Wolves of the Calla

'Hear what the Book of Manni says: When the Angel of Death passed over Ayjip, he killed the firstborn in every house where the blood of a sacrificial lamb hadn't been daubed on the doorposts. So says the Book.'

'Praise the Book,' said the rest of the Manni.

'Perhaps we should do likewise,' the Manni spokesman went on. His voice was calm, but a pulse beat wildly in his forehead. 'Perhaps we should turn these next thirty days into a festival of joy for the wee ones, and then put them to sleep, and let their blood out upon the earth. Let the Wolves take their corpses into the east, should they desire.'

'You're insane,' Benito Cash said, indignant and at the same time almost laughing. 'You and all your kind. We ain't gonna kill our babbies!'

'Would the ones that come back not be better off dead?' the Manni responded. 'Great useless hulks! Scooped-out shells!'

'Aye, and what about their brothers and sisters?' asked Vaughn Eisenhart. 'For the Wolves only take one out of every two, as ye very well know.'

A second Manni rose, this one with a silky-white beard flowing down over his breast. The first one sat down. The old man, Henchick, looked around at the others, then at Tian. 'You hold the feather, young fella-may I speak?'

Tian nodded for him to go ahead. This wasn't a bad start at all. Let them fully explore the box they were in, explore it all the way to the corners. He was confident they'd see there were only two alternatives, in the end: let the Wolves take one of every pair under the age of puberty, as they always had, or stand and fight. But to see that, they needed to understand that all other ways out were dead ends.

The old man spoke patiently. Sorrowfully, even. ' 'Tis a terrible idea, aye. But think'ee this, sais: if the Wolves were to come and find us childless, they might leave us alone ever after.'

'Aye, so they might,' one of the smallhold farmers rumbled-his name was Jorge Estrada. 'And so they might not. Manni-sai, would you really kill a whole town's children for what might be?'

A strong rumble of agreement ran through the crowd. Another smallholder, Garrett Strong, rose to his feet. His pug-dog's face was truculent His thumbs were hung in his belt. 'Better we all kill ourselves,' he said. 'Babbies and grown-ups alike.'

The Manni didn't look outraged at this. Nor did any of the other blue-cloaks around him. 'It's an option,' the old man said. 'We would speak of it if others would.' He sat down.

'Not me,' Garrett Strong said. 'It'd be like cuttin off your damn head to save shaving, hear me, I beg.'

There was laughter and a few cries of Hear you very well. Garrett sat back down, looking a little less tense, and put his head together with Vaughn Eisenhart. One of the other ranchers, Diego Adams, was listening in, his black eyes intent.

Another smallholder rose-Buckyjavier. He had bright little blue eyes in a small head that seemed to slope back from his goatee'd chin. 'What if we left for awhile?' he asked. 'What if we took our children and went back west? All the way to the west branch of the Big River, mayhap?'

There was a moment of considering silence at this bold idea. The west branch of the Whye was almost all the way back to Mid-World… where, according to Andy, a great palace of green glass had lately appeared and even more lately disappeared again. Tian was about to respond himself when Eben Took, the storekeeper, did it for him. Tian was relieved. He hoped to be silent as long as possible. When they were talked out, he'd tell them what was left.

'Are ye mad?' Eben asked. 'Wolves'd come in, see us gone, and burn all to the ground-farms and ranches, crops and stores, root and branch. What would we come back to?'

'And what if they came after us?' Jorge Estrada chimed in. 'Do'ee think we'd be hard to follow, for such as the Wolves? They'd burn us out as Took says, ride our backtrail, and take the kiddies anyway!'

Louder agreement. The stomp of shor'boots on the plain pine floorboards. And a few cries of Hear him, hear him!

'Besides,' Neil Faraday said, standing and holding his vast and filthy sombrero in front of him, 'they never steal all our children.' He spoke in a frightened let's-be-reasonable tone that set Tian's teeth on edge. It was this counsel he feared above all others. Its deadly-false call to reason.

One of the Manni, this one younger and beardless, uttered a sharp and contemptuous laugh. 'Ah, one saved out of every two! And that make it all right, does it? God bless thee!' He might have said more, but Henchick clamped a gnarled hand on the young man's arm. The young one said no more, but he didn't lower his head submissively, either. His eyes were hot, his lips a thin white line.

