He leaned low on the gray’s neck to put that much more distance between his own neck and the nooses. Mat’s face was nearly buried in his horse’s mane. But Rand wondered where Thom was. Had the gleeman decided he was better off on his own, since all three Trollocs had fastened on the boys?
Suddenly Thom’s gelding galloped out of the night, hard behind the Trollocs. The Trollocs had only time enough to look back in surprise before the gleeman’s hands whipped back and then forward. Moonlight flashed off steel. One Trolloc tumbled forward, rolling over and over before landing in a heap, while a second dropped to its knees with a scream, clawing at its back with both hands. The third snarled, baring a muzzleful of sharp teeth, but as its companions toppled it whirled away into the darkness. Thom’s hand made the whip-like motion again, and the Trolloc shrieked, but the shrieks faded into the distance as it ran.
Rand and Mat pulled up and stared at the gleeman.
“My second-best knives,” Thom muttered, but he made no effort to get down and retrieve them. “That one will bring others. I hope the river isn’t too far. I hope. . . .” Instead of saying what else he hoped, he shook his head and set off at a quick canter. Rand and Mat fell in behind him.
Soon they reached a low bank where trees grew right to the edge of the night-black water, its moon-streaked surface riffled by the wind. Rand could not see the far side at all. He did not like the idea of crossing on a raft in the dark, but he liked the idea of staying on this side even less. I’ll swim if I have to.
Somewhere away from the river a Trolloc horn brayed, sharp, quick, and urgent in the darkness. It was the first sound from the horns since they had left the ruins. Rand wondered if it meant some of the others had been captured.
“No use staying here all night,” Thom said. “Pick a direction. Upriver, or down?”
“But Moiraine and the others could be anywhere,” Mat protested. “Any way we choose could just take us further away.”
“So it could.” Clucking to his gelding, Thom turned downriver, heading along the bank. “So it could.” Rand looked at Mat, who shrugged, and they turned after him.
For a time nothing changed. The bank was higher in some places, lower in others, the trees grew thicker, or thinned out in small clearings, but the night and the river and the wind were all the same, cold and black. And no Trollocs. That was one change Rand was glad to forgo.
Then he saw a light ahead, just a single point. As they drew closer he could see that the light was well above the river, as if it were in a tree. Thom quickened the pace and began to hum under his breath.
Finally they could make out the source of the light, a lantern hoisted atop one of the masts of a large trader’s boat, tied up for the night beside a small clearing in the trees. The boat, a good eighty feet long, shifted slightly with the current, tugging against the mooring ropes tied to trees. The rigging hummed and creaked in the wind. The lantern doubled the moonlight on the deck, but no one was in sight.
“Now that,” Thom said as he dismounted, “is better than an Aes Sedai’s raft, isn’t it?” He stood with his hands on his hips, and even in the dark his smugness was apparent. “It doesn’t look as if this vessel is made to carry horses, but considering the danger he’s in, which we are going to warn him of, the captain may be reasonable. Just let me do all the talking. And bring your blankets and saddlebags, just in case.”
Rand climbed down and began untying the things behind his saddle. “You don’t mean to leave without the others, do you?”
Thom had no chance to say what he meant to do. Into the clearing burst two Trollocs, howling and waving their catchpoles, with four more right behind. The horses reared and whinnied. Shouts in the distance said more Trollocs were on the way.
“Onto the boat!” Thom shouted. “Quick! Leave all that! Run!” Suiting his own words, he ran for the boat, patches flapping and instrument cases on his back banging together. “You on the boat!” he shouted. “Wake up, you fools! Trollocs!”
Rand jerked his blanketroll and saddlebags free of the last thong and was right on the gleeman’s heels. Tossing his burdens over the rail, he vaulted after them. He just had time to see a man curled up on the deck, beginning to sit up as if he had only that moment awakened, when his feet came down right on top of the fellow. The man grunted loudly, Rand stumbled, and a hooked catchpole slammed into the railing just where he had come over. Shouts rose all over the boat, and feet pounded along the deck.
