The Path of Daggers

## Chapter 23

#### Fog of War, Storm of Battle

No rain fell, for the moment. Rand guided Tai’daishar around an uprooted tree lying across the slope and frowned down at a dead man sprawled on his back behind the tree trunk. The fellow was short and blocky, his face creased, and his armor all overlapping plates lacquered blue and green, but staring sightlessly at the black clouds overhead, he looked a deal like Eagan Padros, even to the missing leg. An officer, plainly; the sword beside his outflung hand had an ivory hilt carved in the likeness of a woman, and his lacquered helmet, shaped like some huge insect’s head, bore two long thin blue plumes.

Uprooted trees and shattered ones, a fair number burning from end to end, littered the slope of the mountain for a good five hundred paces. Bodies, too, men broken or ripped apart when saidin harrowed the mountainside. Most wore steel veils across their faces, and breastplates painted in horizontal stripes. No women, thank the Light. The injured horses had been put down, another thing to be thankful for. It was incredible how loudly a horse could scream.

Do you think the dead are silent? Lews Therin’s laugh was rasping. Do you? His voice turned to pained rage. The dead howl at me!

At me, too, Rand thought sadly. I can’t afford to listen, but how do you shut them up? Lews Therin began weeping for his lost Ilyena.

“A great victory,” Weiramon intoned behind Rand, then muttered, “But small honor in it. The old ways are best.” Mud liberally decorated Rand’s coat, yet surprisingly, Weiramon appeared as pristine as he had back on the Silver Road. His helmet and armor shone. How had he managed? The Taraboners charged, at the end, lances and courage against the One Power, and Weiramon had led his own charge to break them. Without orders, and followed by every Tairen save the Defenders, even a half-drunk Torean, surprisingly. By Semaradrid and Gregorin Panar, too, with most of the Cairhienin and Illianers. Standing still had been hard by that time, and every man wanted to come to grips with something he actually could come to grips with. The Asha’man could have done it faster. If somewhat more messily.

Rand had taken no part in the fighting, except to sit his saddle where men could see him. He had been afraid to seize the Power. He did not dare display weakness for them to catch. Not a scrap. Lews Therin gibbered with horror at the very idea.

Equally surprising as Weiramon’s unsullied coat, Anaiyella rode with him, and for once not simpering. Her face was pinched and disapproving. Strangely, it did not spoil her looks nearly so much as her unctuous smiles did. She had not joined the charge herself, of course, any more than Ailil, but Anaiyella’s Master of the Horse had, and the man was most definitely dead, with a Taraboner lance through his chest. She did not like that one bit. But why did she accompany Weiramon? Just Tairens flocking together? Maybe. She had been with Sunamon, the last Rand had seen.

Bashere walked his bay up the slope, picking his way around the dead while seeming to pay them no more mind than he did a splintered tree trunk or a burning stump. His helmet hung from his saddle, and his gauntlets were stuffed behind his sword belt. He was mud all down his right side, and his horse as well.

“Aracome’s gone,” he said. “Flinn tried Healing him, but I don’t think Aracome wanted to live like that. There’s near fifty dead so far, and some of the rest might not survive.” Anaiyella paled. Rand had seen her near Aracome, emptying herself. Dead commoners did not affect her so much.

Rand felt a moment of pity. Not for her, and not very much for Aracome. For Min, though she was safely back in Cairhien. Min had foretold Aracome’s death from one of her viewings, and Gueyam and Maraconn’s, too. Whatever she had seen, Rand hoped it had not been anywhere near the reality.

Most of the Soldiers were off scouting again, but down in the broad meadow, gateways woven by Gedwyn’s Dedicated were spilling out the supply carts and the remounts. The men coming with them gaped as soon as they were clear enough to see. The muddy ground was not so well plowed as the mountainside, yet blackened furrows, two paces wide and fifty long, carved through the brown grass, and gaping holes a horse might not be able to leap. They had not found the damane so far. Rand thought there had to be only one; more would have done considerably greater damage under the circumstances.

Men moved around a number of small fires where water boiled for tea, among other things. For once, Tairens, Cairhienin and Illianers mingled. Not just the commoners. Semaradrid was sharing his saddle-flask with Gueyam, who wearily rubbed a hand over his bald head. Maraconn and Kiril Drapaneos, a stork of a man whose square-cut beard looked odd on his narrow face, were squatting on their heels near one of the fires. Playing cards, by the look of it! Torean had a whole circle of laughing Cairhienin lordlings around him, though they might have been less amused by his jokes than by the way he swayed and rubbed at his potato nose. The Legionmen kept apart, but they had taken in the “volunteers” who had followed Padros to the Banner of Light. That lot seemed more eager than anyone since learning how Padros died. Blue-coated Legionmen were showing them how to change direction without falling apart like a gaggle of geese.

