They burst up and out of the earth like dragon's teeth. Boards flew away to either side of them, along with dry flurries of weeds and leaves. Roland and Eddie each had one of the big revolvers with the sandalwood grips. Jake had his father's Ruger. Margaret, Rosa, and Zalia each held a Riza. Susannah had two, her arms crossed over her br**sts as though she were cold.
The Wolves were deployed exactly as Roland had seen them with the cool killer's eye of his imagination, and he felt a moment of triumph before all lesser thought and emotion was swept away beneath the red curtain. As always, he was never so happy to be alive as when he was preparing to deal death. Five minutes' worth of blood and stupidity , he'd told them, and here those five minutes were. He'd also told them he always felt sick afterward, and while that was true enough, he never felt so fine as he did at this moment of beginning; never felt so completely and truly himself. Here were the tag ends of glory's old cloud. It didn't matter that they were robots; gods, no! What mattered was that they had been preying on the helpless for generations, and this time they had been caught utterly and completely by surprise.
"Top of the hoods !" Eddie screamed, as in his right hand Roland's pistol began to thunder and spit fire. The harnessed horses and mules reared in the traces; a couple screamed in surprise. "Top of the hoods, get the thinking-caps !"
And, as if to demonstrate his point, the green hoods of three riders to the right of the path twitched as if plucked by invisible fingers. Each of the three beneath pitched bonelessly out of their saddles and struck the ground. In Gran-pere's story of the Wolf Molly Doolin had brought down, there had been a good deal of twitching afterward, but these three lay under the feet of their prancing horses as still as stones. Molly might not have hit the hidden "thinking-cap" cleanly, but Eddie knew what he was shooting for, and had.
Roland also began to fire, shooting from the hip, shooting almost casually, but each bullet found its mark. He was after the ones on the path, wanting to pile up bodies there, to make a barricade if he could.
"Riza flies true! " Rosalita Munoz shrieked. The plate she was holding left her hand and bolted across the East Road with an unremitting rising shriek. It clipped through the hood of a rider at the head of the arroyo path who was trying desperately to rein his horse around. The thing fell backward, feet up to heaven, and landed upside down with its boots in the road.
"Riza !" That was Margaret Eisenhart.
"For my brother !" Zalia cried.
"Lady Riza come for your asses, you bastards !" Susannah uncrossed her arms and threw both plates outward. They flew, screaming, crisscrossed in midair, and both found their mark. Scraps of green hooding fluttered down; the Wolves to whom the hoods had belonged fell faster and harder.
Bright rods of fire now glowed in the morning light as the jostling, struggling riders on either side of the path unsheathed their energy weapons. Jake shot the thinking-cap of the first one to unsheathe and it fell on its own bitterly sizzling sword, catching its cloak afire. Its horse shied sideways, into the descending light-stick of the rider to the direct left. Its head came off, disclosing a nest of sparks and wires. Now the sirens began to blat steadily, burglar alarms in hell.
Roland had thought the Wolves closest to town might try to break off and flee toward the Calla. Instead the nine on that side still left - Eddie had taken six with his first six shots - spurred past the buckas and directly toward them. Two or three hurled humming silvery balls.
"Eddie! Jake! Sneetches! Your right!"
They swung in that direction immediately, leaving the women, who were hurling plates as fast as they could pull them from their silk-lined bags. Jake was standing with his legs spread and the Ruger held out in his right hand, his left bracing his right wrist. His hair was blowing back from his brow. He was wide-eyed and handsome, smiling. He squeezed off three quick shots, each one a whipcrack in the morning air. He had a vague, distant memory of the day in the woods when he had shot pottery out of the sky. Now he was shooting at something far more dangerous, and he was glad. Glad . The first three of the flying balls exploded in brilliant flashes of bluish light. A fourth jinked, then zipped straight at him. Jake ducked and heard it pass just above his head, humming like some sort of pissed-off toaster oven. It would turn, he knew, and come back.
Before it could, Susannah swiveled and fired a plate at it. The plate flew straight to the mark, howling. When it struck, both it and the sneetch exploded. Sharpnel rained down in the corn-plants, setting some of them alight.