The Great Hunt twot-2

by Robert Jordan

  Almost under her breath, Elayne murmured, "And you tell me to be careful."

  Domon had eyes only for Nynaeve, and they were wary eyes. "What do you mean?" he whispered.

  Nynaeve opened her coat to fumble at the back of her neck, finally pulling out a leather cord that had been tucked inside her dress. Two gold rings hung on the cord. Min gasped when she saw one — it was the heavy man's ring she had seen when she read Nynaeve in the street — but she knew it was the other, slighter and made for a woman's slender finger, that made Domon's eyes bulge. A serpent biting its own tail.

  "You know what this means," Nynaeve said, starting to slip the Serpent ring from the cord, but Domon closed his hand over it.

  "Put it away." His eyes darted uneasily; no one was looking at them that Min could see, but he looked as if he thought everyone was staring. "That ring do be dangerous. If it be seen …"

  "As long as you know what it means," Nynaeve said with a calm that made Min envious. She pulled the cord from Domon's hand and retied it around her neck.

  "I know," he said hoarsely. "I do know what it means. Maybe there do be a chance if you… Four, you say? This girl who do like to listen to my tongue wag, she do be one of the four, I take it. And you, and…" He frowned at Elayne. "Surely this child is no — no one like you."

  Elayne straightened angrily, but Nynaeve put a hand on her arm and smiled soothingly at Domon. "She travels with me, Captain. You might be surprised by what we can do even before we earn the right to a ring. When we sail, you will have three on your ship who can fight damane if need be."

  "Three," he breathed. "There do be a chance. Maybe …" His face brightened for a moment, but as he looked at them, it grew serious again. "I should take you to Spray right now and cast off, but Fortune prick me if I can no tell you what you face here if you stay, and maybe even if you go with me. Listen to me, and mark what I do say." He took another cautious look around, and still lowered his voice and chose his words carefully. "I did see a — a woman who wore a ring like that taken by the Seanchan. A pretty, slender little woman she was, with a big War — a big man with her who did look as if he did know how to use his sword. One of them must have been careless, for the Seanchan did have an ambush laid for them. The big man put six, seven soldiers on the ground before he did die himself. The — the woman … Six damane they did put around her, stepping out of the alleys of a sudden. I did think she would … do something — you know what I mean — but … I know nothing of these things. One moment she did look as if she would destroy them all, then a look of horror did come on her face, and she did scream."

  "They cut her off from the True Source." Elayne's face was white.

  "No matter," Nynaeve said calmly. "We will not allow the same to be done to us."

  "Aye, mayhap it will be as you say. But I will remember it until I die. Ryma, help me. That is what she did scream. And one of the damane did fall down crying, and they did put one of those collars on the neck of the … woman, and I … I did run." He shrugged, and rubbed his nose, and peered into his wine. "I have seen three women taken, and I have no stomach for it. I would leave my aged grandmother standing on the dock to sail from here, but I did have to tell you."

  "Egwene said they have two prisoners," Min said slowly. "Ryma, a Yellow, and she didn't know who the other is." Nynaeve gave her a sharp look, and she fell silent, blushing. From the look on Domon's face, it had not furthered their cause any to tell him the Seanchan held two Aes Sedai, not just one.

  Yet abruptly he stared at Nynaeve and took a long gulp of wine. "Do that be why you are here? To free … those two? You did say there would be three of you."

  "You know what you need to know," Nynaeve told him briskly. "You must be ready to sail on the instant anytime in the next two or three days. Will you do it, or will you remain here to see if they will cut off your head after all? There are other ships, Captain, and I mean to have passage assured on one of them today."

  Min held her breath; under the table, her fingers were knotted.

  Finally, Domon nodded. "I will be ready."

  When they returned to the street, Min was surprised to see Nynaeve sag against the front of the inn as soon as the door closed. "Are you ill, Nynaeve?" she asked anxiously.

  Nynaeve drew a long breath and stood up straight, tugging at her coat. "With some people," she said, "you have to be certain. If you show them one glimmer of doubt, they'll sweep you off in some direction you don't want to go. Light, but I was afraid he was going to say no. Come, we have plans yet to make. There are still one or two small problems to work out."

