“From here, we go afoot,” Elyas announced in a quiet voice that barely carried over the occasional stamp of a horse’s hoof. He had said the Shaido were careless and had no sentries, or almost none, but he spoke as if they could be within twenty paces. “A man on a horse stands out. The Shaido aren’t blind, just blind for Aiel, which means they see twice as sharp as any of you, so don’t go skylining yourselves when we reach the crest. And try not to make any more noise than you can help. They aren’t deaf, either. They’ll find our tracks, eventually - can’t do much about that in snow - but we can’t let them know we were here until after we’re gone.”
Already sour over being shorn of his armor and plumes, Arganda began to argue about Elyas giving orders. Not being a complete fool, he did it in a quiet voice that would not carry, but he had been a soldier since the age of fifteen, he had commanded soldiers fighting Whitecloaks, Altarans and Amadicians, and as he was fond of pointing out, he had fought in the Aiel War and lived through the Blood Snow, at Tar Valon. He knew about Aiel, and he did not need an unbarbered woodsman to tell him how to put his boots on. Perrin let it pass, since the man did his complaining in between telling off two men to hold the horses. He really was not a fool, just afraid for his queen. Gallenne left all of his men behind, muttering that lancers were worse than useless off their horses and would probably break their necks if he made them walk any dis?tance. He was no fool, either, but he did see the black side first. Elyas took the lead, and Perrin waited only long enough to transfer the thick brass-bound tube of his looking glass from Stepper’s sad?dlebags to his coat pocket before following.
The underbrush grew in clumps beneath the trees, which were mostly pine and fir, with clusters of others that were winter-gray and leafless, and the terrain, no steeper than the Sand Hills back home, if more rocky, presented no problems for Dannil and the other Two Rivers men, who ghosted up the slope with arrows nocked and eyes watchful, almost as silent as the mist of their breath.Aram, no stranger to the woods himself, stayed close to Perrin with his sword out. Once he started to chop a tangle of thick brown vines out of his way until Perrin stopped him with a hand on his arm, yet he made little more noise than Perrin, the faint crunch of boots in snow. It was no shock that Marline moved through the trees as if she had grown up in a forest instead of the Aiel Waste, where anything that could be called a tree was rare and snow unheard of, though it seemed that all of her necklaces and bracelets should have made some clatter as they swung, but Annoura climbed with almost as little effort, floundering a little with her skirts but deftly avoiding the sharp thorns of dead cat’s-claw and wait-a-minute vines. Aes Sedai usually found a way to surprise you. She managed to keep a wary eye on Grady, too, though the Asha’man appeared to be focused on putting one foot in front of the other. Sometimes he sighed heavily and paused for a minute, frowning toward the crest ahead, but somehow he never fell behind. Gallenne and Arganda were not young men, nor accustomed to walking where they could ride, and their breathing began to grow heavier as they ascended, sometimes pulling them?selves up from tree to tree, but they watched one another nearly as much as they did the ground, each unwilling to let the other outdo him. The four Ghealdanin lancers, on the other hand, slipped and slid, tripped over roots hidden beneath the snow, caught their scabbards on vines, and growled curses when they fell on rocks or were stabbed by thorns. Perrin began to consider sending them back to wait with the horses. That, or hitting them over the head and leaving them to be picked up when he returned.
Abruptly, two Aiel stepped out of the undergrowth in front of Elyas, dark veils hiding their faces to the eyes, white cloaks hang?ing down their backs and spears and bucklers in hand. They were Maidens of the Spear by their height, which made them no less dangerous than any otheralgai’d’nswai, and in an instant, nine longbows were drawn, broadhead points aimed at their hearts.
“You could get hurt that way, Tuandha,” Elyas muttered. “You should know better, Sulin.” Perrin motioned for the Two Rivers men to lower their bows, and forAramto lower his sword. He had caught their scents as soon as Elyas had, before they stepped into the open.
The Maidens exchanged startled looks, but they unveiled, let?ting the dark veils hang down their chests. “You see closely, Elyas Machera,” Sulin said. Wiry and leather-faced, with a scar across one cheek, she had sharp blue eyes that could pierce like awls, but they still looked surprised, now. Tuandha was taller and younger, and she might have been pretty before losing her right eye and gaining a thick scar than ran from her chin up under hersboufa. It pulled up one corner of her mouth in a half-smile, but that was the only smile she ever gave.
