“A fool,” Perrin whispered back. “But a strong one.” He was going to have the feel of those fingers at his neck for days. “Are you all right?”
“Of course. I am not a porcelain figurine.”
He supposed she was not, at that.
Hastily dragging the unconscious man up against the side of a tent where he hoped no one would find him soon, he stripped off the fellow’s white cloak and bound his hands and feet with spare bowstrings. A kerchief found in the fellow’s pocket served for a gag. Not very clean, but that was his own fault. Lifting his bow over his head, Perrin settled the cloak around his shoulders. If anyone else saw them, maybe they would mistake him for one of their own. The cloak had a golden knot of rank beneath the flaring sunburst. An officer. Even better.
He walked between the tents openly now, and quickly. Hidden or not, that fellow could be found any moment and the alarm raised. Faile scudded along beside him like his shadow, scanning the camp for signs of life as alertly as he did. Shifting moonshadows obscured the spaces between the tents even for his eyes.
Approaching the prison tent, he slowed, so as not to excite the guards; a white-cloaked man stood at this end, and the gleaming lance point of another rose above the tent’s peaked roof.
Suddenly that lance point vanished. There was no sound. It simply fell.
A heartbeat later, two patches of darkness abruptly became veiled Aiel, neither tall enough for Gaul. Before the guard could move, one of them leaped into the air, kicking him in the face. He staggered to his knees, and the other Maiden spun, adding her own kick. The guard dropped bonelessly. Crouching, the Maidens looked around, spears ready, to see if they had roused anyone.
At the sight of Perrin in a white cloak, they nearly went for him, until they saw Faile. One shook her head and whispered to the other, who appeared to laugh silently.
Perrin told himself he should not feel disgruntled, but first Faile saved him from being strangled, and now she saved him from a spear through his liver. For somebody who was supposedly leading a rescue, he was making a fine showing so far.
Tossing the tent flap aside, he put his head into the interior, which was even darker than outside. Master Luhhan lay asleep across the tent’s entrance, with the women huddled together toward the back. Perrin put a hand over Haral Luhhan’s mouth and, when his eyes popped open, laid a finger across his own lips. “Wake the others,” Perrin said in a low voice. “Quietly. We are taking you out of here.” Recognition dawned in Master Luhhan’s eyes, and he nodded.
Backing out of the tent, Perrin stripped the cloak from the downed guard. The man was still breathing—hoarsely, and bubbling through a thoroughly broken nose—but being manhandled did not wake him. They had to hurry now. Gaul was there, with the cloak from the other guard. The three Aiel watched the other tents cautiously. Faile practically danced with impatience.
When Master Luhhan brought his wife and the other women out, all of them peering about nervously in the moonlight, Perrin hurriedly put one of the cloaks around the blacksmith. It was a poor fit—Haral Luhhan seemed to be made from tree trunks—but it had to do. The other went around Alsbet Luhhan. She was not so large as her husband, but still as big as most men. Her round face looked surprised at first, but then she nodded; pulling the fallen guard’s conical helmet from his head, she stuck it on her own, squashing it down atop her thick braid. The two guards they bound and gagged with strips of blanket and laid inside the tent.
Sneaking out again the way they had come in was impossible; Perrin had known that from the start. Even if Master and Mistress Luhhan could have moved quietly enough—which he doubted—Bode and Eldrin were clinging to each other in shocked disbelief at rescue. Only their mother’s soft murmurs kept them from breaking into relieved tears already. He had planned for it. Horses were needed, both for a quick burst of speed away from the camp and to carry everyone afterward. There were horses at the picket lines.
The Aiel ghosting ahead, he followed behind with Faile and the Cauthons behind, Haral and Alsbet bringing up the rear. To a casual glance, at least, they looked to be like three Whitecloaks escorting four women.
The picketed horses were guarded, but only on the side away from the tents. After all, why guard them from the men who rode them? It certainly made Perrin’s job easier. They simply walked up to the line of horses nearest the tents, each secured by a simple rope hackamore, and untied one apiece, except for the Aiel. The hardest part was getting Mistress Luhhan up barebacked; it took Perrin and Master Luhhan both, and she kept trying to push her skirts down to cover her knees. Natti and her girls scrambled up easily, and Faile, of course. The guards supposedly watching the horses continued their measured rounds, calling to each other about all being well with the night.
