The Wheel of Time

by Robert Jordan

  “Better yet.” The mayor smiled deeply. “You’ll use these. In fact . . . I’ll make the throw for you.” Barlden’s face in the dim light took on a decidedly sinister cast.

  Mat felt a stab of panic.

  Talmanes took his arm. “All right, Mat,” he said. “I think we should go.”

  Mat held up a hand. Would his luck work if someone else threw? Sometimes it worked to prevent him from being wounded in combat. He was sure of that. Wasn’t he?

  “Go ahead,” he said to Barlden.

  The man looked shocked.

  “You can make the throw,” Mat said. “But it counts the same as if I’d tossed. A winning hand, and I walk away with everything. A losing hand, and I’ll be on my way with my hat and my horse, and you can keep the bloody chest. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  Mat stuck out his hand for a shake, but the mayor turned away, holding the dice in his hand. “No,” he said. “You’ll get no chance to swap these dice, traveler. Let’s just go out front and wait. And you keep your distance.”

  They did as he said, leaving the muggy, ale-soaked stench of the tavern for the clear street outside. Mat’s soldiers brought the chest. Barlden demanded that the chest remain open so that it couldn’t be switched. One of his thugs poked around inside it, biting the coins, making certain that it really was full and that the coins were authentic. Mat waited, leaning against the door as a wagon rolled up, and men from inside the tavern began rolling casks of ale onto its bed.

  The sun was barely a haze of light on the horizon, behind those blasted clouds. As Mat waited, he saw the mayor grow more and more anxious. Blood and bloody ashes, the man was a stickler for his rules! Well, Mat would show him, and all of them. He’d show them. . . .

  Show them what? That he couldn’t be beaten? What did that prove? As Mat waited, the cart piled higher and higher with foodstuffs, and he began to feel a strange sense of guilt.

  I’m not doing anything wrong, he thought. I’ve got to feed my men, don’t I? These men are betting fair, and I’m betting fair. No loaded dice. No cheating.

  Except his luck. Well, his luck was his own—just as every man’s luck was his own. Some men were born with a talent for music, and they became bards and gleemen. Who begrudged them earning coin with what the Creator gave them? Mat had luck, and so he used it. There was nothing wrong with that.

  Still, as the men came back into the inn, he started to see what it was that Talmanes had noticed. There was an edge of desperation to these men. Had they been too eager to gamble? Had they been foolhardy with their betting? What was that look in their eyes, a look that Mat had mistaken for weariness? Had they been drinking to celebrate the end of the day, or had they been drinking to banish that haunted cast in their eyes?

  “Maybe you were right,” Mat said to Talmanes, who was watching the sun with almost as much anxiety as the mayor. Its last light was dusting the tops of the peaked homes, coloring the tan tile a deeper orange. The sunset was a blaze behind the clouds.

  “We can go, then?” Talmanes asked.

  “No,” Mat said. “We’re staying.”

  And the dice stopped rattling in his head. It was so sudden, the silence so unexpected, that he froze. It was enough to make him think he’d made the wrong decision.

  “Burn me, we’re staying,” he repeated. “I’ve never backed down from a bet before, and I don’t plan to now.”

  A group of riders returned, bearing sacks of grain on their horses. It was amazing what a little coin could do for motivation. As more riders arrived, a young boy came trotting up the road. “Mayor,” he said, tugging on Barlden’s purple vest. That vest bore a crisscross of patched rips across the front. “Mother says that the outlander women aren’t done bathing. She’s trying to hurry them, but. . . .”

  The mayor tensed. He glanced at Mat angrily.

  Mat snorted. “Don’t think I can do anything to hurry that lot,” he said. “If I were to go rush them, they’d likely dig in like mules and take twice as long. Let someone else bloody have a turn dealing with them.”

  Talmanes kept glancing at the lengthening shadows along the road. “Burn me,” he muttered. “If those ghosts start appearing again, Mat. . . .”

  “This is something else,” Mat said as the newcomers threw their grain onto the wagon. “It feels different.”

