The Dragon Reborn

## Chapter 44

#### Hunted

Perrin climbed off the bed and started dressing, not caring whether Zarine was watching or not. He knew what he intended to do, but he asked Moiraine anyway. “Do we leave?”

“Unless you want to make closer acquaintance with Sammael,” she said dryly. Thunder crashed overhead as if to punctuate her sentence, and lightning flashed. The Aes Sedai barely glanced at Zarine.

Stuffing his shirttail into his breeches, he suddenly wished he had his coat and cloak on. Naming which one of the Forsaken it was made the room seem cold. Ba’alzamon isn’t bad enough; we have to have the Forsaken loose, too. Light, does it even matter if we find Rand, now? Is it too late? But he kept dressing, stamping his feet into his boots. It was that or give up, and Two Rivers folk were not known for giving up.

“Sammael?” Zarine said faintly. “One of the Forsaken rules . . . ? Light!”

“Do you still wish to follow?” Moiraine said softly. “I would not make you stay here, not now, but I will give you one last chance to swear to go another way than I.”

Zarine hesitated, and Perrin paused with his coat half on. Surely no one would choose to go with people who had incurred the wrath of one of the Forsaken. Not now that she knew something of what they faced. Not unless she has a very good reason. For that matter, anyone who heard one of the Forsaken was loose should already be running for a Sea Folk ship and asking passage to the other side of the Aiel Waste, not sitting there thinking.

“No,” Zarine said finally, and he began to relax. “No, I will not swear to go another way. Whether you lead me to the Horn of Valere or not, not even whoever does find the Horn will have a story such as this. I think this story will be told for the ages, Aes Sedai, and I will be part of it.”

“No!” Perrin snapped. “That is not good enough. What do you want?”

“I have no time for this bickering,” Moiraine broke in. “Any moment Lord Brend may learn that one of his Darkhounds is dead. You can be sure he will know that means a Warder, and he will come looking for the Gaidin’s Aes Sedai. Do you mean to sit here until he discovers where you are? Move, you foolish children! Move!” She vanished down the hall before he could open his mouth.

Zarine did not wait, either, running from the room without her candle. Perrin hastily gathered his things and dashed for the back stairs still buckling his axe belt around his waist. He caught up to Loial going down, the Ogier trying to stuff a wood-bound book into his saddlebags and put on his cloak at the same time. Perrin gave him a hand with the cloak while they both ran down the stairs, and Zarine caught the pair of them before they could dash out into the pouring rain.

Perrin hunched his shoulders against the wet and ran for the stable across the storm-darkened yard without waiting to pull up the hood of his cloak. She has to have a reason. Being in a bloody story isn’t reason enough for any but a madwoman! The rain soaked his shaggy curls, laying them flat around his head, before he darted through the stable door.

Moiraine was there before them, in an oiled cloak still beaded with rain, and Nieda holding a lantern for Lan to finish saddling the horses. There was an extra, a bay gelding with an even stronger nose than Zarine’s.

“I will send pigeons every day,” the stout woman was saying. “No one will suspect me. Fortune prick me! Even Whitecloaks do speak well of me.”

“Listen to me, woman!” Moiraine snapped. “This is not a Whitecloak or a Darkfriend I speak of. You will flee this city, and make anyone you care for flee with you. For a dozen years you have obeyed me. Obey me now!” Nieda nodded, but reluctantly, and Moiraine growled with exasperation.

“The bay is yours, girl,” Lan said to Zarine. “Get on his back. If you do not know how to ride, you must learn by doing, or take my offer.”

Putting one hand on the high pommel, she vaulted easily into the saddle. “I was on a horse once, stone-face, now that I think of it.” She twisted around to tie her bundle behind her.

“What did you mean, Moiraine?” Perrin demanded as he tossed his saddlebag across Stepper’s back. “You said he would find out where I am. He knows. The Gray Men!” Nieda giggled, and he wondered irritably how much she really knew or believed among the things she said she did not believe in.