Flinn was among the wounded with Adley and Morr and Hopwil. Narishma could Heal little more than minor cuts, no better than Rand, and Dashiva not even that. Gedwyn and Rochaid stood talking well apart from anyone else, holding their horses by the reins atop the hill in the middle of the valley. The hill where they had expected to catch the Seanchan by surprise when they rushed out of gateways surrounding it. Near fifty dead, and more to come, but it would have been above two hundred without Flinn and the rest who could manage Healing to one degree or another. Gedwyn and Rochaid had not wanted to dirty their hands and grimaced when Rand drove them to it. One of the dead was a Soldier, and another Soldier, a round-faced Cairhienin, sat slumped beside a fire with a dazed look that Rand hoped came from being tossed through the air by the ground erupting almost under his feet.

Down there on the furrowed flats, Ailil was conferring with her Lance-captain, a pale little man called Denharad. Their horses stood nearly touching, and occasionally they looked up the mountain toward Rand. What were they scheming?

“We’ll do better next time,” Bashere murmured. He ran his gaze around the valley, then shook his head. “The worst mistake is to make the same one twice, and we won’t.”

Weiramon heard him and repeated the same thing, but using twenty times the words, and flowery enough for a garden in spring. Without admitting that there had been any mistakes, certainly not on his part. He avoided Rand’s mistakes with equal adroitness.

Rand nodded, his mouth tight. Next time they would do better. They had to, unless he wanted to leave half his men buried in these mountains. Right then, he was wondering what to do with the prisoners.

Most of those who escaped death on the mountainside had managed to withdraw through the trees that remained standing. With amazingly good order considering, Bashere claimed, yet they were unlikely to be much threat now. Not unless they had the damane with them. But a hundred or so men sat huddled on the ground, stripped of weapons and armor, under the watchful eyes of two dozen mounted Companions and Defenders. Taraboners, for the most part, they had not fought like men driven to it by conquerors. A fair number held their heads up, and jeered at their guards. Gedwyn had wanted to kill them, after putting them to the question. Weiramon did not care whether they had their throats slit, but he considered torture a waste of time. None would know anything useful, he maintained; there was not a one nobly born.

Rand glanced at Bashere. Weiramon was still going on sonorously. “ . . . sweep these mountains clean for you, my Lord Dragon. We’ll trample them beneath our hooves, and . . . ” Anaiyella was nodding grim approval.

“Six up, and half a dozen down,” Bashere said softly. He scraped mud from one of his thick mustaches with a fingernail. “Or as some of my tenants say, what you gain on the swings, you lose on the roundabouts.” What in the Light was a roundabout? A great help that was!

And then one of Bashere’s patrols made matters worse.

The six men came prodding a prisoner along the slope ahead of their horses with the butts of their lances. She was a black-haired woman in a torn and dirty dark blue dress, with red panels on the breast and skirts bearing forked lightning. Her face was dirty, too, and tear-streaked. She stumbled and half-fell, but the prodding was more gesture than actual touching. She glared scornfully at her captors, even spitting once. She sneered at Rand, too.

“Did you hurt her?” he demanded. A strange question, perhaps, about an enemy after what had happened in this valley. About a sul’dam. But it popped out.

“Not us, my Lord Dragon,” the gruff-faced patrol leader said. “We found her like this.” Scratching his chin through a black flowing beard, he eyed Bashere as if for support. “She claims we killed her Gille. A pet dog, or cat, or some such, the way she carries on. Her name’s Nerith. We got that much out of her.” The woman turned and snarled at him again.

Rand sighed. Not a pet dog. No! That name did not belong on the list! But he could hear the litany of names reciting itself in his head, and “Gille the damane” was there. Lews Therin moaned for his Ilyena. Her name also was on the list. Rand thought it had a right.

“This is a Seanchan Aes Sedai?” Anaiyella asked suddenly, leaning over the pommel of her saddle to peer hard at Nerith. Nerith spat at her, as well, eyes widening in outrage. Rand explained the little he knew of sul’dam, that they controlled women who could channel with the aide of a leash-and-collar ter’angreal but could not themselves channel, and to his surprise, the dainty simpering High Lady said coldly, “If my Lord Dragon feels constrained, I’ll hang her for him.” Nerith spat at her again! Contemptuously, this time. No shortfall of courage there.

“No!” Rand growled. Light, the things people would do to get on his good side! Or maybe Anaiyella had been closer to her Master of the Horse that was considered proper. The man had been stout and balding—and a commoner; that counted heavily with Tairens—but women did have strange tastes in men. He knew that for a pure fact.

“As soon as we’re ready to move again,” he told Bashere, “turn the men down there loose.” Taking prisoners along when he launched his next attack was out of the question, and leaving a hundred men—a hundred now; more later, for sure—leaving them to follow with the supply carts risked fifty kinds of mischief. They could cause no trouble left behind. Even the fellows who had gotten away on horseback could not carry a warning faster than he could Travel.

Bashere shrugged faintly; he thought it might be so, but then again there was always the odd chance. Strange things happened even without a ta’veren around.

Weiramon and Anaiyella opened their mouths almost together, faces set in protest, but Rand pressed on. “I’ve spoken, and it’s done! We’ll keep the woman, though. And any more women we capture.”

