Wizard and glass - By Stephen King Page 0,269

as simple as he’d made them sound.

Jonas fell back until his horse was pacing alongside the black cart. The ball was out of its bag and lay in Rhea’s lap. “Anything?” he asked. He both hoped and dreaded to see that deep pink pulse inside it again.

“Nay. It’ll speak when it needs to, though—count on it.”

“Then what good are you, old woman?”

“Ye’ll know when the time comes,” Rhea said, looking at him with arrogance (and some fear as well, he was happy to see).

Jonas spurred his horse back to the head of the little column. He had decided to take the ball from Rhea at the slightest sign of trouble. In truth, it had already inserted its strange, addicting sweetness into his head; he thought about that single pink pulse of light he’d seen far too much.

Balls, he told himself. Battlesweat’s all I’ve got. Once this business is over, I’ll be my old self again.

Nice if true, but . . .

. . . but he had, in truth, begun to wonder.

Renfrew was now riding with Clay. Jonas nudged his horse in between them. His dicky leg was aching like a bastard; another bad sign.

“Lengyll?” he asked Renfrew.

“Putting together a good bunch,” Renfrew said, “don’t you fear Fran Lengyll. Thirty men.”

“Thirty! God Harry’s body, I told you I wanted forty! Forty at least!”

Renfrew measured him with a pale-eyed glance, then winced at a particularly vicious gust of the freshening wind. He pulled his neckerchief up over his mouth and nose. The vaqs riding behind had already done so. “How afraid of these three boys are you, Jonas?”

“Afraid for both of us, I guess, since you’re too stupid to know who they are or what they’re capable of.” He raised his own neckerchief, then forced his voice into a more reasonable timbre. It was best he do so; he needed these bumpkins yet awhile longer. Once the ball was turned over to Latigo, that might change. “Though mayhap we’ll never see them.”

“It’s likely they’re already thirty miles from here and riding west as fast as their horses’ll take em,” Renfrew agreed. “I’d give a crown to know how they got loose.”

What does it matter, you idiot? Jonas thought, but said nothing.

“As for Lengyll’s men, they’ll be the hardest boys he can lay hands on—if it comes to a fight, those thirty will fight like sixty.”

Jonas’s eyes briefly met Clay’s. I’ll believe it when I see it, Clay’s brief glance said, and Jonas knew again why he had always liked this one better than Roy Depape.

“How many armed?”

“With guns? Maybe half. They’ll be no more than an hour behind us.”

“Good.” At least their back door was covered. It would have to do. And he couldn’t wait to be rid of that thrice-cursed ball.

Oh? whispered a sly, half-mad voice from a place much deeper than his heart. Oh, can’t you?

Jonas ignored the voice until it stilled. Half an hour later, they turned off the road and onto the Drop. Several miles ahead, moving in the wind like a silver sea, was the Bad Grass.

7

Around the time that Jonas and his party were riding down the Drop, Roland, Cuthbert, and Alain were swinging up into their saddles. Susan and Sheemie stood by the doorway to the hut, holding hands and watching them solemnly.

“Thee’ll hear the explosions when the tankers go, and smell the smoke,” Roland said. “Even with the wind the wrong way, I think thee’ll smell it. Then, no more than an hour later, more smoke. There.” He pointed. “That’ll be the brush piled in front of the canyon’s mouth.”

“And if we don’t see those things?”

“Into the west. But thee will, Sue. I swear thee will.”

She stepped forward, put her hands on his thigh, and looked up at him in the latening moonlight. He bent; put his hand lightly against the back of her head; put his mouth on her mouth.

“Go thy course in safety,” Susan said as she drew back from him.

“Aye,” Sheemie added suddenly. “Stand and be true, all three.” He came forward himself and shyly touched Cuthbert’s boot.

Cuthbert reached down, took Sheemie’s hand, and shook it. “Take care of her, old boy.”

Sheemie nodded seriously. “I will.”

“Come on,” Roland said. He felt that if he looked at her solemn, upturned face again, he would cry. “Let’s go.”

They rode slowly away from the hut. Before the grass closed behind them, hiding it from view, he looked back a final time.

“Sue, I love thee.”

She smiled. It was a beautiful smile. “Bird and bear and