Musenge and Hartha nodded. For the Deathwatch Guard, what must be done, would be done. Even to catching the wind.
CHAPTER 5
The Forging of a Hammer
He ran easily through the night in spite of the snow that covered the ground. He was one with the shadows, slipping through the forest, the moonlight almost as clear to his eyes as the light of the sun. A cold wind ruffled his thick fur, and suddenly brought a scent that made his hackles stand and his heart race with a hatred greater than that for the Neverborn. Hatred, and a sure knowledge of death coming. There were no choices to be made, not now. He ran harder, toward death.
Perrin woke abruptly in the deep darkness before dawn, beneath one of the high-wheeled supply carts. Cold had seeped into his bones from the ground despite his heavy fur-lined cloak and two blankets, and there was a fitful breeze, not strong or steady enough to be called a light wind, but icy. When he scrubbed at his face with gauntleted hands, frost crackled in his short beard. At least it seemed not to have snowed any more during the night. Too often he had awakened covered with a dusting despite the shelter of a cart, and snowfall made things difficult for the scouts. He wished he could speak with Elyas the same way he talked with wolves. Then he would not have to endure this endless waiting. Weariness clung to him like a second skin; he could not recall when he had last had a sound night’s sleep. Sleep, or the lack of it, seemed unimportant anyway. These days, only the heat of anger gave him the strength to keep moving.
He did not think it was the dream that had wakened him. Every night he lay down expecting nightmares, and every night they came. In the worst, he found Faile dead, or never found her. Those woke him up in shivering sweats. Anything less horrible, he slept through, or only half-woke with Trollocs cutting him up alive for the cookpot or a Draghkar eating his soul. This dream was fading quickly, in the manner of dreams, yet he remembered being a wolf and smelling. . . . What? Something wolves hated more than they did Myrddraal. Something a wolf knew would kill him. The knowledge he had had in the dream was gone; only vague impressions remained. He had not been in the wolf dream, that reflection of this world where dead wolves lived on and the living could go to consult them. The wolf dream always remained clear in his head after he left, whether he had gone there consciously or not. Yet this dream still seemed real, and somehow urgent.
Lying motionless on his back, he sent his mind questing, feeling for wolves. He had tried using wolves to help his hunt, to no avail. Convincing them to take an interest in the doings of two-legs was difficult, to say the least. They avoided large parties of men, and for them, half a dozen was large enough to stay clear of. Men chased away game, and most men tried to kill a wolf on sight. His thoughts found nothing, but then, after a time, he touched wolves, at a distance. How far, he could not be sure, but it was like catching a whisper almost on the edge of hearing. A long way. That was strange. Despite scattered villages and manors and even the occasional town, this was prime country for wolves, untouched forest for the most part, with plenty of deer and smaller game.
There was always a formality to speaking with a pack you were not part of. Politely, he sent his name among wolves, Young Bull, shared his scent, and received theirs in reply, Leafhunter and Tall Bear, White Tail and Feather and Thunder Mist, a cascade of others. It was a sizable pack, and Leafhunter, a female with a feel of quiet certainty, was their leader. Feather, clever and in his prime, was her mate. They had heard of Young Bull, were eager to speak with the friend of the fabled Long Tooth, the first two-legs who had learned to speak with wolves after a gap of time that carried the feel of Ages vanished into the mists of the past. It was all a torrent of images and memories of scents that his mind turned into words, as the words he thought somehow became images and scents they could understand.
There is something I want to learn, he thought, once the greetings were done. What would a wolf hate more than the Neverborn? He tried to recall the scent from the dream, to add that, but it was gone from his memory. Something that a wolf knows means death.
Silence answered him, and a thread of fear blended with hatred and determination and reluctance. He had felt fear from wolves before - above all things they feared the wildfire that raced through a forest, or so he would have said - but this was the prickling sort of fear that made a man’s skin crawl, made him shiver and jump at things unseen. Laced with the resolution to go on no matter what, it felt close to terror. Wolves never experienced that kind of dread. Except that these did.
