Of course, they'd be more useful if they could fire faster. The cranking was the slow point. Not the turn of the crank itself, but the necessity of lowering the crossbow each time. It cost four seconds just to move the weapon about. These new cranks and boxes that Talmanes had learned to make from that mechanic in Murandy sped things up greatly. But the mechanic had been on his way to sell the cranks in Caemlyn, and who knew who else had bought them along the way? Before too long, everyone might have them. An advantage was negated if both you and your enemies had it.
Those boxes had given a lot to Mat's success in Altara against the Seanchan. He was loath to surrender the advantage. Could he find a way to make the bows fire even faster?
Thoughtful, he checked on a few more things in the camp—the Al-tarans they'd recruited into the Band were settling in well, and other than feed for the horses and perhaps crossbow bolts, supplies looked good. Satisfied, he went looking for Aludra.
She had established herself near the back of the camp, alongside a little cleft in the rocky hillside. Though this spot was much smaller than the glade of trees the Aes Sedai and their attendants used, it was noticeably more secluded. Mat had to weave around three separate cloth sheets hanging between trees—placed carefully to block any view into Aludra's workspace—before he reached her. And he had to stop when Bayle Domon held out a hand, holding Mat back until Aludra gave leave for him to enter.
The slender, dark-haired Illuminator sat on a stump in the center of her little camp, powders, rolls of paper, a writing board for notes and tools neatly arranged on strips of cloth on the ground around her. She no longer wore her braids, and her long hair fell loose around her shoulders. That made her look odd to Mat. Still pretty, though.
;I want three squads of light cavalry here," Mat said, pointing at an upper slope. "They'll be hidden by the trees, but will have full view of the skies. If a red nightflower goes up, they're to come in directly along the main road here for a rescue. We'll have a hundred crossbowmen sequestered on either side of the town as a backup to the cavalry. If the nightflower is green instead, the cavalry is to march in and secure the main roads to the town, here, here and here."
Mat looked up, pointing at Thom. "Thorn, you'll take Harnan, Fer-gin and Mandevwin as 'apprentices' and Noal can be your footman."
"Footman?" Noal asked. He was a gnarled man, missing teeth, with a hooked beak of a nose. But he was tough as an old, battle-scored sword passed down from father to son. "Why does a gleeman need a footman?"
"All right," Mat said. "You can be his brother then, who doubles as a manservant. Juilin, you—"
"Wait, Mat," Mandevwin said, scratching his face near his eye patch. "I'm to be an apprentice gleeman? I'm not certain my voice is suited to fine singing. You've heard me, I warrant. And with only one eye, I doubt I'll fare well at juggling."
"You're a new apprentice," Mat said. "Thom knows you don't have any talent, but he took pity on you because your great-aunt—with whom you've lived since your parents died in a tragic oxen stampede—took sick of the clover pox and went crazy. She started feeding you table scraps and treated you like the family hound, Marks, who'd run away when you were just seven."
Mandevwin scratched his head. His hair was streaked with gray. "Aren't I a little old to be an apprentice, though?"
"Nonsense," Mat said. "You're young at heart, and since you never married—the only woman you ever loved ran away with the tanner's son—Thorn's arrival offered you an opportunity to start fresh."
"But I don't want to leave my great-aunt," Mandevwin protested. "She's cared for me since I was a child! It's not honest of a man to abandon an elderly woman just because she gets a little confused."
"There is no great-aunt," Mat said with exasperation. "This is just a legend, a story to go with your false name."
"Can't I have a story that makes me more honorable?" Mandevwin asked.
"Too late," Mat said, rifling through a stack on his desk, searching out a cluster of five pages covered in scrawled handwriting. "You can't change now. I spent half the night working on your story. It's the best out of the lot. Here, memorize this." He handed it over to Mandevwin, then got out another stack of papers and began looking through them.
"Are you sure we're not taking this a little too far, lad?" Thom asked.
"I'm not going to be surprised again, Thom," Mat said. "Burn me, but I'm not going to let it happen. I'm tired of walking into traps unprepared. I plan to take command of my own destiny, stop running from problem to problem. It's time to be in charge."
"And you do that with ..." Julin said.
"Elaborate aliases with backstories," Mat said, handing Thom and Noal their sheets. "Bloody right I do."
"What about me?" Talmanes asked. That twinkle to his eyes was back, though he spoke with a completely earnest voice. "Let me guess, Mat. I'm a traveling merchant who once trained with the Aiel and who has come to the village because he's heard there's a trout that lives in the lake who insulted his father."
"Nonsense," Mat said, handing him his sheets. "You're a Warder."
"That's rather suspicious," Talmanes noted.
"You're supposed to be suspicious," Mat said. "It's always easier to beat a man in cards when he's thinking about something else. Well, you'll be our 'something else.' A Warder passing through town on mysterious business won't be so grand an event that it will draw too much attention, but to those who know what to look for, it will be a good distraction. You can use Fen's cloak. He said he'd let me borrow it; he still feels guilty for letting those serving women get away."
"Of course, you didn't tell him that they simply vanished," Thom added. "And that there was no way for him to keep it from happening."
"Didn't see the point of telling him," Mat said. "No use dwelling on the past, I say."
"A Warder, is it?" Talmanes said, flipping through his stack of papers. "I'll have to practice scowling."
Mat regarded him with a flat expression. "You're not taking this seriously."
"What did you ask? Is there someone who is taking this seriously?" Burn that twinkle. Had Mat really ever thought this man was slow to laugh? He just did it on the inside. That was the most infuriating way.