The Path of Daggers (The Wheel of Time 8)

He truly had been trying to avoid notice as much as possible, traveling by back roads and the smallest country paths when they could not keep to the forests. A futile effort, really. The horses could be pastured wherever there was grass, but they required at least some grain, and even a small army had to buy food, and a lot of it. Every man needed four pounds a day, in flour and beans and meat. Rumors must have been floating all over Ghealdan, though with luck, no one suspected who they were. Perrin grimaced. Perhaps they had not, until he went and opened his mouth. Still, he would have done nothing differently.

It was three camps really, close to one another and none far from the stream. They traveled together, all following him, obeying him supposedly, but there were too many personalities involved, and no one was entirely sure the others aimed at the same goal. Some nine hundred or so Winged Guards had their cook fires crowded between rows of picketed horses in a broad meadow of trampled brown grass. He tried to close his nose to the mingled smells of horses, sweat, dung and boiling goat meat, an unpleasant combination on a hot day. A dozen mounted sentries rode a slow circuit in pairs, their long, red-streamered lances all at precisely the same angle, but the rest of the Mayeners had shed breastplates and helmets. Coatless and often shirtless in the sun, they lay sprawled on their blankets or diced as they waited on the food. Some looked up as Perrin passed, a number straightened from what they were doing to study the additions to his party, but none came running, so the patrols were still out. Small patrols, without lances, who could see without being seen. Well, that was the hope. It had been.

A handful of gai’shain moved at various chores among the Wise Ones’ low gray-brown tents on the sparsely wooded crest of the hill above the Mayeners. At this distance, the white-robed figures appeared harmless, eyes downcast and meek. Up close, they would look the same, but most were Shaido. The Wise Ones claimed gai’shain were gai’shain; Perrin did not trust any Shaido out of his sight. Off to one side on the slope, beneath a bedraggled sourgum, perhaps a dozen Maidens in cadin’sor knelt in a circle around Sulin, the toughest of them despite her white hair. She had sent out scouts, too, women who could move as fast afoot as the Mayeners on their horses and were much more likely to escape unwanted attention. None of the Wise Ones up there were in the open, but a slender woman stirring a large stew kettle straightened, knuckling her back as she watched Perrin and the others pass. A woman in a green silk riding dress.

He could see the glare on Masuri’s face. Aes Sedai did not stir kettles, nor perform twenty other tasks the Wise Ones had her and Seonid doing. Masuri laid it at Rand’s feet, but he was not here, and Perrin was. Given half a chance, she would peel his hide for him.

Edarra and Nevarin turned up that way, even in those bulky skirts barely disturbing the layers of dead leaves that carpeted the ground. Seonid followed, her cheeks still bulging around that scarf. She twisted in her saddle, peering back at Perrin. If he could have believed an Aes Sedai looking anxious, that was what he would have called her. Riding behind her, Furen and Teryl wore scowls.

Masuri saw them coming and hastily bent back to the black kettle, stirring with renewed vigor, trying to make out that she had never stopped. So long as Masuri stayed in the Wise Ones’ charge, Perrin thought he did not have to worry about his hide. The Wise Ones seemed to keep a very short leash.

Nevarin looked back over her shoulder at him, another of those dark stares he had been getting from her and Edarra since sending his warning, his threat, by the stubble-cheeked fellow. Perrin exhaled in exasperation. He did not have to worry about his pelt unless the Wise Ones decided they wanted it. Too many personalities. Too many goals.

Maighdin rode at Faile’s side, seemingly paying no attention to what they passed, but he would not have wagered a split copper on it. Her eyes had widened a hair at sight of the Mayener sentries. She knew what red breastplates and helmets like rimmed pots meant, as surely as she had recognized an Aes Sedai face. Most people would not have known either, especially not folk dressed as she was. She was a mystery, this Maighdin. For some reason, she seemed vaguely familiar.

Lini and Tallanvor — that was what he had heard Maighdin call the fellow who had ridden after her; “young” Tallanvor, though there could not have been more than four or five years between them if that — stayed as close behind Maighdin as possible, with Aram in the way trying to heel Perrin. So did a little stick of a fellow with a pursed mouth, called Balwer, who seemed to pay less heed to their surroundings than Maighdin pretended. Even so, Perrin thought Balwer saw more than she did. He could not say why, precisely, but the few times he had caught the bony little man’s scent, he had been minded of a wolf testing the air. Strangely, there was no fear in Balwer, only quickly suppressed ridges of irritation shot through with the quivery smell of impatience. The remainder of Maighdin’s companions trailed along well back. The third woman, Breane, was whispering fiercely to a hulking fellow who kept his eyes down and sometimes nodded silently, sometimes shook his head. A shoulder-striker and street tough if ever there was one, but the short woman had an edge of toughness about her, too. The last man sheltered behind those two, a stout man with a battered straw hat pulled low to hide his face. On him, the sword the men all wore looked as strange as it did on Balwer.

