The sound of hooves crunching in snow announced riders com?ing, and he hurriedly told Elyas that the Darkhounds had circled the camp, that they would be carrying word of him to whomever they reported to.
“I wouldn’t worry overmuch, boy,” the older man replied, watching warily for sight of the oncoming horses. Moving away from the stone, he began to stretch, working muscles over-long in the saddle. Elyas was too careful to be caught studying what would be swallowed in shadows to other eyes. “Sounds like they’re hunt?ing something more important than you. They’ll stay on that till they find it if it takes all year. Don’t worry. We’ll get your wife out before those Darkhounds report you were here. Not saying it’ll be easy, but we’ll do it.” There was determination in his voice, and in his scent, but not much hope. Almost none at all, in fact.
Fighting despair, refusing to let it rise again, Perrin resumed walking Stepper as Berelain and her bodyguard appeared through the trees, with Marline astride behind Annoura. As soon as the Aes Sedai drew rein, the twilight-eyed Wise One slid to the ground, shaking down her thick skirts to cover her dark stockings. Another woman might have appeared flustered over having her legs exposed, but not Marline. She was merely straightening her clothes. Annoura was the one who looked upset, a sour-faced disgruntlement that made her nose seem more like a beak. She kept silent, but her mouth was set to bite. She must have been certain her offer to negotiate with the Shaido would be accepted, especially with Berelain supporting and Marline seemingly neutral at worst. Grays were negotiators and mediators, adjudicators and treaty makers. That might have been her motivation. What else could it have been? A problem that he had to set aside while keeping it in mind. He had to take into account anything that might interfere with freeing Faile, but the problem he had to solve lay forty miles to the northeast.
While the Winged Guards formed their protective circle among the towering trees around the Traveling ground, Berelain brought her bay alongside Stepper and paced him, trying to engage Perrin in talk, to entice him with the rest of the woodhen. She smelled uncertain, doubtful of his decision. Maybe she hoped to talk him into attempting the ransom. He kept Stepper moving and refused to listen. To make that attempt was to gamble every?thing on one toss of the dice. He could not gamble with Faile as the stake. Methodical as working at a forge, that was the way. Light, but he was tired. He folded himself in tighter around his anger, embracing the heat for energy. Gallenne and Arganda arrived shortly after Berelain, with a double column of Ghealdanin lancers in burnished breastplates and bright conical helmets who interspersed themselves among the Mayeners between the trees. A trace of irritation entering her scent, Berelain left Perrin and rode to Gallenne. The pair of them sat their horses knee-to-knee, the one-eyed man bending his head to listen to what Berelain had to say. Her voice was low, but Perrin knew their subject, at least in part. Now and then one of them glanced at him as he walked Stepper back and forth, back and forth. Arganda planted his roan in one spot and stared south through the trees toward the camp, still as a statue yet radiating impatience as a fire radiated heat. He was the picture of a soldier, with his plumes and his sword and his silvered armor, his face as hard as stone, but he smelled on the brink of panic. Perrin wondered how he himself smelled. You could never catch your own scent unless you were in a closed space. He did not think he smelled of panic, just fear and anger. All would be well once he had Faile back. All would be well, then. Back and forth, back and forth.
At lastAramappeared, with a yawning Jur Grady on a dark bay gelding, dark enough that the white stripe on its nose made it seem almost a black. Dannil and a dozen Two Rivers men, spears and halberds abandoned for the moment in favor of their long?bows, rode close behind, but not too close. A stocky fellow with a weathered face already beginning to show creases, though he was short of his middle years yet, Grady looked like a sleepy farmer despite of the long-hiked sword at his waist and his black coat with the silver sword pin on the high collar, but he had left the farm behind forever, and Dannil and the others always gave him room. They gave Perrin room, too, hanging back and peering at the ground, sometimes darting quick, embarrassed looks at him or Berelain. It did not matter. All would be well.
Aramtried to lead Grady to Perrin, but the Asha’man knew why he had been summoned. With a sigh, he climbed down beside Elyas, who squatted in a patch of sunlight to mark a map in the snow with his finger and speak of distance and direction, describ?ing the place he wanted to go in detail, a clearing on a slope that faced almost south, with the ridge above notched in three places.Distance and direction were enough, if the distance and direction were precise, but the better the picture in an Asha’man’s mind, the closer he could come to an exact spot.