“When I give the word,” Perrin began, and someone in the camp shouted, then again, more loudly; a horn sounded, and shouting men poured out of the tents. Whether they had found the prisoners gone, or the unconscious man who had attacked him, it made no difference. “Follow me!” Perrin cried, digging his heels into the dark gelding he had chosen. “Ride!”
It was a madcap rush, but he tried to keep an eye on everyone. Master Luhhan was almost as bad a rider as his wife, the pair of them bouncing around, nearly falling as their horses ran. Either Bode or Eldrin was screaming at the top of her lungs, from excitement or terror. Luckily the guards were not expecting trouble from inside the camp. One white-cloaked man peering into the darkness turned just in time to throw himself out of the way of the charging horses with a cry almost as shrill as the Cauthon girl’s. More horns bayed behind them, and shouts with the definite sound of orders hammered the night, well before they reached the cover of the thicket. Not that it was much cover now.
Tam had everyone mounted, as Perrin had asked. Or ordered. He swung straight from the gelding to Stepper. Verin and Tomas were the only ones not all but jumping up and down in their saddles; their horses were the only ones not dancing with their riders’ nervousness. Abell was trying to hug his wife and daughters all three at the same time, all of them laughing and crying. Master Luhhan was trying to shake every hand he could reach. Everybody except the Aiel, Verin and her Warder seemed to be offering everybody else congratulations, as though it were all done.
“Why, Perrin, it is you!” Mistress Luhhan exclaimed. Her round face looked peculiar under the helmet, sitting askew because of her braid. “What is that thing on your face, young man? I am more than grateful to you, but I will not have you at my table looking like a—”
“No time for that,” he told her, ignoring the shock on her face. She was not a woman people cut off, but the Whitecloak horns were sounding something besides an alarm now, a short repetitive cry, sharp and insistent. An order of some kind. “Tam, Abell, take Master Luhhan and the women to that hiding place you know. Gaul, you go with them. And Faile.” That would add Bain and Chiad. “And Hu and Jaim.” That should be enough to be safe. “Move quietly. Quiet is better than speed, for a little while anyway. But go now.”
Those he named wound off westward with no argument, though Mistress Luhhan, holding her horse’s mane with both hands, gave him a very level look. It was the lack of argument from Faile that stunned him, enough that it took him a moment to realize he had called Master al’Thor and Master Cauthon by their first names.
Verin and Tomas had stayed behind, and he eyed her sharply. “Any chance of a little help from you?”
“Not the way you mean, perhaps,” she replied calmly, as though the Whitecloak camp were not in turmoil just a mile off. “My reasons are no different today than yesterday. But I think it might rain in … oh … half an hour. Maybe less. Quite a downpour, I expect.”
Ha
lf an hour. Perrin grunted and turned to the remaining Two Rivers lads. Practically quivering with the desire to run, they held their bows in white-knuckled grips. He hoped they had all remembered to bring spare bowstrings, at least, since it was going to rain. “We,” he told them, “are going to draw the Whitecloaks off so Mistress Cauthon and Mistress Luhhan and the rest can get away safely. We’ll take them south along the North Road until we can lose them in the rain. If anyone wants out, he had best ride now.” A few hands shifted on their reins, but they all sat their saddles looking at him. “All right, then. Shout like you’ve gone mad so they’ll hear us. Shout until we reach the road.”
Bellowing, he wheeled Stepper and galloped for the road. At first he was not really certain they would follow, but their wild howls drowned his roar and the thunder of their hooves. If the Whitecloaks did not hear that, they were deaf.
Not all of them stopped shouting when they reached the hard-packed dirt of the North Road and swung south at a dead run through the night. Some laughed and whooped. Perrin shrugged out of the white cloak and let it fall. The horns sounded again, a little fainter now.
“Perrin,” Wil called, leaning forward on the neck of his horse, “what do we do now? What do we do next?”
“We hunt Trollocs!” Perrin shouted over his shoulder. From the way the laughter redoubled, he did not think they believed him. But he could feel Verin’s eyes drilling into his back. She knew. Thunder in the night sky echoed the horses’ hooves.