(no subject)

[lastgunslinger]

Argument.

Five. Then Desmond died.

Then there were four.

Two days later Jamie DeCurry was killed by sniperfire.

Now Alain was screaming.

Roland stands at the cavemouth on Jericho Hill. His eyes are wide with horror.

Comments

[lastgunslinger]

And he turns to Cuthbert this last time, friend to friend, gunslinger to gunslinger, brother to brother. That smile is still there, knowing, lethal, and somehow beautiful.

Magnificent.

His voice is strong and sure. "Then blow that fucking horn."

And there it is -- the sound of a lifetime, of a dozen lifetimes, a sound that is the heart of all the Way of Eld is and will ever be, and he loves it, and he loves Cuthbert for sounding it -- and Roland draws himself up.

"And now, my friends -- " He doesn't look around, but ahead. Forward. "Hile!"

Their answering cry -- and there's the red haze descending upon him. One last time, then, he thinks, descending into battle fury as though into a lover's embrace. Let it be so.

He raises his voice -- the last time. "To me! Forward!" And always --

"For the Tower!"

[key-youth-bert.livejournal.com]

Cuthbert thrusts his hands skyward, revolver clutched in one, Eld's Horn in the other. The motion makes him stumble and reel, and for one terrifying moment he thinks he will fall, that it will end for him now and Roland will have to face this last charge alone.

And then the ground is firm beneath his feet again as he screams out the final words of his life.

"The Tower!"

[lastgunslinger]

He runs. Cuthbert is at his side. And it is right.

"No prisoners!"

Roland is screaming.

"NO PRISONERS!"

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

They charge, magnificently, doomed, into a horde of barbarians and vandals and murderers and oathbreakers with their faces painted blue and the red light of Discordia in their eyes. They shout defiance and rage at the world's moving on, and Joe Manco shouts with them, inside of him, drowned in the battle fury, unable to tell himself from Roland, if he rages because the fire has taken Susan or the Dark preyed on Mina. All he knows is the hatred of Discordia, of the thieves of light and laughter, and the guns never stop working in their hands.

The gun and the bow and the lance--for a hundred years they'll tell the story of the swathe two gunslingers and ten ordinary men cut through an army of two thousand.

But they die. They die shouting defiance. They die shielded behind the strange statues that cover the hill, the grim blue-black stone faces. They die heroes. They die.

Roland turns to Cuthbert, raising the horn to his lips one last time, here in the lee of one of those ancient, broken faces.

[sai-interloper.livejournal.com]

And one rises up from amongst the others, lips twisted into an unearthly snarl.

Eyes glittering and he laughs, draws the bowstring so high and fine against his cheek it rebounds and draws blood as the arrow whistles forward, screaming the last - born by the wind of your ka, you may say, he thinks, and titters.

It hits Cuthbert in the eye with a sickening wet noise.

Walter howls his triumph to the sky.

[key-youth-bert.livejournal.com]

And there is one more bright flare of pain, and then--

--Then, the thing that tells Cuthbert he's finally dying is that suddenly, he can see.

He's been shot in both eyes, and he should be blind--but suddenly, he can see everything with perfect clarity.

Everything--the strange broken statues, the dead men lying where they fell--and the woman walking toward him with her hand outstretched.

She's beautiful. And he knows her.

For one moment, he's angry. For one moment, he wants to scream at her.

Susan. Mother and Father, and all the rest in Gilead. Desmond. Jamie. Alain--and now Roland and I. Have we all died for nothing? Has any of this been worth anything?

But he doesn't say any of this, because her smile both answers his questions and soothes his anger.

Cuthbert doesn't know if he's ever seen so much love in a smile before. He doubts it.

And, with no bitterness in his heart, he takes her hand. (http://www.livejournal.com/community/milliways_bar/2710548.html)

[lastgunslinger]

In the corner of his eye, he sees Cuthbert fall.

And he sees the Horn of Eld, the Horn o' Deschain, fall from Cuthbert's hand.

Roland turns away -- he'll come back for it later, if he can -- now his business is killing --

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

And Joe comes forward.

There's a man in front of him/them now, a great bull of a man with his face nearly purple under the paint, with a lance. His only concession to armor is a tarnished brass helm. This is not going to be easy.

He stoops--slides, really, because he's in motion--and does something he'd never do in his own body. He tosses the gun in his left hand into the air. But this Roland is maybe two vital years younger, and has apparently had his nerves replaced with razor blades.

He swoops his left hand down and scoops up the horn, simultaneously cocking and firing the right hand pistol into the man's knee. He flips the horn in his hand like a man showboating a pistol, snakes his wrist through the loop and reaching up for the pistol it slides down his forearm, nearly to his shoulder.

And he's reaching up with his right, too, and cocking, and catching the left and cocking it and firing both into the face of the enormous man about to topple forward on to him with that fucking lance.

He stills falls on him, but the spear turns aside, into the ground and then snapping, and the man falls onto him with his full weight, the helm cracking into his skull, and for a while both Roland and Joe are lost to darkness.

[lastgunslinger]

The first thing Roland notices when he awakens is the stench. Someone's bowels let go. Not his, though -- the ones of the man on top of him. The corpse is huge, and it's hard to shift -- but he tries.

His head hurts like hell.

But then --

Voices. "Fuckin' gunslingers, how many of 'em were left, how much damage they did, did you see -- "

Roland secures his guns.

Not time to die. Not yet. He's made it this far.