  The wagon was already loaded high with foodstuffs; a good haul to have purchased from a village this size. It was just what the Band needed, enough to nudge them along, keep them fed until they reached the next town. That food wasn’t worth the gold in the coffer, of course, but it was about equal to what he’d lost dicing inside, particularly with the wagon and horses thrown in. They were good draft animals, sturdy, well cared for from the look of coat and hoof.

  Mat opened his mouth to say it was enough, then hesitated as he noticed that the mayor was talking quietly with a group of men. There were six of them, their vests drab and ragged, their black hair unkempt. One was gesturing toward Mat and holding what looked to be a sheet of paper in his hand. Barlden shook his head, but the man with the paper gestured more insistently.

  “Here now,” Mat said softly. “What’s this?”

  “Mat, the sun . . .” Talmanes said.

  The mayor pointed sharply, and the ragged men sidled away. The men who had brought the food were crowding around the dimming street, keeping to the center of it. Most were looking toward the horizon.

  “Mayor,” Mat called. “That’s good enough. Make the throw!”

  Barlden hesitated, glancing at him, then looked down at the dice in his hand almost as if he’d forgotten them. The men around him nodded anxiously, and so he raised his hand in a fist, rattling the dice. The mayor looked across the street to meet Mat’s eyes, then threw the dice onto the ground between them. They seemed too loud, a tiny rattling thunderstorm, like bones cracking against one another.

  Mat held his breath. It had been a long while since he’d had reason to worry about a toss of the dice. He leaned down, watching the white cubes tumble against the dirt. How would his luck react to someone else throwing?

  The dice came to a stop. A pair of fours. An outright winning throw. Mat released a long, relieved breath, though he felt a trickle of sweat down his temple.

  “Mat . . .” Talmanes said softly, making him look up. The men standing on the road didn’t look so pleased. Several of them cheered in excitement until their friends explained that a winning throw from the mayor meant that Mat would take the prize. The crowd grew tense. Mat met Barlden’s eyes.

  “Go,” the burly man said, gesturing in disgust toward Mat and turning away. “Take your spoils and leave this place. Never return.”

  “Well,” Mat said, relaxing. “Thank you kindly for the game, then. We—”

  “GO!” the mayor bellowed. He looked at the last slivers of sunlight on the horizon, then cursed and began waving for the men to enter The Tipsy Gelding. Some lingered, glancing at Mat with shock or hostility, but the mayor’s urgings soon bullied them into the low-roofed inn. He pulled the door shut and left Mat, Talmanes and the two soldiers standing alone on the street.

  It suddenly seemed eerily quiet. There wasn’t a villager on the street. Shouldn’t there be some noise from inside the tavern, at least? Some clinking of mugs, some grumbling about the lost wager?

  “Well,” Mat said, voice echoing against silent housefronts, “I guess that’s that.” He walked over to Pips, calming the horse, who had begun to shuffle nervously. “Now, see, I told you, Talmanes. Nothing to be worried about at all.”

  And that’s when the screaming began.

  CHAPTER 28

  Night in Hinderstap

  “Burn you, Mat!” Talmanes said, yanking his sword free from the gut of a twitching villager. Talmanes almost never swore. “Burn you twice over and once again!”

  “Me?” Mat snapped, spinning, his ashandarei flashing as he neatly hamstrung two men in bright green vests. They fell to the packed earthen street, eyes wide
with rage as they sputtered and growled. “Me? I’m not the one trying to kill you, Talmanes. Blame them!”

  Talmanes managed to pull himself into his saddle. “They told us to leave!”

  “Yes,” Mat said, grabbing Pips’ reins and pulling the horse away from The Tipsy Gelding. “And now they’re trying to kill us. I can’t rightly be blamed for their unsociable behavior!” Howls, screams, and yells rose from all across the village. Some were angry, some were terrified, others were agonized.

  More and more men piled out of the tavern, each one grunting and yelling, each one trying his best to kill every person around him. Some of them came for Mat, Talmanes or Mat’s Redarms. But many just attacked their companions, hands ripping at skin, nails tearing gouges in faces. They fought with a primal lack of skill, and only a few thought to pick up rocks, mugs or lengths of wood as weapons.

