Perrin sighed. He had thought of sending ropes, but they would have needed nearly two miles of it to span that last slope, a lot to be carried, and if any Shaido spotted the butt end of it in the Malden end of the aqueduct, they would search every nook and cranny in the town. A small risk, perhaps, yet the bitter loss that might result made it loom large. “I’ll be there as fast as I can, Ban. I promise you that.”
He shook hands with every one of them, too. Lantern-jawed Tod al’Caar and Leof Torfinn, with a white streak through his hair where a scar ran, given to him by Trollocs. Young Kenly Maerin, who was making a stab at growing a beard again unfortunately, and Bili Adarra, who was almost as wide as Perrin if a hand shorter. Bili was a distant cousin, and some of the closest kin Perrin had living. He had grown up with many of these men, though some were a few years older than he. Some were a few years younger, too. By now, he knew the men from down to Deven Ride and up to Watch Hill as well as he did those from around Emond’s Field. He had more reason than Faile alone to reach that fortress as fast as he could.
Had al’Lora, a lean fellow with thick mustaches like a Taraboner, was the last of the Two Rivers men. As he climbed into the aqueduct, Gaul appeared, face still veiled and four spears gripped in the hand that held his bull-hide buckler. He put a hand on the edge of the aqueduct and leapt up to sit on the stone coping.
“You’re going in?” Perrin said in surprise.
“The Maidens can do any scouting you need, Perrin Aybara.” The big Aiel glanced over his shoulder toward the Maidens. Perrin thought he scowled, though it was hard to be sure because of the black veil that hid all but his eyes. “I heard them talking when they thought I was not listening. Unlike your wife and the others, Chiad is properly gai’shain. Bain, too, but I care nothing about her. Chiad still has the rest of her year and a day to serve after we rescue her. When a man has a woman as gai’shain, or a woman a man, sometimes a marriage wreath is made as soon as white is put off. It is not uncommon. But I heard the Maidens say they would reach Chiad first, to keep her from me.” Behind him, Sulin’s finger flashed in Maiden handtalk, and one of the others slapped a hand over her mouth as if stifling laughter. So they had been goading him. Maybe they were not so hard against his suit for Chiad as they pretended. Or maybe there was something Perrin was missing. Aiel humor could be rough.
Gaul slipped into the water. He had to bend almost parallel to the surface to get under the aqueduct’s top. Perrin stared at the opening. So easy to follow Gaul. Turning away was hard. The line of Seanchan soldiers still snaked up and down the slope.
“Mishima, I’m going back to my camp. Grady will take you to yours when you’re done here. Do what you can to blur the tracks before you go.”
“Very well, my Lord. I’ve told off some men to scrape grease from the axles and grease these windmills. They sound as if they could seize up any minute. We can do those at the far ridge, too.”
Taking up Stepper’s reins, Perrin looked up at the slow-turning sails. Slow, but steady. They had never been made to turn fast. “And if some Shaido decide to come out here tomorrow and wonder where the fresh grease came from?”
Mishima regarded him for a long moment, his face half-hidden by moonshadows. For once, he did not seem put off by glowing yellow eyes. His scent. . . . He smelled as if he saw something unexpected. “The Banner-General was right about you,” he said slowly.
“What did she say?”
“You’ll have to ask her, my Lord.”
Perrin rode down the slope and back to the trees thinking how easy it would be to turn around. Gallenne could handle everything from here. It was all laid out. Except that the Mayener believed every battle climaxed with a grand charge of horse. And preferably began with one, too. How long would he stick to the plan? Arganda was more sensible, but he was so anxious for Queen Alliandre that he might well order that charge, as well. That left himself. The breeze gusted hard, and he pulled his cloak around him.
Grady, elbows on his knees, was in a small clearing sitting on a half-worked mossy stone that was partially sunken into the ground and no doubt left over from building the aqueduct. A few others like it stood around. The breeze kept his scent from Perrin’s nose. He did not look up until Perrin drew rein in front of him. The gateway they had used to come here still stood open, showing another clearing among tall trees, not far from where the Seanchan were now camped. It might have been easier to have had them set up close to Perrin’s camp, but he wanted to keep the Aes Sedai and Wise Ones as far from the sul’dam and damane as possible. He was not afraid of the Seanchan breaking Tylee’s word, but the Aes Sedai and Wise Ones practically came down with the pip just thinking about damane. Probably the Wise Ones and Annoura would stay their hands for the time being. Probably. Masuri, he was not so sure of. In a number of ways. Better to keep a few leagues between them for as long as it could be managed.
