Wolves of the Calla Read online

  "I'd speak!" he shouted. "Would'ee not hear me, I beg?"

  Cries of No, no and Not now and Jaffords has the feather and Sit and listen came in response. Tian had an idea sai Overholser was learning--and remarkably late in the game--that there was often a deep-running resentment of a village's richest and most successful. Those less fortunate or less canny (most of the time they amounted to the same) might tug their hats off when the rich folk passed in their buckas or lowcoaches, they might send a slaughtered pig or cow as a thank-you when the rich folk loaned their hired hands to help with a house-or barn-raising, the well-to-do might be cheered at Year End Gathering for helping to buy the piano that now sat in the Pavilion's musica. Yet the men of the Calla tromped their shor'boots to drown Overholser out with a certain savage satisfaction.

  Overholser, unused to being balked in such a way--flabbergasted, in fact--tried one more time. "I'd have the feather, do ye, I beg!"

  "No," Tian said. "Later if it does ya, but not now."

  There were actual cheers at this, mostly from the smallest of the smallhold farmers and some of their hands. The Manni did not join in. They were now drawn so tightly together that they looked like a dark blue inkstain in the middle of the hall. They were clearly bewildered by this turn. Vaughn Eisenhart and Diego Adams, meanwhile, moved to flank Overholser and speak low to him.

  You've got a chance, Tian thought. Better make the most of it.

  He raised the feather and they quieted.

  "Everyone will have a chance to speak," he said. "As for me, I say this: we can't go on this way, simply bowing our heads and standing quiet when the Wolves come and take our children. They--"

  "They always return them," a hand named Farren Posella said timidly.

  "They return husks!" Tian cried, and there were a few cries of Hear him. Not enough, however, Tian judged. Not enough by far. Not yet.

  He lowered his voice again. He did not want to harangue them. Overholser had tried that and gotten nowhere, a thousand acres or not.

  "They return husks. And what of us? What is this doing to us? Some might say nothing, that the Wolves have always been a part of our life in Calla Bryn Sturgis, like the occasional cyclone or earthshake. Yet that is not true. They've been coming for six generations, at most. But the Calla's been here a thousand years and more."

  The old Manni with the bony shoulders and baleful eyes half-rose. "He says true, folken. There were farmers here--and Manni-folk among em--when the darkness in Thunderclap hadn't yet come, let alone the Wolves."

  They received this with looks of wonder. Their awe seemed to satisfy the old man, who nodded and sat back down.

  "So in time's greater course, the Wolves are almost a new thing," Tian said. "Six times have they come over mayhap a hundred and twenty or a hundred and forty years. Who can say? For as ye ken, time has softened, somehow."

  A low rumble. A few nods.

  "In any case, once a generation," Tian went on. He was aware that a hostile contingent was coalescing around Overholser, Eisenhart, and Adams. Ben Slightman might or might not be with them--probably was. These men he would not move even if he were gifted with the tongue of an angel. Well, he could do without them, maybe. If he caught the rest. "Once a generation they come, and how many children do they take? Three dozen? Four?

  "Sai Overholser may not have babbies this time, but I do--not one set of twins but two. Heddon and Hedda, Lyman and Lia. I love all four, but in a month of days, two of them will be taken away. And when those two come back, they'll be roont. Whatever spark there is that makes a complete human being, it'll be out forever."

  Hear him, hear him swept through the room like a sigh.

  "How many of you have twins with no hair except that which grows on their heads?" Tian demanded. "Raise yer hands!"

  Six men raised their hands. Then eight. A dozen. Every time Tian began to think they were done, another reluctant hand went up. In the end, he counted twenty-two hands, and of course not everyone who had children was here. He could see that Overholser was dismayed by such a large count. Diego Adams had his hand raised, and Tian was pleased to see he'd moved away a little bit from Overholser, Eisenhart, and Slightman. Three of the Manni had their hands up. Jorge Estrada. Louis Haycox. Many others he knew, which was not surprising, really; he knew almost every one of these men. Probably all save for a few wandering fellows working smallhold farms for short wages and hot dinners.

  "Each time they come and take our children, they take a little more of our hearts and our souls," Tian said.

