Jake!" she called. "Enough! Time to wash and then come in! There's pie for those can eat it, and cream to go on top!"

  Benny came to the open bay. "My Da' says we can sleep in my tent over on the bluff, sai, if it's all right with you."

  Margaret Eisenhart looked at her husband. Eisenhart nodded. "All right," she said, "tent it is and give you joy of it, but come in now if you'd have pie. Last warning! And wash first, mind'ee! Hands and faces!"

  "Aye, say thankya," Benny said. "Can Oy have pie?"

  Margaret Eisenhart thudded the pad of her left hand against her brow, as if she had a headache. The right, Roland was interested to note, stayed beneath her apron. "Aye," she said, "pie for the bumbler, too, as I'm sure he's Arthur Eld in disguise and will reward me with jewels and gold and the healing touch."

  "Thankee-sai," Jake called. "Could we have one more swing first? It's the quickest way down."

  "I'll catch them if they fly wrong, Margaret-sai," Andy said. His eyes flashed blue, then dimmed. He appeared to be smiling. To Roland, the robot seemed to have two personalities, one old-maidish, the other harmlessly cozening. The gunslinger liked neither, and
understood why perfectly. He'd come to mistrust machinery of all kinds, and especially the kind that walked and talked.

  "Well," Eisenhart said, "the broken leg usually hides in the last caper, but have on, if ye must."

  They had on, and there were no broken legs. Both boys hit the haypile squarely, popped up laughing and looking at each other, then footraced for the kitchen with Oy running behind them. Appearing to herd them.

  "It's wonderful how quickly children can become friends," Margaret Eisenhart said, but she didn't look like one contemplating something wonderful. She looked sad.

  "Yes," Roland said. "Wonderful it is." He laid his purse across his lap, seemed on the verge of pulling the knot that anchored the laces, then didn't. "Which are your men good with?" he asked Eisenhart. "Bow or bah? For I know it's surely not the rifle or revolver."

  "We favor the bah," Eisenhart said. "Fit the bolt, wind it, aim it, fire it, 'tis done."

  Roland nodded. It was as he had expected. Not good, because the bah was rarely accurate at a distance greater than twenty-five yards, and that only on a still day. On one when a strong breeze was kicking up . . . or, gods help us, a gale . . .

  But Eisenhart was looking at his wife. Looking at her with a kind of reluctant admiration. She stood with her eyebrows raised, looking back at her man. Looking him back a question. What was this? It surely had to do with the hand under the apron.

  "Garn, tell im," Eisenhart said. Then he pointed an almost-angry finger at Roland, like the barrel of a pistol. "It changes nothing, though. Nothing! Say thankya!" This last with the lips drawn back in a kind of savage grin. Roland was more puzzled than ever, but he felt a faint stirring of hope. It might be false hope, probably would be, but anything was better than the worries and confusions--and the aches--that had beset him lately.

  "Nay," Margaret said with maddening modesty. " 'Tis not my place to tell. To show, perhaps, but not to tell."

  Eisenhart sighed, considered, then turned to Roland. "Ye danced the rice-dance," he said, "so ye know Lady Oriza."

  Roland nodded. The Lady of the Rice, in some places considered a goddess, in others a heroine, in some, both.

  "And ye know how she did away with Gray Dick, who killed her father?"

  Roland nodded again.

  TWO

  According to the story--a good one that he must remember to tell Eddie, Susannah, and Jake, when (and if) there was once more time for storytelling--Lady Oriza invited Gray Dick, a famous outlaw prince, to a vast dinner party in Waydon, her castle by the River Send. She wanted to forgive him for the murder of her father, she said, for she had accepted the Man Jesus into her heart and such was according to His teachings.

  Ye'll get me there and kill me, be I stupid enough to come, said Gray Dick.

  Nay, nay, said the Lady Oriza, never think it. All weapons will be left outside the castle. And when we sit in the banqueting hall below, there will be only me, at one end of the table, and thee, at the other.

  You'll conceal a dagger in your sleeve or a bola beneath your dress, said Gray Dick. And if you don't, I will.

  Nay, nay, said the Lady Oriza, never think it, for we shall both be naked.

  At this Gray Dick was overcome with lust, for Lady Oriza was fair. It excited him to think of his prick getting hard at the sight of her bare breasts and bush, and no breeches on him to conceal his excitement from her maiden's eye. And he thought he understood why she would make such a proposal. His haughty heart will undo him, Lady Oriza told her maid (whose name was Marian and who went on to have many fanciful adventures of her own).

  The Lady was right. I've killed Lord Grenfall, wiliest lord in all the river baronies, Gray Dick told himself. And who is left to avenge him but one weak daughter? (Oh, but she was fair.) So she sues for peace. And maybe even for marriage, if she has audacity and imagination as well as beauty.

  So he accepted her offer. His men searched the banquet hall downstairs before he arrived and found no weapons--not on the table, not under the table, not behind the tapestries. What none of them could know was that for weeks before the banquet, Lady Oriza had practiced throwing a specially weighted dinner-plate. She did this for hours a day. She was athletically inclined to begin with, and her eyes were keen. Also, she hated Gray Dick with all her heart and had determined to make him pay no matter what the cost.

