In a clatter of hooves on stone, Flinn and Narishma came galloping up the rise, followed by nearly a hundred Saldaeans. As they came close, Rand could feel the Power in the grizzled old man and the younger, maybe as much as they could hold. They had both leaped up in strength since Dumai’s Wells. That was the way of it with men; women seemed to gain smoothly, but men suddenly jumped. Flinn was stronger than Gedwyn or Rochaid either one, and Narishma not far behind. For the time being; there was no way to know how it would end. None came close to matching Rand, though. Not yet, anyway. There was no way to tell what time would bring. Not the dreads.
"It seems it’s well we decided to follow you, my Lord Dragon." Gedwyn’s voice assumed concern, just shy of mocking. "Are you suffering from a tender stomach this morning?"
Rand just shook his head. He could not take his eyes from Padros’ face. Why? Because he had conquered Illian? Because the man had been loyal to "Lord Brend"?
With a loud exclamation, Rochaid ripped a washleather pouch from Padros’ coat pocket and upended it. Bright golden coins spilled onto the stony ground, bouncing and clinking. "Thirty crowns," he growled. "Tar Valon crowns. No doubt who paid him." He snatched a coin and tossed it up for Rand, but Rand made no effort to catch it, and it glanced off his arm.
"There’s plenty of Tar Valon coin to be found," Bashere said calmly. "Half the men in this valley have a few in their pockets. I do, myself." Gedwyn and Rochaid swiveled to look at him. Bashere smiled behind his thick mustaches, or at least showed teeth, but some of the Saldaeans shifted uneasily in their saddles and fingered belt pouches.
Up where the pass leveled off for a bit between steep mountain slopes, a slash of light rotated into a gateway, and a top-knotted Shienaran in a plain black coat trotted through, pulling his horse behind him. It appeared the first Seanchan had been found, and not too far away if the man was back so quickly.
"Time to move," Rand told Bashere. The man nodded, but he did not stir. Instead, he studied the two Asha’man standing near Padros. They ignored him.
"What do we do with him?" Gedwyn demanded, gesturing to the corpse. "We ought to send him back to the witches, at least."
"Leave him," Rand replied.
Are you ready to kill now? Lews Therin asked. He did not sound insane at all.
Not yet, Rand thought. Soon.
Digging his heels into Tai’daishar’s flanks, he galloped back down toward his army. Dashiva and Flinn followed closely, and Bashere and the hundred Saldaeans. They were all looking around as if they expected another attempt on his life. To the east, black clouds were building among the peaks, another cemaros storm. Soon.
The hilltop camp was well laid out, with a meandering stream close by for water and good lines of sight to the likeliest ways into the long mountain meadow. Assid Bakuun did not feel pride in the camp. During thirty years in the Ever Victorious Army, he had made hundreds of camps; he would as soon have felt pride in walking across a room without falling down. Nor did he feel pride in where he was. Thirty years serving the Empress, might she live forever, and while there had been the occasional rebellion by some mad upstart with eyes on the Crystal Throne, the bulk of those years had been spent preparing for this. For two generations, while the great ships were built to carry the Return, the Ever Victorious Army had trained and prepared. Bakuun certainly had been proud when he learned he was to be one of the Forerunners. Surely he could be forgiven dreams of retaking the lands stolen from Artur Hawkwing’s rightful heirs, even wild dreams to completing this new Consolidation before the Corenne came. Not such a wild dream after all, as it turned out, but not at all the way he had imagined.
A returning patrol of fifty Taraboner lancers rode up the hillside, red and green stripes painted across their solid breastplates, veils of mail hiding their thick mustaches. They rode well, and even fought well, when they had decent leaders. More than ten times as many were already among the cook fires, or down at the picket lines tending their mounts, and three patrols were still out. Bakuun had never expected to find himself with well over half his command descendants of thieves. And unashamed of it; they would look you straight in the eyes. The patrol’s commander bowed low to him as their muddy-legged horses passed, but many of the others went on talking in their peculiar accents, speaking too fast for Bakuun to understand without listening hard. They had peculiar notions of discipline, too.
