Down the slope, behind Flinn, Morr scrubbed a hand through his hair and looked around uneasily. Flinn alternated shifting on his saddle and easing his sword in its scabbard. Narishma, watching the sky for flying creatures, blinked too often. A muscle twitched in Adley’s cheek. Every one of them displayed some sign of nervousness, and little wonder. Relief welled up in Rand. Not madness after all.
Dashiva smiled, a twisted self-satisfied smile. “I cannot believe you didn’t notice before.” There was very close to a sneer in his voice. “You’ve been holding saidin practically day and night since we began this mad expedition. This is a simple ward, but it did not want to form, then it snapped together like pulling out of my hands.”
The silver-blue slash of a gateway rotated open atop one of the bare hills, half a mile to the west, and a Soldier pulled his horse through and mounted hurriedly, returning from the scout. Even at a distance, Rand could make out the faint shimmer of the weaves surrounding the gateway before they vanished. The rider had not reached the bottom of the hill before another gateway opened on the crest, and then a third, a fourth, more, one after another, almost as fast as the preceding man could get out of the way.
“But it did form,” Rand said. So had the scouts’ gateways. “If saidin is hard to control, it’s always hard, and it still does what you want.” But why more difficult here? A question for another time. Light, he wished Herid Fel were still alive; the old philosopher might have had an answer. “Get back with the others, Dashiva,” he ordered, but the man stared at him in astonishment, and he had to repeat himself before the fellow let the ward vanish, jerked his horse around without a salute and thumped the animal back down the slope with his heels.
“Some trouble, my Lord Dragon?” Anaiyella simpered. Ailil merely looked at Rand with flat eyes.
Seeing the first scout on the way toward Rand, the others fanned off to north and south, where they would join one of the other columns. Finding them the old-fashioned way would be faster than casting about with gateways. Drawing rein in front of Rand, Nalaam slapped fist to chest — did he look a bit wild-eyed? No matter. Saidin still did what the man wielding it made it do. Nalaam saluted and gave his report. The Seanchan were not encamped ten miles away, they were no more than five or six distant, marching east. And they had sul’dam and damane by the score.
Rand issued his orders as Nalaam galloped away, and his column began moving west. The Defenders and the Companions rode on either flank. The Legionmen marched at the rear, just behind Denharad. A reminder to the noblewomen, and their armsmen, if they needed one. Anaiyella certainly looked over her shoulder often enough, and Ailil’s refusal to was pointed. Rand formed the main thrust of the column, Rand and Flinn and the others, just as it would be with the other columns. Asha’man to strike, and men with steel to guard their backs while they killed. The sun still had a long way to climb before midday. Nothing had changed to alter the plan.
Madness waits for some, Lews Therin whispered. It creeps up on others.
Miraj rode near the head of his army marching east along a muddy road that wound through hilly olive groves and patchy forest. Not at the head. A full regiment, most Seanchan, rode between him and the forward scouts. He had known generals who wanted to be at the very front. Most were dead. Most had lost the battles they died in. Mud kept down dust, yet word of an army on the move ran like wildfire on the Sa’las Plains, whatever the land. Here and there among the olive trees he spotted an overturned wheelbarrow or an abandoned pruning hook, but the workers had vanished long since. Luckily, they would avoid his opponents as much as they did him. With luck, lacking raken, his opponents would not know he was on them until it was too late. Kennar Miraj did not like trusting to luck.
Aside from under-officers ready to produce maps or copy orders and messengers ready to carry them, he rode accompanied only by Abaldar Yulan, small enough to make his quite ordinary brown gelding seem immense, a fiery man with the nails of his little fingers painted green who wore a black wig to conceal his baldness, and Lisaine Jarath, a gray-haired woman from Seandar itself, whose pale plump face and blue eyes were a study in serenity. Yulan was not calm; Miraj’s coal-dark Captain of the Air often wore a scowl for the rules that seldom let him touch the reins of a raken anymore, but today his frown went bone deep. The sky was clear, perfect weather for raken, but by Suroth’s command, none of his fliers would be in the saddle today, not here. There were too few raken with the Hailene to risk them unnecessarily. Lisaine’s calm troubled Miraj more. More than the senior der’sul’dam under his command, she was a friend with whom he had shared many a cup of kaf and many a game of stones. An animated woman, always bubbling over with enthusiasms and amusement. And she was icy calm, as silent as any sul’dam he had tried to question.
