The Wheel of Time - Book 14: Page 75

His armies did not have much time left to prepare. Using gateways had put them ahead of the Trollocs, but they had not escaped. Light, there was no escape. Mat had been given his choice of battlefields, though, and this Merrilor place would work best.

Like picking the plot for your own grave, Mat thought. Sure, I’d rather not have to choose in the first place.

The palisade was rising in front of the woods east of the field. He did not have time to section off or surround the entire area with a palisade, and doing so would not make much sense anyway. With those Sharan channelers, the Shadow could rip through walls like a sword through silk. But some palisades, with catwalks on top, would give his archers height to target Trollocs.

Mat had two rivers to work with here. The River Mora flowed in a southwest direction, running between the Heights and Dashar Knob. Its southern bank was in Shienar, the northern bank in Arafel. It joined the River Erinin, which ran directly westward at the southern edge of the field.

Those rivers would serve better than any walls, particularly now that he had the resources to defend them correctly. Well, if you could call them resources. Half his soldiers were as new as spring grass and the other half had fought near to death the week before. The Borderlanders had lost two men out of three—Light, two out of three. A lesser army would have disbanded.

Counting everyone he had, Mat would be outnumbered four to one when those Trollocs arrived, at least according to the reports from the Fists of Heaven. It was going to be messy.

Mat pulled his hat down further, then scratched at the side of the new eyepatch that Tuon had given him. Red leather. He liked it.

“Here now,” he said, passing some of the new Tower Guard recruits. They were sparring with quarterstaffs—spearheads were still being forged to go on the ends. The men looked more likely to hurt themselves than the enemy.

Mat handed his ashandarei to a man, then took a quarterstaff from another as the first hastily saluted. Most of these men were not old enough to need to shave more than once a month. If the boy whose staff he had taken was a day over fifteen, Mat would eat his boots. He would not even boil them first!

“You can’t cringe every time the staff hits something!” Mat said. “Close your eyes on the battlefield, and you’re dead. Didn’t you lot pay any attention last time?”

Mat held up the staff, showing them where to grip it, then put them through the blocking practice his father had shown him back when he had been young enough to think fighting might actually be fun. He worked up a sweat, hitting at each of the new recruits in turn, forcing each to block.

“Burn me, but you will figure this out,” Mat said loudly to all of them. “I wouldn’t care so much, as you lot seem to have the wits of stumps, but if you get yourselves killed, your mothers will be expecting me to send them word. I won’t do it, mind you. But I might feel a little guilty between games of dice, and I hate feeling guilty, so pay attention!”

“Lord Cauthon?” said the lad who had given him the staff.

“I’m not—” He stopped. “Well, yes, what is it?”

“Can’t we just learn the sword?”

“Light!” Mat said. “What’s your name?”

“Sigmont, sir.”

“Well, Sigmont, how much time do you think we have? Maybe you could wander out, talk to the Dreadlords and the Shadowspawn and ask them to give me a few more months’ time so I can train you all properly.”

Sigmont blushed, and Mat handed back his staff. City boys. He sighed. “Look here, all I want is for you lot to be able to defend yourselves. I don’t have time to make you great warriors, but I can teach you to work together, keep a formation, and not shy away when the Trollocs come. That will get you farther than any kind of fancy swordplay, trust me.”

The youths nodded reluctantly.

“Get back to your practice,” Mat said, wiping his brow and looking over his shoulder. Bloody ashes! The Deathwatch Guards were heading his way.

He grabbed his ashandarei and rushed off, then ducked around the side of a tent, only to stumble into a group of Aes Sedai approaching on the path.

“Mat?” Egwene asked from the middle of the group of women. “Are you well?”

“They’re bloody chasing me,” he said, glancing around the side of the tent. “Who is chasing you?” Egwene said. “Deathwatch Guards,” Mat said. “I’m supposed to be back at Tuon’s tent.” Egwene waved a few fingers, sending the other women off, except her two shadows—Gawyn and Leilwin, of all people—who remained with her. “Mat,” Egwene said in a suffering tone, “I’m glad you’ve finally decided to see reason and leave the Seanchan camp, but couldn’t you have waited until after the battle was over to defect?”