  "I hope you don't mind fish, Min," Elayne said.

  One or two small problems? Min thought as she followed them. She hoped very much that Nynaeve was not just being certain again.

  Chapter 44

  (Flame of Tar Valon)

  Five Will Ride Forth

  Perrin eyed the villagers warily, self-consciously hitching at a too-short cloak, embroidered on the chest and with some holes in it not even patched, but none of them gave him a second glance despite his strange mix of clothes and the axe on his hip. Hurin had a coat with blue spirals across the chest under his cloak, and Mat wore a pair of baggy trousers that made bunches where they were stuffed into his boots. That had been all they had been able to find that would fit back in the abandoned village. Perrin wondered if this one would be abandoned soon. Half the stone houses were empty, and in front of the inn, up the dirt street from them, three ox carts, loaded too heavily in great mounds and everything covered with roped canvas, stood with families gathered around them.

  As he watched them, huddling together and saying their goodbyes to those who were staying, at least for the time being, Perrin decided it was not lack of interest in strangers on the villagers' part; they were carefully avoiding looking at him and the others. These people had learned not to show curiosity about strangers, even strangers who were obviously not Seanchan. Strangers might be dangerous these days on Toman Head. They had encountered the same studious indifference in other villages. There were more towns here within a few leagues of the coast, every one holding itself independent. At any rate, they had until the Seanchan came.

  "I say it's time to go get the horses," Mat said, "before they decide to start asking questions. There has to be a first time for it."

  Hurin was staring at a big, blackened circle of ground that marred the brown grass of the village green. It had a weathered look, but no one had done anything to erase it. "Maybe six or eight months ago," he muttered, "and it still stinks. The whole Village Council and their families. Why would they do a thing like that?"

  "Who knows why they do anything?" Mat muttered. "Seanchan don't seem to need a reason for killing people. None I can figure out, anyway."

  Perrin tried not to look at the charred patch. "Hurin, are you sure about Fain? Hurin?" It had been hard to make the sniffer look at anything else since they entered the village. "Hurin!"

  "What? Oh. Fain. Yes." Hurin's nostrils flared, and right away he wrinkled his nose. "There's no mistaking that, even old as it is. Makes a Myrddraal smell like roses. He passed through here all right, but I think he was alone. No Trollocs, anyway, and if he had any Darkfriends with him, they hadn't been up to much lately."

  There was some sort of agitation up by the inn, people shouting and pointing. Not at Perrin and the other two, but at something Perrin could not see in the low hills east of the village.

  "Can we get the horses now?" Mat said. "That could be Seanchan."

  Perrin nodded, and they broke into a run for where they had tied their horses behind an abandoned house. As Mat and Hurin disappeared around the corner of the house, Perrin looked back toward the inn and stopped in astonishment. The Children of the Light were riding into town, a long column of them.

  He leaped after the others. "Whitecloaks!"

  They wasted only an instant staring at him in disbelief before they were scrambling into their saddles. Keeping houses between them and the main st
reet of the village, the three galloped out of the village westward, watching over their shoulders for pursuit. Ingtar had told them to avoid anything that might slow them down, and Whitecloaks asking questions would certainly do that, even if they could manage answers that satisfied. Perrin kept an even closer watch than the other two; he had his own reasons for not wanting to meet Whitecloaks. The axe in my hands. Light, what I wouldn't give to change that.

  The lightly wooded hills soon hid the village, and Perrin began to think maybe there was nothing chasing them after all. He reined in and motioned the other two to stop. When they did, eyeing him questioningly, he listened. His ears were sharper than they once had been, but he heard no sounds of hoofbeats.

