Daise Congar stepped out from the encircling throng with Wit, who clung to her as if he never intended to let go of her again. For that matter, her stout arm was wrapped around Wit’s shoulders in much the same fashion. They made an odd picture as she planted her pitchfork-polearm firmly, her the taller by a head and holding her considerably smaller husband as though she meant to protect him. “They were on the Green,” she announced loudly, “all lined up and sitting their horses pretty as girls ready for a dance at Sunday. They never stirred. It was that that made us come …” A fierce murmur of agreement rippled from the women. “ … when we saw you were about to be overrun, and they just sat there like bumps on a log!”
Bornhald did not take his eyes from Perrin for an instant; he did not even blink. “Did you think I would trust you?” he sneered. “Your plan only failed because these others arrived—yes?—and you can claim no part in that.” Faile shifted; without looking away from the man, Perrin laid a finger across her lips just as she opened her mouth. She bit him—hard—but she did not say anything. Bornhald’s voice finally began to rise. “I will see you hang, Shadowspawn. I will see you hang, whatever it takes! I will see you dead if the world burns!” The last came as a shout. Byar’s sword slid a hand of bare steel from its scabbard; a massive Whitecloak behind him—Farran, Perrin thought his name was—drew his completely, with a pleased smile rather than Byar’s toothy snarl.
They froze as quivers rattled to arrows being drawn, and bows came up all around the circle, fletchings drawn to ear, every broadhead shaft pointed at a Whitecloak. Up and down the thick column, high-cantled saddles creaked as men shifted uneasily. Bornhald showed no sign of fear, and he did not smell of it, either; his scent was all hate. He ran almost fevered eyes over the Two Rivers folk encircling his men and returned them to Perrin just as hot and hate-filled.
Perrin motioned downward, and tension was let off bowstrings reluctantly, bows lowered slowly. “You would not help.” His voice was cold iron, anvil-hard. “Since you came to the Two Rivers, the help you’ve given has been almost accidental. You never really cared if people were burned out, killed, so long as you could find somebody to call Darkfriend.” Bornhald shivered, though his eyes still burned. “It is time for you to go. Not just from Emond’s Field. It is time for you to gather up your Whitecloaks and leave the Two Rivers. Now, Bornhald. You are going now.”
“I will see you hang one day,” Bornhald said softly. He jerked his hand for the column to follow and booted his horse forward as if he meant to ride Perrin over.
Perrin moved Stepper aside; he wanted these men gone, not more killing. Let the man have a final gesture of defiance.
Bornhald never turned his head, but hollow-cheeked Byar stared silent hate at Perrin, and Farran seemed to look at him with regret for some reason. The others kept their eyes front as they passed in a jingle of tack and the clop of hooves. Silently the circle opened to let them out, heading north.
A knot of ten or twelve men approached Perrin on foot, some in mismatched bits and pieces of old armor, all grinning anxiously, as the last of the Whitecloaks went by. He did not recognize any of them. A wide-nosed, leathery-faced fellow seemed to be their leader, his white hair bare but a rusty mail shirt covering him to the knees, though the collar of a farmer’s coat poked up around his neck. He bowed awkwardly over his bow. “Jerinvar Barstere, my Lord Perrin. Jer, they call me.” He spoke hurriedly, as if afraid of being interrupted. “Pardon for bothering you. Some of us will see the Whitecloaks along, if that’s all right with you. A good many want to get on home, even if we can’t get there before dark. There’s as many Whitecloaks again in Watch Hill, but they would not come. Had orders to hold fast, they said. Bunch of fools, if you ask me, and we’re more than tired of having them around, poking their noses into people’s houses and trying to make you accuse your neighbor of something. We’ll see them off, if that’s all right with you.” He gave Faile an abashed look, ducking his broad chin, but the flow of words did not slow. “Pardon, my Lady Faile. Didn’t mean to bother you and your lord. Just wanted to let him know we’re with him. A fine woman you have there, my Lord. A fine woman. No offense meant, my Lady. Well, we’ve daylight still, and talk shears no sheep. Pardon for bothering you, my Lord Perrin. Pardon, my Lady Faile.” He bowed again, imitated by the others, and they hurried away with him herding them, muttering at them, “No time for us to be bothering the lord and his lady. There’s work to do yet.”