“Sorry,” he said, only half-listening. “But can we walk on toward the Aes Sedai quarter of camp? They won’t follow me there.” Maybe not. If all Deathwatch Guards were like Karede, maybe they would. Karede would dive after a man falling off a cliff in order to catch him.

Egwene started back, seeming displeased with Mat. How was it Aes Sedai could be so perfectly emotionless, yet still let a man know they disapproved of him? Come to think of it, an Aes Sedai would probably follow a man off a cliff, too, if only to explain to him—in detail—all the things he was doing incorrectly in the way he went about killing himself.

Mat wished so many of his thoughts lately did not involve feeling like he was the one jumping off the cliff.

“We’ll have to find a way to explain to Fortuona why you ran,” Egwene said as they approached the Aes Sedai quarter. Mat had placed it as far from the Seanchan as was reasonable. “The marriage is going to present a problem. I suggest that you—”

“Wait, Egwene,” Mat said. “What are you talking about?”

“You are running from the Seanchan guards,” Egwene said. “Weren’t you listening… Of course you weren’t. It is pleasant to know that, as the world crumbles, a few things are completely unchangeable. Cuendillar and Mat Cauthon.”

“I’m running from them,” Mat said, looking over his shoulder, “because Tuon wants me to sit in judgment. Any time a soldier is seeking the Empress’s mercy for a crime, I’m the one who is supposed to bloody hear his case!”

“You,” Egwene said, “passing judgment?”

“I know,” Mat said. “Too much bloody work, if you ask me. I’ve been dodging guardsmen all day, trying to steal a little time for myself.”

“A little honest work wouldn’t kill you, Mat.”

“Now, you know that’s not true. Soldiering is honest work, and it gets men killed all the bloody time.”

Gawyn Trakand was apparently practicing to be an Aes Sedai sometime, because he kept giving Mat glares that would have made Moiraine proud. Well, let him. Gawyn was a prince. He had been raised to do things like pass judgment. He probably sent a few men to the gallows each day at his lunch break, just to keep in practice.

But Mat… Mat was not going to order men to be executed, and that was that. They passed a group of Aiel sparring together. Was this group what Urien had been running to reach? Once they had passed—Mat trying to make the others walk faster so the Seanchan would not catch up—he drew closer to Egwene.

“Have you found it yet?” he asked softly.

“No,” Egwene said, eyes forward.

No need to mention what it was. “How could you have lost the thing? After all the work we bloody went through to find it?”

“We? From the telling I hear, Rand, Loial and the Borderlanders had far more to do with finding it than you.”

“I was there,” Mat said. “I rode across the entire bloody continent, didn’t I? Burn me, first Rand, then you. Is everybody going to chivvy me about those days? Gawyn, you want a turn?”

“Yes, please.” He sounded eager.

“Shut up,” Mat said. “It seems that nobody can remember straight but me. I hunted down that bloody Horn like a madman. And, I’ll mention, it was me blowing the thing that let you all escape Falme.”

“Is t

hat how you remember it?” Egwene asked.

“Sure,” Mat said. “I mean, I have some holes in there, but I’ve pieced it mostly together.”

“And the dagger?”

“That trinket? Hardly worth anyone’s time.” He caught himself reaching to his side, to where he had once carried it. Egwene raised an eyebrow at him. “Anyway, that’s not the point. We’re going to need that bloody instrument, Egwene. We’ll need it.”

“We have people searching,” she said. “We’re not sure exactly what happened. There was a Traveling residue, but it’s been a while and… Light, Mat. We’re trying. I promise it. It’s not the only thing the Shadow has stolen from us recently…”

He glanced at her, but she gave him no more. Flaming Aes Sedai. “Has anyone seen Perrin yet?” he asked. “I don’t want to be the one to tell him his wife has gone missing.”

“Nobody has seen him,” Egwene said. “I assume he is at work helping Rand.”

“Bah,” Mat said. “Can you make a gateway for me up to the top of the Knob?”