Within his sight were twenty damane flanking the horsemen, each walking beside her sul’dam’s mount. The sul’dam bobbed in their saddles, bending to pat a damane’s head, straightening only to bend again to stroke her hair. The damane looked steady enough to his eye, but plainly the sul’dam were on razor’s edge. And ebullient Lisaine rode silent as a stone.
A torm appeared ahead, racing down the column. Well off to the side, on the edge of the groves, yet horses whickered and shied as the bronze-scaled creature flowed past. A trained torm would not attack horses — at least not unless the killing frenzy overtook it, the reason torm were no good in battle — but horses trained to be calm around torm were in as short supply as torm themselves.
Miraj sent a skinny under-lieutenant named Varek to fetch the morat’torm’s scouting report. Afoot, and the Light consume whether Varek lost sei’taer. He would not waste time on Varek trying to control a mount acquired locally. The man returned faster than he went and made a crisp bow, beginning his report before his back was straight again.
“The enemy is less than five miles due east, my Lord Captain-General, marching in our direction. They are deployed in five columns spaced approximately one mile apart.”
So much for luck. But Miraj had considered how he would attack forty thousand with only five himself, and fifty damane. Quickly men were galloping with orders to deploy to meet an attempted envelopment, and the regiments behind him began turning into the groves, sul’dam riding among them with their damane.
Gathering his cloak against a sudden cold wind, Miraj noticed something that made him feel colder still. Lisaine was watching the sul’dam vanish into the trees, too. And she had begun to sweat.
Bertome rode easily, letting the wind stream his cloak to one side, but he studied the forested country ahead with a wariness he barely attempted to conceal. Of his four countrymen at his back, only Doressin was truly skilled in the Game of Houses. That fool Tairen dog Weiramon was blind, of course. Bertome glared at the puffed-up buffoon’s back. Weiramon rode well ahead of the rest in deep conversation with Gedwyn, and if Bertome needed any further proof that the Tairen would smile at what gagged a goat, it was how he tolerated that hot-eyed young monster. He noticed Kiril glancing sideways at him, and reined his gray further from the towering man. He had no particular enmity toward the Illianer, but he did hate people looming over him. He could not wait to return to Cairhien, where he did not have to be surrounded by ungainly giants. Kiril Drapeneos was not blind, though, however over-tall. He had sent a dozen scouts forward, too. Weiramon had sent one.
“Doressin,” Bertome said softly, then, a little louder, “Doressin, you lump!”
The bony man gave a start in his saddle. Like Bertome, like the other three, he had shaved and powdered the front of his head; the style of marking yourself like a soldier had become quite fashionable. Doressin should have called him a toad in return, the way they had since boyhood, but instead he heeled his gelding up beside Bertome’s and leaned close. He was worried, and letting it show, his forehead furrowed deeply. “You realize the Lord Dragon means us to die?” he whispered, glancing at the column trailing behind them. “Blood and fire, I only listened to Colavaere, but I have known I was a dead man
since he killed her.”
For a moment, Bertome eyed the column of armsmen, snaking back through the rolling hills. The trees were more scattered here than ahead, but still enough to shield an attack until it was right on top of you. The last olive grove lay nearly a mile behind. Weiramon’s men rode at the fore, of course, in those ridiculous coats with their fat white-striped sleeves, and then Kiril’s Illianers in enough green and red to shame Tinkers. His own people, decently clad in dark blue beneath their breastplates, were still beyond his sight with Doressin’s and the others’, ahead only of the company of Legionmen. Weiramon had seemed surprised that the foot kept up, though he had hardly set a difficult pace.
It was not really the armsmen Bertome glanced at, though. Seven men rode before even Weiramon’s, seven men with hard faces and death-cold eyes, in black coats. One wore a pin in the shape of a silver sword on his tall collar.