  The dinner-plate wasn't just weighted; its rim had been sharpened. Dick's men overlooked this, as she and Marian had been sure they would. And so they banqueted, and what a strange banquet that must have been, with the laughing, handsome outlaw naked at one end of the table and the demurely smiling but exquisitely beautiful maiden thirty feet from him at the other end, equally naked. They toasted each other with Lord Grenfall's finest rough red. It infuriated the Lady to the point of madness to watch him slurp that exquisite country wine down as though it were water, scarlet drops rolling off his chin and splashing to his hairy chest, but she gave no sign; simply smiled coquettishly and sipped from her own glass. She could feel the weight of his eyes on her breasts. It was like having unpleasant bugs lumbering to and fro on her skin.

  How long did this charade go on? Some tale-tellers had her putting an end to Gray Dick after the second toast. (His: May your beauty ever increase. Hers: May your first day in hell last ten thousand years, and may it be the shortest.) Others--the sort of spinners who enjoyed drawing out the suspense--recounted a meal of a dozen courses before Lady Oriza gripped the special plate, looking Gray Dick in the eyes and smiling at him while she turned it, feeling for the dull place on the rim where it would be safe to grip.

  No matter how long the tale, it always ended the same way, with Lady Oriza flinging the plate. Little fluted channels had been carved on its underside, beneath the sharpened rim, to help it fly true. As it did, humming weirdly as it went, casting its fleeting shadow on the roast pork and turkey, the heaping bowls of vegetables, the fresh fruit piled on crystal serving dishes.

  A moment after she flung the plate on its slightly rising course--her arm was still outstretched, her first finger and cocked thumb pointing at her father's assassin--Gray Dick's head flew out through the open door and into the foyer behind him. For a moment longer Gray Dick's body stood there with its penis pointing at her like an accusing finger. Then the dick shriveled and the Dick behind it crashed forward onto a huge roast of beef and a mountain of herbed rice.

  Lady Oriza, whom Roland would hear referred to as the Lady of the Plate in some of his wanderings, raised her glass of wine and toasted the body. She said

  THREE

  "May your first day in hell last ten thousand years," Roland murmured.

  Margaret nodded. "Aye, and let that one be the shortest. A terrible toast, but one I'd gladly give each of the Wolves. Each and every one!" Her visible hand clenched. In the fading red light she looked feverish and ill. "We had six, do ya. An even half-dozen. Has he told you why none of them are here, to help with the Reaptide slaughtering and penning? Has he told you that, gunslinger?"

  "Margaret, there's no need," Eisenhart said. He shifted uncomfortably in his rocker.

  "Ah, but mayhap there is. It goes back to what we were saying before. Mayhap ye pay a price for leaping, but sometimes ye pay a higher one for looking. Our children grew up free and clear, with no Wolves to worry about. I gave birth to my first two, Tom and Tessa, less than a month before they came last time. The others followed along, neat as peas out of a pod. The youngest be only fifteen, do ya not see it."

  "Margaret--"

  She ignored him. "But they'd not be s'lucky with their own children, and they knew it. And so they're gone. Some far north along the Arc, some far south. Looking for a place where the Wolves don't come."

  She turned to Eisenhart, and although she spoke to Roland, it was her husband she looked at as she had her final word.

  "One of every two; that's the Wolves' bounty. That's what they take every twenty-some, for many and many-a. Except for us. They took all of our children. Every . . . single . . . on
e." She leaned forward and tapped Roland's leg just above the knee with great emphasis. "Do ya not see it."

  Silence fell on the back porch. The condemned steers in the slaughter-pen mooed moronically. From the kitchen came the sound of boy-laughter following some comment of Andy's.

  Eisenhart had dropped his head. Roland could see nothing but the extravagant bush of his mustache, but he didn't need to see the man's face to know that he was either weeping or struggling very hard not to.

  "I'd not make'ee feel bad for all the rice of the Arc," she said, and stroked her husband's shoulder with infinite tenderness. "And they come back betimes, aye, which is more than the dead do, except in our dreams. They're not so old that they don't miss their mother, or have how-do-ye-do-it questions for their Da'. But they're gone, nevertheless. And that's the price of safety, as ye must ken." She looked down at Eisenhart for a moment, one hand on his shoulder and the other still beneath her apron. "Now tell how angry with me you are," she said, "for I'd know."

  Eisenhart shook his head. "Not angry," he said in a muffled voice.

  "And have'ee changed your mind?"

  Eisenhart shook his head again.

  "Stubborn old thing," she said, but she spoke with good-humored affection. "Stubborn as a stick, aye, and we all say thankya."

  "I'm thinking about it," he said, still not looking up. "Still thinking, which is more than I expected at this late date--usually I make up my mind and there's the end of it.

  "Roland, I understand young Jake showed Overholser and the rest of em some shooting out in the woods. Might be we could show you something right here that'd raise your eyebrows. Maggie, go in and get your Oriza."

  "No need," she said, at last taking her hand from beneath her apron, "for I brought it out with me, and here 'tis."

  FOUR

  It was a plate both Detta and Mia would have recognized, a blue plate with a delicate webbed pattern. A forspecial plate. After a moment Roland recognized the webbing for what it was: young oriza, the seedling rice plant. When sai Eisenhart tapped her knuckles on the plate, it gave out a peculiar high ringing. It looked like china, but wasn't. Glass, then? Some sort of glass?