Glaring at the two women, Perrin said, “Hello? Do you remember me? I am right here. Stop trying to talk over my head.”
They looked at him for a moment.
“Keep him still,” Ila told Faile. “It is all right to let him talk, but do not allow him to move about. He may injure himself more.”
“I will see to it,” Faile replied.
Perrin gritted his teeth and did his best to help in getting his coat and shirt off, but they had to do most of the work. He felt as weak as the worst wrought iron, ready to bend to any pressure. Four inches of thumb-thick arrow stuck out almost atop his last rib, rising from a puckered gash thick with dried blood. They pushed his head down on a pillow, for some reason not wanting him to look at it. Faile washed the wound while Ila prepared her salve with a stone mortar and pestle—plain smooth gray stone, the first things he had seen in the Tinker camp that were not brightly colored. They mounded the salve around the arrow and wrapped him with bandages to hold it.
“Raen and I will sleep beneath the wagon tonight,” the Tuatha’an woman said at last, wiping her hands. Frowning at the arrow stub sticking up from his bandages, she shook her head. “Once I thought he might eventually find the Way of the Leaf. He was a gentle boy, I think.”
“The Way of the Leaf is not for everyone,” Faile said gently, but Ila shook her head again.
“It is for everyone,” she replied just as gently, and a touch sadly, “if they only knew it.”
She left then, and Faile sat on the edge of the bed blotting his face with a folded cloth. He seemed to be sweating a great deal for some reason.
“I blundered,” he said after a time. “No, that is too soft. I don’t know the right word.”
“You did not blunder,” she said firmly. “You did what seemed fitting at the time. It was fitting; I cannot imagine how they got behind us. Gaul is not one to make a mistake about where his enemies are. Ihvon was right, Perrin. Anyone can find circumstances that have changed when he did not know. You held everyone together. You brought us out.”
He shook his head hard and made his side hurt worse. “Ihvon brought us out. What I did was get twenty-seven men killed,” he said bitterly, trying to sit up to face her. “Some of them were my friends, Faile. And I got them killed.”
Faile threw her weight on his shoulders to push him back down. It was a measure of his weakness, how easily she held him. “There will be time enough for that in the morning,” she said firmly, peering down into his face, “when we have to put you back on your horse. Ihvon did not bring us out; I do not think he cared p
articularly if anyone but you and he did get out. Those men would have scattered in every direction if not for you, and then we’d all have been hunted down. They would not have held together for Ihvon, a stranger. As for your friends—” Sighing, she sat back down again. “Perrin, my father says a general can take care of the living or weep for the dead, but he cannot do both.”
“I am not a general, Faile. I am a fool of a blacksmith who thought he could use other people to help him get justice, or maybe revenge. I still want it, but I don’t want to use anyone else for it any longer.”
“Do you think the Trollocs will go away because you decide your motives are not pure enough?” The heat in her voice made him raise his head, but she pushed it back to the pillow almost roughly. “Are they any less vile? Do you need a purer reason to fight them than what they are? Another thing my father says. The worst sin a general can commit, worse than blundering, worse than losing, worse than anything, is to desert the men who depend on him.”
A tap came at the door, and a slender, handsome young Tinker in a red-and-green striped coat put his head in. He flashed a smile at Faile, all white teeth and oozing charm, before looking at Perrin. “Grandfather said it was you. I thought this was where Egwene said she came from.” He frowned suddenly, disapprovingly. “Your eyes. I see you have followed Elyas after all, to run with the wolves. I was sure you would never find the Way of the Leaf.”
Perrin knew him; Aram, Raen and Ila’s grandson. He did not like him; he smiled like Wil. “Go away, Aram. I am tired.”
“Is Egwene with you?”
“Egwene’s Aes Sedai now, Aram,” he growled, “and she would rip your heart out with the One Power if you asked her to dance. Go away!”
Aram blinked, and hastily shut the door. With himself outside.
Perrin let his head fall back. “He smiles too much,” he muttered. “I cannot abide a man who smiles too much.” Faile made a choking noise, and he looked at her suspiciously. She was biting her underlip.
“I have something in my throat,” she said in a strangled voice, getting up hastily. She hurried to the wide shelf below the foot of the bed where Ila had prepared her poultice and stood with her back to him, pouring water from a green-and-red pitcher into a blue-and-yellow mug. “Would you like something to drink, too? Ila left this powder, for the pain. It will help you sleep.”
“I don’t want any powder,” he said. “Faile, who is your father?”
Her back went very stiff. After a moment she turned with the mug in both hands and an unreadable look in her tilted eyes. Another minute passed before she said, “My father is Davram of House Bashere, Lord of Bashere, Tyr and Sidona, Guardian of the Blightborder, Defender of the Heartland, Marshal-General to Queen Tenobia of Saldaea. And her uncle.”
“Light! What was all that about him being a wood merchant, or a fur dealer? I seem to remember him dealing in ice peppers once, too.”
“It was not a lie,” she said sharply, then in a weaker voice, “Just not … the whole truth. My father’s estates do produce lumber and fine woods, and ice peppers, and furs, and more besides. And his stewards sell them for him, so he does trade in them. In a way.”
“Why couldn’t you just tell me? Hiding things. Lying. You’re a lady!” He frowned at her accusingly. He had not expected this. A small merchant for a father, a former soldier, maybe, but not this. “Light, what are you doing running around as a Hunter of the Horn? Don’t tell me the Lord of Bashere and all that just sent you off to find adventure.”
Still holding the cup, she came back to sit beside him. For some reason she seemed very intent on his face. “My two older brothers died, Perrin, one fighting Trollocs, the other in a fall from his horse hunting. That made me the eldest, and it meant I had to study account books and trading. While my younger brothers learned to be soldiers, while they were being readied for adventures, I had to learn how to manage the estates! It is the eldest’s duty. Duty! It is dull, dry and boring. Buried in paper and clerks.
“When Father took Maedin with him to the Blightborder—he’s two years younger than I—that was more than I could stand. Girls are not taught the sword, or war, in Saldaea, but father had named an old soldier from his first command as my footman, and Eran was always more than happy to teach me to use knives and fight with my hands. I think it amused him. In any case, when Father took Maedin with him, the news had arrived calling the Great Hunt of the Horn, so I … left. I wrote Mother a letter explaining, and I … left. And I reached Illian in time to take the oath of a Hunter … .” Picking up the cloth, she patted at the sweat on his face again. “You really should sleep if you can.”