“Burn my soul,” Weiramon exclaimed. “Why?” The man appeared dumbfounded, and for that matter, Bashere gave a startled jerk of his head. Anaiyella’s mouth twisted in contempt before she managed to turn it to a simpering smile for the Lord Dragon. Plainly, she thought him too soft to send a woman off with the others. They would have hard walking in this terrain, not to mention short rations. And the weather was not weather to turn a woman out in.

“I have enough Aes Sedai against me without sending sul’dam back to their trade,” he told them. The Light knew that was true! They nodded, if Weiramon was slow about it; Bashere looked relieved, Anaiyella disappointed. But what to do with the woman, and any more he captured? He did not intend to turn the Black Tower into a prison. The Aiel could hold them. Except that the Wise Ones might slit their throats the moment his back was turned. What about the sisters that Mat was taking to Caemlyn with Elayne, though? “When this is done, I’ll hand her over to some Aes Sedai I choose.” They might see it as a gesture of goodwill, a little honey to sweeten their having to accept his protection.

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than Nerith’s face went dead white and she screamed at the top of her lungs. Howling without cease, she flung herself down the slope, scrabbling over downed trees, falling and scrambling back up.

“Bloody—! Catch her!” Rand snapped, and the Saldaean patrol leaped after the woman, jumping their mounts across the tree-littered slope careless of broken legs and necks. Still wailing, she dodged and darted among the horses with even less care.

In the mouth of the easternmost pass, a gateway opened in a flash of silver light. A black-coated Soldier pulled his horse through, jumped to the saddle as the gateway winked out and put his mount to a gallop, toward the hilltop where Gedwyn and Rochaid waited. Rand watched impassively. In his head, Lews Therin snarled of killing, killing all the Asha’man before it was too late.

By the time the three of them started up the slope toward Rand, four of the Saldaeans had Nerith down on the ground, binding her hand and foot. It took four, the way she thrashed and bit at them, and an amused Bashere was offering odds on whether she might not overcome them instead. Anaiyella muttered something about cracking the woman’s head. Did she mean cracking it open? Rand frowned at her.

The Soldier between Gedwyn and Rochaid glanced at Nerith uneasily as they rode past. Rand vaguely remembered seeing him at the Black Tower, the day he first handed out the silver Swords, and gave Taim the very first Dragon pin. He was a young man, Varil Nensen by name, still wearing a transparent veil to cover his thick mustaches. He had not hesitated when he found himself facing his countrymen, though. Allegiance was to the Black Tower and the Dragon Reborn, now, so Taim always said. The second part of that always sounded an afterthought.

“You may have the honor of making your report to the Dragon Reborn, Soldier Nensen,” Gedwyn said. Wryly.

Nensen sat up straight in his saddle. “My Lord Dragon!” he barked, slapping fist to chest. “There’s more of them about thirty miles west, my Lord Dragon.” Thirty miles was as far as Rand had told the scouts to go before returning. What good if one Soldier found Seanchan while the rest kept moving ever farther west? “Maybe half what were here,” Nensen went on. “And . . . ” His dark eyes flickered toward Nerith again. She was tied, now, the Saldaeans struggling to get her over a horse. “And I saw no sign of women, my Lord Dragon.”

Bashere squinted at the sky. Dark clouds lay in a blanket from mountain peak to mountain peak, but the sun should still be high. “Time to feed the men before the rest return,” he said, nodding in satisfaction. Nerith had managed to sink her teeth into a Saldaean’s wrist and was hanging on like a badger.

“Feed them quick,” Rand said irritably. Would every sul’dam he captured be as difficult? Very likely. Light, what if they took a damane? “I don’t want to spend all winter in these mountains.” Gille the damane. He could not erase a name once it went onto that list.

The dead are never silent, Lews Therin whispered. The dead never sleep.

Rand rode down toward the fires. He did not feel like eating.

From the point of a thrusting shoulder of stone, Furyk Karede carefully studied the forested mountains rising all around him, sharp peaks like dark fangs. His horse, a tall dappled gelding, stiffened his ears as though catching a sound he had missed, but otherwise the animal was still. Every so often, Karede had to stop and wipe the lens of his looking glass. A light rain fell from a gray morning sky. His helmet’s two black plumes were bent over instead of standing straight, and water ran down his back. A light rain compared to yesterday, anyway, and probably compared to tomorrow. Or this afternoon, perhaps. Thunder rumbled ominously in the south. Karede’s concern had nothing to do with weather, though.

Below him, the last of twenty-three hundred men snaked through the winding passes, men gathered from four outposts. Well-mounted, reasonably well-led, yet a bare two hundred were Seanchan, and just two besides himself wore the red-and-green of the Guard. Most of the remainder were Taraboners—he knew their mettle—but a good third were Amadicians and Altarans, too new to their oaths for any to be sure how they would stand up. Some Altarans and Amadicians had switched allegiance two or three times already. Tried to, anyway. People this side of the Aryth Ocean had no shame. A dozen sul’dam rode near the front of the column, and he wished all twelve had leashed damanes walking by their horses instead of only two.