“An elaborate way to go about it,” he told Doressin dryly. “And I doubt al’Thor would have sent those fellows with us, if we were just being fed into a sausage grinder.” Forehead still creased, Doressin opened his mouth again, but Bertome said, “I need to talk to the Tairen.” He disliked seeing his childhood friend this way. Al’Thor had unhinged him.
Absorbed in one another, Weiramon and Gedwyn did not hear him riding up on them. Gedwyn was idly playing with his reins, his features cold with contempt. The Tairen was red-faced. “I don’t care who you are,” he was saying to the black-coated man in a low, hard voice, spittle flying, “I won’t take more risk without a command direct from the lips of — ”
Abruptly the pair became aware of Bertome, and Weiramon’s mouth snapped shut. He glared as if he wanted to kill Bertome. The Asha’man’s ever-present smile melted away. The wind gusted, cold and sharp as clouds drifted across the sun, but no colder than Gedwyn’s sudden stare. With a small shock Bertome realized the man also wanted to strike him dead on the spot.
Gedwyn’s icily murderous gaze did not change, but Weiramon’s face underwent a remarkable transformation. The red faded slowly as he produced a smile in an instant, an oily smile with only a trace of mocking condescension. “I’ve been thinking about you, Bertome,” he said heartily. “A pity al’Thor strangled your cousin. With his own hands, I hear. Frankly, I was surprised you came when he called. I’ve seen him watching you. I fear he plans something more . . . interesting . . . for you than thrashing your heels on the floor while his fingers tighten on your throat.”
Bertome suppressed a sigh, and not only at the fool’s clumsiness. A good many thought to manipulate him with Colavaere’s death. She had been his favorite cousin, but ambitious beyond reason. Saighan had good claims to the Sun Throne, yet she could not have held it against the strength of Riatin or Damodred either one, let alone both together, not without the open blessings of the White Tower or the Dragon Reborn. Still, she had been his favorite. What did Weiramon want? Certainly not what it seemed on the surface. Even this Tairen oaf was not that simple.
Before he could frame any response, a horseman came galloping toward them through the trees ahead. A Cairhienin, and as he reined to a sudden halt in front of them, that made his horse sit back on its haunches, Bertome recognized one of his own armsmen, a gap-toothed fellow with seamed scars on both cheeks. Doile, he thought. From the Colchaine estates.
“My Lord Bertome,” the fellow panted, bowing hastily. “There are two thousand Taraboners hard on my heels. And women with them! With lightning on their dresses!”
“Hard on his heels,” Weiramon murmured disparagingly. “We’ll see what my man has to say when he gets back. I certainly don’t see any —!”
Sudden whoops in the near distance ahead cut him off, and the thunder of hooves, and then quickly galloping lancers appeared, a flowing tide spreading through the trees. Straight toward Bertome and the others.
Weiramon laughed. “Kill whoever you wish, wherever you wish, Gedwyn,” he said, drawing sword with a flourish. “I use the methods I use, and that’s that!” Racing back toward his armsmen, he waved the blade over his head shouting, “Saniago! Saniago and glory!” It was no surprise he did not add a shout for his country to those for his House and his greatest love.
Spurring in the same direction, Bertome raised his own voice. “Saighan and Cairhien!” No need for sword waving yet. “Saighan and Cairhien!” What had the man been after?
Thunder rumbled, and Bertome looked to the sky, perplexed. There were few more clouds than earlier. No; Doile — Dalyn? — had mentioned those women. And then he forgot all about whatever the fool Tairen wanted as steel-veiled Taraboners poured over the wooded hills toward him, the earth blooming fire and the sky raining lightning ahead of them.
“Saighan and Cairhien!” he shouted.
The wind rose.
Horsemen clashed amid thick trees and heavy underbrush, where shadows hung heavily. The light seemed to be failing, the clouds thickening overhead, but it was hard to say with the dense forest canopy for a roof. Booming roars half-drowned the ring of steel on steel, the shouts of men, the screams of horses. Sometimes the ground shook. Sometimes the enemy raised shouts.
“Den Lushenos! Den Lushenos and the Bees!”
“Annallin! Rally to Annallin!”