“Who was that?” Perrin said, a trifle stunned by the torrent; Daise and Cenn together could not talk that much. “Do you know him, Faile? From Watch Hill?”
“Master Barstere is the Mayor of Watch Hill, and the others are the Village Council. The Watch Hill Women’s Circle will be sending a delegation down under their Wisdom once they’re certain it is safe. To see if ‘this Lord Perrin’ is right for the Two Rivers, they say, but they all wanted me to show them how to curtsy to you, and the Wisdom, Edelle Gaelin, is bringing you some of her dried-apple tarts.”
“Oh, burn me!” he breathed. It was spreading. He knew he should have stamped it down hard in the beginning. “Don’t call me that!” he shouted after the departing men. “I’m a blacksmith! Do you hear me? A blacksmith!” Jer Barstere turned to wave at him and nod before hurrying the others on.
Chortling, Faile tugged at his beard. “You are a sweet fool, my Lord Blacksmith. It is too late to turn back now.” Suddenly her smile became truly wicked. “Husband, is there any possibility you might be alone with your wife any time soon? Marriage seems to have made me as bold as a Domani gall! I know you must be tired, but—” She cut off with a small shriek and clung to his coat as he booted Stepper to a gallop toward the Winespring Inn. For once the cheers that followed did not bother him at all.
“Goldeneyes! Lord Perrin! Goldeneyes!”
From the thick branch of a leafy oak on the edge of the Westwood, Ordeith stared at Emond’s Field, a mile to the south. It was impossible. Scourge them. Flay them. Everything had been going according to plan. Even Isam had played into his hands. Why did the fool stop bringing Trollocs? He should have brought in enough to turn the Two Rivers black with them! Spittle dripped from his lips, but he did not notice, any more than he realized that his hand was fumbling at his belt. Harry them till their hearts burst! Harrow them into the ground screaming! All planned to pull Rand al’Thor to him, and it came to this! The Two Rivers had not even been scratched. A few farms burned did not count, nor a few farmers butchered alive for Trolloc cookpots. I want the Two Rivers to burn, burn so the fire lives in men’s memories for a thousand years!
He studied the banner waving over the village, and the one not that far below him. A scarlet wolfhead on scarlet-bordered white, and a red eagle. Red for the blood the Two Rivers must shed to make Rand al’Thor howl. Manetheren. That’s meant to be Manetheren’s banner. Someone had told them of Manetheren, had they? What did these fools know of the glories of Manetheren? Manetheren. Yes. There was more than one way to scourge them. He laughed so hard he nearly fell out of the oak before he realized that he was not holding on with both hands, that one gripped his belt where a dagger should have hung. The laugh twisted into a snarl as he stared at that hand. The White Tower held what had been stolen from him. What was his by right as old as the Trolloc Wars.
He let himself drop to the ground, and scrambled onto his horse before looking at his companions. His hounds. The thirty or so Whitecloaks remaining no longer wore their white cloaks, of course. Rust spotted their dull plate-and-mail, and Bornhald would never have recognized those sullen, suspicious faces, dirty and unshaven. The humans watched Ordeith, distrustful yet afraid, not even glancing at the Myrddraal in their midst, its slug-pale, eyeless face as bleakly wooden as theirs. The Halfman feared Isam would find it; Isam had not at all been pleased when that raid on Taren Ferry let so many escape to carry away word of what was happening in the Two Rivers. Ordeith giggled at the thought of Isam discomforted. The man was a problem for another time, if he still l
ived.
“We ride for Tar Valon,” he snapped. Hard riding, to beat Bornhald to the ferry. Manetheren’s banner, raised again in the Two Rivers after all these centuries. How the Red Eagle had harried him, so long ago. “But Caemlyn first!” Scourge them and flay them! Let the Two Rivers pay first, and then Rand al’Thor, and then … .
Laughing, he galloped north through the forest, not looking back to see if the others followed. They would. They had nowhere else to go now.
