“If you don’t sit down, you are going to be too tired to ride to So Habor even with Neald’s help,” Berelain said, sounding faintly amused. “Just watching you is exhausting me.”
He managed not to glare at her. In a dark blue silk riding dress, a wide golden necklace studded with firedrops tight around her neck and the narrow crown of Mayene holding a golden hawk in flight above her brows, the First of Mayene was seated atop her crimson cloak on one of the folding chairs with her hands folded around red gloves in her lap. She looked as composed as an Aes Sedai, and she smelled . . . patient. He did not understand why she had stopped smelling as if he were a fat lamb caught in brambles for her meal, but he almost felt grateful to her. It was good to have someone he could talk to about missing Faile. She listened, and smelled of sympathy.
“I want to be here if. . . whenGauland the Maidens bring in some prisoners.” The slip made him grimace as much as the delay. It was as if he doubted. Sooner or later they would capture some of the Shaido, yet apparently that was no easy matter. Taking prison?ers did no good unless they could be brought away, and the Shaido were only careless compared to other Aiel. Sulin had been patient, too, explaining it to him. It was getting so hard for him to be patient, though. “What’s keeping Arganda?” he growled.
As if the Ghealdanin’s name had summoned him at last, Arganda pushed through the entry flaps, his face like stone and his eyes sunken. He looked as though he slept as little as Perrin. The short man wore his silvery breastplate, but no helmet. He had not shaved yet this morning, and graying stubble grizzled his chin. Dangling from one gauntleted hand, a fat leather purse clinked as he set it on the table alongside two already there. “From the Queen’s strongbox,” he said sourly. He had said little the last ten days that was not sour. “Enough to cover our share and more. I had to break open the lock and put three men to guard the chest. It’s a temptation to the best of them, with the lock broken.”
“Good, good,” Perrin said, trying not to sound too impatient. He did not care whether Arganda had to set a hundred men guard?ing his queen’s strongbox. His own purse was the smallest of the three, and he had gleaned every bit of gold or silver he could find to make it up. Slinging his cloak around his shoulders, he picked up the purses and brushed past the man out into the gray morning.
To his disgust, the camp had taken a more permanent air, though it was not by design, and there was nothing he could do about it. Many of the Two Rivers men slept under tents now, pale brown patched canvas rather than striped red like his, but big enough for eight or ten men each, with their ill-assorted polearms stacked at the front, and the others had turned their temporary brush shelters into sturdy little huts of woven evergreen branches. The tents and huts made at best meandering rows, not at all like the rigid lines seen among the Ghealdanin and Mayeners, yet it still looked a little like a village, with paths and lanes through the snow trampled down to bare, frozen earth. A neat stone fire-ring surrounded each of the cookfires, where clusters of men stood cloaked and hooded against the cold, waiting for their breakfast.
It was what was in those black iron cookpots that had Perrin moving this morning. With so many men hunting, game was growing thin on the ground, and everything else was running out. They were down to searching for squirrels’ hoards of acorns to grind for stretching the oatmeal, and this late in the winter, what they found were old and dried out at best. The sour mixture filled the belly after a fashion, but you had to be hungry to get it down. Most of the faces Perrin could see were watching the cookpots eagerly. The last of the carts were rattling though a gap made in the ring of sharpened stakes around the camp, the Cairhienin drivers swathed to their ears and hunched on their seats like dark sacks of wool. Everything the carts had held was stacked in the center of the camp. Empty, they lurched in the ruts left by the carts ahead, a single file disappearing into the surrounding forest.
Perrin’s appearance with Berelain and Arganda at his heels caused a stir, although not among the hungry Two Rivers men. Oh, a few made cautious nods in his direction - one or two fools gave rough bows! - but most still tried not to look at him when Berelain was in the vicinity. Idiots. Stonebrained idiots! There were plenty of other people, though, gathered a little way from the red-striped tent, crowding into the lanes between the other tents. An unarmored Mayener soldier in a gray coat came running with Berelain’s white mare, bowing and bending to hold her stirrup. Annoura was already up on a sleek mare almost as dark as Bere?lain’s mount was pale. Thin beaded braids hanging down her chest from the cowl of her cloak, the Aes Sedai barely seemed to notice the woman she was supposed to advise. Back stiff, she peered fixedly toward the low Aiel tents, where nothing moved but the thin wavering lines of smoke rising from the smoke holes. One-eyed Gallenne, in his red helmet and breastplate and eyepatch, made up for the Taraboner sister’s inattention, though. As soon as Berelain appeared, he barked an order that stiffened fifty of the Winged Guards to statues, long, red-streamered steel-tipped lances upright at their sides, and when she mounted, Gallenne snapped another command that put them on their horses so smoothly they seemed to move as one.
