“I understand,” Perrin said, though what he understood was that there would be no rescue after all, no company of Aiel to drive the Whitecloaks out of the Two Rivers. He kept his disappointment inside. It was sharp after thinking he had escaped his fate, but he could not say he had not prepared himself for the alternative. No point in crying when the iron split; you just reforged it. “Did you have any trouble doing what I asked?”
“None. I told one Tairen to take each thing you want to the Dragonwall Gate stable and tell no one of it; they will have seen one another there, but they will think the things are for me, and they will keep silent. The Dragonwall Gate. You would think the Spine of the World was just over the horizon, instead of a hundred leagues or more off.” The Aiel hesitated. “The girl and the Ogier make no secret of their preparations, Perrin. She has been trying to find the gleeman, and telling everyone she means to travel the Ways.”
Scratching his beard, Perrin breathed heavily, close to a growl. “If she gives me away to Moiraine, I vow she’ll not sit down for a week.”
“She is very handy with those knives,” Gaul said in a neutral tone.
“Not handy enough. Not if she’s given me away.” Perrin hesitated. No company of Aiel. The gallows still waited. “Gaul, if anything happens to me, if I give you the word, take Faile away. She might not want to go, but take her anyway. See her safely out of the Two Rivers. Will you promise me that?”
“I will do what I can, Perrin. For the blood debt I owe you, I will.” Gaul sounded doubtful, but Perrin did not think Faile’s knives would be enough to stop him.
They took back passages as much as possible, and narrow stairs meant to carry servants unobtrusively. Perrin thought it too bad the Tairens had not given servants their own corridors, as well. Still, they saw few people even in the broad hallways with their gilded lamp stands and ornate hangings, and no nobles at all.
He commented on the absence, and Gaul said, “Rand al’Thor has called them to the Heart of the Stone.”
Perrin only grunted, but he hoped Moiraine had been among those summoned. He wondered whether this was Rand’s way of helping him escape her. Whatever the reason, he was glad enough to take advantage of it.
They stepped out of the last cramped stairway onto the ground floor of the Stone, where cavernous hallways as wide as roads led to all the outer gates. There were no wall hangings here. Black iron lamps in iron brackets high on the walls lit the windowless passages, and the floor was paved with broad, rough stones able to stand long wear from horses’ shod hooves. Perrin picked his pace up to a trot. The stables lay just in sight ahead down the great tunnel, the wide Dragonwall Gate itself standing open beyond and only a handful of Defenders for guard. Moiraine could not intercept them now, not without the Dark One’s own luck.
The stable’s open doorway was an arch fifteen paces across. Perrin took one step inside and stopped.
The air was heavy with the smell of straw and hay, underlaid with grain and oats, leather and horse manure. Stalls filled with fine Tairen horses, prized everywhere, lined the walls, with more in rows across the wide floor. Dozens of grooms were at work, currying and combing, mucking out, mending tack. Without pausing, one or another sometimes glanced at where Faile and Loial stood, booted and ready for travel. And beside them, Bain and Chiad, accoutered like Gaul with weapons and blankets, water bottles and cooking pot.
“Are they why you only said you would try?” Perrin asked quietly.
Gaul shrugged. “I will do what I can, but they will take her side. Chiad is Goshien.”
“Her clan makes a difference?”
“Her clan and mine have blood feud, Perrin, and I am no spear-sister to her. But perhaps the water oaths will hold her. I will not dance spears with her unless she offers.”
Perrin shook his head. A strange people. What were water oaths? What he said, though, was “Why are they with her?”
“Bain says they wish to see more of your lands, but I think it is the argument between you and Faile which fascinates them. They like her, and when they heard of this journey, they decided to go with her instead of you.”
“Well, as long as they keep her out of trouble.” He was surprised when Gaul threw back his head and laughed. It made him scratch his beard worriedly.
Loial came toward them, long eyebrows sagging anxiously. His coat pockets bulged, as was usual when he was traveling, mainly with the angular shapes of books. At least his limp seemed better. “Faile is becoming impatient, Perrin. I think she might insist on leaving any minute. Please hurry. You could not even find the Waygate without me. Not that you should try, certainly. You humans make me leap about so I can hardly find my own head. Please hurry.”
“I will not leave him,” Faile called. “Not even if he is yet too stubborn and foolish to ask a simple favor. Should that be the case, he may still follow me like a lost puppy. I promise to scratch his ears and take care of him.” The Aiel women doubled over laughing.
Gaul leaped straight up suddenly, kicking higher, two paces or more above the floor, while twirling one of his spears. “We will follow like stalking ridgecats,” he shouted, “like hunting wolves.” He landed easily, lightly. Loial stared at him in amazement.
Bain, on the other hand, lazily combed her short, fiery hair with her fingers. “I have a fine wolfskin with my bedding in the hold,” she told Chiad in a bored voice. “Wolves are easily taken.”
A growl rose in Perrin’s throat, pulling both women’s eyes to him. For a moment Bain looked on the point of saying something more, but she frowned at his yellow stare and held her peace, not afraid, but suddenly wary.
“This puppy is not well housebroken yet,” Faile confided to the Aiel women.
Perrin refused to look at her. Instead he went to the stall that held his dun stallion, as tall as any of the Tairen animals but heavier in shoulder and haunch. Waving away a groom, he bridled Stepper and led him out himself. The grooms had walked the horse, of course, but he had been confined enough to frisk in the quick steps that had made Perrin give him his name. Perrin soothed him with the sure confidence of a man who had shoed many horses. It was no trouble at all putting his high-cantled saddle on and lashing his saddlebags and blanket roll behind.
Gaul watched with no expression. He would not ride a horse unless he had to, and then not a step farther than absolutely necessary. None of the Aiel would. Perrin did not understand why. Pride, perhaps, in their ability to run for long distances. The Aiel made it seem more than that, but he suspected none of them could have explained.
The packhorse had to be readied too, of course, but that was quickly done, since everything Gaul had ordered was waiting in a neat pile. Food and waterskins. Oats and grain for the horses. None of that would be available in the Ways. A few other things, like hobbles, some horse medicines just in case, spare tinderbox and such. Most of the space in the wicker hampers went for leather bottles like those the Aiel used for water, only larger and filled with lamp oil. Once the lanterns, on long poles, were strapped atop the rest, it was done.
Thrusting his unstrung bow under the saddle girth, he swung up into Stepper’s saddle with the pack animal’s lead in hand. And then had to wait, seething.
Loial was already mounted, on a huge, hairy-fetlocked horse, taller than any other in the stable by hands yet reduced nearly to pony size by the Ogier’s long legs hanging down. There had been a time when the Ogier was almost as unwilling a rider as the Aiel, but he was at home on a horse now. It was Faile who took her time, examining her mount almost as if she had never seen the glossy black mare before, though Perrin knew she had put the horse through her paces before buying, soon after they came to the Stone. The horse, Swallow by name, was a fine animal of Tairen breeding, with slender ankles and an arched neck, a prancer with the look of speed and endurance both, though shod too lightly for Perrin’s taste. Those shoes would not last. It was all another effort to put him in his place, whatever she thought that was.