Hairy hands caught the railing beside the catchpole, and a goat-horned head lifted above it. Off balance, stumbling, Rand still managed to draw his sword and swing. With a scream the Trolloc dropped away.
Men ran everywhere on the boat, shouting, hacking mooring lines with axes. The boat lurched and swung as if eager to be off. Up in the bow three men struggled with a Trolloc. Someone thrust over the side with a spear, though Rand could not see what he was stabbing at. A bowstring snapped, and snapped again. The man Rand had stepped on scrabbled away from him on hands and knees, then flung up his hands when he saw Rand looking at him.
“Spare me!” he cried. “Take whatever you want, take the boat, take everything, but spare me!”
Suddenly something slammed across Rand’s back, smashing him to the deck. His sword skittered away from his outstretched hand. Openmouthed, gasping for a breath that would not come, he tried to reach the sword. His muscles responded with agonized slowness; he writhed like a slug. The fellow who wanted to be spared gave one frightened, covetous look at the sword, then vanished into the shadows.
Painfully Rand managed to look over his shoulder, and knew his luck had run out. A wolf-muzzled Trolloc stood balanced on the railing, staring down at him and holding the splintered end of the catchpole that had knocked the wind out of him. Rand struggled to reach the sword, to move, to get away, but his arms and legs moved jerkily, and only half as he wanted. They wobbled and went in odd directions. His chest felt as if it were strapped with iron bands; silver spots swam in his eyes. Frantically he hunted for some way to escape. Time seemed to slow as the Trolloc raised the jagged pole as if to spear him with it. To Rand the creature appeared to be moving as if in a dream. He watched the thick arm go back; he could already feel the broken haft ripping through his spine, feel the pain of it tearing him open. He thought his lungs would burst. I’m going to die! Light help me, I’m going to . . . ! The Trolloc’s arm started forward, driving the splintered shaft, and Rand found the breath for one yell. “No!”
Suddenly the ship lurched, and a boom swung out of the shadows to catch the Trolloc across the chest with a crunch of breaking bones, sweeping it over the side.
For a moment Rand lay panting and staring up at the boom swinging back and forth above him. That has to have used up my luck, he thought. There can’t be any more after that.
Shakily he got to his feet and picked up his sword, for once holding it in both hands the way Lan had taught him, but there was nothing left on which to use it. The gap of black water between the boat and the bank was widening quickly; the cries of the Trollocs were fading behind in the night.
As he sheathed his sword and slumped against the railing, a stocky man in a coat that hung to his knees strode up the deck to glare at him. Long hair that fell to his thick shoulders and a beard that left his upper lip bare framed a round face. Round but not soft. The boom swung out again, and the bearded man spared part of his glare for that as he caught it; it made a crisp splat against his broad palm.
“Gelb!” he bellowed. “Fortune! Where do you be, Gelb?” He spoke so fast, with all the words running together, that Rand could barely understand him. “You can no hide from me on my own ship! Get Floran Gelb out here!”
A crewman appeared with a bull’s-eye lantern, and two more pushed a narrow-faced man into the circle of light it cast. Rand recognized the fellow who had offered him the boat. The man’s eyes shifted from side to side, never meeting those of the stocky man. The captain, Rand thought. A bruise was coming up on Gelb’s forehead where one
of Rand’s boots had caught him.
“Were you no supposed to secure this boom, Gelb?” the captain asked with surprising calm, though just as fast as before.
Gelb looked truly surprised. “But I did. Tied it down tight. I admit I’m a little slow about things now and then, Captain Domon, but I get them done.”
“So you be slow, do you? No so slow at sleeping. Sleeping when you should be standing watch. We could be murdered to a man, for all of you.”
“No, Captain, no. It was him.” Gelb pointed straight at Rand. “I was on guard, just like I was supposed to be, when he sneaked up and hit me with a club.” He touched the bruise on his head, winced, and glared at Rand. “I fought him, but then the Trollocs came. He’s in league with them, Captain. A Darkfriend. In league with the Trollocs.”