  Reluctantly, he reached out with his mind in search of wolves. Almost immediately he found them, a small pack, lying up for the day in the hills above the village they had just left. There were moments of astonishment so strong he almost thought it was his own; these wolves had heard rumors, but they had not really believed there were two-legs who could talk to their kind. He sweated through the minutes it took to get past introducing himself — he gave the image of Young Bull in spite of himself, and added his own smell, according to the custom among wolves; wolves were great ones for formalities on first meetings — but finally he managed to get his question through. They really had no interest in any two-legs who could not talk to them, but at last they glided down to take a look, unseen by the dull eyes of the two-legs.

  After a time, images came back to him, what the wolves saw. Whitecloaked men on horses crowding around the village, riding among the houses, riding around it, but none leaving. Especially not westward. The wolves said all they smelled moving west was himself and two other two-legs with three of the hard-footed tall ones.

  Perrin let go the contact with the wolves gratefully. He was aware of Hurin and Mat looking at him.

  "They aren't following," he said.

  "How can you be sure?" Mat demanded.

  "I am!" he snapped, then more softly, "I just am."

  Mat opened his mouth and closed it again, and finally said, "Well, if they aren't coming after us, I say we go back to Ingtar and get on Fain's trail. That dagger isn't coming any closer just standing here."

  "We can't pick it up again this close to that village," Hurin said. "Not without risking running into Whitecloaks. I don't think Lord Ingtar would appreciate that, and not Verin Sedai, neither."

  Perrin nodded. "We'll follow it on a few miles, anyway. But keep a close lookout. We can't be too far from Falme, now. It won't do any good to avoid the Whitecloaks and ride right into a Seanchan patrol."

  As they started out again, he could not help wondering what Whitecloaks were doing there.

  Geofram Bornhald peered down the village street, sitting his saddle while the legion spread through the small town and surrounded it. There had been something about the heavy-shouldered man who had dashed out of sight, something that tickled his memory. Yes, of course. The lad who claimed to be a blacksmith. What was his name?

  Byar pulled up in front of him, hand on heart. "The village is secured, my Lord Captain."

  Villagers in heavy sheepskin coats milled uneasily as white-cloaked soldiers herded them together near the overloaded carts in front of the inn. Crying children clung to their mothers' skirts, but no one looked defiant. Dull eyes stared out of the adult faces, waiting passively for whatever was going to happen. For that much, Bornhald was grateful. He had no real desire to make an example of any of these people, and no wish at all to waste time.

  Dismounting, he tossed his reins to one of the Children. "See that the men are fed, Byar. Put the prisoners in the inn with as much food and water as they can carry, then nail all the doors and shutters closed. Make them think I am leaving some men to stand guard, yes?"

  Byar touched his heart again and wheeled his horse to shout orders. The herding began anew, into the flat-roofed inn, while other Children ransacked houses searching for hammers and nails.

  Watching the sullen faces that filed past him, Bornhald thought it should be two or three days before any of them found enough courage to break out of the inn and find there were no guards. Two or three days was all he needed, but he did not intend to risk alerting the Seanchan to his presence now.

  Leaving enough men behind to make the Questioners believe his entire legion was still scattered across Almoth Plain, he had brought more than a thousand of the Children nearly the length of Toman Head without giving alarm, so far as he knew. Three skirmishes with Seanchan patrols had ended quickly. The Seanchan had grown used to facing already defeated rabble; the Children of the Light had been a deadly surprise. Yet the Seanchan knew how to fight like the Dark One's hordes, and he could not help remembering the one skirmish that had cost him better than fifty men. He was still not sure which of the two arrow-riddled women he had stared at afterwards had been the Aes Sedai.

  "Byar!" One of Bornhald's men handed him water in a pottery cup from one of the carts; it was icy in his throat.

  The gaunt-faced man swung down from his saddle. "Yes, my Lord Captain?"

  "When I engage the enemy, Byar," Bornhald said slowly, "you will not take part. You will watch from a distance, and you will carry word to my son of what happens."

  "But my Lord Captain —!"

  "That is my order, Child Byar!" he snapped. "You will obey, yes?"

  Byar's back stiffened, and he stared straight ahead. "As you command, my Lord Captain."

