Knife of Dreams

by Jordan, Robert

  “No Child would let the Questioners arrest you for what happened here, Damodred. Unless his captain ordered it. Some of them would order it, I think.” Angry muttering began, men denying they would stand for such a thing, but Trom quieted them, somewhat, with raised hands. “You know it’s true,” he said loudly. “Anything else would be mutiny.” That brought dead silence. There had never been a mutiny in the Children. It was possible that nothing before had come as close as their own earlier display. “I’ll write out your release from the Children, Galad. Someone may still order your arrest, but they’ll have to find you, and you’ll have a good start. It will take half the day for Asunawa to catch the other Lords Captain, and whoever falls in with him can’t be back before nightfall.”

  Galad shook his head angrily. Trom was right, but it was all wrong. Too much was wrong. “Will you write releases for these other men? You know Asunawa will find a way to accuse them, too. Will you write releases for the Children who don’t want to help the Seanchan take our lands in the name of a man dead more than a thousand years?” Several Taraboners exchanged glances and nodded, and so did other men, not all of them Amadician. “What about the men who defended the Fortress of the Light? Will any release get their chains struck off or make the Seanchan stop working them like animals?” More angry growls; those prisoners were a sore point to all of the Children.

  Arms folded across his chest, Trom studied him as though seeing him for the first time. “What would you do, then?”

  “Have the Children find someone, anyone, who is fighting the Seanchan and ally with them. Make sure that the Children of the Light ride in the Last Battle instead of helping the Seanchan hunt Aiel and steal our nations.”

  “Anyone?” a Cairhienin named Doirellin said in a high-pitched voice. No one ever made fun of Doirellin’s voice. Though short, he was nearly as wide as he was tall, there was barely an ounce of fat on him, and he could put walnuts between all of his fingers and crack them by clenching his fists. “That could mean Aes Sedai.”

  “If you intend to be at Tarmon Gai’don, then you will have to fight alongside Aes Sedai,” Galad said quietly. Young Bornhald grimaced in strong distaste, and he was not the only one. Byar half-straightened before bending back to his task. But no one voiced dissent. Doirellin nodded slowly, as if he had never before considered the matter.

  “I don’t hold with the witches any more than any other man,” Byar said finally, without raising his head from his work. Blood was seeping through the bandages even as he wrapped. “But the Precepts say, to fight the raven, you may make alliance with the serpent until the battle is done.” A ripple of nods ran through the men. The raven meant the Shadow, but everyone knew it was also the Seanchan Imperial sigil.

  “I’ll fight beside the witches,” a lanky Taraboner said, “or even these Asha’man we keep hearing about, if they fight the Seanchan. Or at the Last Battle. And I’ll fight any man who says I’m wrong.” He glared as though ready to begin then and there.

  “It seems matters will play out as you wish, my Lord Captain Commander,” Trom said, making a much deeper bow than he had for Valda. “To a degree, at least. Who can say what the next hour will bring, much less tomorrow?”

  Galad surprised himself by laughing. Since yesterday, he had been sure he would never laugh again. “That’s a poor joke, Trom.”

  “It is how the law is written. And Valda did make his proclamation. Besides, you had the courage to say what many have thought while holding their tongues, myself among them. Yours is a better plan for the Children than any I’ve heard since Pedron Niall died.”

  “It’s still a poor joke.” Whatever the law said, that part had been ignored since the end of the War of the Hundred Years.

  “We’ll see what the Children have to say on the matter,” Trom replied, grinning widely, “when you ask them to follow us to Tarmon Gai’don to fight alongside the witches.”

  Men began slapping their shoulders again, harder than they had for his victory. At first it was only a few, then more joined in, until every man including Trom was signaling approval. Every man but Kashgar, that was. Making a deep bow, the Saldaean held out the scabbarded heron-mark blade with both hands.

  “This is yours, now, my Lord Captain Commander.”

  Galad sighed. He hoped this nonsense would fade away before they reached the camp. Returning there was foolish enough without adding in a claim of that sort. Most likely they would be pulled down and thrown in chains if not beaten to death even without it. But he had to go. It was the right thing to do.