“Sammael did not send the Gray Men.” Moiraine mounted Aldieb with a cool, straight-backed precision, almost as if there were no hurry. “The Darkhound was his, however. I believe it followed my trail. He would not have sent both. Someone wants you, but I do not think Sammael even knows you exist. Yet.” Perrin stopped with one foot in the stirrup, staring at her, but she seemed more concerned with patting her mare’s arching neck than with the questions on his face.

“As well I went after you,” Lan said, and the Aes Sedai sniffed loudly.

“I could wish you were a woman, Gaidin. I would send you to the Tower as a novice to learn to obey!” He raised an eyebrow and touched the hilt of his sword, then swung into his saddle, and she sighed. “Perhaps it is as well you are disobedient. Sometimes it is well. Besides, I do not think Sheriam and Siuan Sanche together could teach you obedience.”

“I do not understand,” Perrin said. I seem to be saying that a great deal, and I’m tired of it. I want some answers I can understand. He pulled himself the rest of the way up so Moiraine would not be looking down at him; she had enough advantage without that. “If he did not send the Gray Men, who did? If a Myrddraal, or another Forsaken . . . ” He stopped to swallow. ANOTHER Forsaken! Light! “If somebody else sent them, why did they not tell him? They’re all Darkfriends, aren’t they? And why me, Moiraine? Why me? Rand is the bloody Dragon Reborn!”

He heard the gasps from Zarine and Nieda, and only then realized what he had said. Moiraine’s stare seemed to skin him like the sharpest steel. Hasty bloody tongue. When did I stop thinking before I speak? It seemed to him it had happened when he first felt Zarine’s eyes watching him. She was watching him now, with her mouth hanging open.

“You are sealed to us, now,” Moiraine told the bold-faced woman. “There is no turning back for you. Ever.” Zarine looked as if she wanted to say something and was afraid to, but the Aes Sedai had already turned her attention elsewhere. “Nieda, flee Illian tonight. In this hour! And hold your tongue even better than you have held it all these years. There are those who would cut it out for what you could say, before I could even find you.” Her hard tone left doubts as to exactly how she meant that, and Nieda nodded vigorously as if she had heard it both ways.

“As for you, Perrin.” The white mare moved closer, and he leaned back from the Aes Sedai despite all he could do. “There are many threads woven in the Pattern, and some are as black as the Shadow itself. Take care one of them does not strangle you.” Her heels touched Aldieb’s flanks, and the mare darted into the rain, Mandarb following close behind.

Burn you, Moiraine, Perrin thought as he rode after them. Sometimes I do not know which side you are on. He glanced at Zarine, riding beside him as if she had been born in a saddle. And whose side are you on?

Rain kept people off the streets and canals, so no visible eyes watched them go, but it made the footing uncertain for the horses on the uneven paving stones. By the time they reached the Maredo Causeway, a wide road of packed dirt stretching north through the marsh, the downpour had begun to slacken. Thunder still boomed, but the lightning flashed far behind them, perhaps out to sea.

Perrin felt a bit of luck was coming their way. The rain had stayed long enough to hide their departure, but now it seemed they would have a clear night for riding. He said as much, but Lan shook his head.

“Darkhounds like clear, moonlit nights best, blacksmith, rain the least. A good thunderstorm can keep them away completely.” As if his words had bidden it, the rain faded to a faint drizzle. Perrin heard Loial groan behind him.

Causeway and marsh ended together, some two miles or so from the city, but the road kept on, slowly bearing a little eastward. Cloud-dark evening faded into night, and the misting rain continued. Moiraine and Lan kept a steady, ground-eating pace. The horses’ hooves splashed through puddles on the hard-packed dirt. The moon shone through gaps in the clouds. Low hills began to rise around them, and trees to appear more and more often. Perrin thought there must be forest ahead, but he was not sure how he liked the idea. Woods could hide them from pursuit; woods could let pursuit come close before they saw.

