“No!” Rand growled. Light, the things people would do to get on his good side! Or maybe Anaiyella had been closer to her Master of the Horse that was considered proper. The man had been stout and balding — and a commoner; that counted heavily with Tairens — but women did have strange tastes in men. He knew that for a pure fact.
“As soon as we’re ready to move again,” he told Bashere, “turn the men down there loose.” Taking prisoners along when he launched his next attack was out of the question, and leaving a hundred men — a hundred now; more later, for sure — leaving them to follow with the supply carts risked fifty kinds of mischief. They could cause no trouble left behind. Even the fellows who had gotten away on horseback could not carry a warning faster than he could Travel.
Bashere shrugged faintly; he thought it might be so, but then again there was always the odd chance. Strange things happened even without a ta’veren around.
Weiramon and Anaiyella opened their mouths almost together, faces set in protest, but Rand pressed on. “I’ve spoken, and it’s done! We’ll keep the woman, though. And any more women we capture.”
“Burn my soul,” Weiramon exclaimed. “Why?” The man appeared dumbfounded, and for that matter, Bashere gave a startled jerk of his head. Anaiyella’s mouth twisted in contempt before she managed to turn it to a simpering smile for the Lord Dragon. Plainly, she thought him too soft to send a woman off with the others. They would have hard walking in this terrain, not to mention short rations. And the weather was not weather to turn a woman out in.
“I have enough Aes Sedai against me without sending sul’dam back to their trade,” he told them. The Light knew that was true! They nodded, if Weiramon was slow about it; Bashere looked relieved, Anaiyella disappointed. But what to do with the woman, and any more he captured? He did not intend to turn the Black Tower into a prison. The Aiel could hold them. Except that the Wise Ones might slit their throats the moment his back was turned. What about the sisters that Mat was taking to Caemlyn with Elayne, though? “When this is done, I’ll hand her over to some Aes Sedai I choose.” They might see it as a gesture of goodwill, a little honey to sweeten their having to accept his protection.
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than Nerith’s face went dead white and she screamed at the top of her lungs. Howling without cease, she flung herself down the slope, scrabbling over downed trees, falling and scrambling back up.
“Bloody —! Catch her!” Rand snapped, and the Saldaean patrol leaped after the woman, jumping their mounts across the treelittered slope careless of broken legs and necks. Still wailing, she dodged and darted among the horses with even less care.
In the mouth of the easternmost pass, a gateway opened in a flash of silver light. A blackcoated Soldier pulled his horse through, jumped to the saddle as the gateway winked out and put his mount to a gallop, toward the hilltop where Gedwyn and Rochaid waited. Rand watched impassively. In his head, Lews Therin snarled of killing, killing all the Asha’man before it was too late.
By the time the three of them started up the slope toward Rand, four of the Saldaeans had Nerith down on the ground, binding her hand and foot. It took four, the way she thrashed and bit at them, and an amused Bashere was offering odds on whether she might not overcome them instead. Anaiyella muttered something about cracking the woman’s head. Did she mean cracking it open? Rand frowned at her.
The Soldier between Gedwyn and Rochaid glanced at Nerith uneasily as they rode past. Rand vaguely remembered seeing him at the Black Tower, the day he first handed out the silver Swords, and gave Taim the very first Dragon pin. He was a young man, Varil Nensen by name, still wearing a transparent veil to cover his thick mustaches. He had not hesitated when he found himself facing his countrymen, though. Allegiance was to the Black Tower and the Dragon Reborn, now, so Taim always said. The second part of that always sounded an afterthought.
“You may have the honor of making your report to the Dragon Reborn, Soldier Nensen,” Gedwyn said. Wryly.
Nensen sat up straight in his saddle. “My Lord Dragon!” he barked, slapping fist to chest. “There’s more of them about thirty miles west, my Lord Dragon.” Thirty miles was as far as Rand had told the scouts to go before returning. What good if one Soldier found Seanchan while the rest kept moving ever farther west? “Maybe half what were here,” Nensen went on. “And... ” His dark eyes flickered toward Nerith again. She was tied, now, the Saldaeans struggling to get her over a horse. “And I saw no sign of women, my Lord Dragon.”
Bashere squinted at the sky. Dark clouds lay in a blanket from mountain peak to mountain peak, but the sun should still be high. “Time to feed the men before the rest return,” he said, nodding in satisfaction. Nerith had managed to sink her teeth into a Saldaean’s wrist and was hanging on like a badger.
“Feed them quick,” Rand said irritably. Would every sul’dam he captured be as difficult? Very likely. Light, what if they took a damane? “I don’t want to spend all winter in these mountains.” Gille the damane. He could not erase a name once it went onto that list.
The dead are never silent, Lews Therin whispered. The dead never sleep.
Rand rode down toward the fires. He did not feel like eating.
From the point of a thrusting shoulder of stone, Furyk Karede carefully studied the forested mountains rising all around him, sharp peaks like dark fangs. His horse, a tall dappled gelding, stiffened his ears as though catching a sound he had missed, but otherwise the animal was still. Every so often, Karede had to stop and wipe the lens of his looking glass. A light rain fell from a gray morning sky. His helmet’s two black plumes were bent over instead of standing straight, and water ran down his back. A light rain compared to yesterday, anyway, and probably compared to tomorrow. Or this afternoon, perhaps. Thunder rumbled ominously in the south. Karede’s concern had nothing to do with weather, though.
Below him, the last of twentythree hundred men snaked through the winding passes, men gathered from four outposts. Wellmounted, reasonably wellled, yet a bare two hundred were Seanchan, and just two besides himself wore the redandgreen of the Guard. Most of the remainder were Taraboners — he knew their mettle — but a good third were Amadicians and Altarans, too new to their oaths for any to be sure how they would stand up. Some Altarans and Amadicians had switched allegiance two or three times already. Tried to, anyway. People this side of the Aryth Ocean had no shame. A dozen sul’dam rode near the front of the column, and he wished all twelve had leashed damanes walking by their h