Shaking his head, Bakuun strode across to the sul’dam’s large tent. Larger than his, of necessity. Four of them were sitting on stools outside in their dark blue dresses with the forked lightning on the skirts, enjoying the sun during this break in the storms. Those were rare enough, now. The gray-clad damane sat at their feet, with Nerith braiding her pale hair. Talking to her, as well, all of them joining in and laughing softly. The bracelet on the end of the silvery a’dam’s leash lay on the ground. Bakuun grunted sourly. He had a favorite wolfhound, back home, and even talked to him sometimes, but he never expected Nip to carry on a conversation!
"Is she well?" he asked Nerith, not for the first time. Or the tenth. "Is everything well with her?" The damane dropped her eyes and went silent.
"She is quite well, Captain Bakuun." A square-faced woman, Nerith put the proper degree of respect into her voice and not a whisker beyond. But she stroked the damane’s head soothingly while she talked. "Whatever the indisposition, it is gone, now. A small thing, in any case. Nothing to worry about." The damane was trembling.
Bakuun grunted again. Not far from the answer he had received before. Something had been wrong, though, back in Ebou Dar, and not just with this damane. The sul’dam had all been as tight-lipped as clams — and the Blood would not say anything, of course, not to the likes of him! — but he had heard too many whispers. They said the damane were all sick, or insane. Light, he had not seen a single one used around Ebou Dar once the city was secured, not even for a victory display of Sky Lights, and who had ever heard the like of that!
"Well, I hope she…" he began, and cut off as a raken appeared, sweeping through the eastern pass. Its great leathery wings beat powerfully for height, and right above the hill it suddenly tilted and cut a tight circle, one wingtip pointed almost straight down. A thin red streamer fell away under the weight of a lead ball.
Bakuun swallowed a curse. Fliers were always showing off, but if this pair injured one of his men delivering their scouting report, he would have their hides no matter who he had to face to get them. He would not have wanted to fight without fliers to scout, but they were coddled like some Blood’s favorite pet.
Arrow-straight the streamer plummeted. The lead weight struck the ground and bounced on the crest, almost beside the tall thin message pole, which was too long to lower unless there was a message to send. Besides, when it was left down somebody was always stepping a horse on the thing and breaking the joins.
Bakuun strode straight to his tent, but his First Lieutenant was already waiting with the mud-stained streamer and the message tube. Tiras was a bony man a head taller than him, with an unfortunate scrap of beard clinging to the point of his chin.
The report rolled up in the thin metal tube, on a slip of paper Bakuun could almost see through, was written simply. He had never been forced to ride on raken or to’raken — the Light be thanked, and the Empress, might she live forever, be praised! — but he doubted it was easy to handle a pen in a saddle strapped to the back of a flying lizard. What it said made him flip open the lid of his small camp desk and write hurriedly.
"There’s a force not ten miles east of here," he told Tiras. "Five or six times our number." Fliers exaggerated sometimes, but not often by much. How had that many penetrated these mountains so far without being spotted before? He had seen the coast to the east, and he wanted his burial prayers paid for before he tried a landing there. Burn his eyes, the fliers boasted they would see a flea move anywhere in the range. "No reason to think they know we’re here, but I’d not mind a few reinforcements."
Tiras laughed. "We’ll give them a brus
h of the damane, and that will be that if they outnumber us by twenty times." His only real fault was a touch of overconfidence. A good soldier, though.
"And if they have a few… Aes Sedai?" Bakuun said quietly, hardly stumbling over the name, as he stuffed the flier’s report back into the tube with his own brief message. He had not really believed anyone could let those… women run free.
Tiras’ face showed that he remembered the tales about an Aes Sedai weapon. The red streamer floated behind him as he ran with the message tube.
Soon enough tube and streamer were attached to the tip of the message pole, a tiny breeze stirring the long red strip fifteen paces above the hill crest. The raken soared toward it along the valley, outstretched wings still as death. Abruptly one of the fliers swung down from the saddle and hung — upside down! — below the raken’s trailing claws. It made Bakuun’s stomach hurt to watch. But her hand closed on the streamer, the pole flexed, then vibrated back upright as the message tube pulled free of the clip, and she scrambled back up as the creature climbed in slow circles.