  Daylight began to grow on this cool spring morning, though the sun had yet to show even a sliver above the horizon, and Rodel Ituralde raised his gold-banded looking glass to study the village below the hill where he sat his roan gelding, deep in the heart of Tarabon. He did hate waiting for enough light to see. Careful of a glint off the lens, he held the end of the long tube on his thumb and shaded it with a cupped hand. At this hour, sentries were at their least watchful, relieved that the darkness where an enemy might sneak close was departing, yet since crossing from Almoth Plain he had heard tales of Aiel raids inside Tarabon. Were he a sentry with Aiel perhaps about, he would grow extra eyes. Peculiar that the country was not milling like a kicked antheap over those Aiel. Peculiar, and perhaps ominous. There were plenty of armed men to be found, Seanchan and Taraboners sworn to them, and hordes of Seanchan building farms and even villages, but reaching this far had been almost too easy. Today, the easiness ended.

  Behind him among the trees, horses stamped impatiently. The hundred Domani with him were quiet, except for an occasional creak of saddle leather as a man shifted his seat, but he could feel their tension. He wished he had twice as many. Five times. In the beginning, it had seemed a gesture of good faith that he himself would ride with a force mainly composed of Taraboners. He was no longer certain that had been the right decision. It was too late for recriminations, in any event.

  Halfway between Elmora and the Amadician border, Serana sat in a flat grassy valley among forested hills, with at least a mile to the trees in any direction save his, and a small, reed-fringed lake fed by two wide streams lay between him and the village. Not a place that could be surprised by daylight. It had been sizable before the Seanchan came, a stopping point for the merchant trains heading east, with over a dozen inns and nearly as many streets. Village folk were already getting about their day’s tasks, women balancing baskets on their heads as they glided down the village streets and others starting the fires under laundry kettles behind their houses, men striding along toward their workplaces, sometimes pausing to exchange a few words. A normal morning, with children already running and playing, rolling hoops and tossing beanbags among the throng. The clang of a smithy rose, dim with the distance. The smoke from breakfast fires was fading at the chimneys.

  As far as he could see, no one in Serana gave a second glance to the three pairs of sentries with bright stripes painted across their breastplates, walking their horses back and forth perhaps a quarter of a mile out. The lake, considerably wider than the village, shielded the fourth side effectively. It seemed the sentries were an accepted matter of every day, and so was the Seanchan camp that had swollen Serana to more than twice its former size.

  Ituralde shook his head slightly. He would not have placed the camp cheek-by-jowl with the village that way. The rooftops of Serana were all tile, red or green or blue, but the buildings themselves were wooden; a fire in the town could spread all too easily into the camp, where canvas store-tents the size of large houses far outnumbered the smaller tents where men slept, and great stacks of barrels and casks and crates covered twice as much ground as all the tents combined. Keeping lightfingered villagers out would be all but impossible. Every town had a few tickbirds who picked up anything they thought they could get away with, and even somewhat more honest men might be tempted by the proximity. The location did mean a shorter distance to haul water from the lake, and a shorter distance for soldiers to walk to reach the a
le and wine in the village when off-duty, but it suggested a commander who kept slack discipline.

  Slack discipline or not, there was activity in the camp, too. Soldiers’ hours made farmers’ hours seem restful. Men were checking the animals on the long horselines, bannermen checking soldiers standing in ranks, hundreds of laborers loading or unloading wagons, grooms harnessing teams. Every day, trains of wagons came down the road into this camp from east and west, and others departed. He admired the Seanchan efficiency at making sure their soldiers had what they needed when and where it was needed. Dragonsworn here in Tarabon, most sour-faced men who believed their dream snuffed out by the Seanchan, had been willing to tell what they knew if not to ride with him. That camp contained everything from boots to swords, arrows to horseshoes to water flasks, enough to outfit thousands of men from the ground up. They would feel its loss.