Fifty paces farther on, the ten men of the spearhead were watching the slopes above them, though not as carefully as they should have. Too many men who rode spearhead relied on the forward scouts to find any dangers. Karede made a note to speak to them personally. They would do their duties properly after that, or he would send them to the labor levies.

A raken appeared in the east ahead, skimming low over the treetops, twisting and turning to follow the curves of the land like a man running his hand down a woman’s back. Peculiar. Morat’raken, fliers, always liked to soar high unless the sky was actually full of lightning. Karede lowered the looking glass to watch.

“Maybe we’ll finally get another scouting report,” Jadranka said. To the other officers waiting behind Karede, not to him. Three of the ten matched Karede’s rank, yet few except the Blood disturbed a man in the blood-red and nearly black green of the Deathwatch Guard. Not that many among the Blood did.

According to the tales he had heard as a child, one of his ancestors, a noble, had followed Luthair Paendrag to Seanchan at Artur Hawkwing’s command, but two hundred years later, with only the north secure, another ancestor tried to carve out a kingdom of his own and ended sold from the block instead. Perhaps it was so; many da’covale claimed noble ancestors. Among themselves, at least; few of the Blood found such chatter amusing. In any case, Karede had felt lucky when the Choosers picked him out, a sturdy boy not yet old enough to be assigned duties, and he still felt pride in the ravens tattooed on his shoulders. Many Deathwatch Guards went without coat or shirt whenever possible, to display those. The humans, anyway. Ogier Gardeners were not marked or owned, but that was between them and the Empress.

Karede was da’covale and proud of it, like every man of the Guard, the property of the Crystal Throne, body and soul. He fought where the Empress pointed, and would die the day she said die. To the Empress alone did the Guard answer, and where they appeared, they appeared as her hand, a visible reminder of her. No wonder that some among the Blood could become uneasy watching a detachment of Guardsmen pass. A far better life than mucking out a Lord’s stables or serving kaf to a Lady. But he cursed the luck that had sent him into these mountains to inspect the outposts.

The raken darted on westward, the two fliers crouched low in their saddle. There was no scouting report, no message for him. Furyk knew it was his imagination, but the creature’s long, outstretched neck somehow looked . . . anxious. Had he been anyone else, he might have been anxious, too. There had been few messages for him since his orders three days ago to assume command and move east. Each message had thickened the fog more than cleared it.

The locals, these Altarans, had moved into the mountains in force, it seemed, but how? The roads along the northern border of this range were patrolled and watched nearly to the border of Illian, by fliers and morat’torm as well as horse-mounted parties. What could have made the Altarans decide to show so many teeth? To stand together? A man might find himself in a duel for a look—though they had begun to learn challenging a Guardsman was just a slower way of cutting your own throat—but he had seen nobles of this so-called nation trying to sell each other and their Queen for the mere suggestion that their own lands might be protected and perhaps those of their neighbor added to them.

Nadoc, a big man with a deceptively mild face, twisted in his saddle to watch the raken. “I don’t like marching blind,” he muttered. “Not when the Altarans have managed to put forty thousand men up here. Forty, at least.”

Jadranka snorted so hard that his tall white gelding shifted. Jadranka was the senior of the three captains behind Karede, having served as long as Karede himself. A short thin man with a prominent nose and such airs you might have thought him of the Blood. That horse would stand out at a mile. “Forty thousand or a hundred, Nadoc, they’re scattered from here to the end of the range, too far apart to support one another. Stab my eyes, likely half are dead already. They must be tangling with outposts everywhere. That’s why we aren’t getting reports. We’re just expected to sweep up the remnants.”

Karede swallowed a sigh. He had hoped Jadranka was not a fool atop his airs. Praise of victors spread quickly, whether they were an army or half a Banner. It was the rare defeats that were swallowed in silence and forgotten. So much silence was . . . ominous.

“That last report didn’t sound like remnants to me,” Nadoc persisted. He was no fool. “There are five thousand men not fifty miles ahead of us, and I doubt we’ll take them with brooms.”

Jadranka snorted again. “We’ll crush them, with swords or brooms. The Light burn my eyes, I can hardly wait for a decent engagement. I told the scouts to press on until they found them. I won’t have them slipping away from us.”

“You did what?” Karede said softly.

Soft or not, his words jerked every eye toward him. Though Nadoc and a few of the others had to struggle to stop gaping at Jadranka. Scouts told to press ahead, scouts told what to look for. What had gone unseen for those orders?

Before anyone could open his mouth shouts rose from the men in the pass, screams and the shrieks of horses.

Karede pressed the leather tube of the looking glass to his eye. Along the pass ahead of him, men and horses were dying under a hail of what he thought must be crossbow bolts, the way they hammered through steel breastplates, exploded through chests protected by mail. Hundreds were down already, hundreds more sagging wounded in their saddles or afoot and running from horses thrashing on the ground. Too many were running. Even as he looked, men still mounted whirled their horses to try fleeing back up the pass. Where in the Light were the sul’dam? He could not find them. He had faced rebels who had sul’dam and damane, and they always had to be killed as fast as possible. Maybe the locals had learned that.

