TWO
They made their way slowly down the wide white downslope with Oy first hurrying at Roland's heel, then dropping behind to check on Susannah, then bounding back to Roland again.
Bright blue holes sometimes opened above them. Roland knew that was the Beam at work, constantly pulling the cloud-cover southeast. Otherwise, the sky was white from horizon to horizon, and had a low full look both of them now recognized. More snow was on the come, and the gunslinger had an idea this storm might be the worst they'd seen. The wind was getting up, and the moisture in it was enough to numb all his exposed skin
(after three weeks of diligent needlework, that amounted to not much more than his forehead and the tip of his nose). The gusts lifted long diaphanous scarves of white. These raced past them and then on down the slope like fantastical, shape-changing ballet-dancers.
"They're beautiful, aren't they?" Susannah asked from behind him, almost wistfully.
Roland of Gilead, no judge of beauty (except once, in the ntland of Mejis), grunted. He knew what would be beautiful to him: decent cover when the storm overtook them, something more than just a thick grove of trees. So he almost doubted what he saw when the latest gust of wind blew itself out and the snow settled. He dropped the tow-band, stepped out of it, went back to Susannah (their gunna, now on the increase again, was strapped to the sledge behind her), and dropped on one knee next to her. Dressed in hides from top to toe, he looked more like a mangy bigfoot than a man.
"What do you make of that?" he asked her.
The wind kicked up again, harder than ever, at first obscuring what he had seen. When it dropped, a hole opened above them and the sun shone briefly through, lighting the snowfield with billions of diamond-chip sparkles. Susannah shaded her eyes with one hand and looked long downhill. What she saw was an inverted T carved in the snow. The cross arm, closest to them
(but still at least two miles away) was relatively short, perhaps two hundred feet on either side. The long arm, however, was very long, going all the way to the horizon and then disappearing over it.
"Those are roads!" she said. "Someone's plowed a couple of roads down there, Roland!"
He nodded. "I thought so, but I wanted to hear you say it. I see something else, as well."
"What? Your eyes are sharper than mine, and by a lot."
"When we get a little closer, you'll see for yourself."
He tried to rise and she tugged impatiently at his arm.
"Don't you play that game with me. What is it?"
"Roofs," he said, giving in to her. "I think there are cottages down there. Mayhap even a town."
"People? Are you saying people?"
"Well, it looks like there's smoke coming from one of the houses. Although it's hard to tell for sure with the sky so white."
She didn't know if she wanted to see people or not. Certainly such would complicate things. "Roland, we'll have to be careful."
"Yes," he said, and went back to the tow-band again. Before he picked it up, he paused to readjust his gunbelt, dropping the holster a bit so it lay more comfortably near his left hand.
An hour later they came to the intersection of the lane and the road. It was marked by a snowbank easily eleven feet high, one that had been built by some sort of plow. Susannah could see tread-marks, like those made by a bulldozer, pressed into the packed snow. Rising out of this hardpack was a pole.
The street sign on top was no different from those she'd seen in all sorts of towns; at intersections in New York City, for that matter.
The one indicating the short road said ODDS LANE.
It was the other that thrilled her heart, however.
TOWER ROAD,
it read.
THREE
All but one of the cottages clustered around the intersection were deserted, and many lay in half-buried heaps, broken beneath the weight of accumulating snow. One, however-it was about three-quarters of the way down the lefthand arm of Odd's Lane-was clearly different from the others. The roof had been mostly cleared of its potentially crushing weight of snow, and a path had been shoveled from the lane to the front door. It was from the chimney of this quaint, tree-surrounded cottage that the smoke was issuing, feather-white. One window was lit a wholesome butter-yellow, too, but it was the smoke diat captured Susannah's eye. As far as she was concerned, it was the final touch. The only question in her mind was who would answer the door when they knocked. Would it be Hansel or his sister Gretel? (And were those two twins? Had anyone ever searched the matter?) Perhaps it would be Little Red Riding Hood, or Goldilocks, wearing a guilty goatee of porridge.
"Maybe we should just pass it by," she said, aware that she had dropped her voice to a near-whisper, even though they were still on the high snowbank created by the plow. "Give it a miss and say thank ya." She gestured to the sign reading TOWER ROAD. "We've got a clear way, Roland-maybe we ought to take it."
"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!"