Wolves of the Calla

"Nup," Overholser said, then drove his feet into his horse's sides and yanked its head around (just looking at this made Eddie wince). He headed down the path. The others followed.

FIVE

Eddie never forgot their first encounter with those of the Calla; that was one memory always within easy reach. Because everything that happened had been a surprise, he supposed, and when everything's a surprise, experience takes on a dreamlike quality. He remembered the way the torches changed when the speaking was done-their strange, varied light. He remembered Oy's unexpected salute to the crowd. The upturned faces and his suffocating panic and his anger at Roland. Susa

Of Roland dancing.

But before any of these things came the ride down the Calla's high street, and his sense of forboding. His premonition of bad days on the way.

SIX

They reached the town proper an hour before sunset. The clouds parted and let through the day's last red light. The street was empty. The surface was oiled dirt. The horses' hooves made muffled thuds on the wheel-marked hardpack. Eddie saw a livery stable, a place called the Travelers' Rest that seemed a combination lodging-house and eating-house, and, at the far end of the street, a large two-story that just about had to be the Calla's Gathering Hall. Off to the right of this was the flare of torches, so he supposed there were people waiting there, but at the north end of town where they entered there were none.

The silence and the empty board sidewalks began to give Eddie the creeps. He remembered Roland's tale of Susan's final ride into Mejis in the back of a cart, standing with her hands tied in front of her and a noose around her neck. Her road had been empty, too. At first. Then, not far from the intersection of the Great Road and the Silk Ranch Road, Susan and her captors had passed a single farmer, a man with what Roland had called lamb-slaughterer's eyes. Later she would be pelted with vegetables and sticks, even with stones, but this lone farmer had been first, standing there with his handful of cornshucks, which he had tossed almost gently at her as she passed on her way to… well, on her way to charyou tree, the Reap Fair of the Old People.

As they rode into Calla Bryn Sturgis, Eddie kept expecting that man, those lamb-slaughterer's eyes, and the handful of cornshucks. Because this town felt bad to him. Not evil-evil as Mejis had likely been on the night of Susan Delgado's death- but bad in a simpler way. Bad as in bad luck, bad choices, bad omens. Bad ka, maybe.

He leaned toward Slightman the Elder. "Where in the heck is everyone, Ben?"

"Yonder," Slightman said, and pointed to the flare of the torches.

"Why are they so quiet?" Jake asked.

"They don't know what to expect," Callahan said. "We're cut off here. The outsiders we do see from time to time are the occasional peddler, harrier, gambler… oh, and the lake-boat marts sometimes stop in high summer."

"What's a lake-boat mart?" Susa

Callahan described a wide flatboat, paddlewheel-driven and gaily painted, covered with small shops. These made their slow way down the Devar-Tete Whye, stopping to trade at the Callas of the Middle Crescent until their goods were gone. Shoddy stuff for the most part, Callahan said, but Eddie wasn't sure he trusted him entirely, at least on the subject of the lake-boat marts; he spoke with the almost unconscious distaste of the longtime religious.

"And the other outsiders come to steal their children," Callahan concluded. He pointed to the left, where a long wooden building seemed to take up almost half the high street. Eddie counted not two hitching rails or four, but eight. Long ones. "Took's General Store, may it do ya fine," Callahan said, with what might have been sarcasm.

They reached the Pavilion. Eddie later put the number present at seven or eight hundred, but when he first saw them- a mass of hats and bo

They will throw shit at us, he thought. Throw shit at us and yell "Charyou tree." The idea was ridiculous but also strong.

The Calla-folk moved back on two sides, creating an aisle of green grass which led to a raised wooden platform. Ringing the Pavilion were torches caught in iron cages. At that point, they still all flared a quite ordinary yellow. Eddie's nose caught the strong reek of oil.

Overholser dismounted. So did the others of his party. Eddie, Susa

Overholser started briskly up the path, shaking a few hands along the way. Callahan walked directly behind him, occasionally sketching the sign of the cross in the air. Other hands reached out of the crowd to secure the horses. Roland, Eddie, and Jake walked three abreast. Oy was still in the wide front pocket of the poncho Be

Eddie realized he could actually smell the crowd-sweat and hair and sunburned skin and the occasional splash of what the characters in the Western movies usually called (with contempt similar to Callahan's for the lake-boat marts) "foo-foo water." He could also smell food: pork and beef, fresh bread, frying onions, coffee and graf. His stomach rumbled, yet he wasn't hungry. No, not really hungry. The idea that the path they were walking would disappear and these people would close in on them wouldn't leave his mind. They were so quiet! Somewhere close by he could hear the first nightjars and whippoor-wills tuning up for evening.

Overholser and Callahan mounted the platform. Eddie was alarmed to see that none of the others of the party which had ridden out to meet them did. Roland walked up the three broad wooden steps without hesitation, however. Eddie followed, conscious that his knees were a little weak.

"You all right?" Susa

"So far."

To the left of the platform was a round stage with seven men on it, all dressed in white shirts, blue jeans, and sashes. Eddie recognized the instruments they were holding, and although the mandolin and banjo made him think their music would probably be of the shitkicking variety, the sight of them was still reassuring. They didn't hire bands to play at human sacrifices, did they? Maybe just a drummer or two, to wind up the spectators.

Eddie turned to face the crowd with Susa