“I mean to get them free as soon as I can, Master al'Seen. And anybody else the Whitecloaks arrest, for that matter.”
“A bold plan,” Jac repeated. “Well, I had better get people moving if I'm going to have us to Jon's by sundown. Go with the Light, Perrin.”
“A very bold plan,” Verin said, coming up as Master al'Seen hurried off calling orders for wagons to be hauled out and people to pack what they could carry. She studied Perrin interestedly, head tilted to one side, but no less so than Faile, at her side. Faile looked as though she had never seen him before.
“I don't know why everybody keeps calling it that,” he said. “A plan, I mean. That Luc was talking nonsense. Defying Whitecloaks in the door. Boys on the roof to watch for Trollocs. A couple of open gates to disaster. All I did was point it out. They should have been doing this from the start. That man.... ” He stopped himself from saying Luc irritated him. Not with Faile there. She might misunderstand.
“Of course,” Verin said smoothly. “I have not had the opportunity to see it work before this. Or perhaps I have and did not know it.”
“What are you talking about? See what work?”
“Perrin, when we arrived these people were ready to hold on here at all costs. You gave them good sense and strong emotion, but do you think the same from me would have shifted them, or from Tam, or Abell? Of any of us, you should know how stubborn Two Rivers people can be. You have altered the course events would have followed in the Two Rivers without you. With a few words spoken in... irritation? Ta'veren truly do pull other people's lives into their own pattern. Fascinating. I do hope I have an opportunity to observe Rand again.”
“Whatever it is,” Perrin muttered, “it's to the good. The more people together in one place, the safer.”
“Of course. Rand does have the sword, I take it?”
He frowned, but there was no reason not to tell her. She knew about Rand, and she knew what Tear had to mean. “He does.”
“Watch yourself with Alanna, Perrin.”
“What?” The Aes Sedai's quick changes of topic were beginning to confuse him. Especially when she started telling him to do what he had already thought of, and thought to keep secret from her. “Why?”
Verin's face did not change, but her dark eyes were suddenly bird bright and sharp. “There are many... designs in the White Tower. Not all are malignant, by far, but sometimes it is difficult to say until it is too late. And even the most benevolent often allow for a few threads snapped in the weaving, a few reeds broken and discarded in making a basket. A ta'veren would make a useful reed in any number of possible plans.” Just as suddenly she was looking a little confused by the bustle around her, more at home in a book or her own thoughts than in the real world. “Oh, my. Master al'Seen is not wasting any time, is he? I'll just see if he can spare someone to fetch our horses.”
Faile shivered as the Brown sister moved away. “Sometimes Aes Sedai make me... uneasy,” she murmured.
“Uneasy?” Perrin said. “Most of the time they scare me half to death.”
She laughed softly and began playing with a button on his coat, peering at it intently. “Perrin, I... have... been a fool.”
“What do you mean?” She glanced up at him — she was about to twist the button right off — and he hastily added, “You are one of the least foolish people I know.” He clamped his teeth shut before he could add “most of the time,” and was glad he had when she smiled.
“That is very nice of you to say, but I was.” She patted the coat button and began adjusting his coat — which it did not need — and smoothing his lapels — which they did not need. “You were so silly,” she said,. speaking too fast, “just because that young man looked at me — really, he is much too boyish; not at all like you — that I thought I would make you jealous — just a little — by pretending — just pretending — to be attracted to Lord Luc. I should not have done it. Will you forgive me?”
He tried to sort through the jumbled words. It was good she thought Wil was boyish — if he tried to grow a beard it would probably be straggly — but she had not mentioned the way she returned Wil's look. And if she had been pretending to be attracted to Luc, why had she blushed that way? “Of course I forgive you,” he said. A dangerous light appeared in her eyes. “I mean, there's nothing to forgive.” If anything, the light sparkled hotter. What did she want him to say? “Will you forgive me? When I was trying to chase you away, I said things I shouldn't have. Will you forgive me that?”
“You said some things that need forgiving?” she said sweetly, and he knew he was in trouble. “I cannot think what, but I will take it into consideration.”
Into consideration? She sounded very much the noblewoman there; maybe her father worked for some lord, so she could study the way ladies talked. He had no idea what she meant. Whenever he found out would be too soon, he was certain.
It was a relief to climb back into Stepper's saddle amid the confusion of wagon teams being hitched and people arguing over what they could or could not take and children chasing down chickens and geese and tying their feet for loading. Boys were already driving the cattle eastward, and others herding the sheep out of the cote.
Faile made no reference to what had been said inside. Indeed, she smiled at him, and compared the keeping of sheep here to in Saldaea, and when one of the girls brought her a bunch of small red flowers, heartsblush, she tried to thread some of them into his beard, laughing at his efforts to stop her. In short, she had him jumping out of his skin. He needed another talk with Master Cauthon.
“Go with the Light,” Master al'Seen told him again just as they were ready to ride out, “and look after the boys.”