  "Oh come on now, son," Eisenhart said. "That's laying it on a bit th--"

  "Shut up, Rancher," a voice said. It belonged to the man who had come late, he with the scar on his forehead. It was shocking in its anger and contempt. "He's got the feather. Let him speak out to the end."

  Eisenhart whirled around to mark who had spoken to him so. He saw, and made no reply. Nor was Tian surprised.

  "Thankee, Pere," Tian said evenly. "I've almost come to the end. I keep thinking of trees. You can strip the leaves of a strong tree and it will live. Cut its bark with many names and it will grow its skin over them again. You can even take from the heartwood and it will live. But if you take of the heartwood again and again and again, there will come a time when even the strongest tree must die. I've seen it happen on my farm, and it's an ugly thing. They die from the inside out. You can see it in the leaves as they turn yellow from the trunk to the tips of the branches. And that's what the Wolves are doing to this little village of ours. What they're doing to our Calla."

  "Hear him!" cried Freddy Rosario from the next farm over. "Hear him very well!" Freddy had twins of his own, although they were still on the tit and so probably safe.

  Tian went on, "You say that if we stand and fight, they'll kill us all and burn the Calla from east-border to west."

  "Yes," Overholser said. "So I do say. Nor am I the only one." From all around him came rumbles of agreement.

  "Yet each time we simply stand by with our heads lowered and our hands open while the Wolves take what's dearer to us than any crop or house or barn, they scoop a little more of the heart's wood from the tree that is this village!" Tian spoke strongly, now standing still with the feather raised high in one hand. "If we don't stand and fight soon, we'll be dead anyway! This is what I say, Tian Jaffords, son of Luke! If we don't stand and fight soon, we'll be roont ourselves!"

  Loud cries of Hear him! Exuberant stomping of shor'boots. Even some applause.

  George Telford, another rancher, whispered briefly to Eisenhart and Overholser. They listened, then nodded. Telford rose. He was silver-haired, tanned, and handsome in the weatherbeaten way women seemed to like.

  "Had your say, son?" he asked kindly, as one might ask a child if he had played enough for one afternoon and was ready for his nap.

  "Yar, reckon," Tian said. He suddenly felt dispirited. Telford wasn't a rancher on a scale with Vaughn Eisenhart, but he had a silver tongue. Tian had an idea he was going to lose this, after all.

  "May I have the feather, then?"

  Tian thought of holding onto it, but what good would it do? He'd said his best. Had tried. Perhaps he and Zalia should pack up the kids and go out west themselves, back toward the Mids. Moon to moon before the Wolves came, according to Andy. A person could get a hell of a head start on trouble in thirty days.

  He passed the feather.

  "We all appreciate young sai Jaffords's passion, and certainly no one doubts his courage," George Telford said. He spoke with the feather held against the left side of his chest, over his heart. His eyes roved the audience, seeming to make eye contact--friendly eye contact--with each man. "But we have to think of the kiddies who'd be left as well as those who'd be taken, don't we? In fact, we have to protect all the kiddies, whether they be twins, triplets, or singletons like sai Jaffords's Aaron."

  Telford turned to Tian now.

  "What will you tell your children as the Wolves shoot their mother and mayhap set their Granpere on f
ire with one of their light-sticks? What can you say to make the sound of those shrieks all right? To sweeten the smell of burning skin and burning crops? That it's souls we're a-saving? Or the heart's wood of some make-believe tree?"

  He paused, giving Tian a chance to reply, but Tian had no reply to make. He'd almost had them . . . but he'd left Telford out of his reckoning. Smooth-voiced sonofabitch Telford, who was also far past the age when he needed to be concerned about the Wolves calling into his dooryard on their great gray horses.

  Telford nodded, as if Tian's silence was no more than he expected, and turned back to the benches. "When the Wolves come," he said, "they'll come with fire-hurling weapons--the light-sticks, ye ken--and guns, and flying metal things. I misremember the name of those--"

  "The buzz-balls," someone called.

  "The sneetches," called someone else.

  "Stealthies!" called a third.

  Telford was nodding and smiling gently. A teacher with good pupils. "Whatever they are, they fly through the air, seeking their targets, and when they lock on, they put forth whirling blades as sharp as razors. They can strip a man from top to toe in five seconds, leaving nothing around him but a circle of blood and hair. Do not doubt me, for I have seen it happen."