Suddenly, shockingly, the ground began to erupt in roaring fountains all along the writhing snake of his command, fountains that flung men and horses into the air as easily as dirt and stones. Lightning flashed out of the sky, blue-white bolts shattering earth and men alike. Other men simply exploded, ripped to shreds by nothing he could see. Did the locals have damane of their own? No, it would be those Aes Sedai.

“What are we going to do?” Nadoc said. He sounded shaken. As well he might.

“Do you think to abandon your men?” Jadranka snarled. “We rally them and attack, you—!” He cut off, gurgling, as Karede’s swordpoint went neatly into his throat. There were times fools could be tolerated, and times not. As the man toppled from his saddle, Karede deftly wiped his blade on the gelding’s white mane before the animal bolted. There were times for a little show, too.

“We rally what can be rallied, Nadoc,” he said as if Jadranka had never spoken. As if he had never been. “We save what can be saved, and fall back.”

Turning to ride down into the pass where lightnings flashed and thunders roared, he ordered Anghar, a steady-eyed young man with a fast horse, to ride east and report what had transpired here. Perhaps a flier would see and perhaps not, though Karede suspected he knew why they flew low, now. He suspected the High Lady Suroth and the generals in Ebou Dar already knew what was occurring up here, too. Was today the day he died for the Empress? He dug his heels into his horse’s flanks.

From the flat, thinly treed ridge, Rand peered westward over the forest before him. With the Power in him—life, so sweet; vileness, oh, so vile—he could see individual leaves, but it was not enough. Tai’daishar stamped a hoof. The jagged peaks behind, to either side, and all around overtopped the ridge by a mile or more, but the ridge stood well above the treetops below, a rolling wooded valley over a league in length and nearly as wide. All was still down there. As quiet as the Void he floated in. Quiet for the moment, anyway. Here and there plumes of smoke rose from where two or three trees in a clump burned like torches. Only the general wet stopped them turning the valley into a conflagration.

Flinn and Dashiva were the only Asha’man still with him. All the rest were down in the valley. The pair stood a little way from him at the edge of the trees, holding their horses by the reins and staring at the forest below. Well, Flinn stared, as intently as Rand himself. Dashiva glanced occasionally, twisting his mouth, sometimes muttering to himself in a way that made Flinn shift his feet and eye him sideways. The Power filled both men, nearly to overflowing, but for a change, Lews Therin said nothing. The man seemed increasingly to have gone back into hiding over the last few days.

In the sky there was actually sunlight, and the scattered clouds were gray. It was five days since Rand had brought his small army to Altara, five days since he had seen his first Seanchan dead. He had seen quite a few since. Thought slid across the surface of the Void. He could feel the heron branded into his palm pressing against the Dragon Scepter through his glove. Silent. There were none of the flying creatures to be seen. Three of those had died, slashed from the sky by lightning, before their riders learned to stay clear. Bashere was fascinated by the creatures. Quiet.

“Perhaps it is finished, my Lord Dragon.” Ailil’s voice was calm and cool, but she patted her mare’s neck, though the animal did not need soothing. She eyed Flinn and Dashiva sideways and straightened, unwilling to reveal a shred of unease in front of them.

Rand found himself humming and stopped abruptly. That was Lews Therin’s habit, looking at a pretty woman, not his. Not his! Light, if he started taking on the fellow’s mannerisms, and when he was not there, at that . . . !

Abruptly, hollow thunder boomed up the valley. Fire fountained out of the trees a good two miles away or more, then again, and again, again. Lightning streaked down into the forest not far from where the tall flames had bloomed, single slashes like jagged blue-white lances. A flurry of lightning bolts and fire, and all was still again. No trees had caught fire, this time.

Some of that had been saidin. Some of it.

Shouts rose, dim and distant, from another part of the valley, he thought. Too far for even his saidin-enhanced ears to hear the crash of steel. Despite everything, not all of the fighting was being done by Asha’man and Dedicated and Soldiers.

Anaiyella let out a long breath she must have been holding since the exchange with the Power began. Men fighting with steel did not disturb her. Then she patted her mount’s neck. The gelding had only flickered an ear. Rand had noticed that about women. Quite often, when a woman was agitated, she tried to soothe others whether they required soothing or not. A horse would do. Where was Lews Therin?

Irritably he leaned forward to study the forest canopy again. A good many of those trees were evergreens—oak and pine and leatherleaf—and despite the late drought, they made an effective screen, even to his intensified vision. As if idly, he touched the narrow bundle under his stirrup leather. He could take a hand. And strike blindly. He could ride down into the woods. And be able to see ten paces at most. Down there, he would be little more effective than one of the Soldiers.

