The Dark Tower (Page 120)

(most of the grass now white and dead) and shallow valleys where there were isolated stands of trees, and brooks now plugged with ice. Earlier, in daylight, Roland had pointed out several holes in the ice and told her they’d been made by deer.

He pointed out several piles of scat, as well. In daylight such sign had been interesting, even hopeful. But in this endless ditch of night, listening to the steady low click of her chattering teeth, it meant nothing. Eddie meant nothing. Jake, neither. The Dark Tower meant nothing, nor did the bonfire they’d had out the outskirts of Castle-town. She could remember the look of it, but the feel of heat warming her skin until it brought an oil of sweat was utterly lost. Like a person who has died for a moment or two and has briefly visited some shining afterlife, she could only say that it had been wonderful.

Roland sat with his arms around her, sometimes voicing a dry, harsh cough. Susannah thought he might be getting sick, but this thought also had no power. Only the cold.

Once-shortly before dawn finally began to stain the sky in the east, this was-she saw orange lights swirl-dancing far ahead, past the place where the snow began. She asked Roland if he had any idea what they were. She had no real interest, but hearing her voice reassured her that she wasn’t dead. Not yet, at least.

"I think they’re hobs."

"W-What are th-they?" She now stuttered and stammered everything.

"I don’t know how to explain them to you," he said. "And there’s really no need. You’ll see them in time. Right now if you listen, you’ll hear something closer and more interesting."

At first she heard only the sigh of the wind. Then it dropped and her ears picked up the dry swish of the grass below as something walked through it. This was followed by a low crunching sound. Susannah knew exactly what it was: a hoof stamping through thin ice, opening the running water to the cold world above. She also knew that in three or four days’ time she might be wearing a coat made from the animal that was now drinking nearby, but this also had no meaning. Time was a useless concept when you were sitting awake in the dark, and in constant pain.

Had she thought she had been cold before? That was quite funny, wasn’t it?

"What about Mordred?" she asked. "Is he out there, do you think?"

"Yes."

"And does he feel the cold like we do?"

"I don’t know."

"I can’t stand much more of this, Roland-I really can’t."

"You won’t have to. It’ll be dawn soon, and I expect we’ll have a fire tomorrow come dark." He coughed into his fist, then put his arm back around her. ‘You’ll feel better once we’re up and in the doings. Meantime, at least we’re together."

TWO

Mordred was as cold as they were, every bit, and he had no one.

He was close enough to hear them, though: not the actual words, but the sound of their voices. He shuddered uncontrollably, and had lined his mouth with dead grass when he became afraid that Roland’s sharp ears might pick up the sound of his chattering teeth. The railwayman’s jacket was no help; he had thrown it away when it had fallen into so many pieces that he could no longer hold it togetlier. He’d worn the arms of it out of Castle-town, but then they had fallen to pieces as well, starting at the elbows, and he’d cast them into the low grass beside the old road with a petulant curse. He was only able to go on wearing the boots because he’d been able to weave long grass into a rough twine. With it he’d bound what remained of them to his feet.

He’d considered changing back to his spider-form, knowing that body would feel the cold less, but his entire short life had been plagued by the specter of starvation, and he supposed that part of him would always fear it, no matter how much food he had at hand. The gods knew there wasn’t much now; three severed arms, four legs (two partially eaten), and a piece of a torso from the wicker basket, that was all. If he changed, the spider would gobble that little bit up by daylight. And while there was game out here-he heard the deer moving around just as clearly as his White Daddy did-Mordred wasn’t entirely confident of his ability to trap it, or run it down.

So he sat and shivered and listened to the sound of their voices until the voices ceased. Maybe they slept. He might have dozed a litde, himself. And the only thing that kept him from giving up and going back was his hatred of them. That they should have each other when he had no one. No one at all.

Mordred’s a-hungry, he thought miserably. Mordred’s a-cold.

And Mordred has no one. Mordred’s alone.

He slipped his wrist into his mouth, bit deep, and sucked the warmth that flowed out. In the blood he tasted the last of Rando Thoughtful’s life… but so litde! So soon gone! And once it was, there was nothing but the useless, recycled taste of himself.

In the dark, Mordred began to cry.