Bakuun thankfully put raken and fliers out of his mind as he surveyed the valley. Broad and long, nearly flat except for this hill, and surrounded by steep wooded slopes; only a goat could enter, except by the passes in his sight. With the damane, he could cut anybody to pieces before they managed to try attacking across that muddy meadow. He had passed word along, though; if the enemy came straight on, they would arrive before any possible reinforcements by three days at best. How had they come this far unseen?
He had missed the last battles of the Consolidation by two hundred years, but some of those rebellions had not been small. Two years fighting on Marendalar, thirty thousand dead, and fifty times that shipped back to the mainland as property. Taking notice of the strange kept a soldier alive. Ordering the camp struck and all signs of it cleared, he began moving his command to the forested slopes. Dark clouds were massing in the east, another of those cursed storms coming.
Chapter 23
(Insect-Like, Horned Helmet)
Fog of War, Storm of Battle
No rain fell, for the moment. Rand guided Tai’daishar around an uprooted tree lying across the slope and frowned down at a dead man sprawled on his back behind the tree trunk. The fellow was short and blocky, his face creased, and his armor all overlapping plates lacquered blue and green, but staring sightlessly at the black clouds overhead, he looked a deal like Eagan Padros, even to the missing leg. An officer, plainly; the sword beside his outflung hand had an ivory hilt carved in the likeness of a woman, and his lacquered helmet, shaped like some huge insect’s head, bore two long thin blue plumes.
Uprooted trees and shattered ones, a fair number burning from end to end, littered the slope of the mountain for a good five hundred paces. Bodies, too, men broken or ripped apart when saidin harrowed the mountainside. Most wore steel veils across their faces, and breastplates painted in horizontal stripes. No women, thank the Light. The injured horses had been put down, another thing to be thankful for. It was incredible how loudly a horse could scream.
Do you think the dead are silent? Lews Therin’s laugh was rasping. Do you? His voice turned to pained rage. The dead howl at me!
At me, too, Rand thought sadly. I can’t afford to listen, but how do you shut them up? Lews Therin began weeping for his lost Ilyena.
"A great victory," Weiramon intoned behind Rand, then muttered, "But small honor in it. The old ways are best." Mud liberally decorated Rand’s coat, yet surprisingly, Weiramon appeared as pristine as he had back on the Silver Road. His helmet and armor shone. How had he managed? The Taraboners charged, at the end, lances and courage against the One Power, and Weiramon had led his own charge to break them. Without orders, and followed by every Tairen save the Defenders, even a half-drunk Torean, surprisingly. By Semaradrid and Gregorin Panar, too, with most of the Cairhienin and Illianers. Standing still had been hard by that time, and every man wanted to come to grips with something he actually could come to grips with. The Asha’man could have done it faster. If somewhat more messily.
Rand had taken no part in the fighting, except to sit his saddle where men could see him. He had been afraid to seize the Power. He did not dare display weakness for them to catch. Not a scrap. Lews Therin gibbered with horror at the very idea.
Equally surprising as Weiramon’s unsullied coat, Anaiyella rode with him, and for once not simpering. Her face was pinched and disapproving. Strangely, it did not spoil her looks nearly so much as her unctuous smiles did. She had not joined the charge herself, of course, any more than Ailil, but Anaiyella’s Master of the Horse had, and the man was most definitely dead, with a Taraboner lance through his chest. She did not like that one bit. But why did she accompany Weiramon? Just Tairens flocking together? Maybe. She had been with Sunamon, the last Rand had seen.
Bashere walked his bay up the slope, picking his way around the dead while seeming to pay them no more mind than he did a splintered tree trunk or a burning stump. His helmet hung from his saddle, and his gauntlets were stuffed behind his sword belt. He was mud all down his right side, and his horse as well.
"Aracome’s gone," he said. "Flinn tried Healing him, but I don’t think Aracome wanted to live like that. There’s near fifty dead so far, and some of the rest might not survive." Anaiyella paled. Rand had seen her near Aracome, emptying herself. Dead commoners did not affect her so much.
