“All right,” Overholser said. “I ken some of it, do ya. The Wolves’ll see the cast-offs and be even surer the kids are up there. But why send the rest of em north at all, gunslinger? Why not just march em down to the rice right now?”
“Because we have to assume the Wolves can smell the track of prey as well as real Wolves,” Roland said. He raised his voice again. ” Children, up the path! Oldest first! Hold the hand of your partner and don’t let go!
Come back at my whistle!”
The children started off, helped into the ditch by Callahan, Sarey Adams, the Javiers, and Ben Slightman. All the adults looked anxious; only Benny’s Da’ looked mistrustful, as well.
“The Wolves will start in because they’ve reason to believe the children are up there,” Roland said, “but they’re not fools, Wayne. They’ll look for sign and we’ll give it to em. If they smell—and I’d bet this town’s last rice crop that they do— they’ll have scent as well as dropped shoes and ribbons to look at. After the smell of the main group stops, that of the four I sent first will carry on yet awhile farther. It may suck em in deeper, or it may not. By then it shouldn’t matter.”
“But—”
Roland ignored him. He turned toward his little band of fighters. They would be seven in all. It’s a good number, he told himself. A number of power. He looked beyond them at the dust-cloud. It rose higher than any of the remaining seminon dust-devils, and was moving with horrible speed. Yet for the time being, Roland thought they were all right.
“Listen and hear.” It was Zalia, Margaret, and Rosa to whom he was speaking. The members of his own katet already knew this part, had since old Jamie whispered his long-held secret into Eddie’s ear on the Jaffordses’ porch. “The Wolves are neither men nor monsters; they’re robots.”
” Robots! “Overholser shouted, but with surprise rather than disbelief.
“Aye, and of a kind my ka-tet has seen before,” Roland said. He was thinking of a certain clearing where the great bear’s final surviving retainers had chased each other in an endless worry-circle. “They wear hoods to conceal tiny twirling things on top of their heads. They’re probably this wide and this long.” Roland showed them a height of about two inches and a length of about five. “It’s what Molly Doolin hit and snapped off with her dish, once upon a time. She hit by accident. We’ll hit a-purpose.”
“Thinking-caps,” Eddie said. “Their connection to the outside world. Without em, they’re as dead as dogshit.”
“Aim here.” Roland held his right hand an inch above the crown of his head.
“But the chests… the gills in the chests…” Margaret began, sounding utterly bewildered.
“Bullshit now and ever was,” Roland said. “Aim at the tops of the hoods.”
“Someday,” Tian said, “I’m going to know why there had to be so much buggering bullshit.”
“I hope there is a someday,” Roland said. The last of the children—the youngest ones—were just starting up the path, obediently holding hands. The eldest would be perhaps an eighth of a mile up, Jake’s quartet at least an eighth of a mile beyond that. It would have to be enough. Roland turned his attention to the child-minders.
“Now they come back,” he said. “Take them across the ditch and through the corn in two side-by-side rows.”
He cocked a thumb over his shoulder without looking. “Do I have to tell you how important it is that the corn-plants not be disturbed, especially close to the road, where the Wolves can see?”
They shook their heads.
“At the edge of the rice,” Roland continued, “take them into one of the streams. Lead them almost to the river, then have them lie down where it’s tall and still green.” He moved his hands apart, his blue eyes blazing. “Spread em out. You grownups get on the river side of em. If there’s trouble—more Wolves, something else we don’t expect—that’s the side it’ll come from.”
Without giving them a chance to ask questions, Roland buried his fingers in the corners of his mouth again and whistled. Vaughn Eisenhart, Krella Anselm, and Wayne Overholser joined the others in the ditch and began bellowing for the little ‘uns to turn around and start back toward the road. Eddie, meanwhile, took another look over his shoulder and was stunned to see how far toward the river the dust-cloud had progressed. Such rapid movement made perfect sense once you knew the secret; those gray horses weren’t horses at all, but mechanical conveyances disguised to look like horses, no more than that. Like a fleet of government Chewies, he thought.
“Roland, they’re coming fast! Like hell!”
Roland looked. “We’re all right,” he said.
“Are you sure?” Rosa asked.
“Yes.”
The youngest children were now hurrying back across the road, hand-in-hand, bug-eyed with fear and excitement. Cantab of the Manni and Ara, his wife, were leading them. She told them to walk straight down the middle of the rows and try not to even brush any of the skeletal plants.
“Why, sai?” asked one tyke, surely no older than four. There was a suspicious dark patch on the front of his overalls. “Corn all picked, see.”
“It’s a game,” Cantab said. “A don’t-touch-the-corn game.” He began to sing. Some of the children joined in, but most were too bewildered and frightened.
As the pairs crossed the road, growing taller and older as they came, Roland cast another glance to the east.
He estimated the Wolves were still ten minutes from the other side of the Whye, and ten minutes should be enough, but gods, they were fast! It had already crossed his mind that he might have to keep Slightman the
Younger and the Tavery twins up here, with them. It wasn’t in the plan, but by the time things got this far, the plan almost always started to change. Had to change.
Now the last of the kids were crossing, and only Overholser, Callahan, Slightman the Elder, and Sarey Adams were still on the road.
“Go,” Roland told them.
“I want to wait for my boy!” Slightman objected.
“Go!”
Slightman looked disposed to argue the point, but Sarey Adams touched one elbow and Overholser actually took hold of the other.
“Come’ee,” Overholser said. “The man’ll take care of yours same as he’ll take care of his.”
Slightman gave Roland a final doubtful look, then stepped over the ditch and began herding the tail end of the line downhill, along with Overholser and Sarey.
“Susannah, show them the hide,” Roland said.
They’d been careful to make sure the kids crossed the ditch on the road’s river side well down from where they had done their digging the day before. Now, using one of her capped and shortened legs, Susannah kicked aside a tangle of leaves, branches, and dead corn-plants—the sort of thing one would expect to see left behind in a roadside runoff ditch—and exposed a dark hole.
“It’s just a trench,” she said, almost apologetically. “There’s boards over the top. Light ones, easy to push back. That’s where we’ll be. Roland’s made a… oh, I don’t know what you call it, we call it a periscope where I come from, a thing with mirrors inside it you can see through… and when the time comes, we just stand up.
The boards’ll fall away around us when we do.”
“Where’s Jake and those other three?” Eddie asked. “They should be back by now.”
“It’s too soon,” Roland said. “Calm down, Eddie.”
“I won’t calm down and it’s not too soon. We should at least be able to see them. I’m going over there—”
“No, you’re not,” Roland said. “We have to get as many as we can before they figure out what’s going on.
That means keeping our firepower over here, at their backs.”
“Roland, something’s not right.”
Roland ignored him. “Lady-sais, slide in there, do ya please. The extra boxes of plates will be on your end; we’ll just kick some leaves over them.”
He looked across the road as Zalia, Rosa, and Margaret began to worm into the hole Susannah had disclosed.
The path to the arroyo was now completely empty. There was still no sign of Jake, Benny, and the Tavery twins. He was beginning to think that Eddie was right; that something had gone amiss.
SIX
Jake and his companions reached the place where the trail split quickly and without incident. Jake had held back two items, and when they reached the fork, he threw a broken rattle toward the Gloria and a little girl’s woven string bracelet toward the Redbird. Choose, he thought, and be damned to you either way.
When he turned, he saw the Tavery twins had already started back. Benny was waiting for him, his face pale and his eyes shining. Jake nodded to him and made himself return Benny’s smile. “Let’s go,” he said.