The third part of the camp, spread out among the trees just around the curve of the hill from the Mayeners, covered as much ground as the Winged Guards’ though it held far fewer people. Here, the horses were picketed well away from the cook fires, so the unblemished smell of dinner filled the air. Roasting goat, this time, and hard turnips the farmers probably had intended to feed to their pigs even with times as hard as they were. Close on to three hundred Two Rivers men who had followed Perrin away from home were tending meat on spits, mending clothes, checking over arrows and bows, all scattered in haphazard clumps of five or six friends around a fire. Nearly every one of them waved and shouted greetings, though there was too much of “Lord Perrin” and “Perrin Goldeneyes” to suit him. Faile had a right to the titles they gave her.

Grady and Neald, unsweating in their night-black coats, did not cheer; standing beside the cook fire they had built a little away from everyone else, they merely looked at him. Expectant looks, he thought. Expecting what? That was the question he always asked himself about them. The Asha’man made him uneasy, more than Aes Sedai or Wise Ones. Women channeling the Power was natural, if not exactly anything a man could be comfortable around. Plain-faced Grady appeared a farmer despite his coat and sword, and Neald a popinjay with his curled mustaches, yet Perrin could not forget what they were, what they had done at Dumai’s Wells. But then, he had been there, too. The Light help him, he had. Pulling his hand from the axe at his belt, he dismounted.

Servants, men and women from Lord Dobraine’s estates in Cairhien, came running from the lines where the horses were picketed, to take their mounts. None stood taller than Perrin’s shoulder, country-clad folk, forever bowing and curtsying obsequiously. Faile said he just upset them when he tried to make them stop, or at least not to bob around him so often; in

truth, that was how they smelled when he did, and they always went back to bobbing in an hour or two. Others, nearly as many as the Two Rivers men, were working with the horses or around the long rows of high-wheeled carts that hauled all their supplies. A few were darting in and out of a large red-and-white tent.

As usual, that tent made Perrin grunt gloomily. Berelain had a larger one back in the Mayener part of the camp, plus one for her two maids and another for the pair of thief-catchers she had insisted on bringing. Annoura had a tent of her own, and Gallenne as well, but only he and Faile possessed one here. For himself, he would have slept under the sky like the other men from home. They had nothing over them at night but a blanket. There was certainly no fear of rain. The Cairhienin servants bedded down beneath the carts. He could not ask Faile to do that, though, not when Berelain had a tent. If only he could have left Berelain in Cairhien. But then he would have had to send Faile into Bethal.

A pair of banners on tall, fresh-cut poles in the middle of a clear space near the tent soured his mood further. The breeze had picked up a trifle, though it was still too warm; he thought he heard that thunder again, faint in the west. The flags unfolded in slow waves, collapsed of their own weight, rippled open again. His crimson-bordered Red Wolfhead and the Red Eagle of long-dead Manetheren, out in the open again despite his orders. Perhaps he had stopped trying to hide, after a fashion, but what was now Ghealdan had been part of Manetheren; Alliandre would not be soothed by hearing of that banner! He managed a pleasant face and a smile for the stocky little woman who curtsied deeply and took Stepper away, but it was a near thing. Lords were supposed to be obeyed, and if he was supposed to be a lord, well, he seemed to be making a poor job of it.

Fists on her hips, Maighdin stood studying those rippling flags as her horse was taken off with the rest. Surprisingly, Breane had both their bundles, held awkwardly; she wore a petulant scowl, directed at the other woman. “I have heard about banners like those,” Maighdin said suddenly. And angrily; there was no anger in her voice, and her face was smooth as ice, but her fury filled Perrin’s nose. “They were raised by men in Andor, in the Two Rivers, who rebelled against their lawful ruler. Aybara is a Two Rivers name, I think.”

“We don’t know much about lawful rulers in the Two Rivers, Mistress Maighdin,” he growled. He was going to skin whoever had put them up this time. If stories about rebellion had spread this far . . . He faced too many complications already without adding more. “I suppose Morgase was a good queen, but we had to fend for ourselves, and we did.” Abruptly he knew who she minded him of. Elayne. Not that it meant anything; he had seen men a thousand miles from the Two Rivers who could have belonged to families he knew back home. Still, she had to have some reason for anger. Her accent could be Andoran. “Things aren’t as bad in Andor as you might have heard,” he told her. “Caemlyn was quiet, last I was there, and Rand — the Dragon Reborn — means to put Morgase’s daughter Elayne on the Lion Throne.”

