The Dark Tower - Stephen King [350]
The boy scrambled to his knees and would have run—likely back into the road—but Roland grabbed him by the collar of his hide coat and yanked him down again.
“We’re safe enough here,” he murmured to Patrick. “Look.” He reached into a hole revealed by the falling rock, knocked on the interior with his knuckles, produced a dull ringing noise, and showed his teeth in a strained grin. “Steel! Yar! He can hit this thing with a dozen of his flying fireballs and not knock it down. All he can do is blast away the rocks and blocks and expose what lies beneath. Kennit? And I don’t think he’ll waste his ammunition. He can’t have much more than a donkey’s carry.”
Before Patrick could reply, Roland peered around the pyramid’s ragged edge once more. He cupped his hands around his mouth and screamed: “TRY AGAIN, SAI! WE’RE STILL HERE, BUT PERHAPS YOUR NEXT THROW WILL BE LUCKY!”
There was a moment of silence, then an insane scream: “EEEEEEEEEEE! YOU DON’T DARE MOCK ME! YOU DON’T DARE! EEEEEEEEEEE!”
Now came another of those rising whistles. Roland grabbed Patrick and fell on top of him, behind the pyramid but not against it. He was afraid it might vibrate hard enough when the sneetch struck to give them concussion injuries, or turn their soft insides to jelly.
Only this time the sneetch didn’t strike the pyramid. It flew past it instead, soaring above the road. Roland rolled off Patrick and onto his back. His eyes picked up the golden blur and marked the place where it buttonhooked back toward its targets. He shot it out of the air like a clay plate. There was a blinding flash and then it was gone.
“OH DEAR, STILL HERE!” Roland called, striving to put just the right note of mocking amusement into his voice. It wasn’t easy when you were screaming at the top of your lungs.
Another crazed scream in response—“EEEEEEEEE!” Roland was amazed that the Red King didn’t split his own head wide open with such cries. He reloaded the chamber he’d emptied—he intended to keep a full gun just as long as he could—and this time there was a double whine. Patrick moaned, rolled over onto his belly, and plunged his face into the rock-strewn grass, covering his head with his hands. Roland sat with his back against the pyramid of rock and steel, the long barrel of his sixgun lying on his thigh, relaxed and waiting. At the same time he bent all of his willpower toward one object. His eyes wanted water in response to that high, approaching whistle, and he must not let them. If he ever needed the preternaturally keen eyesight for which he’d been famous in his time, this was it.
Those blue eyes were still clear when the sneetches bolted past above the road. This time one buttonhooked left and the other right. They took evasive action, jigging crazily first one way and then another. It made no difference. Roland waited, sitting with his legs outstretched and his old broken boots cocked into a relaxed V, his heart beating slow and steady, his eye filled with all the world’s clarity and color (had he seen better on that last day, he believed he would have been able to see the wind). Then he snapped his gun up, blew both sneetches out of the air, and was once more reloading the empty chambers while the afterimages still pulsed with his heartbeat in front of his eyes.
He leaned to the corner of the pyramid, plucked up the binoculars, braced them on a convenient spur