  This was far more than a simple bar fight. These men were trying to kill each other. Already there were a half-dozen corpses or near-corpses on the street, and from what Mat could see of the inside of the inn, the fighting was equally brutal inside.

  Mat tried to edge closer to the wagon with its load of food, Pips clopping alongside him. His chest of gold still lay on the street. The fighting men ignored both food and coin, concentrating on one another.

  Talmanes, as well as Harnan and Delarn—his two soldiers—backed away with him, nervously pulling their own mounts. A group of raving men soon descended on the two villagers Mat had hamstrung, beating their heads against the ground over and over until they stopped moving. Then the pack looked up at Mat and his men, bloodlust clouding their eyes. It was an incongruous expression on the clean faces of men in neat vests and combed hair.

  “Blood and bloody ashes,” Mat said, swinging into his saddle. “Mount up!”

  Harnan and Delarn needed no further instruction. They cursed, sheathing swords and swinging into saddles. The pack of villagers surged forward, but Mat and Talmanes cut off the attack. Mat tried to go for wounding blows only, but the villagers were deceptively strong and fast, and he found himself fighting just to keep them from pulling him out of the saddle. He cursed, reluctantly beginning to wield killing blows, taking two of the men with sweeps to the neck. Pips kicked out and knocked another to the ground with a hoof to the head. In a few moments, Harnan and Delarn joined the fight.

  The villagers didn’t back away. They kept fighting in a frenzy until the entire pack of eight had dropped. Mat’s soldiers fought with wide-eyed terror, and Mat didn’t blame them. It was flaming eerie, seeing common villagers react like this! There didn’t seem to be an ounce of humanity left in them. They spoke only in grunts, hisses, and screams, their faces painted with anger and bloodlust. Now the other villagers—those not directly attacking Mat’s men—started forming into packs, slaughtering the groups smaller than themselves by bludgeoning them, clawing them, biting them. It was unnerving.

  As Mat watched, a body broke through one of the tavern window frames. The corpse rolled to the ground, neck broken. On the other side, Barlden stood with wild, nearly inhuman eyes. He screamed into the night, then saw Mat and—for just a moment—seemed to show a hint of recognition. Then it was gone, and the mayor bellowed again, running forward to leap through the broken window and attack a pair of men whose backs were turned.

  “Move!” Mat said, rearing Pips as another pack of villagers saw him.

  “The gold!” Talmanes said.

  “Burn the gold!” Mat said. “We can win more, and that food isn’t worth our lives. Go!”

  Talmanes and the soldiers turned their mounts and galloped down the street, Mat kicking Pips to join them, leaving the gold and wagon behind. It wasn’t worth their lives—if possible, he’d bring the army in on the morrow to recover it. But they had to survive first.

  They galloped for a short time, and Mat slowed them at the next corner, holding up a hand. He glanced over his shoulder. The villagers were still coming, but the gallop had left them behind for now.

  “I’m still blaming you,” Talmanes said.

  “I thought you liked fighting,” Mat said.

  “I like some fights,” Talmanes said. “On the battlefield or a nice bar fight. This . . . this is insane.” The pack of villagers behind had fallen to all fours and were moving in a strange lope. Talmanes shivered visibly.

  There was barely enough light to see by. Now that the sun had set, those mountains and the gray clouds blocked what light remained. Lanterns lined many of the streets, but it didn’t look as if anyone would be lighting them.

  “Mat, they’re gaining,” Talmanes said, sword held at the ready.

  “This isn’t just about our wager,” Mat said, listening to the screams and shouts. They came from all around the village. Down a side road, a couple of struggling bodies burst through the upper window of a house. They were women, clawing at each other as they fell, crashing to the ground with a sickening thud. They stopped moving.

  “Come on,” Mat said, turning Pips. “We’ve got to find Thom and the women.” They galloped down a side street that would intersect with the main thoroughfare, passing packs of men and women fighting in the gutters. A fat man with bloodied cheeks stumbled into the road, and Mat reluctantly rode him down. There were too many people fighting at the sides for him to risk leading his men around the poor fool. Mat even saw children fighting, biting at the legs of those larger than they, throttling those their own age.