CHAPTER 57
A Breaking in the Three-fold Land
The molten afternoon sun broiled the Waste, flinging shadows across the mountains to the north, just ahead now. The dry hills passed beneath Jeade’en’s hooves, high and low like swells in an ocean of cracked clay, miles rolling away behind. The mountains had held Rand’s eyes since they first came in sight the day before, not snowcapped, not so tall as the Mountains of Mist, much less the Spine of the World, but jagged slabs of brown and gray stone, streaked in some places with yellow or red or bands of glittering flecks, tumbled about so that a man might think to try the Dragonwall afoot first. Sighing, he settled in his saddle and adjusted the shoufa he wore with his red coat. In those mountains lay Alcair Dal. Soon there would be an ending of sorts, or a beginning. Maybe both. Soon, perhaps.
Yellow-haired Adelin strode easily ahead of the dapple stallion, and nine more sun-dark Far Dareis Mai made a wide ring around him, all with bucklers and spears in hand, cased bows on their backs, black veils dangling on their chests ready to be lifted. Rand’s honor guard. The Aiel did not call it that, yet the Maidens came to Alcair Dal for Rand’s honor. So many differences, and he did not know what half really were even when he saw them.
For instance, Aviendha’s behavior toward the Maidens, and theirs to her. Most of the time, as now, she walked beside his horse with her arms folded in the shawl around her shoulders; green eyes intent beneath her dark head scarf on the mountains ahead, she seldom spoke with the Maidens beyond a word or two, but that was not the oddity. Her arms folded; that was the heart of it. The Maidens knew she wore the ivory bracelet, yet seemed to pretend not to see it; she would not take it off, yet hid her wrist whenever she thought one of them might be looking.
You have no society, Adelin had told him when he suggested some other than the Maidens of the Spear might provide his escort. Each chief, whether of clan or sept, would be accompanied by men from the society he had belonged to before becoming chief. You have no society, but your mother was a Maiden. The yellow-haired woman and the other nine had not looked at Aviendha, a few steps away in the entry hall to Lian’s roof; they had not looked intently. For countless years Maidens who would not give up the spear have given their babes for the Wise Ones to hand to other women, none knowing where the child went or even whether boy or girl. Now a Maiden’s son has come back to us, and we know him. We will go to Alcair Dal for your honor, son of Shaiel, a Maiden of the Chumai Taardad. Her face was so set—all of their faces were, including Aviendha’s—that he thought they might offer to dance the spears if he refused.
When he accepted, they made him go through that ritual of “Remember honor” again, this time with some drink called oosquai, made from ze-mai, drinking to the bottom of a small silver cup with each of them. Ten Maidens; ten little cups. The stuff looked like faintly brown-tinged water, tasted almost like it—and was stronger than double-distilled brandy. He had not been able to walk straight after, and they had got him to bed, laughing at him, no matter how he protested, as much as he could with all of them tickling him so he could barely breathe for laughing himself. All but Aviendha. Not that she went away; she stayed and watched the whole thing with a face as blank as stone. When Adelin and the others finally tucked him into his blankets and left, Aviendha sat down beside the door, spreading her dark, heavy skirts, watching him stonily until he fell asleep. At his waking, she was still there, still watching. And refusing to talk about Maidens or oosquai or any of it; as far as she was concerned, it seemed not to have happened. Whether the Maidens would have been as reticent, he did not know; how could you possibly look ten women in the face and ask why they had gotten you drunk and made a game of taking your clothes off and putting you to bed?
So many differences, so few that made much sense that he could see, and no telling which might trip him up and ruin all his plans. Yet he could not afford to wait. He glanced over his shoulder. What was done, was done. And who can say what’s yet to come?
Well behind, the Taardad followed him. Not just the Nine Valley Taardad and the Jindo, but the Miadi and the Four Stones, the Chumai and the Bloody Water and more, broad columns surrounding the peddlers’ lurching wagons and the Wise Ones’ party, reaching back two miles through the shimmering heat haze, ringed by scouts and outrunners. Every day more had come in response to the runners Rhuarc had sent that first day, a hundred men and Maidens here, three hundred there, five hundred, according to the size of each sept and what each hold needed to keep for safety.
In the distance to the south and west, another band was approaching at a run, trailing dust for their pace; perhaps they belonged to some other clan on its way to Alcair Dal, but he thought not. Only two-thirds of the septs represented yet, but he estimated there were well over fifteen thousand Taardad Aiel strung out behind him. An army on the march, and still growing. Nearly an entire clan coming to a meeting of chiefs, in violation of all custom.
