“Whatever they want,” he grumbled, “they had best be quick.” There was no need for them to be leading the dapple, but it was too much effort to make a fuss over it. He twisted to look back, grunting at the pain in his side; the crest was already swallowed in the night. “I have a lot to do yet. I need to find . . .” Couladin. Sammael. The men who were fighting and dying for him. “I need to find them.” He was so tired, but he could not sleep yet.
Lamps on poles lit the Wise Ones’ encampment, and small fires where kettles of water were hauled away and replaced by white-robed men and women as soon as they began boiling. Gai’shain scurried everywhere, and Wise Ones as well, tending the wounded whose numbers swelled the camp. Moiraine was moving slowly down the long lines of those who could not stand, only rarely pausing to lay hands on an Aiel who then thrashed in the throes of being Healed. She swayed whenever she straightened, and Lan hovered behind her as if wanting to hold her up, or expecting to have to. Sulin exchanged words with Adelin and Enaila, too low for Rand to make out, and the younger women ran to speak to the Aes Sedai.
Despite the numbers of wounded, not all of the Wise Ones were looking after them. Inside a pavilion off to one side, perhaps twenty sat in a circle listening to one standing in the center. When she sat, another took her place. Gai’shain knelt around the outside of the pavilion, but none of the Wise Ones appeared to have any interest in wine, or anything except what they were hearing. Rand thought the speaker was Amys.
To his surprise, Asmodean was also helping out with the wounded, the water bag hanging from each shoulder looking decidedly odd with his dark velvet coat and white lace. Straightening from giving a drink to a man stripped to the waist except for bandages, he saw Rand and hesitated.
After a moment he handed the water bags to one of the gai’shain and wove his way through the Maidens toward Rand. They ignored him—they all seemed to be watching Adelin and Enaila speaking to Moiraine or else eyeing Rand—and his face was tight by the time he had to pause for the solid circle of Far Dareis Mai around Jeade’en. They were slow in parting, and did so just enough to let him through to Rand’s stirrup.
“I was sure you must be safe. I was sure.” From his tone of voice, he had been no such thing. When Rand did not speak, Asmodean shrugged uncomfortably. “Moiraine insisted I carry water. A forceful woman, to not allow the Lord Dragon’s bard to . . .” Trailing off, he licked his lips quickly. “What happened?”
“Sammael,” Rand said, but not in answer. He was just speaking the thoughts that drifted through the Void. “I remember when he was first named Destroyer of Hope. After he betrayed the Gates of Hevan, and carried the Shadow down into the Rorn M’doi and the heart of Satelle. Hope did seem to die that day, Culan Cuhan wept. What is wrong?” Asmodean’s face had gone as white as Sulin’s hair; he only shook his head mutely. Rand peered at the pavilion. Whoever was speaking now, he did not know her. “Is that where they are waiting for me? Then I should join them.”
“They will not welcome you yet,” Lan said, appearing beside Asmodean, who jumped, “or any man.” Rand had not heard or seen the Warder approach either, but he only turned his head. Even that seemed an effort. It seemed to be someone else’s head. “They meet with Wise Ones from the Miagoma, the Codarra, the Shiande and the Daryne.”
“The clans are coming to me,” Rand said flatly. But they had waited long enough to make today bloodier. It never happened like that in the stories.
“So it seems. But the four chiefs will not meet you until the Wise Ones have made their arrangements,” Lan added dryly. “Come. Moiraine can tell you more than I of it.”
Rand shook his head. “Done is done. I can hear details later. If Han doesn’t need to keep them from our backs any longer, then I need him. Sulin, send a runner. Han—”
“It is done, Rand,” the Warder said insistently. “All of it. Only a few Shaido remain south of the city. Thousands have been taken prisoner, and most of the rest are crossing the Gaelin. Word would have been sent to you an hour ago, had anyone known where you were. You’ve kept moving. Come and let Moiraine tell you.”
“Done? We’ve won?”
“You have won. Completely.”
