Knife of Dreams (The Wheel of Time 11)

Perrin scrambled down the brushy reverse slope, past where the Mayener and Ghealdanin lancers were waiting beside their horses in the thick mist, streamered lances propped on their shoulders or steel heads driven into the ground. The Winged Guards' red-painted helmets and breastplates might have been safe enough on the ridgetop, but not the Ghealdanin's burnished armor, and since Gallenne and Arganda both bristled if one was favored over the other, both waited here.

The fog extended quite some distance—Neald claimed that was intentional, but the man had smelled surprised, and pleased, when he realized what he had done—so Perrin was still walking through grayness when he reached the bottom of the ridge, where all of the high-wheeled carts stood in a line with horses hitched. The dim figures of the Cairhienin cart drivers moved about them, checking harness, tightening the ropes that held the canvas covers on.

Masema was waiting, and Perrin wanted nothing so much as to chew off the man's arm, but he spotted the stout shape of Basel Gill beside one of the carts and headed that way. Lini was with him, wrapped in a dark cloak, and Breane with her arm around the waist of Lamgwin, Perrin's hulking manservant. Master Gill snatched off his brimmed hat to reveal thin graying hair combed back over a bald spot that it failed to cover. Lini sniffed and pointedly avoided looking at Perrin while pretending to adjust her cowl. She smelled of anger and fear. Master Gill just smelled of fear.

"It's time for you to start north, Master Gill," Perrin said. "When you reach the mountains, follow them until you strike the Jehannah Road. With luck, we'll catch you up before you reach the mountains, but if not, send Alliandre's servants off to Jehannah, then you head east through the pass, then north again. We'll be as close behind you as we can." If his plan did not go too far awry. Light, he was a blacksmith, not a soldier. But even Tylee had finally agreed it was a good plan.

"I will not leave this spot until I know that Maighdin is safe," Lini told the fog, her thin voice a reed of iron. "And the Lady Faile, of course."

Master Gill rubbed a hand back over his head. "My Lord, Lamgwin and I were thinking maybe we could help out. The Lady Faile means a great deal to us, and Maighdin . . . Maighdin is one of our own. I know one end of a sword from the other, and so does Lamgwin." He was wearing one belted around his bulk, yet if he had handled a sword these past twenty years, Perrin would eat the whole great length of that belt. Breane's grip on Lamgwin tightened, but the big man patted her shoulder and rested his other hand on the hilt of a shortsword. The fog obscured his scarred face and sunken knuckles. He was a tavern brawler, though a good man even so, but never a swordsman.

"You're my shambayan, Master Gill," Perrin said firmly. "It's your duty to get the cart drivers and grooms and servants to safety. Yours and Lamgwin's. Now go on with you and see to it."

The stout man nodded reluctantly. Breane breathed a small sigh of relief when Lamgwin knuckled his forehead in acquiescence. Perrin doubted that the man could have heard the sigh, though Lamgwin put his arm around her and murmured comforting words.

Lini was not so compliant. Back stiff as a rod, she addressed the fog again. "I will not leave this spot until I know—"

Perrin slapped his hands together with a loud crack, startling her into looking at him in surprise. "All you can do here is catch the ague from standing in the damp. That and die, if the Shaido manage to break through. I'll bring Faile out. I'll bring Maighdin and the others out." He would, or die himself in the attempt. There was no point saying that, though, and reason not to. They had to believe in their bones that he would be following with Faile and the rest. "And you are going north, Lini. Faile will be upset with me if I let anything happen to you. Mas

ter Gill, you make sure she rides with you if you have to tie her up and put her in the back of a cart."

Master Gill jerked, crumpling his hat between his hands. He smelled of alarm, suddenly, and Lini of pure indignation. Amusement filled Lamgwin's scent, and he rubbed at his nose as though concealing a smile, but strangely, Breane was indignant, too. Well, he had never claimed to understand women. If he could not understand the woman he was married to, which he could not half the time, then it was unlikely he ever would understand the rest of them.

In the end, Lini actually climbed up beside the driver of a cart without having to be forced, though she slapped away Master Gill's hand when he tried to assist her, and the line of carts began to trundle off northward though the fog. Behind one of the carts, laden with the Wise Ones' tents and possessions, marched a cluster of white-clad gai'shain, meek even now, men and women with their cowls up and their eyes lowered. They were Shaido, taken at Cairhien, and in a few months they would put off white and return to their clan. Perrin had had them watched, discreetly, despite the Wise Ones' assurances that they would adhere to ji'e'toh in this regard whatever others they abandoned, yet it appeared the Wise Ones were right. They still numbered seventeen. None had tried to run off and warn the Shaido beyond the ridge. The carts' axles had been greased liberally, but they still creaked and squealed to his ears. With luck, he and Faile would catch up to them shy of the mountains.

