The Gathering Storm

"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 Thorn, 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.

eld 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' reigns 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.