One by one they faded from his consciousness, a deliberate act of shutting him out, until only Leafhunter remained. The Last Hunt is coming, she said at last, and then she also was gone.
Did I offend? he sent. If I did, it was in ignorance. But there was no reply. These wolves, at least, would not speak with him again, not any time soon.
The Last Hunt is coming. That was what wolves called the Last Battle, Tarmon Gai’don. They knew they would be there, at the final confrontation between the Light and the Shadow, though why was something they could not explain. Some things were fated, as sure as the rise and fall of the sun and the moon, and it was fated that many wolves would die in the Last Hunt. What they feared was something else. Perrin had a strong sense that he also had to be there, was meant to be at least, but if the Last Battle came soon, he would not be. He had a job of work in front of him that he could not shirk - would not! - even for Tarmon Gai’don.
Putting nameless fears and the Last Battle alike out of his mind, he fumbled his gauntlets off and felt in his coat pocket for the length of rawhide cord he kept there. In a morning ritual, his fingers made another knot mechanically, then slid down the cord, counting. Twenty-two knots. Twenty-two mornings since Faile was kidnapped.
At the start, he had not thought there was need to keep count. That first day, he had believed he was cold and numb but focused, yet looking back he could see he had been overwhelmed by unbound rage and a consuming need to find the Shaido as fast as possible. Men from other clans had been among the Aiel who had stolen Faile, yet on the evidence, most were Shaido, and that was how he thought of them. The need to rip Faile away from them, before she could be hurt, had gripped him by the throat till he almost choked. He would rescue the other women captured with her, of course, but sometimes he had to list their names in his head to make sure he did not forget them entirely. Alliandre Maritha Kigarin, Queen of Ghealdan, and his liege woman. It still seemed off-kilter to have anyone oathsworn to him, especially a queen - he was a blacksmith! He had been a blacksmith, once - but he had responsibilities toward Alliandre, and she would never have been in danger except for him. Bain of the Black Rock Shaarad and Chiad of the Stones River Goshien, Aiel Maidens of the Spear who had followed Faile to Ghealdan and Amadicia. They had faced Trollocs in the Two Rivers, as well, when Perrin needed every hand that could raise a weapon, and that earned them the right to call on him. Arrela Shiego and Lacile Aldorwin, two foolish young women who thought they could learn to be Aiel, or some strange version of Aiel. They were oathsworn to Faile, and so was Maighdin Dorlain, a penniless refugee Faile had taken under her wing as one of her maids. He could not abandon Faile’s people. Faile ni Bashere t’Aybara.
The litany came back to her, his wife, the breath of his life. With a groan, he clutched the cord so tightly that the knots impressed themselves painfully on a hand hardened by long days swinging the hammer at a forge. Light, twenty-two days!
Working iron had taught him that haste ruined metal, but in the beginning, he had been hasty, Traveling southward through gateways created by Grady and Neald, the two Asha’man, to where the farthest traces of the Shaido had been found, then leaping south again, the direction their tracks went, as soon as the Asha’man could make more gateways. Fretting every hour it took them to rest from making the first and holding them open long enough for everyone to pass through, his mind was eaten up with freeing Faile at any cost. What he found were days of increasing pain as the scouts spread farther and farther through uninh
abited wilderness without locating the slightest sign that anyone had been that way before, until he knew he had to retrace his path, frittering away more days to cover ground the Asha’man had taken him across in a step, searching for any indication of where the Shaido had turned aside.
He should have known they would turn. South took them toward warmer lands, without the snow that seemed so strange to Aiel, yet it took them closer to the Seanchan in Ebou Dar, as well. He knew about the Seanchan, and he should have expected the Shaido to learn! They were after pillage, not a fight with Seanchan and damam. Days of slow marching with the scouts fanning out ahead, days when falling snow blinded even the Aiel and forced them all to a chafing halt, until finally Jondyn Barran found a tree scraped by a wagon and Elyas dug a broken Aiel spear shaft from beneath the snow. And Perrin at last turned east, at most two days south of where he had Traveled to the first time. He had wanted to howl when he realized that, yet he kept a tight hold on himself. He could not give way, not so much as an inch, not when Faile was depending on him. That was when he began to husband his anger, began to forge it.