Rand peered at the men being bandaged, the patient lines awaiting bandages and those leaving with them. The rows that lay almost unmoving. Moiraine was still making her way along those, pausing wearily here and there to Heal. Only a few of the wounded would be here, of course. They would have been coming as they could throughout the day, leaving as and when they could. If they could. None of the dead would be here. Only a battle lost is sadder than a battle won. He seemed to remember saying that before, long ago. Perhaps he had read it.
No. There were too many living in his responsibility for him to worry over the dead. But how many faces will I know, like Jolien’s? I will never forget Ilyena, not if all the world burns!
Frowning, he raised a hand to his head. Those thoughts had seemed to come on top of one another, from different places. He was so tired he could hardly think. But he needed to, needed thoughts that did not slide by almost beyond his reach. He released the Source and the Void, and convulsed as saidin almost drove him under in that moment of retreat. He barely had time to realize his mistake. With the Power gone, exhaustion and pain crashed down on him.
He was aware of faces turned up to him as he toppled from his saddle, mouths moving, hands reaching to grab him, cushion his fall.
“Moiraine!” Lan shouted, voice hollow in Rand’s ears. “He is bleeding badly!”
Sulin had his head cradled in her arms. “Hold on, Rand al’Thor,” she said urgently. “Hold on.”
Asmodean said nothing, but his face was bleak, and Rand felt a trickle of saidin flowing into him from the man. Darkness came.
CHAPTER
45
After the Storm
Sitting on a small boulder jutting from the foot of the slope, Mat winced as he pulled his broad-brimmed hat lower against the midmorning sun. Partly to shield his eyes from the sun. There was another thing he did not want to see, though cuts and bruises reminded him, especially the arrow slash along his temple that the hat pressed against. An ointment from Daerid’s saddlebags had stopped the bleeding, there and elsewhere, yet everything still hurt, and most of it stung. That part would grow worse. The heat of the day was just beginning to take hold, but sweat was beading up on his face and already dampening his smallclothes and shirt. Idly he wondered whether autumn would ever come to Cairhien. At least discomfort kept him from thinking how tired he was; even after a night with no sleep he would have lain awake in a feather bed, much less blankets on the ground. Not that he wanted to be anywhere near his tent in any case.
A fine bloody to-do. Nearly killed, I’m sweating like a pig, I can’t find a comfortable place to stretch out, and I don’t dare get drunk. Blood and bloody ashes! He stopped fingering a slice across the chest of his coat—an inch difference, and that spear would have gone through his heart; Light, but the man had been good!—and put that part of it out of his mind. Not that it was easy, with what was going on all around him.
For once the Tairens and Cairhienin did not seem to mind seeing Aiel tents in every direction. There were even Aiel right in the camp, and almost as miraculously, Tairens mingling with Cairhienin among the smoky cook-fires. Not that anyone was eating; the kettles had not been set on the fires, although he could smell meat burning somewhere. Instead, most were as drunk as they could manage on wine, brandy, or Aiel oosquai, laughing and celebrating. Not far from where he sat, a dozen Defenders of the Stone, stripped to sweaty shirtsleeves, were dancing to the claps of ten times as many watchers. In a line, with arms around each others’ shoulders, they stepped so quickly that it was a wonder none of them tripped or kicked the man next to them. For another circle of onlookers, near a ten-foot pole stuck in the ground—Mat hastily averted his eyes—as many Aielmen were doing some kicking of their own. Mat assumed it was a dance; another Aiel was playing the pipes for them. They leaped as hi
gh as they could, flung one foot even higher, then landed on that foot and immediately leaped upward again, faster and faster, sometimes spinning like horizontal tops at the height of their leaps, or turning somersaults or backflips. Seven or eight Tairens and Cairhienin sat nursing broken bones from trying it, all the while cheering and laughing like madmen, passing a stone crock of something back and forth. In other places other men were dancing, and maybe singing. It was hard to say, in the din. Without stirring, he could count ten flutes, not to mention twice as many tin whistles, and a skinny Cairhienin in a ragged coat was blowing something that looked part flute and part horn with some odd bits tossed in. And there were countless drums, most of them pots being banged with spoons.