“There’s no margin for error here, boy.” Elyas’s eyes seemed to brighten with intensity. Whatever others thought of Asha’man, they never intimidated him. “There’s lots of ridges in that country, and the main camp is only a mile or so the other side of this one. There’ll be sentries, little parties that camp in a different place every night, maybe less than two miles the other way. You put us out off by much, and we’ll be seen for sure.”
Grady met that stare, unblinking. Then he nodded and scrubbed stubby ringers through his hair, drawing a deep breath. He looked as weary as Elyas. As bone-tired as Perrin felt. Making gateways, holding them open long enough for thousands of people and horses to pass through, was wearing work.
“Are you rested enough?” Perrin asked him. Tired men made mistakes, and mistakes with the One Power could be deadly. “Should I send for Neald?”
Grady stared up at him blearily, then shook his head. “Pager’s no more rested than me. Less, maybe. I’m stronger than he is, a bit. Better if I do it.” He turned to face northeast, and with no more warning, a vertical slash of silver-blue appeared beside the track-marked stone. Annoura jerked her mare out of the way with a loud gasp as the line of light widened into an opening, a hole in the air that showed a sunlit clearing on steep ground among trees much smaller than those around Perrin and the others. The already splin?tered pine shivered as it lost another thin slice, groaned, and col?lapsed the rest of the way with a snow-muffled crash that made the horses snort and dance. Annoura glared at the Asha’man, her face growing dark, but Grady just blinked and said, “Does that look like the right place?” Elyas adjusted his hat before nodding.
That nod was all Perrin waited for. He ducked his head and rode Stepper through into snow that was over the dun’s fetlocks. It was a small clearing, but the sky full of white clouds overhead made it seem vastly open after the forest behind. The light was almost blinding compared to the forest, though the sun was still hidden by the tree-covered ridge above. The Shaido camp lay on the other side of that ridge. He stared toward the height yearningly. It was all he could do to stay where he was rather than race ahead to finally see where Faile was. He made himself turn Stepper to face the gateway as Marline came out.
Still studying him, hardly taking her eyes away long enough to place her feet in the snow without tripping, she moved to one side to let Aram and the Two Rivers men ride through. Accustomed to Traveling if not to Asha’man by now, they barely bent their heads enough to clear the top of the opening, and only the tallest did even that. It struck Perrin that the gateway was larger than the first one of Grady’s make that he had passed through. He had had to dismount, then. It was a vague thought, no more important than a fly buzzing. Aram rode straight to Perrin, tight-faced and smelling impatient and eager to be going on, and once Dannil and the oth?ers were out of the way, climbing down and calmly fitting arrows to bows while they watched the surrounding trees, Gallenne appeared, peering grimly at the trees around them as though he expected an enemy to come dashing out, followed by half a dozen Mayeners who had to lower their red-streamered lances to crowd through after him.
A long pause passed with the gateway empty, but just when Perrin had decided to go back and see what was holding Elyas up, the bearded man led his horse out, with Arganda and six Ghealdanin riding at his heels, discontent carved on their faces. Their shining helmets and breastplates were nowhere to be seen, and they scowled as though they had been made to leave off their breeches.
Perrin nodded to himself. Of course. The Shaido camp was on the other side of this ridge, and so was the sun. That gleaming armor would have been like mirrors. He should have thought of that. He was still letting fear goad him into impatience and cloud his thinking. He had to be clearheaded, now more than ever. The detail he missed now could kill him and leave Faile in Shaido hands. It was easier to say that he had to let go of fear than to do it, though. How could he not be afraid for Faile? It had to be man?aged, but how?
To his surprise, Annoura rode through the gateway just ahead of Grady, who was leading his dark bay. Just as every time he had seen her pass through a gateway, she lay as flat on her mare as her saddle’s high pommel would allow, grimacing at the opening that had been made with the tainted male half of the Power, and as soon as she was clear of it, she urged her horse as far up the slope as she could without entering the trees. Grady let the gateway snap shut, leaving the purple afterimage of a vertical bar in Perrin’s eyes, and Annoura flinched and looked away, glaring at Marline, at Perrin. If she had been anyone other than an Aes Sedai, he would have said she was simmering in a sullen fury. Berelain must have told her to come, but it was not Berelain she blamed f