Her kidnappers had gained a long lead because he was hasty, but since then, he had been as careful as he had been in a smithy. His anger was hardened and shaped to a purpose. Since finding the Shaido’s trail again, he had Traveled no farther in one jump than the scouts could go and come between sunrise and sunset, and it was well that he had been cautious, because the Shaido changed directions suddenly several times, zigzagging almost as though they could not decide on a destination. Or maybe they had turned to joined others of their kind. All he had to go by were old traces, old camps buried by snow, yet all of the scouts agreed the Shaido’s numbers had swollen. There had to be at least two or three septs together, maybe more, a formidable quarry to hunt. Slowly but surely, though, he had begun overtaking them. That was what was important.
The Shaido covered more ground on the march than he would have thought possible, given their numbers and the snow, yet they did not seem to care whether anyone was tracking them. Perhaps they believed no one dared. Sometimes they had camped several days in one spot. Anger forged to a purpose. Ruined villages and small towns and estates littered the Shaido’s path as if they were human locusts, storehouses and valuables looted, men and women carried off along with the livestock. Often no one remained by the time he arrived, only empty houses, the people seeking somewhere for food to survive until spring. He had crossed the Eldar into Altara where a small ferry used by peddlers and local farmers, not merchants, once ran between two villages on the forested river-banks. How the Shaido had gotten across, he did not know, but he had the Asha’man make gateways. All that remained of the ferry were the rough stone landings on either bank, and the few unburned structures were deserted except for three slat-ribbed feral dogs that slunk away at the sight of humans. Anger hardened and shaped for a hammer.
Yesterday morning, he had come to a tiny village where a double handful of stunned, dirty-faced people had stared at the hundreds of lancers and bowmen riding out of the forest at first light behind the Red Eagle of Manetheren and the crimson Wolf-shead, the Silver Stars of Ghealdan and the Golden Hawk of Mayene, followed by long lines of high-wheeled carts and strings of remounts. At first sight of Gaul and the other Aiel, those people overcame their paralysis and began running for the trees in panic. Catching a few to answer questions had been difficult; they were ready to run themselves to death rather than let an Aiel near. Brytan had consisted of only a dozen families, but the Shaido had carried off nine young men and women from there, along with all of their animals, only two days ago. Two days. A hammer was a tool with a purpose, and a target.
He knew he had to be careful, or lose Faile forever, but being too careful could lose her, too. Early yesterday he had told those who were going ahead to scout that they were to go farther than before, push on harder, returning only with a full turn of the sun unless they found the Shaido sooner. In a little while the sun would rise, and at most a few hours after that, Elyas and Gaul and the others would return, the Maidens and Two Rivers men he knew could track a shadow across water. As fast as the Shaido moved, the scouts could move faster. They were not encumbered with families and wagons and captives. This time, they would be able to tell him exactly where the Shaido were. They would. He knew it in his bones. The certainty flowed in his veins. He would find Faile and free her. That came before anything, even living, so long as he lived long enough to accomplish it, yet he was a hammer, now, and if there was any way to accomplish it, any way at all, he intended to hammer these Shaido into scrap.
Tossing the blankets aside, Perrin tugged his gauntlets back on, gathered his axe from where it lay beside him, a half-moon blade balanced by a heavy spike, and rolled out into the open, rising to his feet on trampled, frozen snow. Carts stood all around him in rows, in what had been Brytan’s fields. The arrival of more strangers, so many, and armed, with their foreign banners, had been more than the survivors of the little village could absorb. As soon as Perrin would let them, the pitiful remnant had fled into the forest, carrying what they could on their backs and on drag-sleds. They had run as hard as if Perrin was another Shaido, not looking back for fear he was following them.