“Haellin! Haellin! For the High Lord Sunamon!”
The last was the only cry Varek understood in the least, though he suspected any of the locals who named themselves High Lords or Ladies might not be offered the chance to swear the Oath.
He jerked his sword free from where he had jammed it into his opponent’s armpit, just above the breastplate, and let the pale little man topple. A dangerous fighter, until he made the mistake of raising his blade too high. The man’s bay crashed off through the undergrowth, and Varek spared a moment for regret. The animal looked better than the white-footed dun he was forced to ride. A moment only, and then he was peering through the close-set trees, where it seemed vines dangled from half the branches and bunches of some gray, feathery plant from nearly all.
Sounds of battle rose from every direction, but at first he could see nothing that moved. Then a dozen Altaran lancers appeared at fifty paces, walking their horses and peering about carefully, though the way they talked loudly among themselves more than justified the red slashes crisscrossing their breastplates. Varek gathered his reins, meaning to take them in. An escort, even this undisciplined rabble, might be the difference between the urgent message he carried reaching Banner-General Chianmai and not.
Black streaks flashed from among the trees, emptying Altaran saddles. Their horses dashed in every direction as the riders fell, and then there were only a dozen corpses sprawled on the damp carpet of dead leaves, at least one crossbow bolt jutting from every man. Nothing moved. Varek shivered in spite of himself. Those foot in blue coats had seemed easy at first, with no pikes to stand behind, but they never came into the open, hiding behind trees, in dips in the ground. They were not the worst. He had been sure after the frantic retreat to the ships at Falme that he had seen the worse he ever could see, the Ever Victorious Army in a rout. Not half an hour gone, though, he had seen a hundred Taraboners face one lone man in a black coat. A hundred lancers against one, and the Taraboners had been ripped to shreds. Literally ripped to shreds, men and horses simply exploding as fast he could count; the slaughter had continued after the Taraboners turned to flee, went on so long as one of them remained in sight. Perhaps it was really no worse than having the ground erupt beneath your feet, but at least damane usually left enough of you to be buried.
He had been told by the last man he managed to speak to in these woods, a grizzled veteran from home leading a hundred Amadician pikes, that Chianmai was in this direction. Ahead, he spotted riderless horses tied to trees, and men afoot. Maybe they could give him further direction. And he would give them the lash of his tongue for standing about while a battle raged.
When he rode in among them, he forgot tongue-lashings. He had found what he was looking for, but not at all what he wanted to
find. A dozen badly burned corpses lay in a row. One, his honey-brown face untouched, was recognizably Chianmai. The men on their feet were all Taraboners, Amadicians, Altarans. Some of them were injured, too. The only Seanchan was a tight-faced sul’dam soothing a weeping damane.
“What happened here?” Varek demanded. He did not think it was like these Asha’man to leave survivors. Maybe the sul’dam had fought him off.
“Madness, my lord.” A hulking Taraboner shrugged away the man who was spreading ointment down his seared left arm. The sleeve appeared to have been burned away clear to the fellow’s breastplate, yet despite his burns, he did not grimace. His veil of steel mail hung by a corner from his red-plumed conical helmet, baring a hard face with thick gray mustaches that nearly hid his mouth, and his eyes were insultingly direct. “A group of Illianers, they fell on us without warning. At first, all went well. They had none of the blackcoats with them. Lord Chianmai, he led us bravely, and the . . . the woman . . . channeled lightnings. Then, just as the Illianers broke, the lightnings, they fell among us, too.” He cut off with a significant look at the sul’dam.
She was on her feet in an instant, shaking her free fist and striding as far toward the Taraboner as the leash attached to her other wrist would allow. Her damane lay in a weeping heap. “I will not hear this dog’s words against my Zakai! She is a good damane! A good damane!”
Varek made soothing gestures to the woman. He had seen sul’dam make their charges howl for misdeeds, and a few who crippled the recalcitrant, but most would bristle even at one of the Blood who cast aspersions on a favorite. This Taraboner was not of the Blood, and by the look of the quivering sul’dam, she was ready to do murder. Had the man voiced his ridiculous, unspoken charge, Varek thought she might have killed him on the spot.