Wolves of the Calla

'Nothing, son. Your Maw-Maw's all right.' Tian put the baby down, then ran his arm across his eyes. 'Everything's fine. Ain't it, Zee?'

'Aye,' she said, lowering her hands. The rims of her eyes were red, but she wasn't crying. 'And with the blessing, what ain't fine will be.'

'From your lips to God's ear,' Eddie said, watching the giant shamble toward the barn. 'From your lips to God's ear.'

TWO

'Is he having one of his bright days, your Gran-pere?' Eddie asked Tian a few minutes later. They had walked around to where Tian could show Eddie the field he called Son of a Bitch, leaving Zalia and Susannah with all children great and small.

'Not so's you'd notice,' Tian said, his brow darkening. 'He ain't half-addled these last few years, and won't have nobbut to do with me, anyway. Her, aye, because she'll hand-feed him, then wipe the drool off his chin for him and tell him thankya. Ain't enough I got two great roont galoots to feed, is it? I've got to have that bad-natured old man, as well. Head's gone as rusty as an old hinge. Half the time he don't even know where he is, say any small-small!'

They walked, high grass swishing against their pants. Twice Eddie almost tripped over rocks, and once Tian seized his arm and led him around what looked like a right leg-smasher of a hole. No wonder he calls it Son of a Bitch, Eddie thought. And yet there were signs of cultivation. Hard to believe anyone could pull a plow through this mess, but it looked as if Tian Jaffords had been trying.

'If your wife's right, I think I need to talk to him,' Eddie said. 'Need to hear his story.'

'My Granda's got stories, all right. Half a thousand! Trouble is, most of em was lies from the start and now he gets em all mixed up together. His accent were always thick, and these last three years he's missing his last three teeth as well. Likely you won't be able to understand his nonsense to begin with. I wish you joy of him, Eddie of New York.'

'What the hell did he do to you, Tian?'

' 'Twasn't what he did to me but what he did to my Da'. That's a long story and nothing to do with this business. Leave it'

'No, you leave it,' Eddie said, coming to a stop.

Tian looked at him, startled. Eddie nodded, unsmiling: you heard me. He was twenty-five, already a year older than Cuthbert Allgood on his last day at Jericho Hill, but in this day's failing light he could have passed for a man of fifty. One of harsh certainty.

'If he's seen a dead Wolf, we need to debrief him.'

'I don't kennit, Eddie.'

'Yeah, but I think you ken my point just fine. Whatever you've got against him, put it aside. If we settle up with the Wolves, you have my permission to bump him into the fireplace or push him off the goddam roof. But for now, keep your sore ass to yourself. Okay?'

Tian nodded. He stood looking out across his troublesome north field, the one he called Son of a Bitch, with his hands in his pockets. When he studied it so, his expression was one of troubled greed.

'Do you think his story about killing a Wolf is so much hot air? If you really do, I won't waste my time.'

Grudgingly, Tian said: 'I'm more apt to believe that 'un than most of the others.'

'Why?'

'Well, he were tellin it ever since I were old enough to listen, and that 'un never changes much. Also…' Tian's next words squeezed down, as if he were speaking them through gritted teeth. 'My Gran-pere never had no shortage of thorn and bark. If anyone would have had guts enough to go out on the East Road and stand against the Wolves-not to mention enough trum to get others to go with him-I'd bet my money on Jamie Jaffords.'

'Trum?'

Tian thought about how to explain it. 'If'ee was to stick your head in a rock-cat's mouth, that'd take courage, wouldn't it?'

It would take idiocy was what Eddie thought, but he nodded.

'If'ee was the sort of man could convince someone else to stick his head in a rock-cat's mouth, that'd make you trum. Your dinh's trum, ain't he?'

Eddie remembered some of the stuff Roland had gotten him to do, and nodded. Roland was trum, all right. He was trum as hell. Eddie was sure the gunslinger's old mates would have said the same.

'Aye,' Tian said, turning his gaze back to his field. 'In any case, if ye'd get something halfway sensible out of the old man, I'd wait until after supper. He brightens a bit once he's had his rations and half a pint of graf. And make sure my wife's sitting right beside you, where he can get an eyeful. I 'magine he'd try to have a good deal more than his eye on her, were he a younger man.' His face had darkened again.