“I thought you wanted to go to my camp.”

“It’s on the way,” Mat said. Well, sort of, it was. “And those Deathwatch Guards won’t expect it. Burn me, Egwene, but I think they’ve guessed where we were heading.”

Egwene—after pausing for a moment—opened them a gateway to the Traveling ground atop the Knob. They stepped through onto it.

More than a hill, less than a mountain, Dashar Knob rose a good hundred feet into the air near the middle of the battlefield. The rock formation was unscalable, and gateways were the only way to reach the top. From here,

Mat and his commanders would be able to watch the entire battle play out.

“I have never known anyone else,” Egwene said to him, “who will work so hard to avoid hard work, Matrim Cauthon.”

“You haven’t spent enough time around soldiers.” Mat waved at the men who saluted him as he walked out of the Traveling grounds.

He looked north toward the River Mora and across it into Arafel. Then northeast, toward the ruins of what had once been some kind of fort or watchtower. Eastward, toward the rising palisade and the forest. He continued to turn, southward to gaze at the River Erinin in the far distance, and the strange little grove of tall trees that Loial was so in awe of. They said Rand had grown those, during the meeting where the treaty had been signed. Mat looked southwest toward the only good ford on the Mora nearby, named Hawal Ford by the locals who had farmed this area; beyond the ford on the Arafel side was a large expanse of bogs.

Westward, across the Mora, lay Polov Heights—a forty-foot-tall plateau with a steep slope on the east and more gradual slopes on the other sides. Between the base of the southwestern slope and the bogs was a corridor roughly two hundred paces across, well worn by travelers who used the ford to cross between Arafel and Shienar. Mat could use these features to his advantage. He could use them all. Would that be enough? He could feel something pulling on him, tugging him northward. Rand would need him soon.

He turned, ready to bolt, as someone approached across the top of the Knob, but it was not the Deathwatch Guards. It was just leather-faced Jur Grady.

“I fetched those soldiers for you,” Grady said, pointing. Mat could see a small force coming through a gateway to the Traveling grounds near the palisade. A hundred men of the Band, led by Delarn, flying a bloody red flag. The Redarms were accompanied by some five hundred people in worn clothing.

“What was the point of this?” Grady asked. “You sent those hundred to a village in the south to recruit, I assume?”

That, and more. I saved your life, man, Mat thought, trying to pick Delarn out of the group. And then you volunteer for this. Bloody fool. Delarn acted as if it were his fate.

“Take them upriver,” Mat said. “The maps show there is only one good place to block the Mora, a narrow canyon a few leagues northeast of here.”

“All right,” Grady said. “There will be channelers involved.”

“You will have to handle them,” Mat said. “Mostly, though, I want you to let those six hundred men and women defend the river. Don’t risk yourself too much. Let Delarn and his people do the work.”

“Pardon,” Grady said. “But that doesn’t seem like a very large force. Most of them aren’t trained soldiers.”

“I know what I’m doing,” Mat said. I hope.

Grady nodded reluctantly and moved off.

Egwene watched Mat with curious eyes. “We can’t fall back from this fight,” Mat said softly. “We don’t retreat. There isn’t anywhere to go. We stand here, or we lose it all.”

“There is always a retreat,” Egwene said.

“No,” Mat said. “Not anymore.” He rested his ashandarei on his shoulder, his other hand out, palm forward. He scanned the landscape, memories appearing as if from light and dust before him. Rion at Hune Hill. Naath and the San d’ma Shadar. The Fall of Pipkin. Hundreds upon hundreds of battlefields, hundreds of victories. Thousands of deaths.

Mat watched figments of memories flash across the field. “Have you spoken to the supply masters? We’re out of food, Egwene. We can’t win a protracted war, fighting and falling back. The enemy will overwhelm us if we do that. Just like Eyal in the Marches of Maighande. We are at our strongest now, broken though we are. Fall back, and we resign ourselves to starvation as the Trollocs destroy us.”

“Rand,” Egwene said. “We just have to hold out until he is victorious.”