  "Hear him, hear him well!" the men on the benches shouted. Their eyes had grown huge and frightened.

  "The Wolves themselves are terrible fearsome," Telford went on, moving smoothly from one campfire story to the next. "They look sommat like men, and yet they are not men but something bigger and far more awful. And those they serve in far Thunderclap are more terrible by far. Vampires, I've heard. Men with the heads of birds and animals, mayhap. Broken-helm undead ronin. Warriors of the Scarlet Eye."

  The men muttered. Even Tian felt a cold scamper of rats' paws up his back at the mention of the Eye.

  "The Wolves I've seen; the rest I've been told," Telford went on. "And while I don't believe it all, I believe much. But never mind Thunderclap and what may den there. Let's stick to the Wolves. The Wolves are our problem, and problem enough. Especially when they come armed to the teeth!" He shook his head, smiling grimly. "What would we do? Perhaps we could knock them from their greathorses with hoes, sai Jaffords? D'ee think?"

  Derisive laughter greeted this.

  "We have no weapons that can stand against them," Telford said. He was now dry and businesslike, a man stating the bottom line. "Even if we had such, we're farmers and ranchers and stockmen, not fighters. We--"

  "Stop that yellow talk, Telford. You ought to be ashamed of yourself."

  Shocked gasps greeted this chilly pronouncement. There were cracking backs and creaking necks as men turned to see who had spoken. Slowly, then, as if to give them exactly what they wanted, the white-haired latecomer in the long black coat and turned-around collar rose slowly from the bench at the very back of the room. The scar on his forehead--it was in the shape of a cross--was bright in the light of the kerosene lamps.

  It was the Old Fella.

  Telford recovered himself with relative speed, but when he spoke, Tian thought he still looked shocked. "Beg pardon, Pere Callahan, but I have the feather--"

  "To hell with your heathen feather and to hell with your cowardly counsel," Pere Callahan said. He walked down the center aisle, stepping with the grim gait of arthritis. He wasn't as old as the Manni elder, nor nearly so old as Tian's Granpere (who claimed to be the oldest person not only here but in Calla Lockwood to the south), and yet he seemed somehow older than both. Older than the ages. Some of this no doubt had to do with the haunted eyes that looked out at the world from below the scar on his forehead (Zalia claimed it had been self-inflicted). More had to do with the sound of him. Although he had been here enough years to build his strange Man Jesus church and convert half the Calla to his way of spiritual thinking, not even a stranger would have been fooled into believing Pere Callahan was from here. His alienness was in his flat and nasal speech and in the often obscure slang he used ("street-jive," he called it). He had undoubtedly come from one of those other worlds the Manni were always babbling about, although he never spoke of it and Calla Bryn Sturgis was now his home. He had the sort of dry and unquestionable authority that made it difficult to dispute his right to speak, with or without the feather.

  Younger than Tian's Granpere he might be, but Pere Callahan was still the Old Fella.

  FOUR

  Now he surveyed the men of Calla Bryn Sturgis, not even glancing at George Telford. The feather sagged in Telford's hand. He sat down on the first bench, still holding it.

  Callahan began with one of his slang-terms, but they were farmers and no one needed to ask for an explanation.

  "This is chickenshit."

  He surveyed them longer. Most would not return his look. After a moment, even Eisenhart and Adams dropped their eyes. Overholser kept his head up, but under the Old Fella's hard gaze, the rancher looked petulant rather than defiant.

  "Chickenshit," the man in the black coat and turned-around collar repeated, enunciating each syllable. A small gold cross gleamed below the notch in the backwards collar. On his forehead, that other cross--the one Zalia believed he'd carved in his flesh with his own thumbnail in partial penance for some awful sin--glared under the lamps like a tattoo.

  "This young man isn't one of mine, but he's right, and I think you all know it. You know it in your hearts. Even you, Mr. Overholser. And you, George Telford."

  "Know no such thing," Telford said, but his voice was weak and stripped of its former persuasive charm.

  "All your lies will cross your eyes, that's what my mother would have told you." Callahan offered Telford a thin smile Tian wouldn't have wanted pointed in his direction. And then Callahan did turn to him. "I never heard it put better than you put it tonight, boy. Thankee-sai."