As the strings of spare horses began to pass him, on long leads held by mounted grooms, a Maiden appeared in the mist coming down the line of carts. Slowly she resolved into Sulin, shoufa around her neck to bare her short white hair and black veil hanging down onto her chest. A fresh slash across her left cheek would add another scar to her face unless she accepted Healing from one of the sisters. She might not. Maidens seemed to have odd attitudes about Wise Ones' apprentices, or maybe it was just that these apprentices were Aes Sedai. They even saw Annoura as an apprentice, though she was not.

"The Shaido sentries to the north are dead, Perrin Aybara," she said. "And the men who were going out to replace them. They danced well, for Shaido."

"You took casualties?" he asked quietly.

"Elienda and Briain woke from the dream." She might have been speaking of the weather rather than two deaths among women she knew. "We all must wake eventually. We had to carry Aviellin the last two miles. She will need Healing." So. She would accept it.

"I'll send one of the Aes Sedai with you," he said, looking around in the fog. Aside from the line of horses passing him, he could see nothing. "As soon as I can find one."

They found him almost as he spoke, Annoura and Masuri striding out of the fog leading their horses with Berelain and Masema, his shaven head glistening damply.

Even in the mist, there was no mistaking the rumpled nature of the man's brown coat, or the crude darn on the shoulder. None of the gold his followers looted stuck to his hands. It all went to the poor. That was the only good that could be said of Masema. But then, a fair number of the poor that gold went to feed had been made poor by having their possessions stolen and their shops or farms burned by Masema's people.

For some reason, Berelain was wearing the coronet of the First of Mayene this morning, the golden hawk in flight above her brow, though her riding dress and cloak were plain dark gray. Beneath her light, flowery perfume, her scent was patience and anxiety, as odd a combination as Perrin had ever smelled.

The six Wise Ones were with them, too, dark shawls draped over their arms, folded kerchiefs around their temples holding back their long hair. With all their necklaces and bracelets of gold and ivory, they made Berelain appear simply dressed for once.

Aram was one of their number as well, the wolfhead pommel of his sword rising above one red-striped shoulder, and the fog could not hide the absence of his habitual glower. The man gravitated toward Masema and seemed almost to bask in some light that Masema gave off. Perrin wondered whether he should have sent Aram with the carts. But if he had, he was sure Aram would have leaped off and sneaked back as soon as he was out of Perrin's sight.

He explained Aviellin's need to the two Aes Sedai, but to his surprise, when Masuri said she would come, fair-haired Edarra raised a hand that stopped the slim Brown in her tracks. Annoura shifted uncomfortably. She was no apprentice, and uneasy over Seonid and Masuri's relationship with the Wise Ones. They tried to include her in it, and sometimes succeeded.

"Janina will see to it," Edarra said. "She has more skill than you, Masuri Sokawa."

Masuri's mouth tightened, but she kept silent. The Wise Ones were quite capable of switching an apprentice for speaking up at the wrong time, even if she did happen to be an Aes Sedai. Sulin led Janina, a flaxen-haired woman who never seemed to be ruffled by anything, off into the fog, Janina striding as quickly as Sulin despite her bulky skirts. So the Wise Ones had learned Healing, had they? That might be useful later in the day; the Light send it was not needed often.

Watching the pair disappear into the murk, Masema grunted. The thick mist hid the ever-burning intensity of his deep-set eyes and obscured the triangular white scar on his cheek, but his scent was full in Perrin's nose, hard and sharp as a freshly stropped razor yet twitching in a frenzy. That smell of madness sometimes made him think his nose must bleed from breathing it.

"Bad enough you use these blasphemous women who do what only the Lord Dragon, blessed be his name, may do," Masema said, his voice full of the heat that the fog concealed in his eyes.

The colors spinning in Perrin's head turned into a brief image of Rand and Min and a tall man in a black coat, an Asha'man, and he felt a shock right down to his boots. Rand's left hand was gone! No matter. Whatever had happened, had happened. And today his business lay elsewhere.

". . . but if they know Healing," Masema continued, "it will be that much harder to kill the savages. A pity you won't let the Seanchan leash all of them." His sidelong glance at Annoura and Masuri said he included them, despite the fact both had visited him in secret more than once.