“Are you all right, Grady?” The man’s weathered face seemed to have new lines in it. That might have been a trick of moonshadows cast by the trees, but Perrin did not think so. The carts had passed through the gateway easily, but was it a little smaller than the first he had seen Grady make?
“Just tired a little, my Lord,” Grady said wearily. He remained seated with his elbows on his knees. “All this Traveling we’ve been doing lately. . . . Well, I couldn’t have held the gateway open long enough for all those soldiers to ride through yesterday. That’s why I’ve taken to tying them off.”
Perrin nodded. Both of the Asha’man were tired. Channeling took strength out of a man as surely as swinging a hammer all day at a forge. More so, in truth. The man with the hammer could keep going far longer than any Asha’man. That was why the aqueduct was the route into Malden and not a gateway, why there would be no gateway to bring Faile and the others out again, much as Perrin wished there could be. The two Asha’man only had so much more left in them until they could rest, and that little had to be used where it was needed most. Light, but that was a hard thought. Only, if Grady or Neald fell one gateway short of what was needed, a lot of men were going to die. A hard decision.
“I’m going to need you and Neald the day after tomorrow.” That was like saying he needed air. Without the Asha’man, everything became impossible. “You’re going to be busy then.” Another gross understatement.
“Busy as a one-armed man plastering a ceiling, my Lord.”
“Are you up to it?”
“Have to be, don’t I, my Lord.”
Perrin nodded again. You did what had to be done. “Send me back to our camp. After you return Mishima and his people to his, you and the Maidens can sleep there if you’d like.” That would spare Grady a little against two days from now.
“Don’t know about the Maidens, my Lord, but I’d as soon come on home tonight.” He turned his head to look at the gateway without rising, and it dwindled in the reverse of how it had opened, the view through it seeming to rotate as it narrowed, finishing with a vertical slash of silvery blue light that left a faint purplish bar in Perrin’s vision when it winked out. “Those damane fair make my skin crawl. They don’t want to be free.”
“How would you know that?”
“I talked to some of them when none of those sul’dam was close by. Soon as I brought up maybe they’d like those leashes off, just hinting like, they started screaming for the sul’dam. The damane were crying, and the sul’dam petting them and stroking them and glaring daggers at me. Fair made my skin crawl.”
Stepper stamped an impatient hoof, and Perrin patted the stallion’s neck. Grady was lucky those sul’dam had let him go with a whole hide. “Whatever happens with the damane, Grady, it won’t be this week, or next. And it won’t be us who fixes it. So you let the damane be. We have a job of work in front of us that needs doing.” And a deal with the Dark One to do it. He pushed the thought away. Anyway, it had grown hard to think of Tylee Khirgan being on the Dark One’s side. Or Mishima. “You understand that?”
“I understand, my Lord. I’m jus
t saying it makes my skin crawl.”
At last another silvery blue slash appeared, widening into an opening that showed a clearing among large, widely spaced trees and a low stone outcrop. Leaning low on Stepper’s neck, Perrin rode through. The gateway winked out behind him, and he rode on through the trees until he came to the large clearing where the camp lay, near what had once been the tiny village of Brytan, a collection of flea-riddled hovels that the most rain-soaked night could not tempt a man into. The sentries up in the trees gave no warnings, of course. They recognized him.
He wanted nothing so much as he wanted his blankets right then. Well, Faile, certainly, but lacking her, he wanted to be alone in the dark. Likely, he would fail to find sleep again, but he would spend the night as he had so often before, thinking of her, remembering her. Short of the ten-pace wide thicket of sharpened stakes that surrounded the camp, though, he reined in. A raken was crouched just outside the stakes, its long gray neck lowered so a woman in a hooded brown coat could scratch its leathery snout. Her hood hung down her back, revealing short-cropped hair and a hard, narrow face. She looked at Perrin as if she recognized him, but went right on scratching. The saddle on the creature’s back had places for two riders. A messenger had come, it seemed. He turned into one of the narrow, angled lanes through the stakes that had been left to allow horses through. Just not quickly.
