Perrin nodded. The little man bowed yet again, backing away, then went skittering toward the camp, his cloak fluttering behind him as he dodged through the sharpened stakes like a sparrow hop?ping across the snow. He was a strange fellow.
“I don’t trust him,”Arammuttered, staring after Balwer. “And I don’t trust Selande and that lot. They’ll throw in with the Aes Sedai, you mark my words.”
“You have to trust somebody,” Perrin said roughly. The ques?tion was, who? Swinging into Stepper’s saddle, he booted the dun in the ribs. A hammer was useless lying at rest.
CHAPTER 6
The Scent of a Dream
The cold air seemed clean and fresh in Perrin’s nose as he galloped into the forest, the breezes full of the crispness of the snow that fountained in sprays beneath Stepper’s hooves. Out here, he could forget old friends who were willing to believe the worst on rumor. He could try to forget Masema, and the Aes Sedai, and the Wise Ones. The Shaido were welded to the inside of his skull, however, an iron puzzle that would not yield no matter how he twisted. He wanted to wrench it apart, but that never worked with a blacksmith’s puzzle.
After one short burst of speed, he slowed the dun to a walk, feeling a touch of guilt. The darkness beneath the forest canopy was deep, and stone outcrops between the tall trees warned of more hidden beneath the snow, a hundred places that could break a run?ning horse’s leg, and that without counting gopher holes and fox dens and badger sets. There was no need to take the risk. A gallop would not free Faile an hour sooner, and no horse could maintain that pace for long in any case. The snow here was knee-deep in places where it had drifted, and deep enough elsewhere. He rode northeast, though. The scouts would be coming from the north?east, with news of Faile. News of the Shaido, at least, a location. Hehad hoped for that so often, prayed for it, but today, he knew it would come. Yet knowing only increased his anxiety. Finding them was only the first part of solving this puzzle. Anger made his mind flash from one thing to another, yet no matter what Balwer said, Perrin knew he was methodical at best. He did not do well trying to think quickly, and lacking cleverness, methodical was going to have to do. Somehow.
Aram caught up to him, running his gray hard, and slowed to ride just a little behind and to one side like a heeling hound. Per?rin let him.Aramnever smelled comfortable when Perrin made him ride alongside. The onetime Tinker did not speak, but eddies in the icy air brought his scent, a melange of anger and suspicion and disgruntlement. He sat his saddle as tense as an over-wound clockspring and watched the forest around them grimly, as though he expected Shaido to leap out from behind the nearest tree.
In truth, almost anything could have hidden from most men in these woods. Where the sky overhead could be seen through the canopy of branches, it held a definite tinge of dark grayness, but for the moment that cast the forest in shadows murkier than night, and the trees themselves were massive columns of darkness. Yet even the shift of a black-winged jackdaw on a snow-mounded branch, its feathers fluffed against the cold, caught Perrin’s eyes, and a hunting pine martin, a deeper black than the darkness, cau?tiously raising its head on another. He caught the scent of both, too. A faint whiff of man scent came from up in a massive oak with dark spreading limbs as thick as a pony. The Ghealdanin and Mayeners had their mounted patrols circling the camp a few miles out, but he preferred to rely on Two Rivers men closer in. He did not have enough men to ring the camp completely, yet they were used to forests, and to hunting animals that might hunt them in turn, used to noticing movement that would escape a man think?ing in terms of soldiers and war. Ridgecats down from the mountains after sheep could hide in plain sight, and bear and wild boar were known to double back on their pursuers and lie in ambush. From branches thirty and forty feet above the ground, the men could see anything that moved below in time to warn the camp, and with their longbows, they could exact a heavy price from any?one who tried to force a way past them. Yet the presence of the guard touched his mind as lightly as the presence of the jackdaw. He was focused ahead through the trees and the shadows, intent on picking out the first sign of the scouts returning.
Abruptly Stepper tossed his head and snorted in a spew of mist, eyes rolling in fear as he stopped dead, andAram’s gray squealed and shied. Perrin leaned forward to pat the trembling stallion’s neck, but his hand froze as he caught a trace of scent, a smell of burned sulphur faint in the air, that made the hair on the back of his neck try to stand. Almost burnt sulphur; that was only a pale imitation of this smell. It had a reek of. . . wrongness, of some?thing that did not belong in this world. The scent was not new - you could not ever have called that stink “fresh” - but not old, either. An hour, perhaps less. Maybe about the time he had wak?ened. About the time he had dreamed of this scent.