  Bornhald studied him for a moment. The man would do as he was told, but it would be better to give him another reason than letting Dain know how his father had died. It was not as if he did not have knowledge that was urgently needed in Amador. Since that skirmish with the Aes Sedai — Was it one of them, or both? Thirty Seanchan soldiers, good fighters, and two women cost me twice the casualties they did. — since then, he no longer expected to live to leave Toman Head. In the small chance the Seanchan did not see to it, very likely the Questioners would.

  "When you have found my son — he should be with Lord Captain Eamon Valda near Tar Valon — and told him, you will ride to Amador, and report to the Lord Captain Commander. To Pedron Niall personally, Child Byar. You will tell him what we have learned of the Seanchan; I will write it out for you. Be sure he understands that we can no longer count on the Tar Valon witches being content with manipulating events from the shadows. If they fight openly for the Seanchan, we will surely face them elsewhere." He hesitated. That last was the most important of all. They had to know under the Dome of Truth that for all their vaunted oaths, Aes Sedai would march into battle. It gave him a sinking feeling, a world where Aes Sedai wielded the Power in battle; he was not sure that he would regret leaving it. But there was one more message he wanted carried to Amador. "And, Byar … tell Pedron Niall how we were used by the Questioners."

  "As you command, my Lord Captain," Byar said, but Bornhald sighed at the expression on his face. The man did not understand. To Byar, orders were to be obeyed whether they came from the Lord Captain or the Questioners, whatever they were.

  "I will write that out for you to hand to Pedron Niall as well," he said. He was not sure how much good it would do in any case. A thought came to him, and he frowned at the inn, where some of his men were loudly hammering nails through shutters and doors. "Perrin," he muttered. "That was his name. Perrin, from the Two Rivers."

  "The Darkfriend, my Lord Captain?"

  "Perhaps, Byar." He was not entirely certain, himself, but surely a man who seemed to have wolves fight for him could be nothing else. Certainly, this Perrin had killed two of the Children. "I thought I saw him when we rode in, but I do not remember anyone among the prisoners who looked like a blacksmith."

  "Their blacksmith left a month ago, my Lord Captain. Some of them were complaining that they'd have been gone before we came if they had not had to mend their cartwheels themselves. Do you believe it was the man Perrin, my Lord Captain?"

  "Whoever it was, he is not accounted for, no
? And he may carry word of us to the Seanchan."

  "A Darkfriend would surely do so, my Lord Captain."

  Bornhald gulped the last of the water and tossed the cup aside. "There will be no meal for the men here, Byar. I will not let these Seanchan catch me napping, whether it is Perrin of the Two Rivers or someone else who warns them. Mount the legion, Child Byar!"

  Far above their heads, a huge, winged shape circled, unnoticed.

  In the clearing amid the hilltop thicket where they had made their camp, Rand worked the forms with his sword. He wanted to keep from thinking. He had had his chances to search with Hurin for Fain's trail; they all had, in twos and threes so they would not attract attention, and they had all found nothing so far. Now they waited for Mat and Perrin to come back with the sniffer; they should have been back hours ago.

  Loial was reading, of course, and there was no telling if his ear-twitching was over his book or the scouting party's lateness, but Uno and most of the Shienaran soldiers sat tensely, oiling their swords, or kept watch through the trees as if they expected Seanchan to appear any moment. Only Verin appeared unconcerned. The Aes Sedai sat on a log beside their small fire, murmuring to herself and writing in the dirt with a long stick; every so often she would shake her head and scrub it all out with her foot and start over again. All the horses were saddled and ready to go, the Shienarans' animals each tied to a lance driven into the ground.

  "Heron Wading in the Rushes," Ingtar said. He sat with his back against a tree, sliding a sharpening stone along his sword and watching Rand. "You should not be bothering with that one. It leaves you completely open."

  For an instant Rand balanced on the ball of one foot, sword held reversed in both hands over his head, then shifted smoothly to the other foot. "Lan says it's good for developing balance." It was not easy keeping his balance. In the void it often seemed he could maintain his equilibrium atop a rolling boulder, but he did not dare assume the void. He wanted to too much to trust himself.