A gateway opened among the trees a little way along the ridge, silvery slash widening into a hole that showed different trees and thick winter brown underbrush. A copper-skinned Soldier with a thin mustache on his upper lip and a small pearl in his ear exited afoot and let the gateway vanish. He was shoving a sul’dam ahead of him with her wrists tied behind her, a handsome woman except for the purple knot on the side of her head. That seemed to go along with her scowl, though, as well as it did with her rumpled, leaf-stained dress. She sneered over her shoulder at the Soldier while he pushed her along the ridgetop to Rand, and then she sneered up at Rand.

The Soldier stiffened, saluting smartly. “Soldier Arlen Nalaam, my Lord Dragon,” he barked, staring straight at Rand’s saddle. “My Lord Dragon’s orders were to bring any women captured to him.”

Rand nodded. It was only to give him the appearance of doing something, inspecting prisoners to be sure they were what any idiot could see they were. “Take her back to the carts, Soldier Nalaam, then return to the fighting.” He almost ground his teeth saying that. Return to the fighting. While Rand al’Thor, Dragon Reborn and King of Illian, sat his horse and watched treetops!

Nalaam saluted again before pushing away the woman ahead of him, but he was not slow about it. She kept peering over her shoulder again, yet not at the Soldier this time. At Rand. With wide-eyed, openmouthed astonishment. For some reason, Nalaam did not pull her to a halt until he reached the spot where he had come out. All that was necessary was to go far enough to avoid injuring the horses.

“What are you doing?” Rand demanded as saidin filled the man.

Nalaam half turned back to him, hesitating briefly. “It seems easier, here, if I use a place I’ve already made a gateway, my Lord Dragon. Saidin . . . Saidin feels . . . strange . . . to me here.” His prisoner turned to frown at him.

After a moment, Rand gestured him to go ahead. Flinn pretended to be interested in his horse’s saddle girth, but the balding old man smiled faintly. Smugly. Dashiva . . . giggled. Flinn had been the first to mention an odd feel to saidin in this valley. Of course, Narishma and Hopwil had heard him, and Morr added his tales of the “strangeness” around Ebou Dar. Small wonder everyone was claiming to feel something now, though not a one could say what. Saidin just felt . . . peculiar. Light, with the taint thick on the male half of the Source, what else would it feel? Rand hoped they were not all coming down with his new sickness.

Nalaam’s gateway opened, and vanished behind him and his prisoner. Rand let himself really feel saidin. Life and corruption commingled; ice to make winter’s heart seem warm, and fire to make a forge’s flames cold; death, waiting for him to slip. Wanting him to slip. It did not feel any different. Did it? He scowled at where Nalaam had disappeared. Nalaam and the woman.

She was the fourth sul’dam taken this afternoon. That made twenty-three sul’dam prisoners with the carts. And two damane, each still in her silvery leash and collar, carried on separate carts; in those collars, they could not walk three steps before becoming more violently sick than Rand did seizing the Source. He was not sure the sisters with Mat would be pleased to receive them after all. The first damane, three days before, he had not thought of as a prisoner. A slender woman with pale yellow hair and big blue eyes, she was a Seanchan captive to be freed. He thought. But when he forced a sul’dam to remove the woman’s collar, her a’dam, she screamed for the sul’dam to help her and immediately began lashing out with the Power. She had even offered her neck for the sul’dam to replace the thing! Nine Defenders and a Soldier died before she could be shielded. Gedwyn would have killed her on the spot had Rand not stopped it. The Defenders, nearly as uncomfortable around women who could channel as others were around men who could—the Defenders still wanted her dead. They had taken casualties in the fighting these past days, but having men killed by a prisoner seemed to offend them.

There had been more casualties than Rand had expected. Thirty-one Defenders dead, and forty-six Companions. More than two hundred among the Legionmen and the noble’s armsmen. Seven Soldiers and a Dedicated, men Rand had never met before they answered his summons to Illian. Too many, considering that all except the gravest injury could be Healed, if a man could only hang on until there was time. But he was driving the Seanchan west. Driving them hard.

More shouting rose somewhere far off down in the valley. Fire blossomed a good three miles to the west, and lightning struck, toppling trees. Trees and stone erupted from a mountainside farther on, strange fountains marching along the slope. The roaring booms swallowed shouts. The Seanchan were retreating.

“Get down there,” Rand told Flinn and Dashiva. “Both of you. Find Gedwyn and tell him I said push! Push!”

Dashiva grimaced at the forest below, then began awkwardly tugging his horse along the ridge. The man was ungainly with horses, riding or leading. He nearly tripped over his sword!

Flinn looked up at Rand worriedly. “You mean to stay here alone, my Lord Dragon?”

“I’m hardly alone,” Rand said dryly, glancing at Ailil and Anaiyella. They had ridden back to their armsmen, almost two hundred lancers waiting just short of where the ridge began to slope down to the east. At their head, Denharad frowned through the face-bars of his helmet. He had command of both lots, now, and if his concern was for Ailil and Anaiyella, his fellows still made a show fit to keep away most attackers. Besides, Weiramon had the northern end of this ridge secured so a fly could not pass, he claimed, and Bashere held the south. Without boasting; Bashere just erected a wall of lances without talking about it. And the Seanchan were retreating. “And I’m hardly helpless, anyway, Flinn.”