“What is it, Lord Perrin?”Aramwas having difficulty control?ling his gray, which danced in circles fighting the reins and want?ing to run in any direction so long as it was away, but even while sawing at his reins he had his wolfhead-pommeled sword out. He practiced with it daily, for hours on end when he could, and those who knew about such things said he was good. “You may be able to make out a black thread from a white in this, but it isn’t day yet to me. I can’t see anything well enough to matter.”
“Put that away,” Perrin told him. “It isn’t needed. Swords wouldn’t do any good, anyway.” He had to coax his trembling mount to move forward, but he followed the rank smell, scanning the snow-covered ground ahead. He knew that smell, and not just from the dream.
It only took a little while to find what he was looking for, and Stepper gave a grateful whicker when Perrin reined him in well short of a slab-like crest of gray stone, two paces wide, that jutted up to his right. The snow all around was smooth and unmarked, but dog tracks covered the tilted span of stone, as though a pack had scrambled over it as they ran. Dimness and shadows or no, they were plain to Perrin’s eyes. Footprints larger than the palm of his hand, pressed into the stone as though it had been mud. He patted Stepper’s neck again. No wonder the animal was frightened.
“Go back to the camp and findDannil,Aram. Tell him I said to let everyone know there were Darkhounds here, maybe an hourago. And put your sword away. You wouldn’t want to try killing a Darkhound with a sword, believe me.”
“Darkhounds?”Aramexclaimed, peering around into the murky shadows between the trees. There was an anxious fear in his scent, now. Most men would have laughed about travelers’ tales or stories for children. Tinkers roamed the countryside, and knew what could found in the wilds.Aramsheathed the sword on his back with obvious reluctance, but his right hand remained raised, half-reaching for the hilt. “How do you kill a Darkhound? Can they be killed?” Then again, maybe he did not have much good sense at that.
“Just be glad you don’t have to try,Aram. Now go do like I told you. Everyone needs to keep a sharp lookout in case they come back. Not much chance of that, I’d say, but better safe.” Perrin remembered facing a pack of them once, and killing one. He thought he had killed one, after hitting it with three good broad-head arrows. Shadowspawn did not die easily. Moiraine had had to finish that pack, with balefire. “Make sure the Aes Sedai and Wise Ones learn of this, and the Asha’man.” Small chance any of them knew how to make balefire - the women might not admit know?ing a forbidden weave if they did, and maybe not the men either - but maybe they knew something else that could work.
Aramwas reluctant to leave Perrin alone until Perrin snapped at him, and then he turned back toward the camp trailing smells of umbrage and hurt, as if two men would have been a whit safer than one. As soon as the other man was out of sight, Perrin reined Step?per southward, the direction the Darkhounds had been heading. He did not want company for this, evenAram’s. Just because peo?ple sometimes noted his sharp eyesight was no reason to flaunt it, or his sense of smell. There were already reasons enough to shun him without adding more.
It might have been chance that the creatures had passed so near his camp, but the last few years had made him uneasy with coinci?dences. All too often, they were not coincidence at all, not the way other men counted such things. If this was another bit of hista’veren tugging at the Pattern, it was a bit he could have done with?out. The thing seemed to have more disadvantages than advantages even when it appeared to be working in your favor. The chance that favored you one minute could turn on you in the next. And there was always another possibility. Beingta’veren made you stand out in the Pattern, and some of the Forsaken could use that to find you at times, or so he had been told. Maybe some Shadowspawn could, too.
The trail he followed was surely near an hour old, but Perrin felt a tightness between his shoulder blades, a prickling on his scalp. The sky was still a deep dark gray where it showed, even to his eyes. The sun had not yet crested the horizon. Just before sun?rise was one of the worst times to meet the Wild Hunt, when dark?ness was changing to light but the light had not taken hold. At least there was no crossroads nearby, no graveyard, but the only hearthstones to touch lay back in Brytan, and he was not certain how much safety those hovels held. In his mind, he marked out the location of a nearby stream, where the camp got its water by chop?ping through the ice. It was no more than ten or twelve paces wide and only knee-deep, but putting running water between you and Darkhounds would stop them supposedly. But then, so would fac?ing them, supposedly, and he had seen the results of that. His nose tested the breezes, searching for that old scent. And for any hint of a newer. Coming on those things unaware would