“Your coats are different,” Perrin said. Tuandha frowned down at her coat, all gray and green and brown, then at Sulin’s identical garment. “Your cloaks, too.” Elyaswas tired, to make that slip. “They haven’t started moving, have they?”
“No, Perrin Aybara,” Sulin said. “The Shaido seem prepared to stay in one place for a time. They made the people from the city leave and go north last night, those they would let leave.” She gave a small shake of her head, still perturbed by the Shaido forcing people to becomegai’shain who did not followji’e’toh. “Your friends Jondyn Barran and Get Ayliah and Hu Marwin have gone after them to see if they can learn anything. Our spear-sisters andGaulare making their way around the camp again. We waited here for Elyas Machera to return with you.” She seldom let emotion into her voice, and there was none there now, but she smelled of sad?ness. “Come, I will show you.”
The two Maidens turned up the slope, and he hurried after them, forgetting anyone else. A little short of the crest, they crouched, then went to hands and knees, and he copied them, crawling the last spans through the snow to peer past a tree over the top of the ridgeline. The forest ended there, fading into scat?tered brush and isolated saplings on the downslope. He was high enough to see for several leagues, across rolling ridges like long treeless hills to where a dark band of forest began again. He could see everything he wanted to see, and so much less than he needed.
He had tried to imagine the Shaido camp from Elyas’ descrip?tion, but the reality dwarfed his imaginings. A thousand paces below lay a mass of low Aiel tents and every other sort of tent, a mass of wagons and carts and people and horses. It spread for well over a mile in every direction from the gray stone walls of a city halfway to the next rise. He knew the sprawl must be the same on the other side. It was not one of the great cities, not like Caemlyn or Tar Valon, less than four hundred paces wide along the side he could see and narrower on the others, it seemed, but still a city with high walls and towers and what looked like a fortress at the northmost end. Yet the Shaido encampment swallowed it whole. Faile was somewhere in that great lake of people.
Fumbling his looking glass from his pocket, he remembered at the last instant to cup one hand for shade on the far end of the tube. The sun was a golden ball almost ahead of him, just shy of halfway to its noonday height. A stray reflection from the lens could ruin everything. Groups of people leapt up in the looking glass, their faces clear, at least to his eye. Long-haired women with dark shawls over their shoulders, draped in dozens of long necklaces, women with fewer necklaces milking goats, women wearing thecadin’sor and sometimes carrying spears and bucklers, women peeking from the deep cowls of heavy white robes as they scurried across snow already trampled halfway to mud. There were men and children, too, but his eye skipped past them hungrily, ignored them. Thou?sands upon thousands of women, just counting those in white.
“Too many,” Marline whispered, and he lowered the glass to glare at her. The others had joined the Maidens and him, all lying in a row in the snow along the ridgeline. The Two Rivers men were taking pains to keep their bowstrings up out of the snow without raising their bows above the ridgeline. Arganda and Gallenne were using their own looking glasses to study the camp below, and Grady was staring down the slope with his chin propped on his hands, every bit as intent as the two soldiers. Maybe he was using the Power in some way. Marline and Annoura were staring at the camp, too, the Aes Sedai licking her lips and the Wise One frown?ing. Perrin did not think Marline had intended to speak aloud.
“If you think I’ll walk away just because there are more Shaido than I expected,” he began heatedly, but she broke in, meeting his scowl with a level look.
“Too many Wise Ones, Perrin Aybara. Wherever I look, I can see a woman channeling. Just for a moment here, a moment there - Wise Ones do not channel all the time - but they are everywhere I look. Too many to be the Wise Ones of ten septs.”
He drew a deep breath. “How many do you think there are?”
“I think maybe all the Shaido Wise Ones are down there,” Mar?line replied, as calm as if she were talking about the price of barley. “All who can channel.”
Allof them? That made no sense! How could they all be together here, when the Shaido seemed to be scattered everywhere? At least, he had heard tales of what had to be Shaido raids all across Ghealdan and Amadicia, tales of raids here in Altara long before Faile was taken and rumors from even farther.Why would they all be together? If the Shaido intended to gather here, the whole clan. . . . No, he had to deal with what he knew for fact. That was bad enough. “How many?” he asked ag