  Tian raised a feeble hand and managed an even more feeble smile. He felt like a character in a silly festival play, saved at the last moment by some improbable supernatural intervention.

  "I know a bit about cowardice, may it do ya," Callahan said, turning to the men on the benches. He raised his right hand, misshapen and twisted by some old burn, looked at it fixedly, then dropped it to his side again. "I have personal experience, you might say. I know how one cowardly decision leads to another . . . and another . . . and another . . . until it's too late to turn around, too late to change. Mr. Telford, I assure you the tree of which young Mr. Jaffords spoke is not make-believe. The Calla is in dire danger. Your souls are in danger."

  "Hail Mary, full of grace," said someone on the left side of the room, "the Lord is with thee. Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, J--"

  "Bag it," Callahan snapped. "Save it for Sunday." His eyes, blue sparks in their deep hollows, studied them. "For this night, never mind God and Mary and the Man Jesus. Never mind the light-sticks and the buzz-bugs of the Wolves, either. You must fight. You're the men of the Calla, are you not? Then act like men. Stop behaving like dogs crawling on their bellies to lick the boots of a cruel master."

  Overholser went dark red at that, and began to stand. Diego Adams grabbed his arm and spoke in his ear. For a moment Overholser remained as he was, frozen in a kind of crouch, and then he sat back down. Adams stood up.

  "Sounds good, padrone," Adams said in his heavy accent. "Sounds brave. Yet there are still a few questions, mayhap. Haycox asked one of em. How can ranchers and farmers stand against armed killers?"

  "By hiring armed killers of our own," Callahan replied.

  There was a moment of utter, amazed silence. It was almost as if the Old Fella had lapsed into another language. At last Diego Adams said--cautiously, "I don't understand."

  "Of course you don't," the Old Fella said. "So listen and gain wisdom. Rancher Adams and all of you, listen and gain wisdom. Not six days' ride nor'west of us, and bound southeast along the Path of the Beam, come three gunslingers and one 'prentice." He smiled at their amazement. Then he turned to Slightman. "The 'prentice isn't much older than your boy Ben, but he's already
as quick as a snake and as deadly as a scorpion. The others are quicker and deadlier by far. I have it from Andy, who's seen them. You want hard calibers? They're at hand. I set my watch and warrant on it."

  This time Overholser made it all the way to his feet. His face burned as if with a fever. His great pod of a belly trembled. "What children's goodnight story is this?" he asked. "If there ever were such men, they passed out of existence with Gilead. And Gilead has been dust in the wind for a thousand years."

  There were no mutterings of support or dispute. No mutterings of any kind. The crowd was still frozen, caught in the reverberation of that one mythic word: gunslingers.

  "You're wrong," Callahan said, "but we don't need to fight over it. We can go and see for ourselves. A small party will do, I think. Jaffords here . . . myself . . . and what about you, Overholser? Want to come?"

  "There ain't no gunslingers!" Overholser roared.

  Behind him, Jorge Estrada stood up. "Pere Callahan, God's grace on you--"

  "--and you, Jorge."

  "--but even if there were gunslingers, how could three stand against forty or sixty? And not forty or sixty normal men, but forty or sixty Wolves?"

  "Hear him, he speaks sense!" Eben Took, the storekeeper, called out.

  "And why would they fight for us?" Estrada continued. "We make it from year to year, but not much more. What could we offer them, beyond a few hot meals? And what man agrees to die for his dinner?"

  "Hear him, hear him!" Telford, Overholser, and Eisenhart cried in unison. Others stamped rhythmically up and down on the boards.

  The Old Fella waited until the stomping had quit, and then said: "I have books in the rectory. Half a dozen."

  Although most of them knew this, the thought of books--all that paper--still provoked a general sigh of wonder.

  "According to one of them, gunslingers were forbidden to take reward. Supposedly because they descend from the line of Arthur Eld."

  "The Eld! The Eld!" the Manni whispered, and several raised fists into the air with the first and fourth fingers pointed. Hook em horns, the Old Fella thought. Go, Texas. He managed to stifle a laugh, but not the smile that rose on his lips.