Now, she blinked and saw something else about them. Cowards, who would rather pick through corpses and fish in their pockets than fight. Which was worse? The men who—misguided though they were—stood up to the Trollocs and tried to turn them back? Or these mercenaries who refused to fight because they found this path easier?
Ila shook her head. She had always felt as if she knew the answers in life. Today, most of those had slipped from her. Saving a person’s life, though … that she could cling to.
She headed back among the bodies, searching for the living among the dead.
* * *
Olver scuttled back under the wagon, clutching the Horn, as Lady Faile rode off. Dozens of riders followed her, and hundreds of Trollocs. It had grown so dark.
Alone. He’d been left alone again.
He squeezed his eyes shut, but that didn’t do much. He could still hear men screaming and shouting in the distance. He could still smell blood, the captives who had been killed by the Trollocs as they tried to escape. Beyond the blood, he smelled smoke, thick and itchy. It seemed that the whole world was burning.
The ground trembled, as if something very heavy had hit it somewhere close by. Thunder rumbled in the sky, accompanied by sharp cracks as lightning struck time and time again at the Heights. Olver whimpered.
How brave he had thought himself. Now, here he was, finally at the battle. He could barely keep his hands from trembling. He wanted to hide, dig deep into the earth.
Faile had told him to find another place to hide because they might come back, looking for the Horn.
Dared he go out there? Dared he stay here? Olver cracked his eyes open, then nearly screamed. A pair of legs ending in hooves stood beside the wagon. A moment later, a snouted face leaned down and looked at him, beady eyes narrowing, nostrils sniffing.
Olver yelled, scrambling back, clutching the Horn. The Trolloc yelled something, heaving the wagon over and nearly smashing it down on Olver. The wagon’s contents of arrows went scattering across the ground as Olver dashed away, looking for safety.
There was none. Dozens of the Trollocs turned toward him, and they called to one another in a language Olver did not recognize. He looked about, Horn in one hand, knife in the other, frantic. No safety.
A horse snorted nearby. It was Bela, chewing on some grain leaked from a supply cart. The horse raised her head, looking at Olver. She didn’t have a saddle on, only a halter and bridle.
Blood and ashes, Olver thought, running for her, I wish I had Wind. This plump mare would end him in the cookpot for certain. Olver sheathed his knife and jumped up onto Bela’s back, seizing the reins in one hand, clutching the Horn in the other.
The pig-snouted Trolloc from the wagon swung, nearly taking off Olver’s arm. He cried out, kicking Bela into motion, and the mare galloped out from among the Trollocs. The beasts ran behind with howls and yells. Other calls sounded throughout the camp, which was nearly emptying out as they converged on the boy.
Olver rode as he’d been taught, down low, guiding with his knees. And Bela ran. Light, but she ran. Mat had said that many horses were frightened of Trollocs, and would throw their rider if forced near them, but this animal did none of that. She thundered right past howling Trollocs, right through the center of the camp.
Olver looked over his shoulder. There were hundreds of them back there, chasing him. “Oh, Light!”
He’d seen Mat’s banner atop those Heights, he was sure of it. But there were so many Trollocs in the way. Olver turned Bela to ride the way Aravine had gone. Perhaps he could round the Trolloc camp and get out that way, then come up the back of the Heights.
Take the Horn to Mat, or all is lost.
Olver rode for all he was worth, urging Bela on.
There is nobody else.
Ahead, a large force of Trollocs cut him off. Olver turned back the other way, but others approached from that direction, too. Olver cried out, turning Bela again, but a thick black Trolloc arrow hit her in the flank. She screamed and stumbled, then dropped.
Olver tumbled free. Hitting the ground knocked the air from his lungs and made him see a flash of light. He forced himself to crawl to his hands and knees.
The Horn must reach Matrim Cauthon …
Olver grabbed the Horn, and found that he was weeping. “I’m sorry,” he said to Bela. “You were a good horse. You ran like Wind couldn’t have. I’m sorry.” She whinnied softly and drew a final breath, then died.