Far from being mollified, Maighdin rounded on him, blue eyes blazing. “He intends to put her on the throne? No man puts a queen on the Lion Throne! Elayne will claim the throne of Andor by her right!”

Scratching his head, Perrin wished Faile would stop watching the woman so calmly and say something. But all she did was tuck her riding gloves behind her belt. Before he could think of what to say, Lini darted in, seizing Maighdin’s arm and giving her a shake fit to rattle her teeth.

“You apologize!” the old woman barked. “This man saved your life, Maighdin, and you forget yourself, a simple country woman speaking so to a lord! Remember who you are, and don’t let your tongue land you in hotter water! If this young lord was at odds with Morgase, well, everyone knows she’s dead, and it’s none of your affair in any event! Now apologize before he grows angry!”

Maighdin stared at Lini, her mouth working, even more startled than Perrin. Again she surprised him, though. Instead of erupting at the white-haired woman, she slowly drew herself up, shoulders squared, and looked him in the eye. “Lini is entirely right. I have no right to speak to you so, Lord Aybara. I apologize. Humbly. And I ask your pardon.” Humble? Her jaw was stubborn, her tone proud enough for an Aes Sedai, and her scent said she was ready to chew a hole in something.

“You have it,” Perrin said hastily. Which did not seem to placate her one bit. She smiled, and maybe she intended gratitude, but he could hear her teeth grinding. Were women all crazy?

“They are hot and dirty, husband,” Faile said, putting a hand in at last, “and the last few hours have been trying for them, I know. Aram can show the men where to clean themselves. I will take the women with me. I’ll have damp cloths brought to wash your hands and faces,” she told Maighdin and Lini. Gathering up Breane with a gesture, she began herding them toward the tent. At a nod from Perrin, Aram motioned the men to follow him.

“As soon as you finish your wash, Master Gill, I’d like to talk with you,” Perrin said.

He might as well have made that spinning wheel of fire. Maighdin whipped around to gape at him, and the other two women froze in their tracks. Tallanvor was suddenly gripping his sword hilt again, and Balwer rose on his toes, peering over his bundle, head tilting this way then that. Not a wolf, perhaps; some sort of bird, watching for cats. The stout man, Basel Gill, dropped his belongings and leaped a foot in the air.

“Why, Perrin,” he stammered, snatching off the straw hat. Sweat made tracks in the dust on his cheeks. He bent to pick up his bundle, changed his mind and straightened again hastily. “I mean, Lord Perrin. I . . . ah . . . I thought it was you, but . . . but with them calling you lord, I wasn’t sure you’d want to know an old innkeeper.” Scrubbing a handkerchief across his nearly bald head, he laughed nervously. “Of course, I’ll talk to you. Washing can wait a little longer.”

“Hello, Perrin,” the hulking man said. With his heavy-lidded eyes, Lamgwin Dorn appeared lazy despite his muscles and the scars on his face and hands. “We heard about young Rand being the Dragon Reborn, Master Gill and me. Should have figured you’d have come up in the world, too. Perrin Aybara’s a good man, Mistress Maighdin. I think you could trust him with anything you’ve a mind to.” He was not lazy, and he was not stupid, either.

Aram jerked his head impatiently, and Lamgwin and the other two followed, but Tallanvor and Balwer dragged their feet, casting wondering glances back at Perrin and Master Gill. Concerned glances. And at the women. Faile had them moving again, as well, though with plenty of darted looks at Perrin and Master Gill, at the men trailing Aram. Suddenly they were not so pleased at being separated.

Master Gill mopped his forehead and smiled uneasily. Light, why did he smell afraid? Perrin wondered. Of him? Of a man tied to the Dragon Reborn, calling himself lord and leading an army, however small, threatening the Prophet. Might as well throw gagging Aes Sedai into it, too; he would take the blame for that, one way or another. No, Perrin thought wryly; nothing in that to frighten anybody. The whole lot of them were probably afraid he might murder them all.

Trying to put Master Gill at ease, he led the man to a large oak a hundred paces from the red-and-white tent. Most of the great tree’s leaves were gone and half those left were brown, but massive limbs spreading low provided a little shade, and some of the gnarled roots stood high enough to serve as benches. Perrin had used one for just that, twiddling his thumbs while camp was being set. Whenever he tried to do anything useful, there were always ten hands snatching it away from him.