As he slipped the axe haft through the thick loop on his belt, a deeper shadow beside a nearby cart grew taller and resolved into a man swathed in a cloak that seemed black in the darkness. Perrin was not surprised; the nearby horselines thickened the air with the smell of several thousand animals, mounts and remounts and cart horses, not to mention the sweet stink of horse dung, but he still had caught the other’s scent on waking. Man smell always stood out. Besides, Aram was always there when Perrin woke, waiting. A waning sickle moon low in the sky still gave enough light for him to make out the other man’s face, if not clearly, and the brass-pommeled hilt of his sword slanting up past his shoulder. Aram had been a Tinker once, but Perrin did not think he would be again, even if he did wear a brightly striped Tinker coat. There was a frowning hardness about Aram now that moon shadows could not hide. He stood as though ready to draw that sword, and since Faile was taken, anger seemed a permanent part of his scent. A great deal had changed when Faile was taken. Anyway, Perrin understood anger. He had not, not really, before Faile was taken.
“They want to see you, Lord Perrin,” Aram said, jerking his head toward two dim forms farther away between the lines of carts. The words came out in a faint mist in the cold air. “I told them to let you sleep.” It was a fault Aram had, looking after him too much, unasked.
Testing the air, Perrin separated out the scents of those two shadows from the masking smell of the horses. “I’ll see them now. Have Stepper readied for me, Aram.” He tried to be in the saddle before the rest of the camp woke. Partly that was because standing still for long seemed beyond him. Standing still was not catching the Shaido. Partly it was to avoid having to share anyone’s company he could avoid. He would have gone out with the scouts himself if the men and women already doing that job were not so much better at it than he.
“Yes, my Lord.” A jaggedness entered Aram’s scent as he trudged away across the snow, but Perrin barely noted it. Only something important would make Sebban Balwer root himself out of his blankets in the dark, and as for Selande Darengil. . . .
Balwer appeared skinny even in a bulky cloak, his pinched face all but hidden in the deep hood. Had he stood straight instead of hunching, he still would have been at most a hand taller than the Cairhienin woman, who was not tall. With his arms wrapped around himself, he was hopping from one foot to the other, trying to avoid the cold that must be soaking through his boots. Selande, in a man’s dark coat and breeches, made a good effort at ignoring the temperature despite the feathery white that marked every breath. She was shivering, but managed to swagger standing still, with one side of her cloak thrown back and a gloved hand on the hilt of her sword. The hood of her cloak was lowered, too, exposing hair cut short except for the tail in the back that was tied at the nape of
her neck with a dark ribbon. Selande was the leader of those fools who wanted to be imitation Aiel, Aiel who carried swords. Her scent was soft and thick, like a jelly. She was worried. Balwer smelled . . . intent . . . but then, he nearly always did, though there was never any heat to his intensity, only focus.
The skinny little man stopped hopping to make a stiff, hurried bow. “The Lady Selande has news I think you should hear from her lips, my Lord.” Balwer’s thin voice was dry and precise, just like its owner. He would sound the same with his neck on a headsman’s block. “My Lady, if you would?” He was only a secretary - Faile’s secretary, and Perrin’s - a fussy self-effacing fellow for the most part, and Selande was a noblewoman, but Balwer made that more than a request.
She gave him a sharp sideways glance, shifting her sword, and Perrin tensed to grab her. He did not think she would actually draw on the man, but then again, he was not sure enough of her, or any of her ridiculous friends, to put it out of the question. Balwer merely watched her, his head tilted to one side, and his smell carried impatience, not concern.
With a toss of her head, Selande turned her attention to Perrin. “I see you, Lord Perrin Goldeneyes,” she began in the crisp accents of Cairhien, but, aware that he had little patience for her pretend Aiel formality, she hurried on. “I have learned three things tonight. First, the least important, Haviar reported that Masema sent another rider back toward Amadicia yesterday. Nerion tried to follow, but lost him.”
“Tell Nerion I said he isn’t to follow anybody,” Perrin told her sharply. “And tell Haviar the same. They should know that! They are to watch, listen, and report what they see and hear, no more. Do you understand me?” Selande gave a quick nod, a thorn of fear entering her scent for a moment. Fear of him, Perrin supposed, fear that he was angry with her. Yellow eyes on a man made some people uneasy. He took his hand from his axe and clasped both hands behind his back.