-- but what's that? It's -- the horn. He doesn't remember picking it up. But he might have. The whole battle is a blur, now.

It's time to play dead, if there's any hope at all of continuing to the Tower. He looks inward, to do as he'd been taught by Cort not too terribly long ago, to put himself into a trance --

-- something is not right.

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

Hile, gunslinger.

This is fuckin' stupid. Howdy, I'm a voice in your head. Ain't there--

Then, suddenly, light.

It's Milliways.

Or a reasonable facsimile. It's a little dead--only two people here--and it gets fuzzy unless you look hard. And it's got a good bit of the Traveller's Rest in Mejis mixed in--Bernard would never stand for the mutant stag head.

Anyway, it's a bar, and there's a table, and sitting on one side of it is a young man--no more than 27--with fine fair hair and beard and typical gunslinger's wardrobe--wide-brimmed hat, long black coat, jeans, boots--and double strapped pistols and cold blue eyes that ought to be familiar.

Childe Roland sees them in the mirror every morning when he shaves, after all.

[lastgunslinger]

Roland stares. Looks around him.

Looks before him.

Hands hang idle by his sides. By his holsters.

Low: "Tell me who you are, gunslinger. If gunslinger is what you are. And tell me where we are."

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

Joe sighs. He should have known. He's going to be expected to explain, as if he knew any more than this Roland.

"I'm no gunslinger, and we're inside your mind." He jerks his thumb over his shoulder at a door in the wall. There's no knob on this side. "I came in here through that door an' I can't get out. You didn't see it followin' along behind when you turned your head, huh?"

[lastgunslinger]

Roland sees the door, now. It's closed.

"No." Roland's senses are still thrumming, and he's trembling slightly. It's difficult to come down from an adrenaline high with no warning. "How the fuck did you get inside my head? And who the fuck are you?"

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

Joe sighs again. "You can call me Blondie. Plenty of people have." He fumbles in a pocket, focuses his imagination. "Cigar?"

"Somebody put the door up and gave me a key and a reason to go through. As a trap for both of us, I reckon. Enemy of yours--name of Walter."

[lastgunslinger]

"Don't know anybody by that name."

Roland smokes.

"If it was a trap, why'd you do it?" Flat, with no scorn.

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

"I had a good reason, and I reckoned I could beat it," Joe says. He may sound slightly smug.

"Didn't quite reckon on the fucker closin'. As you can see it, don't open from this side. When we weren't in here, I could see it when you looked over your shoulder, bobbing along."

"Now, on the other side of that door, it can be opened. But only you and me can open it, and we gotta have a password and a key too."

[lastgunslinger]

"You're here," says Roland. "So we can't get it open. Is that what you're saying?"

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

Joe smiles. It's very small and very thin. "Well. Not exactly."

"I don't suppose you're familiar with the idea of doors that lead to other wheres and whens yet?"

[lastgunslinger]

Roland stares.

He shakes his head.

Though if worlds are circled around the Tower --

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

Joe exhales disspiritedly. He racks his memory. For anything Roland might have said--

No. Not said. Read. The first book. (And for some reason, the temperature (http://www.livejournal.com/community/milliways_bar/3428369.html?thread=135062545#t135062545) in the not'bar begins to rise.)

"Walter's also gone by the name--" Dammit, books are not Joe's favorite things, but names are his specialty. "Marten Broadcloak."

"As for doors--I come from your future, in a different where. The door is there."

[lastgunslinger]

And Roland's eyes flare, at that. "That son of a bitch."

"You come from my future." There's a bit of disbelief in his voice. "You don't talk like anyone I've ever heard." Pause. "You could just be one of Marten's tricks. He disappeared a year or two ago."

He stubs out the cigar and glares at Blondie.

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

"A different where," Joe repeats. "I'm not of Mid-World."

"There's nothing I can do to prove this to you, son," says Joe dryly. "Fortunately, I don't have to. Do you remember picking up that horn? No? I do. See, apparently these doors give you the whip hand."

Joe gestures at the observation window--yes, it's here, too--with his cigar.

It's black. Joe closes his eyes. And opens them. The window opens too, revealing the unappetizing view from a heap of corpses.

"See, fortunately for me, if you want to see your Tower, you'll have to go along with my plan." He sticks the cigar back in his mouth. "And fortunately for you, I got one."

[lastgunslinger]

"I'm not your son." Instant. Angry.

Steven Deschain's death is still near, even two years later.

He looks out the window.

And back at Blondie.

"Talk."

[joewithnoname.livejournal.com]

"You got certain stuff now you'll still have when I know you. The guns. A purse you pay for shit out of. The key came through with me--it was actually a Tarot card."

"You dropped it, where you shot your friend. That's where I came in. You gotta go back there and get it back. And keep it, until the day it comes in handy. I can give you the password."

Joe smirks. "I knew that fucker underestimated me. If I can get my hands on seventy thousand dollars, openin' one fuckin' door ain't shit."

[lastgunslinger]

Where you shot your friend.

For a moment he looks stricken. He bows his head, closes his eyes.

And Cuthbert's dead, too.

This means that Roland Deschain, son of Steven, is the last gunslinger of Gilead.

He never wanted that. From dinh of a ka-tet to alone, every friend taken from him -- he never wanted that. Never.

But it's what he's got.

Roland looks back up at Blondie, now. "Two thousand men stand in between me and that door." Calm. He doesn't say it like he can't do it. Because he can, and he knows it. "How's opening the door going to help me get to the Tower, other than getting you the fuck out of my head?"