The Gathering Storm

Harnan saluted in the darkness, then dismounted and dashed over to the stables. Mat waited long enough to determine that nobody was going to jump out at him from the darkness, then spoke to Delarn, still held in front of him. "You still conscious?"

Delarn nodded weakly. "Yes, Mat. But I've taken a gut wound. I____"

"We'll get the Aes Sedai," Mat said. "All you need to do is sit right here. Stay in the saddle, all right?"

Delarn nodded again. Mat hesitated at the weakness in the man's motions, but Delarn took Pips' reins, and seemed determined. So Mat slid out of the saddle, holding his ashandarei at the ready.

"Mat," Delarn said from the saddle.

Mat turned back.

"Thank you. For coming back for me."

"I wasn't going to leave a man to that," Mat said, shivering. "Dying on the battlefield is one thing, but to die out there, in that darkness. . . . Well, I wasn't going to let it happen. Talmanes! See if you can find some light."

"Working on it," the Cairhienin said from beside the inn's back door. He had found a lantern hanging there. A few strikes of flint and steel later, and a small, soft glow lit the backyard of the inn. Talmanes quickly closed the shield, keeping the light mostly hidden.

Thom trotted back to them. "No one following, Mat," he said.

Mat nodded. By the lanternlight, he could see that Delarn was in bad shape. Not just the gut wound, but scrapes across the face, rips in his uniform, one eye swollen shut.

Mat whipped out a handkerchief and pressed it against the gut wound, standing beside Pips and reaching up to the man in the saddle. "Hold this tight. How'd the wound happen? They don't use weapons."

"One got my own sword away from me," Delarn said with a grunt. "He used it well enough once he had it."

Talmanes had opened the back door of the inn. He looked to Mat and nodded. The way inside was clear.

"We'll be back soon," Mat promised Delarn. Holding his ashandarei in a loose grip, he crossed the short distance to the door and nodded to Talmanes and Thorn. The three of them ducked inside.

The door led to the kitchens. Mat scanned the dark room, and Talmanes nudged him, pointing at several lumps on the floor. The sliver of lantern light revealed a pair of kitchen boys, barely ten years old, dead on the ground, their necks twisted. Mat glanced away, steeling himself, and inched into the room. Light! Only lads, and now dead by this insanity.

Thorn shook his head grimly, and the three of them crept forward. They found the cook in the next hallway, grunting as he beat on the head of what appeared to be the innkeeper. It was a man in a white apron, at least. He was already dead. The fat cook turned toward Mat and Talmanes the moment they entered the hallway, feral rage in his eyes. Mat reluctantly struck, silencing him before he could howl and bring more people against them.

"There's fighting on the stairs," Talmanes said, nodding forward.

"I'll bet there's a servants' stairwell," Thorn noted. "This looks like a nice enough a place for it."

Sure enough, by cutting through two hallways in the back, they found a narrow, rickety stairwell leading up into darkness. Mat took a deep breath, then started up the stairs, holding his ashandarei at the ready. The inn was only two stories high, and the flashes had been coming from the second floor, near the front.

They entered the second floor, pushing open the door to the acrid scent of burned flesh. The hallways here were of wood, the grain obscured by thick white paint. The floor lay under a deep chestnut carpet. Mat nodded to Talmanes and Thorn, and—weapons at the ready—they burst out of the stairwell and into the hallway.

Immediately, a ball of fire whooshed in their direction. Mat cursed, throwing himself backward and into Talmanes, narrowly avoiding the fire. Thom flattened himself with a gleeman's agility, getting under the fire. Mat and Talmanes almost tumbled back down the stairs.

"Bloody ashes!" Mat yelled into the hallway. "What do you think you're doing?"

There was silence. Followed, finally, by Joline's voice. "Cauthon?" she called.

"Who do you bloody think it is!" he shouted back.

"I don't know!" she said. "You came around so quickly, weapons out. Are you trying to get killed?"

"We're trying to rescue you!" Mat yelled.

"Do we look like we need rescuing?" came the response.

"Well, you're still here, aren't you?" Mat called back.

That was met with silence.