In the beginning the coarsely dressed, sometimes bare-chested oarsmen made rough jokes, not too unfriendly, about how any amount of gold was hardly worth what they were missing. They laughed as they strode back and forth along the deck, working the sweeps, and every one claimed he had been dancing with or kissing a noblewoman. One lanky fellow with a big chin even claimed he had a Tairen noblewoman on his knee before he came out to Manal’s shout, but no one believed that. Perrin certainly did not; the Tairen men had taken one look at what was going on and dived headfirst into the celebrations; the Tairen women had taken one look and shut themselves up in their rooms with guards on the doors.
Jokes and laughter did not last long. Gaul stood as near the center of the boat as he could, slightly wild eyes fixed on the far shore, up on his toes as though ready to leap. It was all that water, of course, but the boatmen could not know that. And Loial, leaning on the long-handled axe he had found in the Sun Palace, with its ornately engraved head like the head of a huge wood-axe, stood still as a statue with his broad face truly looking carved from granite. The ferrymen shut their mouths and worked their oars as hard as they could, hardly daring to look at their passengers. When the ferry finally pulled into a stone dock on the west bank of the Alguenya, Perrin gave the owner — come to think of it, he hoped the man was the owner — the rest of the gold and a handful of silver to pass around besides, to soothe them for being frightened by Loial and Gaul. The fat man flinched back from him in taking it, and bowed so deeply in spite of his bulk that his head nearly touched his knees. Perhaps Gaul and Loial did not have the only frightening faces.
Huge windowless buildings stood surrounded by wooden scaffolding, the stone blackened, and fallen in many places. The granaries had been burned in riots some time ago, and repairs were only now really taking hold, but there was no one in sight at all on the streets lined with granaries and stables, warehouses and wagon yards. Every last man who worked here was in the city. There was no one in sight until two men rode out of a side street.
“We are ready, Lord Aybara,” Havien Nurelle said eagerly. The pink-cheeked young man, considerably taller than his companion, appeared gaudy in his red-painted breastplate and helmet, with a single slender red plume. He even smelled eager, and young.
“I began to think you were not coming,” Dobraine muttered. Helmetless, he wore steel-backed gauntlets and a battered breastplate that retained remnants of once ornate gilding. He glanced at Perrin’s face and added, “Under the Light, I meant no disrespect, Lord Aybara.”
“We have a long way to go,” Perrin said, turning the bay. Stayer? What was he to do about Faile? Rand’s need seethed beneath his skin. “They’ve four days on us, now.” He dug in his heels lightly and put Stayer to a steady walk. A long chase; it would not do to founder the horses. Neither Loial nor Gaul had any difficulty keeping up.
The widest of the straight streets abruptly became the Tar Valon Road — Cairhien’s Tar Valon Road; there were others — a wide band of hard-packed earth winding west and north through forested hills lower than those the city stood on. A mile into the forest, they were joined by two hundred Mayener Winged Guards and five hundred armsmen of House Taborwin, all mounted on the best animals that could be found.
The Mayeners were all in red breastplates and helmets like rimmed pots that covered the nape of the neck, and their lances bore red streamers. Many of them seemed almost as eager as Nurelle. The shorter Cairhienin wore plain breastplates and helmets like bells cut away to expose hard faces, helmets and breastplates alike often dented. Their lances were unadorned, though here and there Dobraine’s con, a small stiff square on a short staff, blue with two white diamonds, marked officers or minor lords of House Taborwin. None of them looked eager, only grim. They had seen fighting. In Cairhien, they called it “seeing the wolf.”
That nearly made Perrin laugh. It was not time for the wolves yet.
Near midday, a small cluster of Aiel trotted out of the trees and down the slope to the road. Two Maidens loped at Rhuarc’s shoulder, Nandera and, Perrin realized after a moment, Sulin. She looked very different in cadin’sor, with her white hair cut close except for the tail on the back of her neck. She looked . . . natural . . . which she never had in livery. Amys and Sorilea came with them, shawls looped over their arms, clattering with necklaces and bracelets of gold and ivory, holding up their bulky skirts on the slope, but matching the others stride for stride.
Perrin swung down to walk with them, ahead of everyone else. “How many?” was all he said.