He left her and ran beneath the legs of the first Trolloc that arrived. Olver couldn’t fight them. He knew he couldn’t. He didn’t unsheathe the knife. He just ran up the steep slope, trying to reach the top from where he had seen Mat’s flag fall.
It might as well have been a continent away. A Trolloc grabbed at his clothing, pulling him down, but Olver ripped free, leaving cloth in its thick nails. He scrambled over broken ground, and with desperation, spotted a little cleft in a rocky outcrop at the base of the slope. The shallow crack looked up at the black sky.
He threw himself toward it, then wiggled in, clinging to the Horn. He barely fit. Trollocs milled around above him, then began to reach in for him, tearing at his clothing.
Olver whimpered and closed his eyes.
* * *
Logain hurled himself through the gateway, weaves already forming before him as he struck at Demandred.
The man stood on the smoldering slope that looked over the dried river and toward the failing Andoran pike formations. The Aiel, Cairhienin and Legion of the Dragon fought there as well, and all were in danger of being surrounded.
The pikes were all but shattered, now. It would soon be a rout.
Logain launched twin columns of fire toward Demandred, but Sharans threw themselves in the way, interfering with his attack. Flesh burned away, bones charring to dust. Their deaths gave Demandred time to spin about and lash out with a weave of Water and Air. Logain’s burst of fire hit that and turned to steam, then boiled away.
Logain had hoped that after so much channeling, Demandred would be weakened. Not so. A complex weave formed in front of the man, a weave such as Logain had never seen. It made a field that rippled in the air, and when Logain next attacked, his weave bounced free like a stick thrown against a brick wall.
Logain leaped to the side, rolling as lightning struck from the sky. Shards of rock pelted him as he wove Spirit, Fire and Earth, slicing at the strange wall. He ripped it down, then lobbed broken bits of stone from the ground to intercept fire from Demandred.
A diversion, Logain thought, realizing that Demandred had woven something else, more complex, behind the fire. A gateway opened and shot across the ground, opening to a maw of redness. Logain threw himself to the side as the Deathgate passed, but it left a trail of burning lava.
Demandred’s next attack was a jet of air that hurled Logain backward, toward that lava. Logain desperately wove Water to cool the lava. He hit shoulder-first, passing a burst of steam that scalded his skin, but he had cooled the lava enough that it formed a crust atop the still-molten flow beneath. Holding his breath against the steam, he hurled himself to the side as another series of lightning bolts pulverized the ground where he had been.
Those bolts shattered the crust he’d made, reaching into the molten rock. Drops of lava splashed across Logain, searing his skin, burning pocks in his arm and face. He screamed and wove through his rage to send lightning down on his foe.
A slice of Spirit, Earth and Fire cut his weaves from the air. Demandred was just so strong. That sa’angreal was incredible.
The next flash of lightning blinded Logain, throwing him backward. He hit a patch of broken shale, the points of the rock biting into his skin.
“You are powerful,” Demandred said. Logain could barely hear the words. His ears … the thunder … “But you are not Lews Therin.”
Logain growled, weaving through his tears, hurling lightning at Demandred. He wove twice, and though Demandred cut one bolt from the air, the other struck true.
&nb
sp; But … what was that weave? It was another that Logain did not recognize. The lightning hit Demandred, but vanished, somehow sent down into the ground and dissipated. Such a simple weave of Air and Earth, but it rendered the lightning useless.
A shield rammed between Logain and the Source. Through his wounded eyes, he watched the weave for balefire begin in Demandred’s hands. Snarling, Logain grabbed a piece of shale from the ground beside him, the size of his fist, and hurled it at Demandred.
Surprisingly, the stone hit, ripping skin, causing Demandred to stumble back. The Forsaken was powerful, but he could still make the mistakes of common men. Never focus all of your attention on the One Power, despite what Taim had always said. In that moment of distraction, the shield between Logain and the Source vanished.
Logain rolled to the side, beginning two weaves. One, a shield of his own that he did not intend to use. The other, a desperate, final gateway. The coward’s choice.