A thin howl rose far behind them. For a moment he thought it was a wolf; he surprised himself by nearly reaching out to the wolf before he could stop. The cry came again, and he knew it was no wolf. Others answered it, all miles behind, eerie wails holding blood and death, cries that spoke of nightmares. To his surprise, Lan and Moiraine slowed, the Aes Sedai studying the hills around them in the night.

“They are a long way,” he said. “They’ll not catch us if we keep on.”

“The Darkhounds?” Zarine muttered. “Those are the Darkhounds? Are you sure it isn’t the Wild Hunt, Aes Sedai?”

“But it is,” Moiraine replied. “It is.”

“You can never outrun the Darkhounds, blacksmith,” Lan said, “not on the fastest horse. Always, you must face them and defeat them, or they will pull you down.”

“I could have stayed in the stedding, you know,” Loial said. “My mother would have had me married by now, but it would not have been a bad life. Plenty of books. I did not have to come Outside.”

“There,” Moiraine said, pointing to a tall, treeless mound well off to their right. There were no trees that Perrin could see for two hundred paces or more around it, either, and they were still sparse beyond that. “We must see them coming to have a chance.”

The Darkhounds’ dire cries rose again, closer, yet still far.

Lan quickened Mandarb’s pace a little, now that Moiraine had chosen their ground. As they climbed, the horses’ hooves clattered on rocks half-buried in the dirt and slicked by the drizzle. To Perrin’s eyes, most of them had too many squared corners to be natural. At the top, they dismounted around what seemed to be a low, rounded boulder. The moon appeared through a gap in the clouds, and he found himself looking at a weathered stone face two paces long. A woman’s face, he thought from the length of the hair. The rain made her seem to be weeping.

Moiraine dismounted and stood looking off in the direction of the howls. She was a shadowed, hooded shape, rain catching moonlight as it rolled down her oiled cloak.

Loial led his horse over to peer at the carving, then bent closer and felt the features. “I think she was an Ogier,” he said at last. “But this is not an old stedding; I would feel it. We all would. And we would be safe from Shadowspawn.”

“What are you two staring at?” Zarine squinted at the rock. “What is it? Her? Who?”

“Many nations have risen and fallen since the Breaking,” Moiraine said without turning, “some leaving no more than names on a yellowed page, or lines on a tattered map. Will we leave as much behind?” The blood-drenched howls rose again, still closer. Perrin tried to calculate their pace, and thought Lan had been right; the horses could not have outrun them, after all. They would not have long to wait.

“Ogier,” Lan said, “you and the girl hold the horses.” Zarine protested, but he rode straight over to her. “Your knives will not do much good here, girl.” His sword blade gleamed in the moonlight as he drew it. “Even this is a last resort. It sounds like ten out there, not one. Your work is to keep the horses from running when they smell the Darkhounds. Even Mandarb does not like that smell.”

If the Warder’s sword was no good, then neither was the axe. Perrin felt something near to relief at that, even if they were Shadowspawn; he would not have to use the axe. He drew the length of his unstrung bow from under Stepper’s saddle girths. “Maybe this will do some good.”

“Try if you wish, blacksmith,” Lan said. “They do not die easily. Perhaps you will kill one.”

Perrin drew a fresh bowstring from his pouch, trying to shield it from the soft rain. The beeswax coating was thin, and not much protection against prolonged damp. Setting the bow slantwise between his legs, he bent it easily, fixing the loops of the bowstring into the horn nocks at the ends of the bow. When he straightened, he could see the Darkhounds.

They ran like horses at a gallop, and as he caught sight of them, they gathered speed. They were only ten large shapes running in the night, sweeping through the scattered trees, yet he pulled a broadhead arrow from his quiver, nocked it but did not draw. He had been far from the best bowman in Emond’s Field, but among the younger men, only Rand had been better.

