Wolves of the Calla

(and if) there was once more time for storytelling—Lady Oriza invited Gray Dick, a famous outlaw prince, to a vast dinner party in Waydon, her castle by the River Send. She wanted to forgive him for the murder of her father, she said, for she had accepted the Man Jesus into her heart and such was according to His teachings.

Ye'll get me there and kill me, be I stupid enough to come, said Gray Dick.

Nay, nay, said the Lady Oriza, never think it. All weapons will be left outside the castle. And when we sit in the banqueting hall below, there will be only me, at one end of the table, and thee, at the other.

You'll conceal a dagger in your sleeve or a bola beneath your dress, said Gray Dick. And if you don't, I will.

Nay, nay, said the Lady Oriza, never think it, for we shall both be naked.

At this Gray Dick was overcome with lust, for Lady Oriza was fair. It excited him to think of his prick getting hard at the sight of her bare breasts and bush, and no breeches on him to conceal his excitement from her maiden's eye. And he thought he understood why she would make such a proposal. His haughty heart will undo him , Lady Oriza told her maid (whose name was Marian and who went on to have many fanciful adventures of her own).

The Lady was right. I've killed Lord Grenfall, wiliest lord in all the river baronies , Gray Dick told himself. And who is left to avenge him but one weak daughter' ? (Oh, but she was fair.) So she sues for peace. And maybe even for marriage, if she has audacity and imagnation as well as beauty.

So he accepted her offer. His men searched the banquet hall downstairs before he arrived and found no weapons—not on the table, not under the table, not behind the tapestries. What none of them could know was that for weeks before the banquet, Lady Oriza had practiced throwing a specially weighted dinner-plate. She did this for hours a day. She was athletically inclined to begin with, and her eyes were keen. Also, she hated Gray Dick with all her heart and had determined to make him pay no matter what the cost.

The dinner-plate wasn't just weighted; its rim had been sharpened. Dick's men overlooked this, as she and Marian had been sure they would. And so they banqueted, and what a strange banquet that must have been, with the laughing, handsome outlaw naked at one end of the table and the demurely smiling but exquisitely beautiful maiden thirty feet from him at the other end, equally naked. They toasted each other with Lord Grenfall's finest rough red. It infuriated the Lady to the point of madness to watch him slurp that exquisite country wine down as though it were water, scarlet drops rolling off his chin and splashing to his hairy chest, but she gave no sign; simply smiled coquettishly and sipped from her own glass. She could feel the weight of his eyes on her breasts. It was like having unpleasant bugs lumbering to and fro on her skin.

How long did this charade go on? Some tale-tellers had her putting an end to Gray Dick after the second toast. (His: May your beauty ever increase . Hers: May your first day in hell last ten thousand years, and may it be the shortest.) Others—the sort of spinners who enjoyed drawing out the suspense—recounted a meal of a dozen courses before Lady Oriza gripped the special plate, looking Gray Dick in the eyes and smiling at him while she turned it, feeling for the dull place on the rim where it would be safe to grip.

No matter how long the tale, it always ended the same way, with Lady Oriza flinging the plate. Little fluted channels had been carved on its underside, beneath the sharpened rim, to help it fly true. As it did, humming weirdly as it went, casting its fleeting shadow on the roast pork and turkey, the heaping bowls of vegetables, the fresh fruit piled on crystal serving dishes.

A moment after she flung the plate on its slightly rising course—her arm was still outstretched, her first finger and cocked thumb pointing at her father's assassin—Gray Dick's head flew out through the open door and into the foyer behind him. For a moment longer Gray Dick's body stood there with its penis pointing at her like an accusing finger. Then the dick shriveled and the Dick behind it crashed forward onto a huge roast of beef and a mountain of herbed rice.

Lady Oriza, whom Roland would hear referred to as the Lady of the Plate in some of his wanderings, raised her glass of wine and toasted the body. She said

THREE

'May your first day in hell last ten thousand years,' Roland murmured.

Margaret nodded. 'Aye, and let that one be the shortest. A terrible toast, but one I'd gladly give each of the Wolves. Each and every one!' Her visible hand clenched. In the fading red light she looked feverish and ill. 'We had six, do ya. An even half-dozen. Has he told you why none of them are here, to help with the Reaptide slaughtering and penning? Has he told you that, gunslinger?'

'Margaret, there's no need,' Eisenhart said. He shifted uncomfortably in his rocker.

'Ah, but mayhap there is. It goes back to what we were saying before. Mayhap ye pay a price for leaping, but sometimes ye pay a higher one for looking. Our children grew up free and clear, with no Wolves to worry about. I gave birth to my first two, Tom and Tessa, less than a month before they came last time. The others followed along, neat as peas out of a pod. The youngest be only fifteen, do ya not see it.'

'Margaret—'

She ignored him. 'But they'd not be's'lucky with their own children, and they knew it. And so they're gone. Some far north along the Arc, some far south. Looking for a place where the Wolves don't come.'

She turned to Eisenhart, and although she spoke to Roland, it was her husband she looked at as she had her final word.

'One of every two; that's the Wolves' bounty. That's what they take every twenty-some, for many and many-a. Except for us. They took all of our children. Every… single… one.' She leaned forward and tapped Roland's leg just above the knee with great emphasis. 'Do ya not see it.'

Silence fell on the back porch. The condemned steers in the slaughter-pen mooed moronically. From the kitchen came the sound of boy-laughter following some comment of Andy's.

Eisenhart had dropped his head. Roland could see nothing but the extravagant bush of his mustache, but he didn't need to see the man's face to know that he was either weeping or struggling very hard not to.

'I'd not make'ee feel bad for all the rice of the Arc,' she said, and stroked her husband's shoulder with infinite tenderness.

'And they come back betimes, aye, which is more than the dead do, except in our dreams. They're not so old that they don't miss their mother, or have how-do-ye-do-it questions for their Da'. But they're gone, nevertheless. And that's the price of safety, as ye must ken.' She looked down at Eisenhart for a moment, one hand on his shoulder and the other still beneath her apron. 'Now tell how angry with me you are,' she said, 'for I'd know.'

Eisenhart shook his head. 'Not angry,' he said in a muffled voice.

'And have'ee changed your mind?'

Eisenhart shook his head again.

'Stubborn old thing,' she said, but she spoke with good-humored affection. 'Stubborn as a stick, aye, and we all say thankya.'

'I'm thinking about it,' he said, still not looking up. 'Still thinking, which is more than I expected at this late date— usually I make up my mind and there's the end of it.

'Roland, I understand young Jake showed Overholser and the rest of em some shooting out in the woods. Might be we could show you something right here that'd raise your eyebrows. Maggie, go in and get your Oriza.'

'No need,' she said, at last taking her hand from beneath her apron, 'for I brought it out with me, and here 'tis.'

FOUR

It was a plate both Detta and Mia would have recognized, a blue plate with a delicate webbed pattern. A forspecial plate. After a moment Roland recognized the webbing for what it was: young oriza, the seedling rice plant. When sai Eisenhart tapped her knuckles on the plate, it gave out a peculiar high ringing. It looked like china,