Flinn actually looked doubtful and scratched his fringe of white hair before saluting and leading his horse toward where Dashiva’s gateway was already winking out. Limping along, Flinn shook his head, muttering to himself fit for Dashiva. Rand wanted to snarl. He could not go mad, and neither could they.

Flinn’s gateway vanished, and Rand returned to his study of the treetops. It was quiet again. Time stretched in stillness. This notion of taking the outposts in the mountains had been a bad one; he was willing to admit that, now. In this terrain, you could be half a mile from an army without knowing. In those tangled woods down there, you could be ten feet from them without knowing! He needed to face the Seanchan on better ground. He needed . . .

Abruptly he was fighting saidin, fighting wild surges that tried to ream out his skull. The Void was vanishing, melting beneath the onslaught. Frantic, dazed, he released the Source before it could kill him. Nausea twisted his middle. Double vision showed him two Crowns of Swords. Lying on the thick mulch of dead leaves in front of his face! He was on the ground! He could not seem to breathe properly, and struggled to suck in air. There was a chip broken off one of the crown’s golden laurel leaves, and blood stained several of the tiny golden swordpoints. A knot of hot pain in his side told him those never-healing wounds had broken open. He tried to push himself up, and cried out. In stunned amazement he stared at the dark fletchings of an arrow stuck through his right arm. With a groan he collapsed. Something ran down his face. Something dripped in front of his eye. Blood.

Vaguely he became aware of ululating cries. Horsemen appeared among the trees to the north, galloping along the ridge, some with lowered lances, some working short bows as fast as they could nock and draw. Horsemen in blue-and-yellow armor of overlapping plates, and helmets like huge insects’ heads. Seanchan, several hundred of them it seemed. From the north. So much for Weiramon’s fly.

Rand struggled to reach the Source. Too late to worry about sicking up, or falling on his face. Another time, he might have laughed at that. He struggled . . . It was like fumbling for a pin in the dark with numbed fingers.

Time to die, Lews Therin whispered. Rand had always known Lews Therin would be there at the end.

Not fifty paces from Rand, screaming Tairens and Cairhien plowed into the Seanchan.

“Fight, you dogs!” Anaiyella shrieked, swinging down from her saddle beside him. “Fight!” The willow lady in her silks and laces hurled a string of curses that would have made a wagon driver’s tongue go dry.

Anaiyella stood holding her mount’s reins, glaring from the mill of men and steel to Rand. It was Ailil who turned him onto his back. Kneeling there, she looked down at him with an unreadable expression in her big dark eyes. He could not seem to move. He felt drained. He was not sure he could blink. Screams and the clash of steel rang in his ears.

“If he dies on our hands, Bashere will hang both of us!” Anaiyella certainly was not simpering now. “If those black-coated monsters get hold of us . . . !” She shuddered, and bent closer to Ailil, gesturing with a belt knife he had not noticed in her hand before. A ruby sparkled blood-red on the hilt. “Your Lance-captain could break off enough men to get us away. We could be miles away before he’s found, and back to our estates by the time—”

“I think he can hear us,” Ailil broke in calmly. Her red-gloved hands moved at her waist. Sheathing a belt knife? Or drawing one? “If he dies here—” She cut off as sharply as the other woman had, and her head jerked around.

Hooves thundered past Rand on either side in thick streams. Galloping north, toward the Seanchan. Sword in hand, Bashere barely reined in before leaping from his saddle. Gregorin Panar dismounted more slowly, but he waved his sword at the men flooding by. “Strike home for King and Illian!” he shouted. “Strike home! The Lord of the Morning! The Lord of the Morning!” The crash of steel rose higher. And the screaming.

“It would be like this at the last of it,” Bashere growled, favoring the two women with suspicious glares. He wasted only an instant, though, before raising his voice above the din of battle. “Morr! Burn your Asha’man hide! Here, now!” He did not shout that the Lord Dragon was down, thank the Light.

With an effort, Rand turned his head perhaps a hand. Enough to see Illianers and Saldaeans driving on north. The Seanchan must have given way.

“Morr!” The name roared through Bashere’s mustaches, and Morr himself dropped from a galloping horse nearly on top of Anaiyella. She looked disgruntled at the lack of an apology as the man knelt beside Rand, scrubbing dark hair out of his face. She moved back quickly enough when she realized he intended to channel, though, practically bounding away. Ailil was much smoother about rising, but not noticeably slower in stepping clear. And she slipped a silver-handled belt knife back into its sheath at her waist.