At three hundred paces he would shoot, he decided. Fool! You’d have a hard time hitting a target standing still at that distance. But if I wait, the way they are moving . . . Stepping up beside Moiraine, he raised his bow—I just have to imagine that moving shadow is a big dog—drew the goose-feather fletchings to his ear, and loosed. He was sure the shaft merged with the nearest shadow, but the only result was a snarl. It is not going to work. They’re coming too fast! He was already drawing another arrow. Why aren’t you doing something, Moiraine? He could see their eyes, shining like silver, their teeth gleaming like burnished steel. Black as the night itself and as big as small ponies, they sped toward him, silent now, seeking the kill. The wind carried a stink near to burned sulphur; the horses whickered fearfully, even Lan’s warhorse. Burn you, Aes Sedai, do something! He loosed again; the frontmost Darkhound faltered and came on. They can die! He shot once more, and the lead Darkhound tumbled, staggered to its feet, then fell, yet even as it did he knew a moment of despair. One down, and the other nine had covered two thirds of the distance already; they seemed to be running even faster, like shadows flowing across the ground. One more arrow. Time for one more, maybe, and then it’s the axe. Burn you, Aes Sedai! He drew again.

“Now,” Moiraine said as his arrow left the bow. The air between her hands caught fire and streaked toward the Darkhounds, vanquishing night. The horses squealed and leaped against being held.

Perrin threw an arm across his eyes to shield them from a white-hot glare like burning, heat like a forge cracking open; sudden noon flared in the darkness, and was gone. When he uncovered his eyes, spots flickered across his vision, and the faint, fading image of that line of fire. Where the Darkhounds had been was nothing but night-covered ground and the soft rain; the only shadows that moved were cast by clouds crossing the moon.

I thought she’d throw fire at them, or call lightning, but this . . . “What was that?” he asked hoarsely.

Moiraine was peering off toward Illian again, as if she could see through all those miles of darkness. “Perhaps he did not see,” she said, almost to herself. “It is far, and if he was not watching, perhaps he did not notice.”

“Who?” Zarine demanded. “Sammael?” Her voice shook a little. “You said he was in Illian. How could he see anything here? What did you do?”

“Something forbidden,” Moiraine said coolly. “Forbidden by vows almost as strong as the Three Oaths.” She took Aldieb’s reins from the girl, and patted the mare’s neck, calming her. “Something not used in nearly two thousand years. Something I might be stilled just for knowing.”

“Perhaps . . . ?” Loial’s voice was a faint boom. “Perhaps we should be going? There could be more.”

“I think not,” the Aes Sedai said, mounting. “He would not loose two packs at once, even if he has two; they would turn on each other instead of their prey. And I think we are not his main quarry, or he would have come himself. We were . . . an annoyance, I think”—her tone was calm, but it was clear she did not like being regarded so lightly—“and perhaps a little something extra to slip into his gamebag, if we were not too much trouble. Still, there is small good in remaining any nearer him than we must.”

“Rand?” Perrin asked. He could almost feel Zarine leaning forward to listen. “If we are not what he hunts, is it Rand?”

“Perhaps,” Moiraine said. “Or perhaps Mat. Remember that he is ta’veren also, and he blew the Horn of Valere.”

Zarine made a strangled sound. “He blew it? Someone has found it already?”

The Aes Sedai ignored her, leaning out of her saddle to stare closely into Perrin’s eyes, dark gleaming into burnished gold. “Once again events outpace me. I do not like that. And neither should you. If events outrun me, they may well trample you, and the rest of the world with you.”

“We have many leagues to Tear yet,” Lan said. “The Ogier’s suggestion is a good one.” He was already in his saddle.

After a moment Moiraine straightened and touched the mare’s ribs with her heels. She was halfway down the side of the mound before he could get his bow unstrung and take Stepper’s reins from Loial. Burn you, Moiraine! I’ll find some answers somewhere!

Leaning back against a fallen log, Mat enjoyed the warmth of the campfire—the rains had drifted south three days earlier, but he still felt damp—yet right at that moment, he was hardly aware of the dancing flames. He peered thoughtfully at the small, wax-covered cylinder in his hand. Thom was engrossed in tuning his harp, muttering to himself of rain and wet, never glancing Mat’s way. Crickets chirped in the dark thicket around them. Caught between villages by sunset, they had chosen this copse away from the road. Two nights they had tried to buy a room for the night; twice a farmer had loosed his dogs on them.

