"And if we should, do you think that Mordred will?" Roland asked. "Do you think he'll simply pass by and leave whoever lives there in peace?"
Here was a question that hadn't even occurred to her, and of course the answer was no. If Mordred decided he could kill whoever was in the cottage, he'd do it. For food if the inhabitants were edible, but food would only be a secondary consideration.
The woods behind them had been teeming with game, and even if Mordred hadn't been able to catch his own supper
(and in his spider form, Susannah was sure he would have been perfectly capable of doing that), diey had left the remains of their own meals at a good many camps. No, he would come out of the snowy uplands fed... but not happy. Not happy at all.
And so woe to whoever happened to be in his path.
On the other hand, she thought... only there was no other hand, and all at once it was too late, anyway. The front door of the cottage opened, and an old man came out onto the stoop.
He was wearing boots, jeans, and a heavy parka with a furlined hood. To Susannah this latter garment looked like something that might have been purchased at the Army-Navy Surplus Store in Greenwich Village.
The old man was rosy-cheeked, the picture of wintry good health, but he limped heavily, depending on the stout stick in his left hand. From behind his quaint little cottage with its fairy-tale plume of smoke came the piercing whinny of a horse.
"Sure, Lippy, I see em!" the old man cried, turning in that direction. "I got a'least one good eye left, ain't I?" Then he turned back to where Roland stood on the snowbank with Susannah and Oy flanking him. He raised his stick in a salute that seemed both merry and unafraid. Roland raised his own hand in return.
"Looks like we're in for some palaver whether we want it or not," said Roland.
"I know," she replied. Then, to the bumbler: "Oy, mind your manners now, you hear?"
Oy looked at her and then back at the old man without making a sound. On the subject of minding his manners he'd keep his own counsel awhile, it seemed.
The old man's bad leg was clearly very bad-"Next door to nuthin," Daddy Mose Carver would have said-but he got on well enough with his stick, moving in a sideways hopping gait that Susannah found both amusing and admirable. "Spry as a cricket" was another of Daddy Mose's many sayings, and perhaps this one fit yonder old man better. Certainly she saw no harm or danger in a white-haired fellow (the hair was long and baby-fine, hanging to the shoulders of his anorak) who had to hop along on a stick. And, as he drew closer, she saw that one of his eyes was filmed white with a cataract. The pupil, which was faintly visible, seemed to look dully off to their left. The other, however, regarded the newcomers with lively interest as the inhabitant of the cottage hopped down Odd's Lane toward them.
The horse whinnied again and the old man waved his stick wildly against the white, low-lying sky. "Shut up ya haybox, ya turdfactory, y'old clap-cunt gammer-gurt, ain't you ever seen cump'ny before? Was ya born in a barn, hee-hee? (For if y'wasn't, I'm a blue-eyed baboon, which there ain't no such thing!)"
Roland snorted with genuine laughter, and the last of Susannah's watchful apprehension departed. The horse whinnied again from the outbuilding behind the cottage-it was nowhere near grand enough to be called a barn-and the old man waved his stick at it once more, almost falling to the snowpack in the process. His awkward but nonetheless rapid gait had now brought him halfway to their location. He saved himself from what would have been a nasty tumble, took a large sidle-hop using the stick for a prop, then waved it cheerily in their direction.
"Hile, gunslingers!" the old man shouted. His lungs, at least, were admirable. "Gunslingers on pilgrimage to the Dark Tower, so y'are, so ya must be, for don't I see the big irons with the yaller grips? And the Beam be back, fair and strong, for I feel it and Lippy do, too! Spry as a colt she's been ever since Christmas, or what I call Christmas, not having a calendar nor seen Sainty Claus, which I wouldn't expect, for have I been a good boy? Never! Never! Good boys go to heaven, and all my friends be in t'other place, toastin marshmallows and drinkin Nozzy spiked with whiskey in the devil's den! Arrr, ne'mine, my tongue's caught in the middle and runs on both ends! Hile to one, hile to t'other, and hile to the little furry gobbins in between! Billy-bumbler as I live and breathe! Yow, ain't it good to see ya! Joe Collins is my name, Joe Collins of Odd's Lane, plenty odd m'self, one-eyed and lame I am, but otherwise at your service!"