“In league with my aged grandmother!” Captain Domon roared. “Did I no warn you the last time, Gelb? At Whitebridge, off you do go! Get out of my sight before I put you off now.” Gelb darted out of the lantern light, and Domon stood opening and closing his hands while he stared at nothing. “These Trollocs do be following me. Why will they no leave me be? Why?”
Rand looked over the rail and was shocked to find the riverbank no longer in sight. Two men manned the long steering oar that stuck out over the stern, and there were six sweeps working to a side now, pulling the ship like a waterbug further out into the river.
“Captain,” Rand said, “we have friends back there. If you go back and pick them up, I am sure they’ll reward you.”
The captain’s round face swung toward Rand, and when Thom and Mat appeared he included them in his expressionless stare as well.
“Captain,” Thom began with a bow, “allow me to—”
“You come below,” Captain Domon said, “where I can see what manner of thing be hauled up on my deck. Come. Fortune desert me, somebody secure this horn-cursed boom!” As crewmen rushed to take the boom, he stumped off toward the stern of the boat. Rand and his two companions followed.
Captain Domon had a tidy cabin in the stern, reached by climbing down a short ladder, where everything gave the impression of being in its proper place, right down to the coats and cloaks hanging from pegs on the back of the door. The cabin stretched the width of the ship, with a broad bed built against one side and a heavy table built out from the other. There was only one chair, with a high back and sturdy arms, and the captain took that himself, motioning the others to find places on various chests and benches that were the only other furnishings. A loud harrumph stopped Mat from sitting on the bed.
“Now,” said the captain when they were all seated. “My name be Bayle Domon, captain and owner of the Spray, which be this ship. Now who be you, and where be you going out here in the middle of nowhere, and why should I no throw you over the side for the trouble you’ve brought me?”
Rand still had as much trouble as before in following Domon’s rapid speech. When he worked out the last part of what the captain had said he blinked in surprise. Throw us over the side?
Mat hurriedly said, “We didn’t mean to cause you any trouble. We’re on our way to Caemlyn, and then to—”
“And then where the wind takes us,” Thom interrupted smoothly. “That’s how gleemen travel, like dust on the wind. I am a gleeman, you understand, Thom Merrilin by name.” He shifted his cloak so the multihued patches stirred, as if the captain could have missed them. “These two country louts want to become my apprentices, though I am not yet sure I want them.” Rand looked at Mat, who grinned.
“That be all very well, man,” Captain Domon said placidly, “but it tells me nothing. Less. Fortune prick me, that place be on no road to Caemlyn from anywhere I ever heard tell of.”
“Now that is a story,” Thom said, and he straightaway began to unfold it.
According to Thom, he had been trapped by the winter snows in a mining town in the Mountains of Mist beyond Baerlon. While there he heard legends of a treasure dating from the Trolloc Wars, in the lost ruin of a city called Aridhol. Now it just so happened that he had earlier learned the location of Aridhol from a map given him many years ago by a dying friend in Illian whose life he had once saved, a man who expired breathing that the map would make Thom rich, which Thom never believed until he heard the legends. When the snows melted enough, he set out with a few companions, including his two would-be apprentices, and after a journey of many hardships they actually found the ruined city. But it turned out the treasure had belonged to one of the Dreadlords themselves, and Trollocs had been sent to fetch it back to Shayol Ghul. Almost every danger they really had faced—Trollocs, Myrddraal, Draghkar, Mordeth, Mashadar—assailed them at one point or another of the story, though the way Thom told it they all seemed to be aimed at him personally, and to have been handled by him with the greatest adroitness. With much derring-do, mostly by Thom, they escaped, pursued by Trollocs, though they became separated in the night, until finally Thom and his two companions sought refuge on the last place left to them, Captain Domon’s most welcome ship.
As the gleeman finished up, Rand realized his mouth had been hanging open for some time and shut it with a click. When he looked at Mat, his friend was staring wide-eyed at the gleeman.
Captain Domon drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “That be a tale many folk would no believe. Of course, I did see the Trollocs, did I no.”
“Every word true,” Thom said blandly, “from one who lived it.”
“Happen you have some of this treasure with you?”