Mat unsheathed his belt knife, and hesitated. Luck. It only explodes sometimes, she said. Luck. As carefully as he could, he slit along the length of the tube. It was a tube, and of paper, as he had thought—he had found bits of paper on the ground after fireworks were set off, back home—layers of paper, but all that filled the inside was something that looked like dirt, or maybe tiny gray-black pebbles and dust. He stirred them on his palm with one finger. How in the Light could pebbles explode?

“The Light burn me!” Thom roared. He thrust his harp into its case as if to protect it from what was in Mat’s hand. “Are you trying to kill us, boy? Haven’t you ever heard those things explode ten times as hard for air as for fire? Fireworks are the next thing to Aes Sedai work, boy.”

“Maybe,” Mat said, “but Aludra did not look like any Aes Sedai to me. I used to think that about Master al’Vere’s clock—that it had to be Aes Sedai work—but once I got the back of the cabinet open, I saw it was full of little pieces of metal.” He shifted uncomfortably at the memory. Mistress al’Vere had been the first to reach him that time, with the Wisdom and his father and the Mayor all right behind her, and none believing he just meant to look. I could have put them all back together. “I think Perrin could make one, if he saw those little wheels and springs and I don’t know what all.”

“You would be surprised, boy,” Thom said dryly. “Even a bad clock-maker is a fairly rich man, and they earn it. But a clock does not explode in your face!”

“Neither did this. Well, it is useless, now.” He tossed the handful of paper and little pebbles into the fire to a screech from Thom; the pebbles sparked and made tiny flashes, and there was a smell of acrid smoke.

“You are trying to kill us.” Thom’s voice was unsteady, and it rose in intensity and pitch as he spoke. “If I decide I want to die, I will go to the Royal Palace when we reach Caemlyn, and I’ll pinch Morgase!” His long mustaches flailed. “Do not do that again!”

“It did not explode,” Mat said, frowning at the fire. He fished into the oiled-cloth roll on the other side of the log and pulled out a firework of the next larger size. “I wonder why there was no bang.”

“I do not care why there was no bang! Do not do it again!”

Mat glanced at him and laughed. “Stop shaking, Thom. There’s no need to be afraid. I know what is inside them, now. At least, I know what it looks like, but . . . Don’t say it. I will not be cutting any more open, Thom. It is more fun to set them off, anyway.”

“I am not afraid, you mud-footed swineherd,” Thom said with elaborate dignity. “I am shaking with rage because I’m traveling with a goat-brained lout who might kill the pair of us because he cannot think past his own—”

“Ho, the fire!”

Mat exchanged glances with Thom as horses’ hooves approached. It was late for anyone honest to be traveling. But the Queen’s Guards kept the roads safe this close to Caemlyn, and the four who rode into the firelight certainly did not look like robbers. One was a woman. The men all wore long cloaks and seemed to be her retainers, while she was pretty and blue-eyed, in gold necklace and a gray silk dress and a velvet cloak with a wide hood. The men dismounted. One held her reins and another her stirrup, and she smiled at Mat, doffing her gloves as she came near the fire.

“I fear we are caught out late, young master,” she said, “and I would trouble you for directions to an inn, if you know one.”

He grinned and started to rise. He had made it as far as a crouch when he heard one of the men mutter something, and another produced a crossbow from under his cloak, already drawn, with a clip holding the bolt.

“Kill him, fool!” the woman shouted, and Mat tossed the firework into the flames and threw himself toward his quarterstaff. There was a loud bang and a flash of light—“Aes Sedai!” a man cried. “Fireworks, fool!” the woman shouted—and he rolled to his feet with the staff in his hand to see the crossbow bolt sticking out of the fallen log almost where he had been sitting, and the crossbowman falling with the hilt of one of Thom’s knives adorning his chest.

