The Shadow Rising (The Wheel of Time 4)

More joined in on the second verse, until everyone sang, even Ihvon. And Faile. Not Perrin, of course; he had been told often enough that he sounded like a stepped-on frog, singing. Some even fell into step with the music.

“Oh, I have seen stark Tarwin’s Gap,

and the Trollocs’ raving horde.

I have stood ’fore the Halfman’s charge,

and walked on death’s cold borde.

But a winsome lass, she waits for me,

for a dance, and a kiss ’neath the apple tree … .”

Perrin shook his head. A day before they had been ready to run and hide. Today they sang, about a battle so long ago that it had left no memory but this song in the Two Rivers. Perhaps they were becoming soldiers. They would have to, unless he managed to close that Waygate.

Farms began to appear more often, closer together, until they traveled along hard-packed dirt between fields bordered by hedges or low, rough stone walls. Abandoned farms. No one here clung to the land.

They came to the Old Road, which ran north from the White River, the Manetherendrelle, through Deven Ride to Emond’s Field, and at last began to see sheep in the pastures, great clumps like a dozen men’s flocks gathered together, with ten shepherds where there once would have been one, and half of them grown men. Bow-armed shepherds watched them pass, singing at the tops of their lungs, not knowing quite what to make of it.

Perrin did not know what to make of his first view of Emond’s Field, and neither did the other Two Rivers men, from the way their singing faltered and died.

The trees, fences and hedges closest to the village were simply gone, cleared away. The westernmost houses of Emond’s Field had once stood among the trees on the edge of the Westwood. The oaks and leatherleaf between the houses remained, but now the forest’s brim stood five hundred paces away, a long bowshot, and axes rang loud as men pushed it back farther. Row on row of waist-high stakes, driven into the ground at an angle, surrounded the village a little out from the houses and presented a continuous hedge of sharpened points, except where the road ran in. At intervals behind the stakes men stood like sentries, some wearing bits of old armor or leather shirts sewn with rusty steel discs, a few in dented old steel caps, with boar spears, or halberds rooted out of attics, or bush hooks fitted to long poles. Other men, and boys, were up on some of the thatched roofs with bows; they stood when they saw Perrin and the others coming, and shouted to people below.

Beside the road behind the stakes stood a contraption of wood and thick, twisted rope, with a nearby pile of stones bigger than a man’s head. Ihvon noticed Perrin frowning at it as they came closer. “Catapult,” the Warder said. “Six, so far. Your carpenters knew what to do once Tomas and I showed them. The stakes will hold off charging Trollocs or Whitecloaks, either one.” He might have been discussing the prospects for more rain.

“I told you your village was preparing to defend itself.” Faile sounded fiercely proud, as though it were her village. “A hard people, for such a soft land. They could almost be Saldaean. Moiraine always said Manetheren’s blood runs strong here still.”

Perrin could only shake his head.

The hard-packed dirt streets were nearly crowded enough for a city, the gaps between houses filled with carts and wagons, and through open doors and unshuttered windows he could see more people. The crowd parted before Ihvon and the Aiel, and rustling whispers accompanied them along the street.

“It’s Perrin Goldeneyes.”

“Perrin Goldeneyes.”

“Perri

n Goldeneyes.”

He wished they would not do that. These people knew him, some of them. What did they think they were doing? There was horse-faced Neysa Ayellin, who had paddled his ten-year-old backside that time Mat talked him into stealing one of her gooseberry pies. And there was pink-cheeked, big-eyed Cilia Cole, the first girl he had ever kissed and still pleasingly plump, and Pel Aydaer, with his pipe and his bald head, who had taught Perrin how to catch trout with his hands, and Daise Congar herself, a tall, wide woman who made Alsbet Luhhan seem soft, with her husband Wit, a scrawny man overshadowed as always by his wife. And they were all staring at him, and whispering to the people from off, who might not know who he was. When old Cenn Buie lifted a little boy up on his shoulder, pointing at Perrin and talking enthusiastically to the boy, Perrin groaned. They had all gone mad.

Townsfolk trailed after Perrin and the others, around them, in a parade that rode a swell of murmurs. Chickens scurried every which way under people’s feet. Bawling calves and pigs squealing in pens behind the houses competed with the noise of the humans. Sheep crowded the Green, and black-and-white milkcows cropped the grass in company with flocks of geese, gray and white.

And in the middle of the Green rose a tall pole, the red-bordered white banner at its peak rippling lazily, displaying a red wolf’s head. He looked at Faile, but she shook her head, as surprised as he.

“A symbol.”

Perrin had not heard Verin approach, though now he caught hushed whispers of “Aes Sedai” floating around her. Ihvon did not look surprised. People stared at her with awe-filled eyes.

“People need symbols,” Verin went on, resting a hand on Stepper’s shoulder. “When Alanna told a few of the villagers how much Trollocs fear wolves, everyone seemed to think this banner a grand idea. Don’t you, Perrin?” Was there a dryness in her voice then? Her dark eyes looked up at him, birdlike. A bird watching a worm?

“I wonder what Queen Morgase will think of that,” Faile said. “This is part of Andor. Queens seldom like strange banners being raised in their realms.”

“That’s nothing but lines on a map,” Perrin told her. It was good to be still; the throbbing from the arrowhead seemed to have abated somewhat. “I did not even know we were supposed to be part of Andor until I went to Caemlyn. I doubt many people here do.”

“Rulers have a tendency to believe maps, Perrin.” There was no doubt of the dryness in Faile’s tone. “When I was a child, there were parts of Saldaea that had not seen a taxman in five generations. Once Father could turn his attention from the Blight for a time, Tenobia made sure they knew who their queen was.”

“This is the Two Rivers,” he said, grinning, “not Saldaea.” They did sound very fierce, up there in Saldaea. As he turned back to Verin, the grin became a frown. “I thought you were … hiding … who you are.” He could not say which was more disturbing; Aes Sedai there in secret, or Aes Sedai in the open.