In short, the camp was bedlam and a ball rolled into one. He recognized it, mainly from those memories he could still assign to other men if he concentrated hard enough. A celebration of still being alive. One more time they had walked under the Dark One’s nose and survived to tell the tale. One more dance along the razor’s edge finished. Almost dead yesterday, maybe dead tomorrow, but alive, gloriously alive, today. He did not feel like celebrating. What good was being alive if it meant living in a cage?
He shook his head as Daerid, Estean and a heavyset red-haired Aiel man he did not know staggered by, holding each other up. Barely audible through the clamor, Daerid and Estean were trying to teach the taller man between them the words to “Dance with Jak o’ the Shadows.”
“We’ll sing all night, and drink all day,
and on the girls we’ll spend our pay,
and when it’s gone, then we’ll away,
to dance with Jak o’ the Shadows.”
The sun-dark fellow showed no interest in learning, of course—he would not unless they convinced him it was a proper battle hymn—but he listened, and he was not the only one. By the time the three passed out of sight in the milling crowd, they had acquired a tail of twenty more, waving dented pewter cups and tarred-leather mugs, all bellowing the tune at the top of their lungs.
“There’re some delight in ale and wine,
and some in girls with ankles fine,
but my delight, yes, always mine,
is to dance with Jak o’ the Shadows.”
Mat wished he had never taught any of them the song. The teaching had just kept his mind occupied while Daerid stopped him from bleeding to death; that ointment stung as bad as the gashes themselves had, and Daerid would never make a seamstress jealous with his delicate handling of needle and thread. Only, the song had spread from that first dozen like fire in dry grass. Tairens and Cairhienin, horse and foot, had all been singing it when they returned at dawn.
Returned. Right back to the hill valley where they had started, below the ruin of the log tower, and no chance for him to get away. He had offered to ride ahead, and Talmanes and Nalesean nearly came to blows over who was to provide his escort. Not everyone had become the best of friends. All he needed now was for Moiraine to come asking questions about where he had been and why, nattering at him about ta’veren and duty, about the Pattern and Tarmon Gai’don, until his head spun. Doubtless she was with Rand now, but she would get around to him eventually.
He glanced up at the hilltop and the tangle of shattered logs among broken trees. That Cairhienin fellow who had made the looking glasses for Rand was up there with his apprentices, poking about. The Aiel had been full of what happened there. It was definitely past time for him to be gone. The foxhead medallion protected him from women channeling, but he had heard enough from Rand to know a man’s channeling was different. He had no interest in finding out whether the thing would shield him from Sammael and his ilk.
Grimacing at darts of pain, he used the black-hafted spear to lever himself to his feet. Around him the celebration went on. If he drifted down to the picket lines now . . . He was not looking forward to saddling Pips.
“The hero should not sit without drinking.”
Startled, he jerked around, grunting at the stab of his wounds, to stare at Melindhra. She had a large clay pitcher in one hand, not spears, and her face was not veiled, but her eyes seemed to be weighing him. “Now listen, Melindhra, I can explain everything.”
“What must be explained?” she asked, flinging her free arm around his shoulders. Even with the sudden jolt, he tried to stand straighter; he still was not used to having to look up at a woman. “I knew you would seek your own honor. The Car’a’carn casts a great shadow, but no man wishes to spend his life in the shade.”
Closing his mouth hurriedly, he managed a faint, “Of course.” She was not going to try to kill him. “That’s it exactly.” In his relief, he took the pitcher from her, but his gulp turned into a splutter. It was the rawest double-distilled brandy he had ever tasted.
She retrieved the pitcher long enough to take a draw, then sighed gratefully and pushed it back at him. “He was a man of much honor, Mat Cauthon. Better that you had captured him, but even by killing him, you have gained much ji. It was well that you sought him out.”
Despite himself, Mat looked at what he had been avoiding, and shivered. A leather cord tied in short flame-red hair held Couladin’s head atop the ten-foot pole near where the Aielmen were dancing. The thing seemed to be grinning. At him.