Rhuarc glanced back to where Gaul and Loial were walking alongside Dobraine and Nurelle in advance of the column. Too far maybe for even Perrin to hear anything over the clump of hooves and jingle of bridles and creak of saddles, but Rhuarc held his voice low anyway. “Five thousand men from different societies; a few more than five. I could not bring many. Timolan was suspicious as it is that I did not go with him against the Shaido. If it becomes common knowledge that Aes Sedai hold the Car’a’carn, I fear the bleakness will swallow us all.” Nandera and Sulin coughed loudly at the same time; the two women glared at one another, and after a moment Sulin looked away, blushing. Rhuarc spared them a glance — he smelled exasperated — and muttered, “I also have nearly a thousand Maidens. Had I not tightened my fist, I would have every last one of them running after me, carrying a torch to tell the world that Rand al’Thor is in danger.” Abruptly his voice hardened. “Any Maiden I find following us will learn that I mean what I say.”
Sulin and Nandera both went red, the color startling on those hard sun-dark faces. “I — ” both began at the same instant. Again those glares passed, and again Sulin looked away, her face even more crimson. Perrin did not remember all this blushing from Bain and Chiad, the only two Maidens he really knew. “I have promised,” Nandera said stiffly, “and every Maiden has promised on pledge. It will be as the chief has commanded.”
Perrin forbore asking what the bleakness was, just as he did not ask how Rhuarc had gotten the Aiel across the Alguenya without ferries when water they could not step across was the only thing in the world that could give an Aiel pause. He would have liked to know, but the answers were unimportant. Six thousand Aiel, five hundred of Dobraine’s armsmen, and two hundred Winged Guards. Against six Aes Sedai, their Warders and some five hundred guards apparently, that should be enough. Except. The Aes Sedai held Rand. If they put a knife to his throat, would anyone dare lift a hand?
“There are also ninety-four Wise Ones,” Amys said. “They are the strongest in the One Power of those near the city.” That came out reluctantly — he had the idea Aiel women did not like to admit they could channel — but her voice picked up. “We would not have brought so many, but all wanted to come.” Sorilea cleared her throat, and this time Amys blushed. He was going to have to ask Gaul. Aiel were so unlike anyone else he had ever met; maybe they began blushing when they grew older. “Sorilea leads us,” Amys finished, and the older woman gave a snort that sounded extremely satisfied. She certainly smelled satisfied.
For Perrin, he only just stopped from shaking his head. What he knew of the One Power could be stuffed into a thimble with room left for a fat thumb, but he had traveled with Moiraine, seen what Verin and Alanna could do, and he had seen that flame Sorilea had made. If she was one of the strongest in the Power among the Wise Ones, he was not sure six Aes Sedai would not wrap all ninety-four of them into a bundle. At this point, though, he would not have turned aside field mice.
“They must be seventy or eighty miles ahead of us,” he said. “Maybe as much as a hundred, if they’re pushing their wagons. We will have to press as hard as we can.” As he climbed back to his saddle, Rhuarc and the other Aiel were already trotting back up the hill. Perrin raised his hand, and Dobraine signaled the horsemen to advance. It never occurred to Perrin to wonder why men old enough to be his father, women old enough to be his mother, men and women used to command, were following him.
What he did wonder about, worry about, was
how fast they could move. Aiel in cadin’sor could keep up with the horses, he knew, yet at first he had worried about Wise Ones in skirts, some maybe as old as Sorilea. Skirts or no, white hair or no, the Wise Ones walked as quickly as anyone, keeping up with the horses while talking quietly in groups.
The road wound clear ahead; no one set out during the Feast of Lights, and few for days before, unless their business was as urgent as his. The sun climbed higher, and the hills grew lower, and by the time they made camp at twilight, he estimated they might have come as much as thirty-five miles. A good day’s travel, excellent for so large a party; half again what the Aes Sedai could manage unless they were willing to kill the teams drawing their wagons. He no longer worried whether he could catch them before they reached Tar Valon, only what he could do once he did.
Lying on his blankets with his head pillowed on his saddle, Perrin smiled up at the waxing quarter-moon. With any clouds at all, the night would not have been nearly so bright. It was a good night for hunting. A good night for wolves.
