They went on in silence for the next half an hour, Roland pulling Ho Fat's Luxury Taxi and Susannah riding. Then the narrow path (Badlands Avenue, she'd come to call it) tilted upward and she hopped down, catching up with him and then going along beside. For such forays she'd torn his Old Home Days tee-shirt in half and wore it wrapped around her hands. It protected her from sharp stones, and also warmed her fingers, at least a little.
He glanced down at her, then back at the path ahead. His lower lip was stuck out a bit and Susannah thought that surely he couldn't know how absurdly willful that expression was-like a three-year-old who has been denied a trip to the beach. He couldn't know and she wouldn't tell him. Later, maybe, when they could look back on this nightmare and laugh. When they could no longer remember what, exactly, was so terrible about a night when the temperature was forty-one degrees and you lay awake, shivering on the cold ground, watching the occasional meteor scrape cold fire across the sky, thinking Just a sweater, that's all I need. Just a sweater and I'd go along as happy as a parakeet at feeding time. And wondering if there was enough hide on Oy to make them each a pair of underdrawers and if killing him might not actually be doing the poor litde beastie a favor; he'd just been so sad since Jake passed into the clearing.
"Susannah," Roland said. "I was sharp with you just now, and I cry your pardon."
"There's no need," she said.
"I think there is. We've enough problems without making problems between us. Without making resentments between us."
She was quiet. Looking up at him as he looked off into the southeast, at the circling birds.
"Those rooks," he said.
She was quiet, waiting.
"In my childhood, we sometimes called them Gan's Blackbirds.
I told you and Eddie about how my friend Cuthbert and I spread bread for the birds after the cook was hanged, didn't I?"
"Yes."
"They were birds exactly like those, named Casde Rooks by some. Never Royal Rooks, though, for they were scavenger birds. You asked what yonder rooks live on. Could be they're scavenging in the yards and streets of his casde, now that he's departed."
"Le Casse Roi Russe, or Roi Rouge, or whatever you call it."
"Aye. I don't say for sure, but..."
Roland didn't finish and didn't need to. After that she kept an eye on the birds, and yes, they seemed to be both coming and going from the southeast. The birds might mean that they were making progress after all. It wasn't much, but enough to buoy her spirits for the rest of that day and deep into another shivering rotten-cold night.
SIX
The following morning, as they were eating another cold breakfast in another fireless camp (Roland had promised that tonight they would use some of the Sterno and have food that was at least warm), Susannah asked if she could look at the watch he had been given by the Tet Corporation. Roland passed it over to her willingly enough. She looked long at the three siguls cut into the cover, especially the Tower with its ascending spiral of windows. Then she opened it and looked inside. Without looking up at Roland she said, "Tell me again what they said to you."
"They were passing on what one of their good-minds told them. An especially talented one, by their accounts, although I don't remember his name. According to him, the watch may stop when we near the Dark Tower, or even begin to run backward."
"Hard to imagine a Patek Philippe running backward," she said. "According to this, it's eight-sixteen AM or PM back in New York. Here it looks about six-thirty AM, but I don't guess that means much, one way or the other. How're we supposed to know if this baby is running fast or slow?"
Roland had stopped storing goods in his gunna and was considering her question. "Do you see the tiny hand at the bottom?
The one that runs all by himself?"
"The second-hand, yes."
"Tell me when he's straight up."
She looked at the second-hand racing around in its own circle, and when it was in the noon position, she said, "Right now."
Roland was hunkered down, a position he could accomplish easily now that the pain in his hip was gone. He closed his eves and wrapped his arms around his knees. Each breath he exhaled emerged in a thin mist. Susannah tried not to look at this; it was as if the hated cold had actually grown strong enough to appear before them, still ghostlike but visible.
"Roland, what're you d-"
He raised a hand to her, palm out, not opening his eyes, and she hushed.
The second-hand hurried around its circle, first dipping down, then rising until it was straight up again. And when it had arrived there-
Roland opened his eyes and said, "That's a minute. A true minute, as I live beneath the Beam."
Her mouth dropped open. "How in the name of heaven did you do that?"