Sought Couladin out? He had done his best to keep the pikes between him and any of the Shaido. But that arrow had clipped the side of his head, and he was on the ground before he knew it, struggling to get to his feet with the fight raging all around him, laying about him with the raven-marked spear, trying to make it back to Pips. Couladin had appeared as if springing out of air, veiled for killing, but there had been no mistaking those bare arms, entwined with Dragons glittering gold-and-red. The man had been cutting a swath into the pikemen with his spears, shouting for Rand to show himself, shouting that he was the true Car’a’carn. Maybe he really believed it by then. Mat still did not know whether Couladin had recognized him, but it had made no difference, not when the fellow decided to carve a hole through him to find Rand. He did not know who had cut off Couladin’s head afterward, either.
I was too busy trying to stay alive to watch, he thought sourly. And hoping he would not bleed to death. Back in the Two Rivers he had been as fine a hand with a quarterstaff as anyone, and a quarterstaff was not so different from a spear, but Couladin must have been born with the things in his hands. Of course, that skill had not availed the man much in the end. Maybe I still have a little bit of luck. Please, Light, let it show itself now!
He was thinking of how to get rid of Melindhra so he could saddle Pips when Talmanes presented himself with a formal bow, hand to heart in the Cairhienin fashion. “Grace favor you, Mat.”
“And you,” Mat said absently. She was not going to go because he asked. Asking would certainly put a fox in the henyard. Maybe if he told her he wanted to take a ride. They said Aiel could run down horses.
“A delegation came from the city during the night. There will be a triumphal procession for the Lord Dragon, in gratitude from Cairhien.”
“Will there?” She had to have duties of some sort. The Maidens were always flocking around Rand; maybe she would be called off for that. Glancing at her though, he did not think he had better count on it. Her wide smile was . . . proprietary.
“The delegation was from the High Lord Meilan,” Nalesean said, joining them. His bow was just as correct, both hands sweeping wide, but hasty. “It is he who offers the procession to the Lord Dragon.”
“Lord Dobraine, Lord Maringil and Lady Colavaere, among others, also came to the Lord Dragon.”
Mat pulled his mind back to the moment. Each of the pair was trying to pretend the other of them did not exist—both looking right at him, with never the flicker of an eye toward each other—but their faces were as tight as their voices from the strain, their hands white-knuckled on sword hilts. It would be a cap to everything if they came to blows, and him likely still trying to hobble out of reach when one of them ran him through by accident. “What does it ma
tter who sent a delegation, as long as Rand gets his procession?”
“It matters that you should ask him for our rightful place at the head,” Talmanes said quickly. “You slew Couladin, and earned us that place.” Nalesean closed his mouth and scowled; plainly he had been about to say the same thing.
“You two ask him,” Mat said. “It’s none of my affair.” Melindhra’s hand tightened on the back of his neck, but he did not care. Moiraine would surely not be far from Rand. He was not about to put his neck in a second noose while still trying to think his way out of the first.
Talmanes and Nalesean gaped at him as if he were demented. “You are our battle leader,” Nalesean protested. “Our general.”
“My bodyservant will polish your boots,” Talmanes put in with a small smile that he carefully did not direct at the square-faced Tairen, “and brush and mend your clothes. So you will appear at your best.”
Nalesean gave his oiled beard a jerk; his eyes darted halfway to the other man before he could stop them. “If I may offer, I have a good coat I think will fit you well. Gold satin and crimson.” It was the Cairhienin’s turn to glower.
“General!” Mat exclaimed, holding himself up with the spear haft. “I’m no flaming—! I mean, I wouldn’t want to usurp your place.” Let them figure out which one of them he meant.
“Burn my soul,” Nalesean said, “it was your battle skill that won for us, and kept us alive. Not to mention your luck. I’ve heard how you always turn the right card, but it is more than that. I’d follow you if you had never met the Lord Dragon.”
“You are our leader,” Talmanes said right on top of him, in a voice more sober if no less certain. “Until yesterday I have followed men of other lands because I must. You I will follow because I want to. Perhaps you are not a lord in Andor, but here, I say that you are, and I pledge myself your man.”
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