'I don't mean it's right,' Neil said. He had begun to spin his sombrero in a way that made Tian feel a litde dizzy. 'But we have to face the realities, don't we? Aye. And they don't take em all. Why my daughter, Georgina, she's just as apt and canny-'

Tar, and yer son George is a great empty-headed galoot,' Ben Slightman said. Slightman was Eisenhart's foreman, and he did not suffer fools lightly. He took off his spectacles, wiped them with a bandanna, and set them back on his face. 'I seen him settin on the steps in front of Tooky's when I rode down-street. Seen him very well. Him and some others equally empty-brained.'

'But-'

'I know,' Slightman said. 'It's a hard decision. Some empty-brained's maybe better than all dead.' He paused. 'Or all taken instead of just half.'

Cries of Hear him and Say thankee as Ben Slightman sat down.

'They always leave us enough to go on with, don't they?' asked a smallhold farmer whose place was just west of Tian's, near the edge of the Calla. His name was Louis Haycox, and he spoke in a musing, bitter tone of voice. Below his mustache, his lips curved in a smile that didn't have much humor in it. 'We won't kill our children,' he said, looking at the Manni. 'All God's grace to ye, gentlemen, but I don't believe even you could do so, came it right down to the killin-floor. Or not all of ye. We can't pull up bag and baggage and go west-or in any other direction-because we leave our farms behind. They'd burn us out, all right, and come after the children just the same. They need em, gods know why.

'It always comes back to the same thing: we're farmers, most of us. Strong when our hands are in the soil, weak when they ain't. I got two kiddies of my own, four years old, and I love em both well. Should hate to lose either. But I'd give one to keep the other. And my farm.' Murmurs of agreement met this. 'What other choice do we have? I say this: it would be the world's worst mistake to anger the Wolves. Unless, of course, we can stand against them. If 'twere possible, I'd stand. But I just don't see how it is.'

Tian felt his heart shrivel with each of Haycox's words. How much of his thunder had the man stolen? Gods and the Man Jesus!

Wayne Overholser got to his feet. He was Calla Bryn Sturgis's most successful farmer, and had a vast sloping belly to prove it. 'Hear me, I beg.'

'We say thankee-sai,' they murmured.

'Tell you what we're going to do,' he said, looking around. 'What we always done, that's what. Do any of you want to talk about standing against the Wolves? Are any of you that mad? With what? Spears and rocks, a few bows and bahs? Maybe four rusty old sof calibers like that?' He jerked a thumb toward Eisenhart's rifle.

'Don't be making fun of my shooting-iron, son,' Eisenhart said, but he was smiling ruefully.

'They'll come and they'll take the children,' Overholser said, looking around. 'Some of em. Then they'll leave us alone again for a generation or even longer. So it is, so it has been, and I say leave it alone.'

Disapproving rumbles rose at this, but Overholser waited them out.

'Twenty-three years or twenty-four, it don't matter,' he said when they were quiet again. 'Either way it's a long time. A long time of peace. Could be you've forgotten a few things, folks. One is that children are like any other crop. God always sends more. I know that sounds hard. But it's how we've lived and how we have to go on.'

Tian didn't wait for any of the stock responses. If they went any further down this road, any chance he might have to turn them would be lost. He raised the opopanax feather and said, 'Hear what I say! Would ye hear, I beg!'

'Thankee-sai,' they responded. Overholser was looking at Tian distrustfully.

And you're right to look at me so, the farmer thought. For I've had enough of such cowardly common sense, so I have.

'Wayne Overholser is a smart man and a successful man, Tian said, 'and I hate to speak against his position for those reasons. And for another, as well: he's old enough to be my Da'.'

' 'Ware he ain't your Da',' Garrett Strong's only farmhand-

Rossiter, his name was-called out, and there was general laughter. Even Overholser smiled at this jest.

'Son, if ye truly hate to speak agin me, don't ye do it,' Overholser said. He continued to smile, but only with his mouth.

'I must, though,' Tian said. He began to walk slowly back and forth in front of the benches. In his hands, the rusty-red plume of the opopanax feather swayed. Tian raised his voice slightly so they'd understand he was no longer speaking just to the big farmer.

'I must because sai Overholser is old enough to be my Da'. His children are grown, do ye kennit, and so far as I know there were only two to begin with, one girl and one boy.' He paused, then shot the killer. 'Born two years apart.' Both singletons, in other words. Both safe from the Wolves, although he didn't need to say it right out loud. The crowd murmured.

Overholser flushed a bright and dangerous red. 'That's a rotten goddamned thing to say! My get's got nothing to do with this whether single or double! Give me that feather, Jaffords. I got a few more things to say.'

But the boots began to thump down on the boards, slowly at first, then picking up speed until they rattled like hail. Overholser looked around angrily, now so red he was nearly purple.

'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.