Most everybody had turned in already. He sensed movement on the horselines, in the heart of the camp, likely some of the Cairhienin grooms or farriers, but the patched canvas tents and small huts of woven evergreen branches, now long since brown, lay dark and quiet. Nothing moved among the low Aiel tents, and only a few sentries walking up and down in the nearest Mayener section of the camp. The Mayeners and Ghealdanin put little trust in the Two Rivers men in the trees. His tall, red-striped tent was alight, however, and the shadows of a number of people shifted on the tent walls. When he climbed down in front of the tent, Athan Chandin appeared to take the reins and knuckle his forehead while he hunched a sort of bow. Athan was a good bowshot or he would not have been here, but he had a truckling manner. Perrin went in unpinning his cloak.
“There you are,” Berelain said brightly. She must have dressed hastily, because her long black hair looked as though it had had just a lick and a promise from a brush, but her high-necked gray riding dress appeared neat and fresh. Her serving women never let her don anything unless it was freshly ironed. She held out a silver winecup for Breane to refill from a long-necked wine pitcher, which the Cairhienin woman did with a grimace. Faile’s maid disliked Berelain with a passion. Berelain seemed not to notice, though. “Forgive me for entertaining in your tent, but the Banner-General wanted to see you, and I thought I’d keep her company. She’s been telling us about some Whitecloaks.”
Balwer was standing unobtrusively in a corner—the bird-like little man could be as unnoticeable as a lizard on a branch when he wished to be—but his scent sharpened at the mention of Whitecloaks.
Tylee, her shoulders straining a coat like that of the flier, made a straight-legged bow while keeping one eye on Annoura. She seemed to believe the Aes Sedai might turn into ravening wild dogs at any moment. Perrin thought she smelled of distress, though none showed on her dark face. “My Lord, I have two pieces of news I felt I had to bring you immediately. Have you begun putting the forkroot into the town’s water?”
“I have,” he said worriedly, tossing his cloak down atop one of the brass-banded chests. Tylee sighed. “I told you I would. I’d have done it two days ago if that fool woman in Almizar hadn’t dragged her heels so. What’s happened?”
“Forgive me,” Lini announced, “but I was roused from my blankets, and I would like to return to them. Does anyone require anything else of me tonight?” There were no curtsies or ‘my Lords’ from the frail-appearing woman with her white hair in a loose braid for sleeping. Unlike with Berelain, her brown dress looked hastily donned, unusual for her. Her scent was crisp and sharp with disapproval. She was one of those who believed the ridiculous tale that Perrin had slept with Berelain on the very night after Faile had been captured. She managed to avoid looking at him while her gaze swept around the tent’s interior.
“I’ll have some more wine,” Aram announced, holding out his cup. Grim-faced and haggard in a red-striped coat, his eyes hollow, he was attempting to lounge in one of the folding camp chairs, but the sword strapped to his back made leaning against the gilt-edged back impossible. Breane started toward him.
“He’s had enough,” Lini said sharply, and Breane turned away. Lini had a firm hand with Faile’s servants.
Aram muttered an oath and leaped to his feet, tossing his cup down on the flowered carpet that served as a floor. “I might as well go somewhere I won’t have some old woman nagging at me every time I take a drink.” He gave Perrin a sullen glare before stalking out of the tent. Doubtless on his way to Masema’s camp. He had pleaded to be one of the party sent into Malden, but his hot head could not be trusted with that.
“You can go, Lini,” Berelain said. “Breane can look after us well enough.” A snort was the acknowledgment Lini gave—she made it sound almost delicate—before she stalked out, stiff-backed and reeking of disapproval. And still not looking at Perrin.
“Forgive me, my Lord,” Tylee drawled in careful tones, “but you seem to run your household more . . . loosely . . . than I’m accustomed to.”