Thom spread his hands regretfully. “Alas, what little we managed to carry away was with our horses, which bolted when those last Trollocs appeared. All I have left are my flute and my harp, a few coppers, and the clothes on my back. But believe me, you want no part of that treasure. It has the taint of the Dark One. Best to leave it to the ruins and the Trollocs.”
“So you’ve no money to pay your passage. I’d no let my own brother sail with me if he could no pay his passage, especially if he brought Trollocs behind him to hack up my railings and cut up my rigging. Why should I no let you swim back where you came from, and be rid of you?”
“You wouldn’t just put us ashore?” Mat said. “Not with Trollocs there?”
“Who said anything about shore?” Domon replied dryly. He studied them a moment, then spread his hands flat on the table. “Bayle Domon be a reasonable man. I’d no toss you over the side if there be a way out of it. Now, I see one of your apprentices has a sword. I need a good sword, and fine fellow that I be, I’ll let you have passage far as Whitebridge for it.”
Thom opened his mouth, and Rand spoke up quickly, “No!” Tam had not given it to him to trade away. He ran his hand down the hilt, feeling the bronze heron. As long as he had it, it was as if Tam were with him.
Domon shook his head. “Well, if it be no, it be no. But Bayle Domon no give free passage, not to his own mother.”
Reluctantly Rand emptied his pocket. There was not much, a few coppers and the silver coin Moiraine had given him. He held it out to the captain. After a second, Mat sighed and did the same. Thom glared, but a smile replaced it so quickly that Rand was not sure it had been there at all.
Captain Domon deftly plucked the two fat silver coins out of the boys’ hands and produced a small set of scales and a clinking bag from a brass-bound chest behind his chair. After careful weighing, he dropped the coins in the bag and returned them each some smaller silver and copper. Mostly copper. “As far as Whitebridge,” he said, making a neat entry in a leatherbound ledger.
“That’s a dear passage just to Whitebridge,” Thom grumbled.
“Plus damages to my vessel,” the captain answered placidly. He put the scales and the bag back in the chest and closed it in a satisfied way. “Plus a bit for bringing Trollocs down on me so I must run downriver in the night when there be shallows aplenty to pile me up.”
“What about the others?” Rand asked. “Will you take them, too? They should have reached the river by now, or they soon will, and th
ey’ll see that lantern on your mast.”
Captain Domon’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Happen you think we be standing still, man? Fortune prick me, we be three, four miles downriver from where you came aboard. Trollocs make those fellows put their backs into the oars—they know Trollocs better than they like—and the current helps, too. But it makes no nevermind. I’d no put in again tonight if my old grandmother was on the riverbank. I may no put in again at all until I reach Whitebridge. I’ve had my fill of Trollocs dogging my heels long before tonight, and I’ll have no more can I help it.”
Thom leaned forward interestedly. “You have had encounters with Trollocs before? Lately?”
Domon hesitated, eyeing Thom narrowly, but when he spoke he merely sounded disgusted. “I wintered in Saldaea, man. Not my choice, but the river froze early and the ice broke up late. They say you can see the Blight from the highest towers in Maradon, but I’ve no mind for that. I’ve been there before, and there always be talk of Trollocs attacking a farm or the like. This winter past, though, there be farms burning every night. Aye, and whole villages, too, betimes. They even came right up to the city walls. And if that no be bad enough, the people be all saying it meant the Dark One be stirring, that the Last Days be come.” He gave a shiver, and scratched at his head as if the thought made his scalp itch. “I can no wait to get back where people think Trollocs be just tales, the stories I tell be traveler’s lies.”
Rand stopped listening. He stared at the opposite wall and thought about Egwene and the others. It hardly seemed right for him to be safe on the Spray while they were still back there in the night somewhere. The captain’s cabin did not seem so comfortable as before.
He was surprised when Thom pulled him to his feet. The gleeman pushed Mat and him toward the ladder with apologies over his shoulder to Captain Domon for the country louts. Rand climbed up without a word.
Once they were on deck Thom looked around quickly to make sure he would not be overheard, then growled, “I could have gotten us passage for a few songs and stories if you two hadn’t been so quick to show silver.”
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