Demandred growled, raising a hand to his face and lashing out with the Power. He chose to destroy the shield, immediately recognizing it as the greater risk. The gateway opened, and Logain rolled through, letting it snap closed. He collapsed on the other side, his flesh scalded, his arms flayed, his ears ringing, his sight almost gone.
He forced himself to sit up, back in the Asha’man camp below the bogs where Gabrelle and the others awaited his return. He howled in anger. Gabrelle’s concern radiated through the bond. Real concern. He hadn’t imagined it. Light.
“Quiet,” she said, kneeling beside him. “You fool. What have you done to yourself?”
“I have failed,” he said. Distantly, he felt the strikes of Demandred’s power begin again as he continued bellowing for Lews Therin. “Heal me.”
“You’re not going to try that again, are you?” she said, already beginning the weave. “I don’t want to Heal you only to let you—”
“I won’t try again,” Logain said, voice ragged. The pain was horrible, but it paled compared to the humiliation of defeat. “I won’t, Gabrelle. Stop doubting my word. He’s too strong.”
“Some of these burns are bad, Logain. These holes in your skin, I don’t know if I can Heal them completely. You will be scarred.”
“That is fine,” he growled. That would be where the lava had splashed on his arm and the side of his face.
Light, he thought. How are we going to deal with that monster?
Gabrelle put her hands on him and Healing weaves poured into his body.
* * *
The thunder of Egwene’s battle with M’Hael rivaled that of the crashing clouds above. M’Hael. A new Forsaken, his name proclaimed by his Dreadlords across the battlefield.
Egwene wove without thought, hurling weave after weave toward the renegade Asha’man. She had not called upon the wind, but still it rushed and roared about her, whipping her hair and her dress, catching her stole and flipping it about. Narishma and Merise huddled with Leilwin on the ground beside her, Narishma’s voice—barely audible above the battle—calling out weaves as M’Hael crafted them.
Following her advance, Egwene stood upon the top of the Heights, on even ground with M’Hael. She knew, somewhere deep, that her body would need rest soon.
For now, that was an unaffordable luxury. For now, only the fight mattered.
Fire flared toward her, and she slapped it aside with Air. The sparks caught in the wind, swirling about her in a spray of light as she wove Earth. She sent a ripple through the already-broken ground, trying to knock M’Hael down, but he split the wave with a weave of his own.
He’s slowing, she thought.
Egwene stepped forward, swollen with power. She began two weaves, one above each hand, and spouted fire at him.
He responded with a bar of pure whiteness, wire-thin, which missed her by less than a handspan. The balefire left an afterimage in Egwene’s eyes, and the ground groaned beneath them as the air warped. Those spiderwebs sprang out across the ground, fractures into nothingness.
“Fool!” she yelled at him. “You will destroy the Pattern itself!” Already, their clash threatened that. This wind was not natural, this sizzling air. Those cracks in the ground spread from M’Hael, widening.
“He’s weaving it again!” Narishma cried, voice caught in the tempest.
M’Hael released this second weave of balefire, fracturing the ground, but Egwene was ready. She sidestepped, her anger building. Balefire. She needed to counter it!
They don’t care what they ruin. They are here to destroy. That is their master’s call. Break. Burn down. Kill.
Gawyn …
She screamed in fury, weaving column after column of fire, one after another. Narishma shouted what M’Hael was doing, but Egwene couldn’t hear for the rush of sound in her ears. She saw soon, anyway, that he had constructed a barrier of Air and Fire to deflect her attacks.
Egwene strode forward, sending repeated strikes at him. That gave him no time to recover, no time to attack. She stopped the rhythm only to form a shield that she held at the ready. A spray of fire off his barrier made him stumble back, his weave cracking, and he raised his hand, perhaps to attempt balefire again.
Egwene slammed the shield between him and the Source. It didn’t quite cut him off, for he held it back by force of will. They were near enough now that she could see his incredulity, his anger. He fought back, but was weaker than she. Egwene pushed, bringing that shield closer and closer to the invisible thread that connected him to the One Power. She forced it with all her strength …
M’Hael, straining, released a small stream of balefire upward, through the gap where the shield had not yet fallen into place. The balefire destroyed the weave—as it did the air, and indeed, the Pattern itself.
