“Never let it worry you,” Roland said. “Ihave what I need here to cure it.”

“Say true?” she asked doubtfully.

“Yar. And these, which I never lost.” Hereached into his pocket and showed her a handful of aspirin tablets. Shethought the expression on his face was one of real reverence, and why not? Itmight be that he owed his life to what he called astin. Astin and cheflet.

They loaded their kill into the back of HoFat’s Luxury Taxi and dragged it down to the stream. It took three trips inall. After they’d stacked the carcasses, Roland carefully placed the head ofthe yearling buck atop the pile, where it looked at them from its glazed eyes.

“What you want that for?” Susannah asked,with a trace of Detta in her voice.

“We’re going to need all the brains we canget,” Roland said, and coughed dryly into his curled fist again. “It’s a dirtyway to do the job, but it’s quick, and it works.”

Five

When they had their kill piled beside theicy stream (“At least we don’t have the flies to worry about,” Roland said),the gunslinger began gathering deadwood. Susannah looked forward to the fire,but her terrible need of the previous night had departed. She had been workinghard, and for the time being, at least, was warm enough to suit her. She triedto remember the depth of her despair, how the cold had crept into her bones,turning them to glass, and couldn’t do it. Because the body had a way offorgetting the worst things, she supposed, and without the body’s cooperation,all the brain had were memories like faded snapshots.

Before beginning his wood-gathering chore,Roland inspected the bank of the icy stream and dug out a piece of rock. Hehanded it to her, and Susannah rubbed a thumb over its milky, water-smoothedsurface. “Quartz?” she asked, but she didn’t think it was. Not quite.

“I don’t know that word, Susannah. We callit chert. It makes tools that are primitive but plenty useful: axe-heads,knives, skewers, scrapers. It’s scrapers we’ll want. Also at least onehand-hammer.”

“I know what we’re going to scrape, butwhat are we going to hammer?”

“I’ll show you, but first will you join mehere for a moment?” Roland got down on his knees and took her cold hand in oneof his. Together they faced the deer’s head.

“We thank you for what we are about toreceive,” Roland told the head, and Susannah shivered. It was exactly how herfather began when he was giving the grace before a big meal, one where all thefamily was gathered.

Our own family is broken, shethought, but did not say; done was done. The response she gave was the one shehad been taught as a young girl: “Father, we thank thee.”

“Guide our hands and guide our hearts as wetake life from death,” Roland said. Then he looked at her, eyebrows raised,asking without speaking a word if she had more to say.

Susannah found that she did. “Our Father,Who art in heaven, hallow’d be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, onEarth as it is in heaven. Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those whotrespass against us. Lead us not into temptation; deliver us from evil; Thouart the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, now and forever.”

“That’s a lovely prayer,” he said.

“Yes,” she agreed. “I didn’t say it justright—it’s been a long time—but it’s still the best prayer. Nowlet’s do our business, while I can still feel my hands.”

Roland gave her an amen.

Six

Roland took the severed head of theyearling deer (the antler-nubs made lifting it easy), set it in front of him,then swung the fist-sized chunk of rock against the skull. There was a muffledcracking sound that made Susannah’s stomach cringe. Roland gripped the antlersand pulled, first left and then right. When Susannah saw the way the brokenskull wiggled under the hide, her stomach did more than cringe; it did a slowloop-the-loop.

Roland hit twice more, wielding the pieceof chert with near-surgical precision. Then he used his knife to cut a circlein the head-hide, which he pulled off like a cap. This revealed the crackedskull beneath. He worked the blade of his knife into the widest crack and usedit as a lever. When the deer’s brain was exposed, he took it out, set itcarefully aside, and looked at Susannah. “We’ll want the brains of every deerwe killed, and that’s what we need a hammer for.”

“Oh,” she said in a choked voice. “Brains.”

“To make a tanning slurry. But there’s moreuse for chert than that. Look.” He showed her how to bang two chunks togetheruntil one or both shattered, leaving large, nearly even pieces instead ofjagged lumps. She knew that metamorphic rocks broke that way, but schists andsuch were generally too weak to make good tools. This stuff was strong.

“When you get chunks that break thickenough to hold on one side but thin to an edge on the other,” Roland said, “laythem by. Those will be our scrapers. If we had more time we could make handles,but we don’t. Our hands will be plenty sore by bedtime.”

“How long do you think it will take to getenough scrapers?”

“Not so long,” Roland said. “Chert breakslucky, or so I used to hear.”

While Roland dragged deadwood for a fireinto a copse of mixed willows and alders by the edge of the frozen stream,Susannah inspected her way along the embankments, looking for chert. By thetime she’d found a dozen large chunks, she had also located a granite boulderrising from the ground in a smooth, weather-worn curve. She thought it wouldmake a fine anvil.

The chert did indeed break lucky, and shehad thirty potential scrapers by the time Roland was bringing back his thirdlarge load of firewood. He made a little pile of kindling which Susannahshielded with her hands. By then it was sleeting, and although they wereworking beneath a fairly dense clump of trees, she thought it wouldn’t be longbefore both of them were soaked.

When the fire was lit, Roland went a fewsteps away, once more fell on his knees, and folded his hands.

“Praying again?” she asked, amused.

“What we learn in our childhood has a wayof sticking,” he said. He closed his eyes for a few moments, then brought hisclasped hands to his mouth and kissed them. The only word she heard him say wasGan. Then he opened his eyes and lifted his hands, spreading them andmaking a pretty gesture that looked to her like birds flying away. When hespoke again, his voice was dry and matter-of-fact: Mr. Taking-Care-of-Business.“That’s very well, then,” he said. “Let’s go to work.”

Seven

They made twine from grass, just as Mordredhad done, and hung the first deer—the one already headless—by itsback legs from the low branch of a willow. Roland used his knife to cut itsbelly open, then reached into the guts, rummaged, and removed two dripping redorgans that she thought were kidneys.

“These for fever and cough,” he said, andbit into the first one as if it were an apple. Susannah made a gurking noiseand turned away to consider the stream until he was finished. When he was, sheturned back and watched him cut circles around the hanging legs close to wherethey joined the body.

“Are you any better?” she asked himuneasily.

“I will be,” he said. “Now help me take thehide off this fellow. We’ll want the first one with the hair still onit—we need to make a bowl for our slurry. Now watch.”

He worked his fingers into the place wherethe deer’s hide still clung to the body by the thin layer of fat and musclebeneath, then pulled. The hide tore easily to a point halfway down the deer’smidsection. “Now do your side, Susannah.”

Getting her fingers underneath was the onlyhard part. This time they pulled together, and when they had the hide all theway down to the dangling forelegs, it vaguely resembled a shirt. Roland usedhis knife to cut it off, then began to dig in the ground a little way from theroaring fire but still beneath the shelter of the trees. She helped him,relishing the way the sweat rolled down her face and body. When they had ashallow bowl-shaped depression two feet across and eighteen inches deep, Rolandlined it with the hide.