It was all he had time to see, for the other two men darted past the fire at him, drawing swords. One of them suddenly stumbled to his knees, dropping his sword to claw at the knife in his back as he fell facedown. The last man did not see his companion fall; he obviously expected to be one of a pair, dividing their opponent’s attention, as he thrust his blade at Mat’s middle. Feeling almost contemptuous, Mat cracked the fellow’s wrist with one end of his staff, sending the sword flying, and cracked his forehead with the other. The man’s eyes rolled up in his head as he collapsed.

From the corner of his eye, Mat saw the woman walking toward him, and he stuck a finger at her like a knife. “Fine clothes you wear for a thief, woman! You sit down till I decide what to do with you, or I’ll—”

She looked as surprised as Mat at the knife that suddenly bloomed in her throat, a red flower of spreading blood. He took a half step, as if to catch her as she fell, knowing it was no good. Her long cloak settled over her, covering everything but her face, and the hilt of Thom’s knife.

“Burn you,” Mat muttered. “Burn you, Thom Merrilin! A woman! Light, we could have tied her up, given her to the Queen’s Guards tomorrow in Caemlyn. Light, I might even have let her go. She’d rob nobody without these three, and the only one that lives will be days before he can see straight and months before he can hold a sword. Burn you, Thom, there was no need to kill her!”

The gleeman limped to where the woman lay, and kicked back her cloak. The dagger had half fallen from her hand, its blade as wide as Mat’s thumb and two hands long. “Would you rather I had waited till she nested that in your ribs, boy?” He retrieved his own knife, wiping the blade on her cloak.

Mat realized he was humming. “She Wore a Mask That Hid Her Face,” and stopped it. He bent down and hid hers with the hood of her cloak. “Best we move on,” he said quietly. “I do nor want to have to explain this if a patrol of the Guards happens by.”

“With her in those clothes?” Thom said. “I should say not! They must have robbed a merchant’s wife, or some noblewoman’s carriage.” His voice became gentler. “If we’re going, boy, you had best see to saddling your horse.”

Mat gave a start and pulled his eyes from the dead woman. “Yes, I had better, hadn’t I?” He did not look at her again.

He had no such compunction about the men. As far as he was concerned, a man who decided to rob and kill deserved what he got when he lost the game. He did not dwell on them, but neither did he jerk his eyes away if they fell on one of the robbers. It was after he had saddled his gelding and tied his things on behind, while he was kicking dirt onto the fire, that he found himself looking at the man who had shot the crossbow. There was something familiar about those features, about the way the smothering fire made shadows across them. Luck, he told himself. Always the luck.

“The crossbowman was a good swimmer, Thom,” he said as he climbed into the saddle.

“What foolery are you talking, now?” The gleeman was on his horse, too, and far more concerned with how his instrument cases rode behind his saddle than he was in the dead. “How could you know whether he could even swim at all?”

“He made it ashore from a small boat in the middle of the Erinin in the middle of the night. I guess that used up all his luck.” He checked the lashings on the roll of fireworks again. If that fool thought one of these was Aes Sedai, I wonder what he’d have thought if they all went off.

“Are you sure, boy? The chances of it being the same man . . . Why, even you wouldn’t lay a wager against those odds.”

“I am sure, Thom.” Elayne, I will wring your neck when I put my hands on you. And Egwene’s and Nynaeve’s, too. “And I am sure I intend to have this bloody letter out of my hands an hour after we reach Caemlyn.”

“I tell you, there is nothing in that letter, boy. I played Daes Dae’mar when I was younger than you, and I can recognize a code or a cipher even when I don’t know what it says.”

“Well, I never played your Great Game, Thom, your bloody Game of Houses, but I know when someone is chasing me, and they’d not be chasing this hard or this far for the gold in my pockets, not for less than a chest full of gold. It has to be the letter.” Burn me, pretty girls always get me in trouble. “Do you feel like sleeping tonight, after this?”

“With the sleep of an innocent babe, boy. But if you want to ride, I’ll ride.”

The face of a pretty woman floated into Mat’s head, with a dagger in her throat. You had no luck, pretty woman. “Then let’s ride!” he said savagely.