There is a moment in the heat of the day when the Wolves seem to draw no closer but only to shimmer in place. Then the sound of their horses’ hooves, previously dull and muffled, grows sharp. And the Wolves seem to leap forward through the swarming air. Their pants are as gray as the hides of their horses. Dark-green cloaks flow out behind them. Green hoods surround masks (theymust be masks) that turn the heads of the four remaining riders into the heads of snarling, hungry wolves.

“Four agin’ four!” Jamie screams. “Four agin’ four, even up, stand yer ground, cullies! Never run a step!”

The four Wolves sweep toward them on their gray horses. The men raise their bahs. Molly— sometimes called Red Molly, for her famous temper even more than her hair— raises her dish over her left shoulder. She looks not angry now but cool and calm.

The two Wolves on the end have light-sticks. They raise them. The two in the middle draw back their fists, which are clad in green gloves, to throw something.Sneetches, Jamie thinks coldly. That’s what them are.

“Hold, boys…” Pokey says. “Hold…hold…now! ”

He lets fly with a twang, and Jamie sees Pokey’s bah-bolt pass just over the head of the Wolf second to the right. Eamon’s strikes the neck of the horse on the far left. The beast gives a crazy whinnying cry and staggers just as the Wolves begin to close the final forty yards of distance. It crashes into its neighbor horse just as that second horse’s rider throws the thing in his hand. It is indeed one of the sneetches, but it sails far off course and none of its guidance systems can lock onto anything.

Jamie’s bolt strikes the chest of the third rider. Jamie begins a scream of triumph that dies in dismay before it ever gets out of his throat. The bolt bounces off the thing’s chest just as it would have bounced off Andy’s, or a stone in the Son of a Bitch field.

Wearing armor, oh you buggardly thing, you’re wearing armor under that twice-damned—

The other sneetch flies true, striking Eamon Doolin square in the face. His head explodes in a spray of blood and bone and mealy gray stuff. The sneetch flies on maybe thirty grop, then whirls and comes back. Jamie ducks and hears it flash over his head, giving off a low, hard hum as it flies.

Molly has never moved, not even when she is showered with her husband’s blood and brains. Now she screams, “THIS IS FOR MINNIE, YOU SONS OF WHORES!” and throws her plate. The distance is very short by now— hardly any distance at all— but she throws it hard and the plate rises as soon as it leaves her hand.