In his mind he formed an image. A curly-haired young wild bull, proud, with horns that gleamed like polished metal in morning sunlight. His thumb ran across the axe lying beside him, with its wicked curving blade and sharp spike. The steel horns of Young Bull; that was what the wolves called him.
He let his mind quest, sent the image out into the night. There would be wolves, and they would know of Young Bull. News of a human able to speak with wolves would pass across the land like a rushing wind. Perrin had only met two. One a friend, the other a poor wretch who had not been able to hold on to humanity. He had heard tales from the refugees who trickled into the Two Rivers. They had old stories of men turning into wolves, stories few really believed, told to entertain children. Three claimed to have known men who became wolves and ran wild, though, and if the details had seemed wrong to Perrin, the uneasy way two of them had avoided his yellow eyes made confirmation of a sort. Those two, a woman from Tarabon and a man from Almoth Plain, would not go outdoors at night. They also kept giving him gifts of garlic for some reason, which he ate with great pleasure. But he no longer tried to find others like himself.
He felt wolves, and their names began coming to him. Two Moons and Wildfire and Old Deer and dozens more cascading into his head. They were not names as such, really, but images and sensations. Young Bull was a very simple image to name a wolf. Two Moons was really a night-shrouded pool, smooth as ice in the instant before the breeze stirred, with a tang of autumn in the air, and one moon hanging full in the sky and another reflected so perfectly on the water that it was difficult to tell which was real. And that was cutting it to the bone.
For a time there was only the exchanging of names and scents. Then he thought, I seek people who are ahead of me. Aes Sedai and men, with horses and wagons. That was not exactly what he thought, of course, any more than Two Moons was just two moons. People were “two-legs” and horses “hard-footed four-legs.” Aes Sedai were “two-leg shes who touch the wind that moves the sun and call fire.” Wolves did not like fire, and they were even more wary of Aes Sedai than of other humans; they thought it amazing that he could not tell an Aes Sedai; he had only learned they could by chance. They took the ability as much for granted as he took being able to pick out one white horse among a herd of black, certainly nothing to mention, and certainly nothing they could explain clearly.
In his head the night sky seemed to whirl, suddenly capping a camp of wagons and tents and campfires. They did not look quite right — wolves cared little for anything human, so the wagons and tents seemed vague; the campfires appeared to roar dangerously; the horses looked quite tasty — and this was passed from wolf to wolf before reaching him. The camp was larger than Perrin expected, but Wildfire was in no doubt. Her pack was even then skirting wide of where the “two-leg shes who touch the wind that moves the sun and call fire” were. Perrin tried asking how many, but wolves had no grasp of numbers; they told how many things there were by showing how many they had seen, and once Wildfire and her pack sensed Aes Sedai, they had no intention of going any closer.
How far? received a better answer, again passed wolf to wolf, if one that had to be puzzled out. Wildfire said she could walk to the hill where a sour male named Half Tail had his pack feeding on a deer while the moon moved so far across the sky, at that angle. Half Tail could reach Rabbit Nose — apparently a young and very fierce male — while the moon moved that far, at another angle. And so it went until Two Moons was reached. Two Moons maintained a dignified silence, suitable for an old male with a muzzle more white than not; he and his pack were not much beyond a mile from Perrin, and it would have been insulting to think Perrin did not know exactly where they sat.
Reasoning it out as best he could, Perrin came up with a figure of sixty or seventy miles. Tomorrow, he would be able to tell how fast he was closing on them. They surely could not be moving as fast as he with wagons.
Why? That was Half Tail, passed along and scent-marked.
Perrin hesitated before answering. He had dreaded this. He felt about the wolves as he did about Two Rivers people. They have caged Shadowkiller, he thought at last. That was what the wolves called Rand, but he had no idea whether they considered Rand important
The shock filling his mind was answer enough, but howls filled the night, near and far, howls filled with anger and fear. In the camp horses whinnied fearfully, stamping their hooves as they shied against the picket ropes. Men ran to calm them, and others to peer into the darkness as if expecting a huge pack to come after the mounts.
We come, Half Tail replied at last. Only that, and then others answered, packs Perrin had spoken to and packs that had listened silently to the two-legs who could speak as the wolves did. We come. No more.
