Wolves of the Calla (5 page)

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 little 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—”

“Yar, 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 downstreet. 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
.

He raised the feather and they quieted.

“Everyone will have a chance to speak,” he said. “As for me, I say this: we can’t go on this way, simply bowing our heads and standing quiet when the Wolves come and take our children. They—”

“They always return them,” a hand named Farren Posella said timidly.

“They return husks!”
Tian cried, and there were a few cries of
Hear him
. Not enough, however, Tian judged. Not enough by far. Not yet.

He lowered his voice again. He did not want to harangue them. Overholser had tried that and gotten nowhere, a thousand acres or not.

“They return husks. And what of us? What is this doing to us? Some might say nothing, that the Wolves have always been a part of our life in Calla Bryn Sturgis, like the occasional cyclone or earthshake. Yet that is not true. They’ve been coming for six generations, at most. But the Calla’s been here a thousand years and more.”

The old Manni with the bony shoulders and baleful eyes half-rose. “He says true,
folken
. There were farmers here—and Manni-folk among em—when the darkness in Thunderclap hadn’t yet come, let alone the Wolves.”

They received this with looks of wonder. Their awe seemed to satisfy the old man, who nodded and sat back down.

“So in time’s greater course, the Wolves are almost a new thing,” Tian said. “Six times have they come over mayhap a hundred and twenty or a hundred and forty years. Who can say? For as ye ken, time has softened, somehow.”

A low rumble. A few nods.

“In any case, once a generation,” Tian went on. He was aware that a hostile contingent was coalescing around Overholser, Eisenhart, and Adams. Ben Slightman might or might not be with them—probably was. These men he would not move even if he were gifted with the tongue of an angel. Well, he could do without them, maybe. If he caught the rest. “Once a generation they come, and how many children do they take? Three dozen? Four?

“Sai Overholser may not have babbies this time,
but
I
do—not one set of twins but two. Heddon and Hedda, Lyman and Lia. I love all four, but in a month of days, two of them will be taken away. And when those two come back, they’ll be roont. Whatever spark there is that makes a complete human being, it’ll be out forever.”

Hear him, hear him
swept through the room like a sigh.

“How many of you have twins with no hair except that which grows on their heads?” Tian demanded. “Raise yer hands!”

Six men raised their hands. Then eight. A dozen. Every time Tian began to think they were done, another reluctant hand went up. In the end, he counted twenty-two hands, and of course not everyone who had children was here. He could see that Overholser was dismayed by such a large count. Diego Adams had his hand raised, and Tian was pleased to see he’d moved away a little bit from Overholser, Eisenhart, and Slightman. Three of the Manni had their hands up. Jorge Estrada. Louis Haycox. Many others he knew, which was not surprising, really; he knew almost every one of these men. Probably all save for a few wandering fellows working smallhold farms for short wages and hot dinners.

“Each time they come and take our children, they take a little more of our hearts and our souls,” Tian said.

“Oh come on now, son,” Eisenhart said. “That’s laying it on a bit th—”

“Shut up, Rancher,” a voice said. It belonged to the man who had come late, he with the scar on his forehead. It was shocking in its anger and contempt. “He’s got the feather. Let him speak out to the end.”

Eisenhart whirled around to mark who had spoken to him so. He saw, and made no reply. Nor was Tian surprised.

“Thankee, Pere,” Tian said evenly. “I’ve almost come to the end. I keep thinking of trees. You can strip the leaves of a strong tree and it will live. Cut its bark with many names and it will grow its skin over them again. You can even take from the heartwood and it will live. But if you take of the heartwood again and again and again, there will come a time when even the strongest tree must die. I’ve seen it happen on my farm, and it’s an ugly thing. They die from the inside out. You can see it in the leaves as they turn yellow from the trunk to the tips of the branches. And that’s what the Wolves are doing to this little village of ours. What they’re doing to our Calla.”

“Hear him!” cried Freddy Rosario from the next farm over. “Hear him very well!” Freddy had twins of his own, although they were still on the tit and so probably safe.

Tian went on, “You say that if we stand and fight, they’ll kill us all and burn the Calla from east-border to west.”

“Yes,”
Overholser said. “So I do say. Nor am I the only one.” From all around him came rumbles of agreement.

“Yet each time we simply stand by with our heads lowered and our hands open while the Wolves take what’s dearer to us than any crop or house or barn, they scoop a little more of the heart’s wood from the tree that is this village!” Tian spoke strongly, now standing still with the feather raised high in one hand. “If we don’t stand and fight soon, we’ll
be dead anyway! This is what I say, Tian Jaffords, son of Luke! If we don’t stand and fight soon, we’ll be roont ourselves!”

Loud cries of
Hear him!
Exuberant stomping of shor’boots. Even some applause.

George Telford, another rancher, whispered briefly to Eisenhart and Overholser. They listened, then nodded. Telford rose. He was silver-haired, tanned, and handsome in the weatherbeaten way women seemed to like.

“Had your say, son?” he asked kindly, as one might ask a child if he had played enough for one afternoon and was ready for his nap.

“Yar, reckon,” Tian said. He suddenly felt dispirited. Telford wasn’t a rancher on a scale with Vaughn Eisenhart, but he had a silver tongue. Tian had an idea he was going to lose this, after all.

“May I have the feather, then?”

Tian thought of holding onto it, but what good would it do? He’d said his best. Had tried. Perhaps he and Zalia should pack up the kids and go out west themselves, back toward the Mids. Moon to moon before the Wolves came, according to Andy. A person could get a hell of a head start on trouble in thirty days.