I’ll have to watch those Sharans, Mat thought. They’ll have generals who can reinstitute command.
For now, he needed to hit hard, hit powerfully. Push the Trollocs and Sharans off the Heights. Down below, the Trollocs filled the corridor between the bogs and the Heights, pressing hard the defenders at the riverbed. Elaynes death had been a lie. Her troops had been in disarray—they had lost more than a third of their soldiers—but just as they were about to be routed by the Trollocs, she rode into their midst and rallied them. Now they were miraculously holding their lines, despite being pushed back well into Shienaran territory. They could not resist much longer, though, with or without Elayne: more and more pikes on the front lines were being mobbed, soldiers were falling all across the field, and her cavalries and the Aiel were working furiously, with increasing difficulty, to contain the enemy. Light, if I can push the Shadow off these bloody Heights into those beasts below, they’ll fall all over each other!
"Lord Cauthon!" Tinna shouted nearby. She leveled a bloody spear from horseback, pointing to the south.
Light shone distantly, toward the River Erinin. Mat wiped his brow. Was that . . .
Gateways in the sky. Dozens of them, and through them poured to’raken in flight, carrying lanterns. A fiery flight of arrows launched at the Trollocs in the corridor; the to’raken, carrying archers, flew in formation over the ford and the corridor beyond.
Over the battle, Mat heard sounds that must have made the enemy’s blood run cold: hundreds, maybe thousands of animal horns blared out in the night their call to war; a thunderstorm of drums began to beat out a unified cadence that became louder and louder; and a rumble of footfalls made by an advancing army, man and animal alike, slowly approaching Polov Heights in the dark. No one could see them in the pre-dawn blackness, but everyone on the battlefield knew who they were.
Mat let out a whoop of joy. He could see the Seanchan movements playing out in his mind’s eye now. Half their army would march directly north from the Erinin, joining with Elayne’s harried army at the Mora to crush the Trollocs trying to force their way into Shienar. The other half would swing to the west around the bogs to the western side of the Heights, crushing the Trollocs in the corridor from behind.
Now the falling hail of arrows was accompanied by glowing lights popping into existence in the air—damane, making more light for their army to see by—a display that would have done the Illuminators proud! Indeed, the ground shook as the massive Seanchan army marched across the Field of Merrilor.
Thunder shattered the air off Mat’s right flank on the Heights—a deeper thunder. Talmanes and Aludra had mended the dragons and were firing directly from the cavern through gateways into the Sharan army.
The pieces were almost all in place. There was one more bit of business that needed tending to before the final toss of the dice.
Mat’s armies pressed forward.
Jur Grady fingered the letter from his wife, sent with Androl from the Black Tower. He couldn’t read it in this darkness, but that didn’t matter, so long as he could hold it. He’d memorized the words anyway.
He watched this canyon ten or so miles to the northeast along the River Mora, where Cauthon had positioned him. He was well out of sight of the battlefield at Merrilor.
He didn’t fight. Light, it was hard, but he didn’t fight. He watched, trying not to think of the poor people who had died trying to hold the river here. It was the perfect place for it—the Mora passed through a canyon here, where the Shadow could stop the river. And it had. Oh, the men Mat had sent had tried to fight the Dreadlords and the Sharans. What a fool’s task that had been! Grady’s anger smoldered at Cauthon. Everyone claimed that he was a good general. Then he went and did this.
Well, if he was a genius, why had he had sent five hundred simple folk from a mountain village in Murandy to hold this river? Yes, Cauthon had also sent about a hundred soldiers from the Band, but that wasn’t nearly enough. They’d died after holding the river for a few hours. There were hundreds upon hundreds of Trollocs and several Dreadlords at the river canyon!
Well, those folk had been slaughtered, to a man. Light! There had been children in that group. The townsfolk and the few soldiers had fought well, defending the canyon for far longer than Grady would have thought possible, but then they’d fallen. And he’d been ordered not to help them.
Well, now Grady waited in the darkness atop the canyon walls, hiding among a cluster of rocks. Distant from him, perhaps a hundred paces, Trollocs moved by torchlight—the Dreadlords needed that to see. They, too, were atop the canyon walls, which gave them the height and position to look down on the river below—which had become a lake. The three Dreadlords had broken up large chunks of the canyon walls and created the barrier of rock that dammed the river.
That had dried out the Mora at Merrilor and let the Trollocs cross the river with ease. Grady could open that dam in a moment—a strike with the One Power would open it up and release the water from the canyon. So far, he hadn’t dared. Cauthon had ordered him not to attack, but beyond that, he’d never be able to defeat three strong Dreadlords on his own. They’d kill him and dam the river again.
He caressed his wife’s letter, then prepared himself. Cauthon had ordered him to make a gateway at dawn to that same village. Doing so would reveal Grady. He didn’t know the purpose of the order.
The basin below was filled with water, covering the bodies of the fallen.
I guess now will do as well as any time, Grady thought, taking a deep breath. Dawn should be almost here, though the cloud cover kept the land dark.
He’d follow his orders. Light burn him, but he would. But if Cauthon survived the battle downriver, he and Grady would have words. Stern ones. A man like Cauthon, born of ordinary folk, should have known better than to throw away lives.
He took another deep breath, then began to weave a gateway. He opened it at that village the people had come from yesterday. He didn’t know why he was to do this; the village had been depopulated to make up the group that had fought earlier. He doubted anybody remained. What had Mat called it? Hinderstap?
People roared through the gateway, yelling, holding aloft cleavers, pitchforks, rusty swords. With them came more soldiers of the Band, like the hundred who had fought here before. Except . . .
Except by the light of the Dreadlords’ fires, the faces of those soldiers were the same as the ones who had fought here before .
