“Some fool has gone crazy over it,” Abell added. “Maybe more than one. We’ve found all sorts of dead animals. Rabbits, deer, foxes, even a bear. Killed and left to rot. Most not even skinned. It’s a man, or men, not Trollocs; I found boot prints. A big man, but too small for a Trolloc. A shame and a waste.”
Slayer. Slayer here, and not just in the wolf dream. Slayer and Trollocs. The man in the dream had seemed familiar. Perrin scuffed dirt and leaves over the dead raven with his boot. There would be plenty of time for Trollocs later. A lifetime, if need be. “I promised Mat I’d look after Bode and Eldrin, Master Cauthon. How hard will it be to get them, and the others, free?”
“Hard,” Abell sighed, his face sagging. Suddenly he looked his age and more. “Powerful hard. I got close enough to see Natti after they took her, walking outside the tent where they’re holding everybody. I could see her—with a couple of hundred Whitecloaks between us. I got a little careless, and one of them put an arrow through me. If Tam hadn’t hauled me back here to the Aes Sedai … .”
“It’s a good-sized camp,” Tam said, “right under Watch Hill. Seven or eight hundred men. Patrols, day and night, with the heaviest concentration from Watch Hill down to Emond’s Field. If they spread out more, it would make things easier for us, but except for a hundred men or so at Taren Ferry, they’ve just about given the rest of the Two Rivers over to the Trollocs. It’s bad down around Deven Ride, I hear. Another farm burned almost every night. The same between Watch Hill and the River Taren. Bringing Natti and the others out will be hard, and after, we’ll have to hope the Aes Sedai will let them stay here. That pair aren’t too pleased at anyone knowing where they are.”
“Surely someone will hide them,” Perrin protested. “You can’t tell me everyone’s turned their backs on you. They don’t really believe you’re Darkfriends?” Even as he said it, he was remembering Cenn Buie.
“No, not that,” Tam said, “except for a few fools. Plenty of folk will give us a meal, or a night in the barn, sometimes even a bed, but you have to understand they’re uneasy about helping people the Whitecloaks are chasing. It’s nothing to blame them for. Things are stone hard, and most men are trying to look after their own families the best they can. Asking someone to take in Natti and the girls, Haral and Alsbet … . Well, it might be asking too much.”
“I thought better of Two Rivers folk than that,” Perrin muttered.
Abell managed a weak smile. “Most people feel caught between two millstones, Perrin. They’re just hoping they aren’t ground to flour between Whitecloaks and Trollocs.”
“They should stop hoping and do something.” For a moment Perrin felt abashed. He had not been living here; he had no idea what it was like. But he was still right. As long as the people hid behind the Children of the Light, they would have to put up with whatever the Children wanted to do, whether taking books or arresting women and girls. “Tomorrow I’ll take a look at this Whitecloak camp. There has to be some way to free them. And once they are, we can turn our attention to Trollocs. A Warder once told me Trollocs call the Aiel Waste ‘the Dying Ground.’ I mean to make them give that name to the Two Rivers.”
“Perrin,” Tam began, then stopped, looking troubled.
Perrin knew his eyes caught the light, there in the shadows under the oak. His face felt carved from rock.
Tam sighed. “First we’ll see about Natti and the others. Then we can decide what to do about the Trollocs.”
“Don’t let it eat you inside, boy,” Abell said softly. “Hate can grow till it burns everything else out of you.”
“Nothing is eating me,” Perrin told them in a level voice. “I just mean to do what needs doing.” He ran a thumb along the edge of his axe. What needed doing.
Dain Bornhald held himself straight in his saddle as the hundred he had taken on patrol approached Watch Hill. Fewer than a hundred, now. Eleven saddles had cloak-wrapped bodies tied across them, and twenty-three more men nursed wounds. The Trollocs had laid a neat ambush; it might have succeeded against soldiers less well trained, less tough than the Children. What troubled him was that this was his third patrol to be attacked in force. Not a chance encounter, not happening on Trollocs killing and burning, but meeting a planned attack. And only patrols he led personally. The Trollocs tried to avoid the others. The fact presented worrisome questions, and the answers he came up with gave no solutions.
The sun was dropping. A few lights already appeared in the village that covered the hill from top to bottom with thatched roofs. The only tile roof stood at the crest, on the White Boar, the inn. Another evening he might have gone up there for a cup of wine, despite the nervous silence that closed in at the sight of a white cloak with a golden sunburst. He seldom drank, but he sometimes enjoyed being around people outside th
e Children; after a time they would forget his presence to some extent, and begin to laugh and talk among themselves again. On another evening. Tonight he wanted to be alone to think.
There was activity among the hundred or so colorful wagons gathered less than half a mile from the foot of the hill, men and women in even brighter hues than their wagons, examining horses and harness, loading things that had been lying about the camp for weeks. It seemed the Traveling People meant to live up to their name, probably at first light.
