The children started off, helped into the ditch by Callahan, Sarey Adams, the Javiers, and Ben Slightman. All the adults looked anxious; only Benny's Da' looked mistrustful, as well.
"The Wolves will start in because they've reason to believe the children are up there," Roland said, "but they're not fools, Wayne. They'll look for sign and we'll give it to em. If they smell - and I'd bet this town's last rice crop that they do - they'll have scent as well as dropped shoes and ribbons to look at. After the smell of the main group stops, that of the four I sent first will carry on yet awhile farther. It may suck em in deeper, or it may not. By then it shouldn't matter."
"But - "
Roland ignored him. He turned toward his little band of fighters. They would be seven in all. It's a good number , he told himself. A number of power . He looked beyond them at the dust-cloud. It rose higher than any of the remaining seminon dust-devils, and was moving with horrible speed. Yet for the time being, Roland thought they were all right.
"Listen and hear." It was Zalia, Margaret, and Rosa to whom he was speaking. The members of his own ka-tet already knew this part, had since old Jamie whispered his long-held secret into Eddie's ear on the Jaffordses' porch. "The Wolves are neither men nor monsters; they're robots."
"Robots ! "Overholser shouted, but with surprise rather than disbelief.
"Aye, and of a kind my ka-tet has seen before," Roland said. He was thinking of a certain clearing where the great bear's final surviving retainers had chased each other in an endless worry-circle. "They wear hoods to conceal tiny twirling things on top of their heads. They're probably this wide and this long." Roland showed them a height of about two inches and a length of about five. "It's what Molly Doolin hit and snapped off with her dish, once upon a time. She hit by accident. We'll hit a-purpose."
"Thinking-caps," Eddie said. "Their connection to the outside world. Without em, they're as dead as dogshit."
"Aim here." Roland held his right hand an inch above the crown of his head.
"But the chests... the gills in the chests..." Margaret began, sounding utterly bewildered.
"Bullshit now and ever was," Roland said. "Aim at the tops of the hoods."
"Someday," Tian said, "I'm going to know why there had to be so much buggering bullshit."
"I hope there is a someday," Roland said. The last of the children - the youngest ones - were just starting up the path, obediently holding hands. The eldest would be perhaps an eighth of a mile up, Jake's quartet at least an eighth of a mile beyond that. It would have to be enough. Roland turned his attention to the child-minders.
"Now they come back," he said. "Take them across the ditch and through the corn in two side-by-side rows." He cocked a thumb over his shoulder without looking. "Do I have to tell you how important it is that the corn-plants not be disturbed, especially close to the road, where the Wolves can see?"
They shook their heads.
"At the edge of the rice," Roland continued, "take them into one of the streams. Lead them almost to the river, then have them lie down where it's tall and still green." He moved his hands apart, his blue eyes blazing. "Spread em out. You grownups get on the river side of em. If there's trouble - more Wolves, something else we don't expect - that's the side it'll come from."
Without giving them a chance to ask questions, Roland buried his fingers in the corners of his mouth again and whistled. Vaughn Eisenhart, Krella Anselm, and Wayne Overholser joined the others in the ditch and began bellowing for the little 'uns to turn around and start back toward the road. Eddie, meanwhile, took another look over his shoulder and was stunned to see how far toward the river the dust-cloud had progressed. Such rapid movement made perfect sense once you knew the secret; those gray horses weren't horses at all, but mechanical conveyances disguised to look like horses, no more than that. Like a fleet of government Chewies , he thought.
"Roland, they're coming fast! Like hell!"
Roland looked. "We're all right," he said.
"Are you sure?" Rosa asked.
"Yes."
The youngest children were now hurrying back across the road, hand-in-hand, bug-eyed with fear and excitement. Cantab of the Manni and Ara, his wife, were leading them. She told them to walk straight down the middle of the rows and try not to even brush any of the skeletal plants.
"Why, sai?" asked one tyke, surely no older than four. There was a suspicious dark patch on the front of his overalls. "Corn all picked, see."
"It's a game," Cantab said. "A don't-touch-the-corn game." He began to sing. Some of the children joined in, but most were too bewildered and frightened.