“That’s true in a fashion,” Mat said, turning toward the Heights. In his mind’s eye, he saw what could come, the possibilities. He imagined riders on the Heights, like shadows. He would lose if he tried to hold those Heights, but maybe…“If Rand loses, it won’t matter. The Wheel is bloody broken, and we all become nothing, if we’re lucky. Well, we can’t do anything more about it. But here’s the thing. If he does what he’s supposed to, we could still lose—we will lose, if we don’t stop the Shadow’s armies.”

He blinked, seeing it, the entire battlefield spread before him. Fighting at the ford. Arrows from the palisade. “We can’t just beat them, Egwene,” Mat said. “We can’t just stand and hold on. We have to destroy them, drive them away, then hunt them to the last Trolloc. We can’t just survive… we have to win.”

“How are we going to do that?” Egwene asked. “Mat, you’re not talking sense. Weren’t you just saying yesterday how outnumbered we’ll be?”

He looked toward the bog, imagining shadows trying to slog through it. Shadows of dust and memory. “I have to change it all,” he said. He could not do what they would expect. He could not do what spies might have reported he was planning. “Blood and bloody ashes… one last toss of the dice. Everything we have, piled into a heap…” A group of men in dark armor came through a gateway to the top of the Knob, panting deeply, as if they’d had to chase down a damane to get them up here. Their breastplates were lacquered a deep red, but this batch did not need a fearsome display to be frightening. They looked furious enough to scramble eggs with a stare.

“You,” said the lead Deathwatch Guard, a man named Gelen, pointing at Mat, “are needed at the—”

Mat held up a hand to cut him off.

“I will not be denied again!” Gelen said. “I have orders from—”

Mat shot the man a glare, and he stopped short. Mat turned northward again. A cool, somehow familiar wind blew across him, rippling his long coat, brushing at his hat. He narrowed his eye. Rand was tugging on him.

The dice still tumbled in his head.

“They’re here,” Mat said.

“What did you say?” Egwene asked.

“They’re here.”

“The scouts—”

“The scouts are wrong,” Mat said. He looked up, and noticed a pair of raken speeding back toward the camp. They had seen it. The Trollocs must have marched through the night.

Sharans will come first, Mat thought, to give the Trollocs a breather. They’ll have arrived through gateways.

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nbsp; “Send runners,” Mat said, pointing at the Deathwatch Guards, “get the men and women to their posts. And warn Elayne that I’m going to change the battle plan.”

“What?” Egwene said.

“They’re here!” Mat said, turning on the Guards. “Why aren’t you bloody running! Go, go!” Above, the raken screeched. Gelen, to his credit, saluted, then ran—pounding in that massive armor—with his companions.

“This is it, Egwene,” Mat said. “Take a deep breath, a last pull on the brandy, or burn your final pinch of tabac. Have a good look at the ground before you, as it’s soon going to be covered in blood. In an hour, we’ll be in the thick of it. The Light watch over us all.”

Perrin drifted in darkness. He felt so tired.

Slayer still lives, a piece of himself thought. Graendal is corrupting the great captains. The end is near. You can’t slip away now! Hold on.

Hold on to what? He tried to open his eyes, but was so exhausted. He should.… should have gotten out of the wolf dream sooner. His entire body felt numb, except…

Except for his side. Moving fingers that felt like bricks, he touched the warmth. His hammer. It was blazing hot. That warmth seemed to move up his fingers, and Perrin took a deep breath.

He needed to wake up. He hovered at the edges of consciousness, as when he was close to sleep, but still partially aware. In that state, he felt as if he faced a forked pathway before him. One path led deeper into darkness. And one led… He couldn’t see, but he knew that it meant… It meant waking up.

Warmth from the hammer radiated up his arm. His mind gathered sharpness. Awaken.

That was what Slayer had done. He had… awakened… somehow…

Perrin’s life was trickling away. Not much time left. Half within death’s embrace, he gritted his teeth, drew in a deep breath and forced himself to wake.

The silence of the wolf dream shattered.

Perrin hit soft earth, and entered a place of shouts. Something about a battlefront, about preparing the lines…