THREE

Four hours after dawn, under a white sky that promised rain or sleet (perhaps both at the same time), Susannah Dean lay shivering behind a fallen log, looking down into one of the little valleys. You’ll hear Oy, the gunslinger had told her. And you’ll hear me, too. I’ll do what I can, but I’ll be driving them ahead of me and you ‘II have the best shooting. Make every shot count.

What made things worse was her creeping intuition that Mordred was very close now, and he might try to bushwhack her while her back was turned. She kept looking around, but they had picked a relatively clear spot, and the open grass behind her was empty each time save once, when she had seen a large brown rabbit lolloping along with its ears dragging the ground.

At last she heard Oy’s high-pitched barking from the copse of trees on her left. A moment later, Roland began to yell.

"H’yah! H’yah! Get on brisk! Get on brisk, I tell thee! Never tarry! Never tarry a single-" Then the sound of him coughing.

She didn’t like that cough. No, not at all.

Now she could see movement in the trees, and for one of the few times since Roland had forced her to admit there was another person hiding inside of her, she called on Detta Walker.

I need you. If you want to be warm again, you settle my hands so I can shoot straight.

And the ceaseless shivering of her body stopped. As the herd of deer burst out of the trees-not a small herd, either; there had to be at least eighteen of them, led by a buck with a magnificent rack-her hands also stopped their shaking. In the right one she held Roland’s revolver with the sandalwood grips.

Here came Oy, bursting out of the woods behind the final straggler. This was a mutie doe, running (and with eerie grace) on four legs of varying sizes with a fifth waggling bonelessly from the middle of her belly like a teat. Last of all came Roland, not really running at all, not anymore, but rather staggering onward at a grim jog. She ignored him, tracking the buck with the gun as the big fellow ran across her field of fire.

"This way," she whispered. "Break to your right, honeychild, let’s see you do it. Commala-come-come."

And while diere was no reason why he should have, the buck leading his litde fleeing herd did indeed veer slightly in Susannah’s direction. Now she was filled with the sort of coldness she welcomed. Her vision seemed to sharpen until she could see the muscles rippling under the buck’s hide, the white crescent as his eye rolled, the old wound on the nearest doe’s foreleg, where the fur had never grown back. She had a moment to wish Eddie and Jake were lying on either side of her, feeling what she was feeling, seeing what she was seeing, and then that was gone, too.

I do not kill with my gun; she who kills with her gun has forgotten the face of her father.

"I kill with my heart," she murmured, and began shooting.

The first bullet took the lead buck in the head and he crashed over on his left side. The others ran past him. A doe leaped over his body and Susannah’s second bullet took her at the height of her leap, so that she crashed down dead on the other side, one leg splayed and broken, all grace gone.

She heard Roland fire three times, but didn’t look to see how he’d done; she had her own business to attend to, and she attended to it well. Each of the last four bullets in the cylinder took down a deer, and only one was still moving when he fell. It didn’t occur to her that this was an amazing piece of shooting, especially with a pistol; she was a gunslinger, after all, and shooting was her business.

Besides, the morning was windless.

Half the herd now lay dead in the grassy valley below. All the remainder save one wheeled left and pelted away downslope toward the stream. A moment later they were lost in a screen of willows. The last one, a yearling buck, ran directly toward her.

Susannah didn’t bother trying to reload from the little pile of bullets lying beside her on a square of buckskin but took one of the ‘Riza plates instead, her hand automatically finding die dull gripping-place.

""Riza!" she screamed, and flung it. It flew across the dry grass, elevating slightly as it did, giving off that weird moaning sound. It struck the racing buck at mid-neck. Droplets of blood flew in a garland around its head, black against the white sky. A butcher’s cleaver could not have done a neater job. For a moment the buck ran on, heedless and headless, blood jetting from the stump of its neck as its racing heart gave up its last half a dozen beats. Then it crashed to its splayed forelegs less than ten yards in front of her hide, staining the dry yellow grass a bright red.

The previous night’s long misery was forgotten. The numbness had departed her hands and her feet. There was no grief in her now, no sense of loss, no fear. For the moment Susannah was exactly the woman that ka had made her. The mixed smell of gunpowder and blood from the downed buck was bitter; it was also the world’s sweetest perfume.