Eddie clapped him on the shoulder. 'Well, he's not younger. You are. So lighten up, all right?'

'Aye.' Tian made a visible effort to do just that. 'What do'ee think of my field, gunslinger? I'm going to plant it with madrigal next year. The yellow stuff ye saw out front.'

What Eddie thought was that the field looked like a heart-break waiting to happen. He suspected that down deep Tian thought about the same; you didn't call your only unplanted field Son of a Bitch because you expected good things to happen there. But he knew the look on Tian's face. It was the one Henry used to get when the two of them were setting off to score. It was always going to be the best stuff this time, the best stuff ever. China White and never mind that Mexican Brown that made your head ache and your bowels run. They'd get high for a week, the best high ever, mellow, and then quit the junk for good. That was Henry's scripture, and it could have been Henry here beside him, telling Eddie what a fine cash crop madrigal was, and how the people who'd told him you couldn't grow it this far north would be laughing on the other side of their faces come next reap. And then he'd buy Hugh Anselm's field over on the far side of yon ridge… hire a couple of extra men come reap, for the land'd be gold for as far as you could see… why, he might even quit the rice altogether and become a madrigal monarch.

Eddie nodded toward the field, which was hardly half-turned. 'Looks like slow plowing, though. You must have to be damned careful with the mules.'

Tian gave a short laugh. 'I'd not risk a mule out here, Eddie.'

'Then what-?'

'I plow my sister.'

Eddie's jaw dropped. 'You're shitting me!'

'Not at all. I'd plow Zal, too-he's bigger, as ye saw, and even stronger-but not as bright. More trouble than it's worth. I've tried.'

Eddie shook his head, feeling dazed. Their shadows ran out long over the lumpy earth, with its crop of weed and thistle. 'But… man… she's your sister!'

'Aye, and what else would she do all day? Sit outside the barn door and watch the chickens? Sleep more and more hours, and only get up for her taters and gravy? This is better, believe me. She don't mind it. It's tur'ble hard to get her to plow straight, even when there ain't a plow-buster of a rock or a hole every eight or ten steps, but she pulls like the devil and laughs like a loon.'

What convinced Eddie was the man's earnestness. There was no defensiveness in it, not that he could detect.

'Sides, she'll likely be dead in another ten year, anyway. Let her help while she can, I say. And Zalia feels the same.'

'Okay, but why don't you get Andy to do at least some of the plowing? I bet it'd go faster if you did. All you guys with the smallhold farms could share him, ever think of that? He could plow your fields, dig your wells, raise a barn roofbeam all by himself. And you'd save on taters and gravy.' He clapped Tian on the shoulder again. 'That's got to do ya fine.'

Tian's mouth quirked. 'It's a lovely dream, all right.'

'Doesn't work, huh? Or rather, he doesn't work.'

'Some things he'll do, but plowing fields and digging wells ain't among em. You ask him, and he'll ask you for your password. When you have no password to give him, he'll ask you if you'd like to retry. And then-'

'Then he tells you you're shit out of luck. Because of Directive Nineteen.'

'If you knew, why did you ask?'

'I knew he was that way about the Wolves, because I asked him. I didn't know it extended to all this other stuff.'

Tian nodded. 'He's really not much help, and he can be tiresome-if'ee don't ken that now, ye will if'ee stay long-but he does tell us when the Wolves are on their way, and for that we all say thankya.'

Eddie actually had to bite off the question that came to his lips. Why did they thank him when his news was good for nothing except making them miserable? Of course this time there might be more to it; this time Andy's news might actually lead to a change. Was that what Mr. You-Will-Meet-An-Interesting-Stranger had been angling for all along? Getting the folken to stand up on their hind legs and fight? Eddie recalled Andy's decidedly smarmy smile and found such altruism hard to swallow. It wasn't fair to judge people (or even robots, maybe) by the way they smiled or talked, and yet everybody did it.

Now that I think about it, what about his voice? What about that smug little I-know-and-you-don't thing he's got going on? Or am I imagining that, too?

The hell of it was, he didn't know.

THREE

The sound of Susannah's singing voice accompanied by the giggles of the children-all children great and small-drew Eddie and Tian back around to the other side of the house.