Suddenly Jeade’en topped a rise, and there in a long, wide hollow below was the fair gathered for the meeting, and on the hills beyond, the camps of the clan and sept chiefs who had already arrived.
Spread among two or three hundred of the low, wall-less tents, all widely spaced, were pavilions of the same grayish brown material that were tall enough to stand beneath, with goods displayed on blankets in the shade, brightly glazed pottery and even brighter rugs, jewelry in silver or gold. Aiel crafts mainly, but there would be things from beyond the Waste as well, including perhaps silk and ivory from far to the east. No one seemed to be trading; the few men and women in sight sat in one or another of the pavilions, usually alone.
Of the five camps scattered on heights around the fair, four looked just as empty, only a few dozen men or Maidens stirring amid tents set up for as many as a thousand. The fifth camp sprawled over twice as much ground as any of the others, with hundreds of people visible, and likely as many more inside the tents.
Rhuarc trotted up the hill behind Rand with his ten Aethan Dor, Red Shields, followed by Heirn with ten Tain Shari, True Bloods, and forty-odd more sept chiefs with their escorts for honor, all with spears and bucklers, bows and quivers. It made a formidable force, more than had taken the Stone of Tear. Some of the Aiel in the camps and among the pavilions were peering at the hilltop. Not at the Aiel gathered there, Rand suspected. At him; a man on a horse. A thing seen very seldom in the Three-fold Land. He would show them more before he was done.
Rhuarc’s gaze settled on the largest camp, where more Aiel in cadin’sor were boiling out of the tents, all to stare in their direction. “Shaido, unless I mistake myself,” he said quietly. “Couladin. You are not the only one to break custom, Rand al’Thor.”
“Perhaps as well I did.” Rand dragged the shoufa from around his head and stuffed it into his coat pocket atop the angreal, the carving of a round-faced man with a sword across his knees. The sun began baking his bare head to show him how much protection the cloth had been. “If we had come according to custom … .” The Shaido were loping toward the mountains, leaving behind apparently empty tents. And causing some little stir in the other camps, and the fair; the Aiel gave over staring at a man on a horse to peer after the Shaido. “Could you have forced a way into Alcair Dal against two-to-one odds or better, Rhuarc?”
“Not before nightfall,” the clan chief replied slowly, “not even against Shaido dogrobbers. This is more than violation of custom! Even Shaido should have more honor than this!”
Angry mutters of agreement rose from the other Taardad on the hilltop. Except
the Maidens; for some reason they had gathered around Aviendha off to one side, talking seriously among themselves. Rhuarc spoke a few quiet words to one of his Red Shields, a green-eyed fellow who looked as if his face had been used to pound fence posts, and the man turned downhill, running swiftly back toward the approaching Taardad.
“Did you expect this?” Rhuarc asked Rand as soon as the Red Shield left. “Is that why you summoned the entire clan?”
“Not this exactly, Rhuarc.” The Shaido began forming lines before a narrow gap into the mountains; they were veiling themselves. “But there was no other reason for Couladin to leave in the night except that he was eager to be somewhere, and where would he better like to be than here, causing me trouble? Are the others already in Alcair Dal? Why?”
“The opportunity presented by chiefs meeting is not to be missed, Rand al’Thor. There will be discussions of boundary disputes, grazing rights, a dozen things. Water. If two Aiel from different clans meet, they discuss water. Three from three clans, and they discuss water and grazing.”
“And four?” Rand asked. Five clans represented already, and the Taardad made six.
Rhuarc hesitated a moment, hefting one of his short spears unconsciously. “Four will dance the spears. But it should not be so here.”
The Taardad parted to let the Wise Ones through, shawls over their heads, with Moiraine and Lan and Egwene riding behind. Egwene and the Aes Sedai wore those white cloths around their temples, in damp imitation of the Aielwomen’s head scarves. Mat rode up, too, off by himself, black-hafted spear across his pommel. His wide-brimmed hat shadowed his, face as he studied what lay ahead.
The Warder nodded to himself when he saw the Shaido. “That could be messy,” he said softly. His black stallion rolled an eye at Rand’s dapple; only that, and Lan was intent on the Aiel ranks before the gap, yet he patted Mandarb’s neck soothingly. “But not now, I think.”