Roland nodded.

She touched the side of one of the tankers. Her fingers came away oily. She rubbed the tips together, smelled them, then bent and picked up a swatch of grass to wipe her hands. “This doesn’t work in our machines. It’s been tried. It clogs them.”

Roland nodded again. “My fa-my folk in the Inner Crescent know that as well. And count on it. But if Farson has gone to this trouble-and split aside a troop of men to come and get these tankers, as we have word he has done-he either knows a way to thin it to usefulness, or he thinks he does. If he’s able to lure the forces of the Affiliation into a battle in some close location where rapid retreat is impossible, and if he can use machine-weapons like the ones that go on treads, he could win more than a battle. He could slaughter ten thousand horse-mounted fighting men and win the war.”

“But surely yer fathers know this…?”

Roland shook his head in frustration. How much their fathers knew was one question. What they made of what they knew was another. What forces drove them-necessity, fear, the fantastic pride which had also been handed down, father to son, along the line of Arthur Eld-was yet a third. He could only tell her his clearest surmise.

“I think they daren’t wait much longer to strike Farson a mortal blow. If they do, the Affiliation will simply rot out from the inside. And if that happens, a good deal of Mid-World will go with it.”

“But… “She paused, biting her lip, shaking her head. “Surely even Farson must know… understand…” She looked up at him with wide eyes. “The ways of the Old People are the ways of death. Everyone knows that, so they do.”

Roland of Gilead found himself remembering a cook named Hax, dangling at the end of a rope while the rooks pecked up scattered breadcrumbs from beneath the dead man’s feet. Hax had died for Farson. But before that, he had poisoned children for Farson.

“Death,” he said, “is what John Parson’s all about.”

17

In the orchard again.

It seemed to the lovers (for so they now were, in all but the most physical sense) that hours had passed, but it had been no more than forty-live minutes. Summer’s last moon, diminished but still bright, continued to shine above them.

She led him down one of the lanes to where she had tied her horse. Pylon nodded his head and whickered softly at Roland. He saw the horse had been rigged for silence-every buckle padded, and the stirrups themselves wrapped in felt.

Then he turned to Susan.

Who can remember the pangs and sweetness of those early years? We remember our first real love no more clearly than the illusions that caused us to rave during a high fever. On that night and beneath that fading moon, Roland Deschain and Susan Delgado were nearly torn apart by their desire for each other; they floundered for what was right and ached with feelings that were both desperate and deep.

All of which is to say that they stepped toward each other, stepped back, looked into each other’s eyes with a kind of helpless fascination, stepped forward again, and stopped. She remembered what he had said with a kind of horror: that he would do anything for her but share her with another man. She would not-perhaps could not-break her promise to Mayor Thorin, and it seemed that Roland would not (or could not) break it for her. And here was the most horrible thing of all: strong as the wind of ka might be, it appeared that honor and the promises they had made would prove stronger.

“What will ye do now?” she asked through dry lips.

“I don’t know. I must think, and I must speak with my friends. Will you have trouble with your aunt when you go home? Will she want to know where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing?”

“Is it me you’re concerned about or yourself and yer plans, Willy?”

He didn’t respond, only looked at her. After a moment, Susan dropped her eyes.

“I’m sorry, that was cruel. No, she’ll not tax me. I often ride at night, although not often so far from the house.”

“She won’t know how far you’ve ridden?”

“Nay. And these days we tread carefully around each other. It’s like having two powder magazines in the same house.” She reached out her hands. She had tucked her gloves into her belt, and the fingers which grasped his fingers were cold. “This’ll have no good end,” she said in a whisper.

“Don’t say that, Susan.”

“Aye, I do. I must. But whatever comes, I love thee, Roland.”

He took her in his arms and kissed her. When he released her lips, she put them to his ear and whispered, “If you love me, then love me. Make me break my promise.”

For a long moment when her heart didn’t beat, there was no response from him, and she allowed herself to hope. Then he shook his head-only the one time, but firmly. “Susan, I cannot.”

“Is yer honor so much greater than yer professed love for me, then? Aye? Then let it be so.” She pulled out of his arms, beginning to cry, ignoring his hand on her boot as she swung up into the saddle-his low call to wait, as well. She yanked free the slipknot with which Pylon had been tethered and turned him with one spurless foot. Roland was still calling to her, louder now, but she flung Pylon into a gallop and away from him before her brief flare of rage could go out. He would not take her used, and her promise to Thorin had been made before she knew Roland walked the face of the earth. That being so, how dare he insist that the loss of honor and consequent shame be hers alone? Later, lying in her sleepless bed, she would realize he had insisted nothing. And she was not even clear of the orange grove before raising her left hand to the side of her face, feeling the wetness there, and realizing that he had been crying, too.

18

Roland rode the lanes outside town until well past moonset, trying to get his roaring emotions under some kind of control. He would wonder for awhile what he was going to do about their discovery at Citgo, and then his thoughts would shift to Susan again. Was he a fool for not taking her when she wanted to be taken? For not sharing what she wanted to share? If you love me, then love me. Those words had nearly torn him open. Yet in the deep rooms of his heart rooms where the clearest voice was that of his father he felt he had not been wrong. Nor was it just a matter of honor, whatever she might think. But let her think that if she would; better she should hate him a little, perhaps, than realize how deep the danger was for both of them.

Around three o’ the clock, as he was about to turn for the Bar K, he heard the rapid drumming of hoofbeats on the main road, approaching from the west. Without thinking about why it seemed so important to do so, Roland swung back in that direction, then brought Rusher to a stop behind a high line of run-to-riot hedges. For nearly ten minutes the sound of the hoofbeats continued to swell-sound carried far in the deep quiet of early morning-and that was quite enough time for Roland to feel he knew who was riding toward Hambry hell-for-leather just two hours before dawn. Nor was he mistaken. The moon was down, but he had no trouble, even through the brambly interstices of the hedge, recognizing Roy Depape. By dawn the Big Coffin Hunters would be three again.

Roland turned Rusher back the way he had been heading, and rode to rejoin his own friends.