Four of the young men had decided to go with them, on roughcoated horses not nearly as good as those Tam and Abell rode. Perrin was not sure why he was the one who was supposed to look after them. They were all older than he, if not by much. Wil al'Seen was one, with his cousin Ban, one of Jac's sons, who had gotten all the nose in that family, and a pair of the Lewins, Tell and Dannil, who looked so much like Flann that they could have been his sons instead of his nephews. Perrin had tried to talk them out of it, especially when they all made it plain that they wanted to help rescue the Cauthons and the Luhhans from the Whitecloaks. They seemed to think it was a matter of riding into the Children's camp and demanding everybody's return. Casting down our defiance, Tell called it, which nearly made Perrin's hair stand on end. Too many gleeman's tales. Too much listening to fools like Luc. He suspected that Wil had another reason, though he tried to pretend Faile did not exist, but the others were bad enough.
No one else made any objections. Tam and Abell only seemed concerned that they all knew how to use the bows they carried and could stay on a horse, and Verin merely observed, making notes in her little book. Tomas looked amused, and Faile busied herself plaiting a crown from the heartsblush, which turned out to be for Perrin. Sighing, he draped the flowers across the pommel of his saddle. “I will take care of them the best I can, Master al'Seen,” he promised.
A mile from the al'Seen farm, he thought he might lose one or two right there, when Gaul and Bain and Chiad suddenly appeared out of a thicket, loping to join them. Lose them to Aiel spears. Wil and his friends took one look at the Aiel and hastily began nocking arrows; without breaking stride the Aiel had spears ready to cast and their faces veiled. It took some minutes to straighten out. Gaul and the two Maidens seemed to think it a huge joke when they understood, laughing uproariously, and that unsettled the Lewins and al'Seens as much as finding out that the three were Aiel, and two of them women. Wil essayed a smile at Bain and Chiad, and they exchanged looks and brief nods. Perrin did not know what was going on there, but he decided to let it alone unless Wil looked to get his throat cut. Time enough to stop it if one of the Aiel women actually took her knife out. Might teach Wil a thing or two about smiling.
He intended that they should push on to Watch Hill as quickly as they could, but a mile or so north of the al'Seen place he saw one of the farms that produced those scattered plumes of chimney smoke. Tam was keeping them far enough away that the people around the farmhouse were only shapes. Except to Perrin's eyes; he could see children in the yard. And Jac al'Seen was the nearest neighbor. Had been, until today. He hesitated, then reined Stepper toward the farm. Not that it was likely to do any good, but he had to try.“What are you doing?” Tam asked, frowning.
“Giving them the same advice I gave Master al'Seen. It won't take a minute.”
Tam nodded, and the others turned with him. Verin was studying Perrin thoughtfully. The Aiel peeled away short of the farm to wait to the north, Gaul running a little apart from the Maidens.
Perrin did not know the Torfinns nor they him, yet to his surprise, once the excitement of strangers was past, the staring at Tomas and Verin and Faile, they listened and began hitching horses to two wagons and a pair of highwheeled carts before he and the others rode on.
Three more times he stopped when their route took them near to farmhouses, once at a cluster of five close together. It was always the same. The people protested they could not just leave their farms, but each time he left behind a bustle of packing and a gathering of farm animals.
Something else happened, too. He could not stop Wil and his cousin, or the Lewins, from talking with the young men on the farms. Their party grew by thirteen, Torfinns and al'Dais, Ahans and Marwins, armed with bows and riding an illmatched assortment of ponies and plow horses, all eager to rescue the prisoners from the Whitecloaks.
It was not as smooth as that, of course. Wil and the others from the al'Seen farm thought it unfair that he warned the newcomers about the Aiel, spoiling the fun they hoped to have seeing them jump. They jumped more than enough to suit Perrin, and the way they peered at every bush, much less every stand of trees, made it clear that they thought there must be more Aiel about no matter what he said. At first Wil tried lording it over the Torfinns and the rest on the grounds that he had been the first to join Perrin — one of the first, at least, he admitted when Ban and the Lewins glared at him — while they were latecomers.
Perrin put an end to it by dividing them into two groups of about the same size and putting Darmil and Ban each in charge of one, though there was some grumbling over that, too, in the beginning. The al'Dais thought the leaders should be chosen according to age — Bili al'Dai being the eldest by a year — while others put forward Hu Marwin as the best tracker, and Jairn Tortinn as the best shot, while Kenley Ahan had been to Watch Hill often before the Whitecloaks came and would know his way around the village. They all seemed to think it a lark. Tell's phrase about casting defiance was repeated more than once.
Finally Perrin rounded on them in cold anger, forcing everyone to halt in the grass between two copses. “This is not a game, and it isn't a Bel Tine dance. You do what you're told, or else go back home. I don't know what use you are anyway, and I've no intention of getting killed because you think you know what you are doing. Now line up and shut up. You sound like the Women's Circle mee
