He looked at Patrick. The mute boy looked anxiously back, trying to smile. Roland took his hand, and they crested the hill in that fashion.
Below them was a great blanket of red that stretched to the horizon in every direction. The road cut through it, a dusty white line perfectly straight and perhaps twelve feet wide. In the middle of the rose-field stood the sooty dark gray Tower, just as it had stood in his dreams; its windows gleamed in the sun. Here the road split and made a perfect white circle around the Tower's base to continue on the other side, in a direction Roland believed was now dead east instead of south-by-east.
Another road ran off at right angles to the Tower Road: to the north and south, if he was right in believing that the points of the compass had been re-established. From above, the Dark Tower would look like the center of a blood-filled gunsight.
"It's-" Roland began, and then a great, crazed shriek floated to them on the breeze, weirdly undiminished by the distance of miles. It comes on the Beam, Roland thought. And it's carried by the roses.
"GUNSLINGER!"screamed the Crimson King. "NOW YOU DIE!"
There was a whisding sound, thin at first and then growing, cutting through the combined song of the Tower and die roses like the keenest blade ever ground on a wheel dusted with diamonds.
Patrick stood transfixed, peering dumbly at the Tower; he would have been blown out of his boots if not for Roland, whose reflexes were as quick as ever. He pulled the mute boy behind die heaped stone of the pyramid by their joined hands.
There were other stones hidden in the high grass of dock and jimson; they stumbled over these and went sprawling. Roland felt the corner of one digging painfully into his ribs.
The whistle continued to rise, becoming an earsplitting whine. Roland saw a golden something flash past in the air-one of the sneetches. It struck the cart and it blew up, scattering their gunna every which way. Most of the stuff settled back to the road, cans rattling and bouncing, some of them burst.
Then came high, chattering laughter that set Roland's teeth on edge; beside him, Patrick covered his ears. The lunacy in that laughter was almost unbearable.
"COME OUT!" urged that distant, mad, laughing voice.
"COME OUT AND PLAY, ROLAND! COME TO ME! COME TO YOUR TO\WR, AFTER ALL THE LONG YEARS WILL YOU NOT?"
Patrick looked at him, his eyes desperate and frightened.
He was holding his drawing pad against his chest like a shield.
Roland peered carefully around the edge of the pyramid, and there, on a balcony two levels up from the Tower's base, he saw exactly what he had seen in sai Sayre's painting: one blob of red and three blobs of white; a face and two upraised hands.
But this was no painting, and one of the hands moved rapidly forward in a throwing gesture and there came another hellish, rising whine. Roland rolled back against the tumble of the pyramid. There was a pause that seemed endless, and then the sneetch struck the pyramid's other side and exploded.
The concussion threw them forward onto their faces. Patrick screamed in terror. Rocks flew to either side in a spray. Some of them rattled down on the road, but Roland saw not a single piece of shrapnel strike so much as a single rose.
The boy scrambled to his knees and would have run-likely back into the road-but Roland grabbed him by the collar of his hide coat and yanked him down again.
"We're safe enough here," he murmured to Patrick.
"Look." He reached into a hole revealed by the falling rock, knocked on the interior with his knuckles, produced a dull ringing noise, and showed his teeth in a strained grin. "Steel!
Yar! He can hit this thing with a dozen of his flying fireballs and not knock it down. All he can do is blast away the rocks and blocks and expose what lies beneadi. Kennit? And I don't think he'll waste his ammunition. He can't have much more than a donkey's carry."
Before Patrick could reply, Roland peered around the pyramid's ragged edge once more. He cupped his hands around his mouth and screamed: "TRYAGAIN, SAI! WE'RE STILL HERE, BUT PERHAPS YOUR NEXT THROW WILL BE LUCKY!"
There was a moment of silence, then an insane scream:
"FFFFFFFFFFF! YOU DON'T DARE MOCK ME! YOU DON'T DARE! FFFFFFFFFFF."
Now came another of tiiose rising whisdes. Roland grabbed Patrick and fell on top of him, behind the pyramid but not against it. He was afraid it might vibrate hard enough when the sneetch struck to give them concussion injuries, or turn their soft insides to jelly.
Only this time the sneetch didn't strike the pyramid. It flew past it instead, soaring above the road. Roland rolled off Patrick and onto his back. His eyes picked up the golden blur and marked the place where it buttonhooked back toward its targets. He shot it out of the air like a clay plate. There was a blinding flash and then it was gone.