  He lowered the looking glass to brush a buzzing green fly away from his face. Two replaced it almost at once. Tarabon teemed with flies. Did they always come so early here? They would just have begun hatching at home by the time he reached Arad Doman again. If he did. No; no ill thoughts. When he did. Tamsin would be displeased, otherwise, and it was seldom wise to displease her too far.

  Most of the men down there were hired workmen, not soldiers, and only a hundred or so of those Seanchan. Still, a company of three hundred Taraboners in stripe-painted armor had ridden in at noon the day before, more than doubling their numbers and requiring him to change his plans. Another party of Taraboners, as large, had entered the camp at sunset, just in time to eat and bed down wherever they could lay their blankets. Candles and lamp oil were luxuries for soldiers. There was one of those leashed women, a damane, in the camp, too. He wished he could have waited until she left—they must have been taking her elsewhere; what use for a damane at a supply camp?—but today was the appointed day, and he could not afford to give the Taraboners reason to claim he was holding back. Some would snatch at any reason to go their own way. He knew they would not follow him much longer, yet he needed to hold as many as he could for a few days more.

  Shifting his gaze to the west, he did not bother with the looking glass.

  “Now,” he whispered, and as though at his command, two hundred men with mail veils across their faces galloped out of the trees. And immediately halted, cavorting and jockeying for place, brandishing steel-tipped lances while their leader raced up and down before them gesturing wildly in an obvious effort to establish some semblance of order.

  At this distance, Ituralde could not have made out faces even with the glass, but he could imagine the fury on Tornay Lanasiet’s features at playing out this charade. The stocky Dragonsworn burned to close with Seanchan. Any Seanchan. It had been difficult to dissuade him from striking the day they crossed the border. Yesterday he had been visibly overjoyed finally to scrape the hated stripes indicating loyalty to the Seanchan from his breastplate. No matter; so far he was obeying his orders to the letter.

  As the sentries nearest Lanasiet turned their mounts to speed toward the village and the Seanchan camp, Ituralde swung his attention there and raised his looking glass once more. The sentries would find their warning superfluous. Motion had ceased. Some men were pointing toward the horsemen on the other side of the village, while the rest seemed to be staring, soldiers and workmen alike. The last thing they expected was raiders. Aiel raids or no Aiel raids, the Seanchan considered Tarabon theirs, and safely so. A quick glance at the village showed people standing in the streets staring toward the strange riders. They had not expected raiders, either. He thought the Seanchan were right, an opinion he would not share with any Taraboner in the foreseeable future.

  With well-trained men, shock could last only so long, however. In the camp, soldiers began racing toward their horses, many still unsaddled, though grooms had started working as fast as they could. Eighty-odd Seanchan footmen, archers, formed into ranks and set off running through Serana. At that evidence that there truly was a threat, people began snatching up the smaller children and herding the older toward the hoped-for safety of the houses. In moments, the streets were empty save for the hurrying archers in their lacquered armor and peculiar helmets.

  Ituralde turned the glass toward Lanasiet and found the man galloping his line of horsemen forward. “Wait for it,” he growled. “Wait for it.”

  Again it seemed the Taraboner heard his command, finally raising a hand to halt his men. At least they were still a half-mile or more from the village. The hotheaded fool was supposed to be near a mile away, on the edge of the trees and still in seeming disorder and easily swept away, but half would have to suffice. He suppressed the urge to finger the ruby in his left ear. The battle had begun, now, and in battle you had to make those following you believe that you were utterly cool, completely unaffected. Not wanting to knock down a putative ally. Emotion seemed to leak from a commander into his men, and angry men behaved stupidly, getting themselves killed and losing battles.

  Touching the half-moon-shaped beauty patch on his cheek—a man should look his best on a day like today—he took slow measured breaths until certain that he was as cool inside as his outward display, then returned his attention to the camp. Most of the Taraboners there were mounted, now, but they waited for twenty or so Seanchan led by a tall fellow with a single thin plume on his curious helmet to gallop into the village before falling in behind, yesterday’s latecomers trailing at the rear.