Rand felt a moment of pity. Not for her, and not very much for Aracome. For Min, though she was safely back in Cairhien. Min had foretold Aracome’s death from one of her viewings, and Gueyam and Maraconn’s, too. Whatever she had seen, Rand hoped it had not been anywhere near the reality.
Most of the Soldiers were off scouting again, but down in the broad meadow, gateways woven by Gedwyn’s Dedicated were spilling out the supply carts and the remounts. The men coming with them gaped as soon as they were clear enough to see. The muddy ground was not so well plowed as the mountainside, yet blackened furrows, two paces wide and fifty long, carved through the brown grass, and gaping holes a horse might not be able to leap. They had not found the damane so far. Rand thought there had to be only one; more would have done considerably greater damage under the circumstances.
Men moved around a number of small fires where water boiled for tea, among other things. For once, Tairens, Cairhienin and Illianers mingled. Not just the commoners. Semaradrid was sharing his saddle-flask with Gueyam, who wearily rubbed a hand over his bald head. Maraconn and Kiril Drapaneos, a stork of a man whose square-cut beard looked odd on his narrow face, were squatting on their heels near one of the fires. Playing cards, by the look of it! Torean had a whole circle of laughing Cairhienin lordlings around him, though they might have been less amused by his jokes than by the way he swayed and rubbed at his potato nose. The Legionmen kept apart, but they had taken in the "volunteers" who had followed Padros to the Banner of Light. That lot seemed more eager than anyone since learning how Padros died. Blue-coated Legionmen were showing them how to change direction without falling apart like a gaggle of geese.
Flinn was among the wounded with Adley and Morr and Hopwil. Narishma could Heal little more than minor cuts, no better than Rand, and Dashiva not even that. Gedwyn and Rochaid stood talking well apart from anyone else, holding their horses by the reins atop the hill in the middle of the valley. The hill where they had expected to catch the Seanchan by surprise when they rushed out of gateways surrounding it. Near fifty dead, and more to come, but it would have been above two hundred without Flinn and the rest who could manage Healing to one degree or another. Gedwyn and Rochaid had not wanted to dirty their hands and grimaced when Rand drove them to it. One of the dead was a Soldier, and another Soldier, a round-faced Cairhienin, sat slumped beside a fire with a dazed look that Rand hoped came from being tossed through the air by the ground erupting almost under his feet.
Down there on the furrowed flats, Ailil was conferring with her Lance-captain, a pale little man called Denharad. Their horses st
ood nearly touching, and occasionally they looked up the mountain toward Rand. What were they scheming?
"We’ll do better next time," Bashere murmured. He ran his gaze around the valley, then shook his head. "The worst mistake is to make the same one twice, and we won’t."
Weiramon heard him and repeated the same thing, but using twenty times the words, and flowery enough for a garden in spring. Without admitting that there had been any mistakes, certainly not on his part. He avoided Rand’s mistakes with equal adroitness.
Rand nodded, his mouth tight. Next time they would do better. They had to, unless he wanted to leave half his men buried in these mountains. Right then, he was wondering what to do with the prisoners.
Most of those who escaped death on the mountainside had managed to withdraw through the trees that remained standing. With amazingly good order considering, Bashere claimed, yet they were unlikely to be much threat now. Not unless they had the damane with them. But a hundred or so men sat huddled on the ground, stripped of weapons and armor, under the watchful eyes of two dozen mounted Companions and Defenders. Taraboners, for the most part, they had not fought like men driven to it by conquerors. A fair number held their heads up, and jeered at their guards. Gedwyn had wanted to kill them, after putting them to the question. Weiramon did not care whether they had their throats slit, but he considered torture a waste of time. None would know anything useful, he maintained; there was not a one nobly born.
Rand glanced at Bashere. Weiramon was still going on sonorously. "… sweep these mountains clean for you, my Lord Dragon. We’ll trample them beneath our hooves, and…" Anaiyella was nodding grim approval.
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