Arganda directed a frown toward the Aiel tents, frowned at the Mayeners, then stalked over to where as many Ghealdanin lancers waited, in shining armor and conical green helmets, and spoke softly to the fellow who would be commanding them, a lean man named Kireyin who Perrin suspected was nobly born from the haughty gaze visible behind the face-bars of his silvered helmet. Arganda was short enough that Kireyin had to bend to listen to what he had to say, and the necessity frosted the taller man’s face even more. One of the men behind Kireyin was carrying a staff with a red banner bearing the three six-pointed Silver Stars of Ghealdan instead of a green-streamered lance, and one of the Winged Guards carried Mayene’s Golden Hawk on blue.
Aramwas there, too, though off to one side and not ready to ride. Wrapped in his putrid green cloak, sword hilt rising behind his shoulder, he shared his jealous scowls between the Mayeners and the Ghealdanin. When he saw Perrin, the man’s scowl turned sullen, and he hurried off, blundering through the Two Rivers men waiting for their breakfast. He did not pause to offer apologies when he bumped someone.Aramhad grown increasingly touchy, snapping and sneering at everyone but Perrin as the days passed and they sat and waited. Yesterday, he had almost come to blows with a pair of Ghealdanin over something none of them could quite recall once they were separated, except thatAramsaid the Ghealdanin had no respect and they said he had a bad mouth. That was why the former Tinker was staying behind this morning. Things were likely to be touchy enough in So Habor withoutAramstarting a fight when Perrin was not looking.
“Keep an eye onAram,” he said quietly when Dannil brought up his bay. “And keep a close eye on Arganda,” he added, stuffing the purses into his saddlebags and buckling the flaps down tight. The weight of Berelain’s contribution balanced his and Arganda’s together very nicely. Well, she had cause to be generous. Her men were as hungry as anyone else. “Arganda looks a man ready to do something stupid, to me.” Stayer frisked a little and tossed his head as Perrin took the reins, but the stallion settled quickly under a firm, gentle hand.
Dannil rubbed his tusk-like mustaches with a cold-reddened knuckle and eyed Arganda sideways, then exhaled heavily in a mist. “I’ll watch him, Lord Perrin,” he muttered, giving his cloak a hitch, “but no matter what you said about me being in charge, as soon as you’re out of sight, he won’t listen to a thing I say.”
Unfortunately, that was true. Perrin would rather have taken Arganda with him and left Gallenne here, but neither had been will?ing to accept that. The Ghealdanin did accept that men and horses would begin starving soon unless food and fodder were found some?where, but he could not make himself spend a day farther from his queen than he already was. In some ways, he seemed even more fran?tic than Perrin, or maybe just more ready to give in to it. Left to himself, Arganda would have been edging a little nearer the Shaido every day until he was right under their noses. Perrin was ready to die to free Faile. Arganda just seemed ready to die.
“Do what you can to keep him from doing anything stupid, Dannil.” After a moment, he added, “As long as it doesn’t come to blows.” There was only so far he could expect Dannil to restrain the fellow, after all. There were three Ghealdanin for every Two Rivers man, and Faile would never be freed if it came to them killing each other. Perrin very nearly rested his head on Stayer’s flank. Light, but he was tired, and he could not see any place ahead of him anywhere.
A slow clop of hooves announced the arrival of Masuri and Seonid, with their three Warders riding close behind wrapped in cloaks that made most of each man vanish, along with part of his horse. Both Aes Sedai wore shimmering silk, and a heavy gold necklace, layers of thick strands, showed under the edge of Masuri’s dark cloak. A small white jewel dangled onto Seonid’s forehead from a fine golden chain fastened in her hair. Annoura relaxed, set?tling more easily in her saddle. Back among the Aiel tents, the Wise Ones stood in a line watching, six tall women with their heads wrapped in dark shawls. The people of So Habor might be about as welcoming to Aiel as the people of Maiden would have been, but Perrin had not been sure the Wise Ones would let either sister come alone. They had been the last reason for waiting. The sun was a red