Egwene stumbled back as M’Hael directed the weave toward her, but the white-hot bar was too small, too weak, to reach her. It faded away before hitting. M’Hael snarled, then vanished, warping the air in a form of Traveling Egwene did not know.
Egwene breathed deeply, holding her hand to her chest. Light! She had almost been obliterated from the Pattern.
He disappeared without forming a gateway! The True Power, she thought. The only explanation. She knew next to nothing about it—it was the Dark One’s very essence, the lure that had coaxed channelers in the Age of Legends to drill the Bore in the first place.
Balefire. Light. I was almost dead. Worse than dead.
She had no way to counter balefire.
It’s only a weave … Only a weave. Perrin’s words.
The moment was past now, and M’Hael had fled. She would have to keep Narishma close to warn her if someone started channeling nearby.
Unless M’Hael uses the True Power again. Would another man be able to sense that being channeled?
“Mother!”
Egwene turned as Merise gestured toward where most of the Aes Sedai and Asha’man were still engaged in a resounding battle with the Sharan forces. Many sisters in colorful dresses lay dead across the hillside.
Gawyn’s death haunted her thoughts like an assassin in black. Egwene set her jaw and stoked her anger, drawing in the One Power as she launched herself at the Sharans.
* * *
Hurin, his nostrils stuffed with cloth, fought on Polov Heights with the other Borderlanders.
Even through the cloth, he smelled the war. So much violence, the scents of blood, of rotting flesh all around him. They coated the ground, his sword, his own clothing. He had already been ill, violently, several times during the battle.
Still he fought. He threw himself aside as a bear-snouted Trolloc crawled over the bodies and swung down at him. The beast’s sword made the ground shake, and Hurin cried out.
The beast laughed an inhuman laugh, taking Hurin’s cry to indicate fear. It lunged, so Hurin scuttled forward and under its reach, then opened up its stomach as he ran past. The creature stumbled to a stop, watching at its own reeking innards pour out.
Have to buy time for Lord Rand, Hurin thought, backing away and waitin
g for the next Trolloc to come over the bodies. They were coming up the eastern side of the Heights, the river side. This steep slope was hard for them to climb, but Light, there were so many of them.
Keep fighting, keep fighting.
Lord Rand had come to him, making apologies. To him! Well, Hurin would do him proud. The Dragon Reborn did not need the forgiveness of a little thief-taker, but Hurin still felt as if the world had righted itself. Lord Rand was Lord Rand again. Lord Rand would preserve them, if they could give him enough time.
There was a lull in the action. He frowned. The beasts had seemed endless. Surely they hadn’t all fallen. He stepped cautiously forward, looking over the corpses and down the slope.
No, no they weren’t defeated. The sea of beasts seemed near-endless still. He could see them by the light of fires below. The Trollocs had paused their climb because they needed to move corpses out of their way on the slope, many of whom had been cut down by Tam’s archers. Below them, at the riverbed, the greater army of Trollocs fought Elayne’s army.
“We should have a few minutes,” Lan Mandragoran said to the soldiers from where he sat on horseback. Queen Alliandre rode nearby as well, talking calmly with her men. Two monarchs within sight. Surely they knew how to exercise command. That made Hurin feel better.
“They’re preparing for a final charge,” Lan said, “a push to force us away from the slope so they can fight us up here on even ground. Rest while they clear bodies. Peace favor your swords, friends. The next assault will be the worst one.” The next assault would be the worst one? Light!
Behind them on the middle of the plateau, the rest of Mat’s army continued pressing the Sharan army, trying to push them back to the southwest. If he could do that, and force them down the slope into the Trollocs fighting Elayne’s forces, it could create a right mess that Mat could take advantage of. But for the moment, the Sharans were not giving an inch of ground; in fact, they were pushing back Mat’s army, which was beginning to founder.
Hurin lay back, listening to the moans all around, the distant shouts and ringing of weapons hitting metal, sniffing the stink of violence hanging around him in an ocean of stenches.
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