Healing was a simple matter, if not exactly comfortable. The fletchings were broken off and the arrow drawn the rest of the way through with a sharp jerk that brought a gasp to Rand’s lips, but that was just to clear the way. Dirt and lightly embedded fragments would fall way as flesh knit itself up, but only Flinn and a few others could use the Power to remove what was driven deep. Resting two fingers on Rand’s chest, Morr caught his tongue between his teeth with a fixed expression and wove Healing. That was how he always did it; it did not work for him, otherwise. It was not the complex weaves that Flinn used. Few could manage that, and none as well as Flinn, so far. This was simpler. Rougher. Waves of heat rushed through Rand, strong enough to make him grunt and send sweat gushing from every pore. He quivered violently from head to foot. A roast in the oven must have felt that way.

The sudden flood of heat ebbed slowly, and Rand lay panting. In his head, Lews Therin panted, too. Kill him! Kill him! Over and over.

Muting the voice to a faint buzz, Rand thanked Morr—the young man blinked as if surprised!—then grabbed the Dragon Scepter from the ground and forced himself to his feet. Erect, he swayed slightly. Bashere started to offer an arm, then backed away at a gesture. Rand could stand unaided. Barely. He could as soon have flown by waving his arms as channeled, though. When he touched his side, his shirt slipped on blood, yet the old round scar and the newer slash across it merely felt tender. Half-healed only, but they had never been better than that since he got them.

For a moment, he studied the two women. Anaiyella murmured something vaguely congratulatory and offered him a smile that made him wonder whether she intended to lick his wrist. Ailil stood very straight, very cool, as if nothing had happened. Had they meant to leave him to die? Or to kill him? But if so, why send their armsmen charging in and rush to check on him? On the other hand, Ailil had drawn her knife once the talk of him dying began.

Most of the Saldaeans and Illianers were galloping north or riding down the slope of the ridge, pursuing the last of the Seanchan. And then Weiramon appeared from the north, riding a tall, glossy black at a slow canter that picked up when he saw Rand. His armsmen rode in double file at his back.

“My Lord Dragon,” the High Lord intoned as he dismounted. He still seemed as clean as he had in Illian. Bashere simply looked rumpled and a bit grimy here and there, but Gregorin’s finery was decidedly dirt-stained, and slashed down one sleeve besides. Weiramon flourished a bow to shame a king’s court. “Forgive me, my Lord Dragon. I thought I saw Seanchan advancing in front of the ridge and went to meet them. I never suspected this other company. You can’t know how it would pain me if you were injured.”

“I think I know,” Rand said dryly, and Weiramon blinked. Seanchan advancing? Perhaps. Weiramon would always snatch at a chance for glory in the charge. “What did you mean, ‘at the last,’ Bashere?”

“They’re pulling back,” Bashere replied. In the valley, fire and lightning erupted for a moment as if to give him the lie, but nearly to the far end.

“Your . . . scouts do say they all do be retreating,” Gregorin said, rubbing his beard, and gave Morr a sidelong, uncomfortable glance. Morr grinned at him toothily. Rand had seen the Illianer in the thick of fighting heading his men, shouting encouragement and laying his sword about with wild abandon, but he flinched at Morr’s grin.

Gedwyn strode up then, leading his horse carelessly, insolently. He almost sneered at Bashere and Gregorin, frowned at Weiramon as if already knowing the man’s blunder, and eyed Ailil and Anaiyella as though he might pinch them. The two women drew back from him hastily, but then, so did the men except for Bashere. Even Morr. Gedwyn’s salute to Rand was a casual tap of fist to chest. “I sent scouts out as soon as I saw this lot was done. There are three more columns inside ten miles.”

“All headed west,” Bashere put in quietly, but he looked at Gedwyn sharp enough to slice stone. “You’ve done it,” he told Rand. “They’re all falling back. I doubt they’ll stop short of Ebou Dar. Campaigns don’t always end with a grand march into the city, and this one is finished.”

Surprisingly—or perhaps not—Weiramon began arguing for an advance, to “take Ebou Dar for the glory of the Lord of the Morning,” as he put it, but it was certainly a shock to hear Gedwyn say he would not mind taking a few more swipes at these Seanchan and he certainly would not mind seeing Ebou Dar. Even Ailil and Anaiyella added their voices in favor of “putting an end to the Seanchan once and for all,” though Ailil did add that she would as soon like to avoid having to return to finish. She was quite sure the Lord Dragon would insist on her company for it. That in a tone as cool and dry as night in the Aiel Waste.

Only Bashere and Gregorin spoke for turning back, and raise their voices they did increasingly as Rand stood silent. Silent and staring west. Toward Ebou Dar.

“We did do what we came for,” Gregorin insisted. “Light’s mercy, do you think to take Ebou Dar itself?”

Take Ebou Dar, Rand thought. Why not? No one would expect that. A total surprise, for the Seanchan and everybody else.

“Times are, you seize the advantage and ride on,” Bashere growled. “Other times, you take your winnings and go home. I say it’s time to go home.”

I would not mind you in my head, Lews Therin said, sounding almost sane, if you were not so clearly mad.

Ebou Dar. Rand tightened his hand on the Dragon Scepter, and Lews Therin cackled.