Towers of Midnight (The Wheel of Time 13)

He split another log. I always was good at concentrating my attention. That was part of what had impressed Master Luhhan. Give Perrin a project, and he'd keep working on it until he was done.

He split the halves of that log.

Maybe the changes in him were a result of encountering the outside world. He'd blamed the wolves for many things, and he had placed unnatural demands on Hopper. Wolves weren't stupid or simple, but they did not care about things that humans did. It must have been very hard for Hopper to teach in a way that Perrin would understand.

What did the wolf owe him? Hopper had died during that fateful night, so long ago. The night when Perrin had first killed a man, the night Perrin had first lost control of himself in a battle. Hopper didn't owe Perrin anything, but he had saved Perrin on several occasions in fact, Perrin realized that Hopper's intervention had helped to keep him from losing himself as a wolf.

He swung at a log, a glancing blow that knocked it to the side. He repositioned and continued, Gaul's quiet sharpening soothing him. He split it.

Petrin grew caught up in what he was doing, maybe too much. That was true.

But at the same time, if a man wanted to get anything done, he had to work on one project until it was complete. Perrin had known men who never seemed to finish anything, and their farms were a mess. He couldn't live like that.

There had to be a balance. Perrin had claimed he had been pulled into a world filled with problems much larger than he was. He had claimed he was a simple man.

What if he was wrong? What if he was a complex man who had once happened to live a simple life? After all, if he was so simple, why had he fallen in love with such a complicated woman?

The split logs were piling up. Perrin bent down, gathering up quarters, their grain rough against his fingers. Callused fingers; he would never be a lord like those milk-fed creatures from Cairhien. But there were other kinds of lords, men like Faile's own father. Or men like Lan, who seemed more weapon than man.

Perrin stacked the wood. He enjoyed leading the wolves in his dream, but wolves didn't expect you to protect them, or to provide for them, or to make laws for them. They didn't cry to you when their loved ones died beneath your command.

It wasn't the leadership that worried him. It was all the things that came with it.

He could smell Elyas approaching. With his loamy, natural earthen scent he smelled like a wolf. Almost.

"You're up late," Elyas said, stepping up. Perrin heard Gaul rustling, slipping his spear back into its place on his bowcase, then withdrawing with the silence of a sparrow streaking off into the sky. He would stay close, but would not listen in.

Perrin looked up at the dark sky, resting the axe on his shoulder. "Sometimes I feel more awake at night than during the day."

Elyas smiled. Perrin didn't see it, but he could smell the amusement.

"Did you ever try to avoid it, Elyas?" Perrin asked. "Ignore their voices, pretend that nothing about you had changed?"

"I did," Elyas said. He had a soft low voice, one that somehow suggested the earth in motion. Distant rumbles. "I wanted to, but then the Aes Sedai wanted to gentle me. I had to flee."

"Do you miss your old life?"

Elyas shrugged Perrin could hear the motion, the clothing scraping against itself. "No Warder wants to abandon his duty. Sometimes, other things are more important. Or . . . well, maybe they are just more demanding. I don't regret my choices."

"I can't leave, Elyas. I won't!'

"I left my life for the wolves. That doesn't mean you have to."

"Noam had to," Perrin said.

"Did he have to?" Elyas said.

"It consumed him. He stopped being human."

He caught a scent of worry. Elyas had no answers.

"Do you ever visit wolves in your dreams, Elyas?" Perrin asked. "A place where dead wolves run and live again?"

Elyas turned, eyeing him. "That place is dangerous, Perrin. It's another world, although tied to this one somehow. Legends say the Aes Sedai of old could go there."

"And other people, too," Perrin said, thinking of Slayer.

"Be careful in the dream. I stay away from it." His scent was wary.