“It’s our way, Banner-General,” Perrin said, picking up Aram’s cup. No need to dirty another. “Nobody around here is property.” If that sounded sharp, so be it. He had come to like Tylee after a fashion, but these Seanchan had ways that would make a goat gag. He took the pitcher from Breane—she actually tried to hold on to it for a moment, frowning at him as if she would deny him a drink—and poured for himself before handing it back. She snatched the pitcher out of his hand. “Now, what happened? What about these Whitecloaks?”
“I sent raken out scouting as far as they could go just before dawn, and again just after sunset. One of the fliers tonight turned back sooner than expected. She saw seven thousand Children of the Light on the move not fifty miles from my camp.”
“On the move toward you?” Perrin frowned at his wine instead of drinking. “Seven thousand seems a very exact count to make in the dark.”
“It seems these men, they are deserters,” Annoura broke in. “At least, the Banner-General sees them so.” In gray silk, she appeared as neat as if she had spent an hour dressing. Her thrusting nose made her look like a crow wearing beaded braids as she peered at Tylee, and the Banner-General a particularly interesting bit of carrion. She held a winecup, but it seemed untouched. “I have heard rumors that Pedron Niall died fighting the Seanchan, but apparently Eamon Valda, who replaced Niall, swore fealty to the Seanchan Empress.” Tylee mouthed, “may she live forever,” under her breath; Perrin doubted anyone but himself heard. Balwer opened his mouth, too, but closed it again without speaking. The Whitecloaks were a bugbear to him. “Something over a month ago, however,” the Gray sister went on, “Galad Damodred killed Valda and led seven thousand Whitecloaks to leave the Seanchan cause. A pity he became enmeshed with Whitecloaks, but perhaps some good has come of it. In any case, it appears there is a standing order that these men are all to be killed as soon as found. I have summed it up nicely, yes, Banner-General?”
Tylee’s hand twitched as if it wanted to make one of those signs against evil. “That’s a fair summing up,” she said. To Perrin, not Annoura. The Seanchan woman seemed to find speaking to an Aes Sedai difficult. “Except the part about good coming of it. Oath-breaking and desertion can never be called good.”
“I take it they’re not moving toward you, or you’d have said.” Perrin put a hint of question into that, though there was no question in his mind.
“North,” Tylee answered. “They’re heading north.” Balwer half opened his mouth again, then shut it with a click of teeth.
“If you have advice,” Perrin told him, “then give it. But I d
on’t care how many Whitecloaks desert the Seanchan. Faile is the only thing I care about. And I don’t think the Banner-General will give up the chance to collar three or four hundred more damane to chase after them.” Berelain grimaced. Annoura’s face remained smooth, but she took a long swallow of her wine. None of the Aes Sedai felt very complacent about that part of the plan. None of the Wise Ones did, either.
“I will not,” Tylee said firmly. “I think I’ll take some wine after all.” Breane took a deep breath before moving to comply, and a hint of fear entered her scent. Apparently the tall dark woman intimidated her.
“I won’t deny I would enjoy a chance to strike a blow at the Whitecloaks,” Balwer said in that dry-as-dust voice, “but in truth, I feel I owe this Galad Damodred a debt of gratitude.” Perhaps his grudge was against this Valda personally. “In any case, you have no need of my advice here. Events are in motion in Malden, and if they weren’t, I doubt you’d hold back even a day. Nor would I have advised it, my Lord. If I may be so bold, I am quite fond of the Lady Faile.”
“You may,” Perrin told him. “Banner-General, you said two pieces of news?”
The Seanchan took the proffered winecup from Breane and looked at him so levelly it was clear she was avoiding a glance at the others in the tent. “May we speak alone?” she asked quietly.
Berelain glided across the carpet to rest a hand on his arm and smile up at him. “Annoura and I don’t mind leaving,” she said. Light, how could anyone believe there was anything between him and her? She was as beautiful as ever, true, yet the scent that had minded him of a hunting cat was so long gone from her smell that he barely remembered it. The bedrock of her scent was patience and resolve, now. She had come to accept that he loved Faile and only Faile, and she seemed as determined to see Faile freed as he was.
“You can stay,” he said. “Whatever you have to say, Banner-General, you can say in front of everyone here.”
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