“Farran!” The thick-bodied hundredman heeled his horse closer, and Bornhald nodded toward the Tuatha’an caravan. “Inform the Seeker that if he wishes to move his people, they will move south.” His maps said there was no crossing of the Taren except at Taren Ferry, but he had begun learning how old they were as soon as he crossed the river. No one was leaving the Two Rivers to perhaps seal his command into a trap as long as he could stop it. “And Farran? There is no need to use boots or fists, yes? Words will suffice. This Raen has ears.”
“By your command, Lord Bornhald.” The hundredman sounded only a little disappointed. Touching gauntleted fist to heart, he wheeled away toward the Tuatha’an encampment. He would not like it, but he would obey. Despise the Traveling People as he might, he was a good soldier.
The sight of his own camp brought a moment of pride to Bornhald, the long neat rows of wedge-roofed white tents, the picket lines for the horses precisely arrayed. Even here in this Light-forsaken corner of the world, the Children maintained themselves, never allowing discipline to slack. It was Light-forsaken. The Trollocs proved that. If they burned farms, it only meant some folk here were pure. Some. The rest bowed, and said “yes, my Lord,” “as you wish, my Lord,” and stubbornly went their own way as soon as his back was turned. Besides which, they were hiding an Aes Sedai. The second day south of the Taren they had killed a Warder; the man’s color-shifting cloak had been sufficient proof. Bornhald hated Aes Sedai, meddling with the One Power as if Breaking the World once was not enough. They would do it again if they were not stopped. His momentary good mood faded like spring snow.
His eye sought out the tent where the prisoners were kept, except for a brief exercise period each day, one at a time. None would try running when it meant leaving the others behind. Not that running would get them more that a dozen paces—a guard stood at either end of the tent, and a dozen paces in any direction took in another twenty Children—but he wanted as little trouble as possible. Trouble sparked trouble. If rough treatment was needed with the prisoners, it might raise resentment in the village to a point where something had to be done about it. Byar was a fool. He—and others, Farran especially—wanted to put the prisoners to the question. Bornhald was not a Questioner, and he did not like to use their methods. Nor did he mean to let Farran anywhere near those girls, even if they were Darkfriends, as Ordeith claimed.
Darkfriends or no Darkfriends, he realized more and more that all he really wanted was one Darkfriend. More than the Trollocs, more than Aes Sedai, he wanted Perrin Aybara. He could hardly credit Byar’s tales of the man running with wolves, but Byar was clear enough that Aybara had led Bornhald’s father into a Darkfriend trap, led Geofram Bornhald to his death on Toman Head at the hands of the Seanchan Darkfriends and their Aes Sedai allies. Perhaps, if neither of the Luhhans talked soon, he might let Byar have his way with the blacksmith. Either the man would crack, or his wife would, watching. One of them would give him the means to find Perrin Aybara.
When he dismounted in front of his tent, Byar was there to meet him, stiff and gaunt as a scarecrow. Bornhald glanced distastefully toward a much smaller collection of tents apart from the rest. The wind was from that direction, and he could smell the other camp. They did not keep their picket lines clean, or themselves. “Ordeith is back, it seems, yes?”
“Yes, my Lord Bornhald.” Byar stopped, and Bornhald looked at him questioningly. “They report a skirmish with Trollocs to the south. Two dead. Six wounded, they claim.”
“And who are the dead?” Bornhald asked quietly.
“Child Joelin and Child Gomanes, my Lord Bornhald.” Byar’s hollow-cheeked expression never changed.
Bornhald drew off his steel-backed gauntlets slowly. The two he had sent off to accompany Ordeith, to see what he did on his forays south. Carefully, he did not raise his voice. “My compliments to Master Ordeith, Byar, and—No! No compliments. Tell him, in these words, that I will have his scrawny bones before me now. Tell him, Byar, and bring him if you must arrest him and those filthy wretches who disgrace the Children. Go.”
Bornhald held his anger until he was inside his tent, flap lowered, then swept maps and writing case from his camp table with a snarl. Ordeith must think him an imbecile. Twice he had sent men with the fellow, and twice they had been the only deaths in “a skirmish with Trollocs” that left no wounded to show among the rest. Always to the south. The man was obsessed with Emond’s Field. Well, he himself might have had his camp there, if not for … . No point to it now. He had the Luhhans here. They would give him Perrin Aybara, one way or another. Watch Hill was a much better site if he had to move to Taren Ferry quickly. Military considerations before personal.
For the thousandth time he wondered why the Lord Captain Commander had sent him here. The people seemed no different from those he had seen a hundred other places. Except that only the Taren Ferry folk showed any enthusiasm for rooting out their own Darkfriends. The rest stared with a sullen stubbornness when the Dragon’s Fang was scrawled on a door. A village always knew who its own undesirables were; they were always ready to cleanse themselves, with a little encouragement, and any Darkfriends were certain to be swept up with the others the people wanted gone. But not here. The black scrawl of a sharp fang on a door might as well be new whitewash for all of its real effect. And the Trollocs. Had Pedron Niall known the Trollocs would come when he wrote those orders? How could he have? But if not, why had he sent enough of the Children to put down a small rebellion? And why under the Light had the Lord Captain Commander burdened him with a murderous madman?