  “The entire bloody town has gone insane,” Mat muttered grimly as the four of them barreled onto the main street and turned toward the fine inn. They’d pick up the Aes Sedai, then swing out eastward for Thom, as his inn was the most distant.

  Unfortunately, the main street was worse than the one Mat had left. It was almost completely dark now. Indeed, it seemed to him that the darkness had come too quickly here. Unnaturally swift. The road’s length squirmed with shadows, figures battling, screeching, struggling in the deepening gloom. In that darkness, the fights looked at times to be solid, single creatures—horrific monstrosities with a dozen waving limbs and a hundred mouths to scream from the blackness.

  Mat spurred Pips forward. There was nothing to do but charge down the middle of it.

  “Light,” Talmanes yelled as they galloped toward the inn. “Light!”

  Mat gritted his teeth and leaned forward on Pips, spear held close to his side as he rode through the nightmare. Roars shook the darkness and bodies rolled across the street. Mat shivered at the horror of it, cursing under his breath. The night itself seemed to be trying to smother them, to strangle them, and to spawn beasts of blackness and murder.

  Pips and the other horses were well trained, and the four of them charged straight down the street. Mat narrowly avoided being pulled from the saddle as dark forms leapt for his legs, trying to yank him free. They screamed and hissed, like legions of the drowned trying to pull him down into a deep, unearthly sea.

  Beside Mat, Delarn’s horse suddenly pulled to a halt, then, as a mass of black figures leaped in front of it, the gelding reared in panic, throwing Delarn from his saddle.

  Mat reined in Pips, turning at the man’s scream, which was somehow more distinct and more human than the howls around them.

  “Mat!” Talmanes yelled, charging past. “Keep going! We can’t stop!”

  No, Mat thought, shoving down his panic. No, I’m not leaving someone to this. He took a deep breath and ignored Talmanes, kicking Pips back toward the black clot of bodies where Delarn had fallen. Sweat sprayed from his forehead, chilled by the wind of the gallop. Moans, screams, and hisses all around him seemed to descend on him.

  Mat roared and threw himself from Pips’ back—he couldn’t bring his mount in without risking trampling the man he wanted to save. He hated fighting in darkness, he bloody hated it. He attacked those dark figures, whose faces he couldn’t see save for an occasional flash of teeth or insane eyes reflecting the dying light. It reminded him, briefly, of another night, killing Shadowspawn in the dark. Save these figures
he fought didn’t have the grace of a Myrddraal. They didn’t even have the coordination of Trollocs.

  For a moment, it seemed Mat fought the shadows themselves—shadows made by sputtering firelight, random and uncoordinated, yet all the more deadly for his inability to anticipate them. He narrowly escaped getting his skull crushed by attacks that made no sense. During the day, those attacks would have been laughable, but from this darkened pack of men—and women—who didn’t care what they hit or who they hurt, the attacks were overwhelming. Mat found himself fighting just to stay alive, spinning his ashandarei in wide arcs, using it to trip as often as he used it to kill. If something moved in the darkness, he struck. How in the light was he going to find Delarn in this!

  A shadow moved just a short distance away, and Mat instantly recognized a sword-form. Rat Gnawing the Grain? A villager wouldn’t know that. Good man!

  Mat spun toward that shadow, slashing two other shadows across the chest, earning grunts and howls of pain. Delarn’s figure fell beneath a pile of several others, and Mat bellowed in denial, leaping across a fallen body and landing with his spear descending in a broad sweep. Shadows bled where he struck, the blood just another patch of darkness, and Mat used the butt of his weapon to beat back another. He reached down, pulling one of the shadows to its feet, and heard a muttered curse. It was Delarn.

  “Come on,” Mat said, pulling the man toward Pips, who stood firm, snorting, in the darkness. The attacking men seemed to ignore animals, which was fortunate. Mat shoved the stumbling Delarn toward the horse, then turned and engaged the pack he’d known would chase after him. Again, Mat danced with the darkness, striking again and again, trying to disengage so that he could climb into the saddle. He risked a glance over his shoulder, and found that Delarn had managed to get onto Pips’ back—but the soldier sat slumped, a huddled mound. How badly was he wounded? He barely seemed able to keep himself upright. Blood and bloody ashes!