Rolling over, Perrin went to sleep, and dreamed he was a wolf running across endless hills. The next morning there was no sign of wolves — not even the Aiel reported seeing one — but Perrin could feel them, several hundred of them and more on the way.
The land flattened into rolling plains over the next four days, where the tallest rises hardly seemed to warrant the name hill compared to what had been around them back by the Alguenya. The forest thinned and faded into grassland, brown and sere, with thickets increasingly far between. The rivers and streams they crossed barely wet the horses’ hooves, and would not have done much more before they had narrowed between banks of sun-hardened mud and stones. Each night the wolves told Perrin what they could of the Aes Sedai ahead, which was not much. Wildfire’s pack shadowed, but well back. One thing did become clear. Perrin was covering as much ground each day as he had the first, and each day he sliced as much as ten miles from the Aes Sedai lead. But when he caught up, what then?
Before the wolves each night, Perrin would sit talking quietly with Loial, as they smoked their pipes together. It was the “what then” that Perrin wanted to talk about. Dobraine seemed to think they should charge in and die doing their best. Rhuarc only said that they must wait to see what the sun shone on tomorrow and that all men must wake from the dream, which was not so different from Dobraine. Loial might be a young Ogier, but he was still ninety-odd; Perrin suspected Loial had read more books than he himself had seen, and he often came out with surprising knowledge about Aes Sedai.
“There are several books about Aes Sedai dealing with men who can channel.” Loial frowned around his pipe; its leaf-carved bowl was as big as Perrin’s two fists. “Elora, daughter of Amar daughter of Coura, wrote Men of Fire and Women of Air in the early days of Artur Hawkwing’s reign. And Ledar, son of Shandin son of Koimal, wrote A Study of Men, Women and the One Power Among Humans only some three hundred years ago. Those are the two best, I think. Elora in particular; she wrote in the style of . . . No. I will be brief.” Perrin doubted that, brevity was seldom numbered among Loial’s virtues when he spoke of books. The Ogier cleared his throat. “By Tower law, the man must be taken to the Tower for trial before he can be gentled.” For a moment Loial’s ears twitched viol
ently, and his long eyebrows drew down grimly, but he patted Perrin’s shoulder in an effort at comfort. “I cannot think they mean to do that, Perrin. I hear they spoke of honoring him, and he is the Dragon Reborn. They know that.”
“Honor?” Perrin said quietly. “Maybe they’re letting him sleep on silk, but a prisoner is still a prisoner.”
“I am sure they are treating him well, Perrin. I am sure.” The Ogier did not sound sure, and his sigh was a hollow gale. “And he is safe until he does reach Tar Valon. What I do not understand is how they captured him.” That huge head swung in open puzzlement. “Perrin, both Elora and Ledar say that when Aes Sedai find a man of great power, they always gather thirteen to take him. Oh, they recount stories of four or five, and both mention Caraighan — she brought a man nearly two thousand miles to the Tower by herself after he killed both of her Warders — but . . . Perrin, they wrote of Yurian Stonebow and Guaire Amalasan. Of Raolin Darksbane and Davian, as well, but the others are who worry me.” Those were four of the most powerful among the men who had called themselves the Dragon Reborn, all long ago, before Artur Hawkwing. “Six Aes Sedai tried to capture Stonebow, and he killed three and captured the others himself. Six tried to take Amalasan; he killed one and stilled two more. Surely Rand is as strong as Stonebow or Amalasan. Are there really only six ahead of us? It would explain much.”
Perhaps it did, but no comfort in it. Thirteen Aes Sedai might be able to beat off any attack Perrin could mount by themselves, without their Warders and guards. Thirteen Aes Sedai could threaten to gentle Rand if Perrin attacked. Surely they would not — they did know Rand was the Dragon Reborn; they knew he had to be there at the Last Battle — but could Perrin risk it, Tower law or no Tower law? Who knew why Aes Sedai did anything? He had never been able to make himself trust even Aes Sedai who had tried to show themselves friends. They always held their secrets, and how could a man ever be sure when he could feel them moving behind his back, however much they smiled to his face? Who could say what Aes Sedai would do?