"Perrin!" Faile screamed.
The big Shaido seemed to hesitate for a heartbeat, and Perrin took advantage of it. His hammer hit the side of the man's head so hard that his feet left the ground as he fell. Another was right behind him, though, spear ready to stab. Suddenly the man grunted, surprise in the green eyes above his black veil, and dropped to his knees peering over his shoulder at Faile, who stood close. Slowly he fell forward, revealing a ridged steel hilt rising from his back. Perrin looked hastily for the third, and found him also lying on his face, with two wooden knife hilts sticking out of his back. Lacile was leaning against Arrela, weeping. No doubt she had found actually killing someone not so easy as she had supposed.
Alliandre was at the front of the crowd, too, and Maighdin right behind her, carried by a tall you
ng man in white, but Perrin had eyes only for Faile. Letting knife and hammer fall, he stepped over the dead men and gathered her in his arms. The smell of her filled his nose. It filled his head. She smelled strongly of charred wood, of all things, but he could still smell her. "I've dreamed of this moment so long," he breathed.
"I have, too," she said against his chest, hugging him hard. Her scent was full of joy, but she was trembling.
"Did they hurt you?" he asked gently.
"No. They. . . . No, Perrin, they didn't hurt me." There were other smells mixed in with her joy, though, laced through it inextricably. The dull, aching scent of sadness and the greasy aroma of guilt. Shame, like thousands of hair-fine needles pricking. Well, the man was dead, and a woman had the right to keep her secrets if she wanted.
"All that matters is that you're alive, and we're together again," he told her. "That's all that matters in the world."
"All that matters," she agreed, hugging him even harder. Hard enough that she actually groaned with the effort. But the next instant, she had pushed back and was examining his wounds, fingering open tears in his coat to look at them. "These don't look too bad." she said briskly, though all of those emotions still lay tangled in her joy. She reached up to part his hair and tugged until he bent his head so she could examine the slash along his scalp. "You'll need Healing, of course. How many Aes Sedai did you bring? How did you—? No, that's of no matter right now. There are enough of them to defeat the Shaido, and that is what's important."
"This lot of Shaido," he said, straightening to look down at her. Light, dirt or no dirt, she was so beautiful. "There'll be another six or seven thousand spears here in . . ." he glanced at the sun; it seemed it should be higher, "less than two hours, maybe. We need to finish up here and be moving before then, if we can. What's wrong with Maighdin?" She was limp as a feather pillow against the young man's chest. Her eyelids were fluttering without opening fully.
"She tired herself out saving our lives," Faile said, abandoning his injuries and turning to the other people in white. "Aravine, all of you, start gathering up gai'shain. Not just those sworn to me. Everybody in white. We leave no one we can reach behind. Perrin, what direction is safest?"
"North," he told her. "North is safe."
"Start them moving north," Faile went on. "Gather carts, wagons, packhorses, and load them with whatever you think we'll need. Hurry!" People started moving. Running. "No, you stay here, Aldin. Maighdin still needs to be carried. You stay, too, Alliandre. And Arrela. Lacile needs a shoulder to cry on for a while."
Perrin grinned. Put his wife down in the middle of a house engulfed in flames, and she would calmly set about putting the fire out. She would put it out, too.
Bending, he cleaned his belt knife on the green-eyed man's coat before sheathing it. His hammer needed a good wiping, too. He tried not to think about what he was smearing on the man's coat. The fire was fading from his blood. There was no thrill remaining, only tiredness. His wounds were beginning to throb.
"Will you send someone to the fortress to let Ban and Seonid know they can come out now?" he said as he slipped the hammer's haft back through the loop on his belt.
Faile stared at him in amazement. "They're in the fortress? How? Why?"
"Alyse didn't tell you?" He had always been slow to anger until Faile was taken. Now, he felt fury bubbling up in him. Bubbles like white-hot iron. "She said she was taking you with her when she left, but she promised to tell you to go to the fortress when you saw fog on the ridges and heard wolves howl by daylight. I'd swear she said it straight out. Burn me, you can't trust Aes Sedai an inch!”
Faile glanced toward the western ridge, where the fog still clung thickly, and grimaced. "Not Alyse, Perrin. Galina. If that wasn't a lie, too. It has to be her. And she has to be Black Ajah. Oh, how I wish I knew her real name." She moved her left arm and winced. She had been hurt. Perrin found himself wanting to kill the big Shaido all over again. Faile did not let her injury slow her, though. "Theril, come out from there. I see you peeking around the gate."
A skinny young man edged shyly around the corner of the gate. "My father told me to stay and keep an eye on you, my Lady," he said in an accent so rough that Perrin could barely understand.
"That's as may be," Faile said firmly, "but you run to the fortress as fast as you can and tell whoever you find there that Lord Perrin says they're to come. Run, now." The boy knuckled his forehead and ran.
In a quarter of an hour or so he reappeared, still running, followed by Seonid and Ban and all the others. Ban made a leg to Faile and murmured smoothly how pleased he was to see her again before ordering the Two Rivers men to set up a guard ring around the gate, bows at the ready and halberds stuck in the ground. He used his normal voice for that. He was another who was trying to acquire polish. Selande and Faile's other hangers-on rushed around her, all babbling with excitement and saying how worried they had been when she failed to appear after the wolves howled.
"I'm going to Masuri," Kirklin announced in tones that dared challenge. He did not wait for one, though, simply drawing his sword and running off along the wall to the north.
Tallanvor gave a cry when he saw Maighdin being held by the tall young man and had to be convinced that she was only exhausted. He still took her away from the fellow and held her against his own chest, whispering to her.
"Where is Chiad?" Gaul demanded. On learning that she had never been with them, he lifted the veil across his face. "The Maidens tricked me," he said grimly, "but I will find her before them."
Perrin caught his arm. "There are a lot of men out there who'll take you for a Shaido."
"I have to find her first, Perrin Aybara." There was something in the Aiel's voice, something in his scent, that Perrin could only call heartache. He understood the sorrow of thinking the woman you loved might be lost to you forever. He let go of Gaul's sleeve, and the man darted through the line of bowmen, spear and buckler in hand.
"I'll go with him," Elyas grinned. "Maybe I can keep him out of trouble." Drawing the long knife that had given him his name among the wolves, Long Tooth, he went running after the tall Aielman. If the two of them could not make their way safely out there, then no one could.
"If you are done jabbering, perhaps you will stand still for Healing," Seonid told Perrin. "You look as if you need it." Furen and Teryl were heeling her, hands on their sword hilts and eyes trying to watch in every direction. The ring of Two Rivers men were all very well, their attitude seemed to say, but Seonid's safety was their charge. They looked like leopards heeling a house cat. Only she was no house cat.
"See to Faile first," he said. "Her arm is hurt." Faile was talking with Alliandre, both of them so angry they should have had tails to bristle. No doubt angry over Alyse or Galina or whatever her name was.