  Ituralde studied the figure leading the column, viewing him through the gaps between houses. A single plume would mark a lieutenant or maybe an under-lieutenant. Which might mean a beardless boy on his first command or a grizzled veteran who could take your head if you made one mistake. Strangely, the damane, marked by the shining silvery leash that connected her to a woman on another horse, galloped her animal as hard as anyone. Everything he had heard said damane were prisoners, yet she appeared as eager as the other woman, the sul’dam. Perhaps—

  Abruptly his breath caught in his throat and all thought of damane fled. There were people still in the street, seven or eight men and women, walking in a cluster and right ahead of the racing column that they seemed not to hear thundering up behind them. There was no time for the Seanchan to stop if they wanted to, and good reason not to try with an enemy ahead, but it looked as though the tall fellow’s hand never twitched on his reins as he and the rest rode the people down. A veteran, then. Murmuring a prayer for the dead, Ituralde lowered the glass. What came next was best seen without it.

  Two hundred paces beyond the village, the officer started forming his command where the archers had already stopped and were waiting with nocked arrows. Waving directions to the Taraboners behind, he turned to peer at Lanasiet through a looking glass. Sunlight glinted off the tube’s banding. The sun was rising, now. The Taraboners began dividing smoothly, lance heads glittering and all slanted at the same angle, disciplined men falling into ordered ranks to either side of the archers.

  The officer leaned over to converse with the sul’dam. If he turned her and the damane loose now, this could still turn into a disaster. Of course, it could if he did not, too. The last of the Taraboners, those who had arrived late, began stretching out in a line fifty paces behind the others, driving their lances point-down into the ground and pulling their horsebows from the cases fastened behind their saddles. Lanasiet, curse the man, was galloping his men forward.

  Turning his head for a moment, Ituralde spoke loudly enough for the men behind him to hear. “Be ready.” Saddle leather creaked as men gathered their reins. Then he murmured another prayer for the dead and whispered, “Now.”

  As one man the three hundred Taraboners in the long line, his Taraboners, raised their bows and loosed. He did not need the looking glass to see the sul’dam and damane and the officer suddenly sprout arrows. They were all but swept from their saddles by near a dozen striking each of them at once. Ordering that had given him a pang, but the women were the most dangerous people on that field. The rest of that voll
ey cut down most of the archers and cleared saddles, and even as men struck the ground, a second volley lanced out, knocking down the last archers and emptying more saddles.

  Caught by surprise, the Seanchan-loyal Taraboners tried to fight. Among those still mounted, some wheeled about and lowered lances to charge their attackers. Others, perhaps seized by the irrationality that could take men in battle, dropped their lances and tried to uncase their own horsebows. But a third volley lashed them, pile-headed arrows driving through breastplates at that range, and suddenly the survivors seemed to realize that they were survivors. Most of their fellows lay still on the ground or struggled to stand though pierced by two or three shafts. Those still mounted were now outnumbered by their opponents. A few men reined their horses around, and in a flash the lot of them were running south pursued by one final rain of bowshot that toppled more.

  “Hold,” Ituralde murmured. “Hold where you are.”

  A handful of the mounted archers fired again, but the rest wisely refrained. They could kill a few more before the enemy was beyond range, but this group was beaten, and before long they would be counting every arrow. Best of all, none of them went racing in pursuit.

  The same could not be said of Lanasiet. Cloaks streaming, he and his two hundred raced after the fleeing men. Ituralde imagined he could hear them yelping, hunters on the trail of running prey.

  “I think we’ve seen the last of Lanasiet, my Lord,” Jaalam said, reining his gray up beside Ituralde, who shrugged slightly.

  “Perhaps, my young friend. He may come to his senses. In any case, I never thought the Taraboners would return to Arad Doman with us. Did you?”

  “No, my Lord,” the taller man replied, “but I thought his honor would hold through the first fight.”

  Ituralde lifted his glass to look at Lanasiet, still galloping hard. The man was gone, and unlikely to come to senses he did not possess. A third of his force gone as surely as if that damane had killed them. He had counted on a few more days. He would need to change plans again, perhaps change his next target.