He swung into Stepper’s saddle, shadowed by Aram with the gray, and sat facing south, into the wagon circle. At least half again as tall as even the tallest of the Aiel, Loial was just stepping carefully over crossed wagon tongues. With the size of him, he did look as though he might break one of the heavy wooden shafts with a heedless step. As usual, the Ogier had a book in his hand, a thick finger marking his place, and the capacious pockets of his long coat bulged with more. He had spent the morning in a tiny clump of trees he called restful and shady, but whatever the shade among those trees, the heat was affecting him, too. He looked tired, and his coat was undone, his shirt unlaced, and his boots rolled down below his knees. Or maybe it was more than the heat. Just inside the wagons Loial paused, peering at the Aes Sedai and the Asha’man, and his tufted ears quivered uneasily. Eyes big as teacups rolled toward the Wise Ones, and his ears vibrated again. Ogier were sensitive to the mood of a place.
When he saw Perrin, Loial came striding across the camp. Sitting his saddle, Perrin was two or three hands shorter than Loial standing. “Perrin,” Loial whispered, “this is all wrong. It isn’t right, and it is dangerous besides.” For an Ogier it was a whisper. He sounded like a bumblebee the size of a mastiff. Some of the Aes Sedai turned their heads.
“Could you speak a little louder?” Perrin said almost under his breath. “I think somebody in Andor didn’t hear. In the west of Andor.”
Loial looked startled, then grimaced, long eyebrows brushing his cheeks. “I do know how to whisper, you know.” This time it was unlikely anyone could hear clearly more than three paces away or so. “What are we going to do, Perrin? It is wrong holding Ae
s Sedai against their will, wrong and wrongheaded, too. I have said that before, and I will again. And that isn’t even the worst. The feel here . . . One spark, and this place will erupt like a wagonload of fireworks. Does Rand know about this?”
“I don’t know,” Perrin said to both questions, and after a moment the Ogier nodded reluctantly.
“Someone has to know, Perrin. Someone has to do something.” Loial looked north, over the wagons behind Perrin, and Perrin knew there was no putting it off longer.
Unwillingly he turned Stepper. He would rather have worried over Aes Sedai and Asha’man and Wise Ones till his hair fell out, but what had to be done, had to be done. Think of the good on High Chasaline.
Chapter 2
The Butcher’s Yard
* * *
At first Perrin did not look downslope toward where he would ride, where he should have gone with Rand this morning. Instead he sat his saddle at the edge of the wagons and sent his eyes anywhere else, though the view everywhere made him want to sick up. It was like being hit in the belly with a hammer.
Hammerstroke. Nineteen fresh graves atop a squat hill to the east; nineteen Two Rivers men who would never see home again. A blacksmith seldom had to see people die because of his decisions. At least the Two Rivers men had obeyed his orders. There would have been more graves, otherwise. Hammerstroke. Rectangles of newly turned earth blanketed the next slope over from that, as well, near to a hundred Mayeners, and more Cairhienin, who had come to Dumai’s Wells to die. Never mind causes or reasons; they had followed Perrin Aybara. Hammerstroke. The ridge-face to the west seemed solid graves, maybe a thousand or more. A thousand Aiel, buried standing upright, to face each sunrise. A thousand. Some were Maidens. The men tied his stomach into knots; the women made him want to sit down and cry. He tried telling himself that they all had chosen to be here, that they had had to be here. Both things were true, but he had given the orders, and that made the responsibility for those graves his. Not Rand’s, not the Aes Sedai’s; his.
The living Aiel had only stopped singing over their dead a short while ago, haunting songs, sung in parts, that lingered in the mind.
Life is a dream — that knows no shade.
Life is a dream — of pain and woe.
A dream from which — we pray to wake.
A dream from which — we wake and go.
Who would sleep — when the new dawn waits?
Who would sleep — when the sweet winds blow?
A dream must end — when the new day comes.
This dream from which — we wake and go.
They appeared to find comfort in those songs. He wished he could, too, but as far as he could see, the Aiel truly did not seem to care whether they lived or died, and that was mad. Any sane man wanted to live. Any sane man would run as far as he could from a battle, run as hard as he could.
Stepper tossed his head, nostrils flaring at the smells from below, and Perrin patted the dun’s neck. Aram was grinning as he looked at what Perrin tried to block out. Loial’s face had so little expression it might have been carved from wood. His lips moved slightly, and Perrin thought he heard, “Light, let me never see the like again.” Drawing a deep breath, he made his eyes follow theirs, to Dumai’s Wells.
In some ways it was not as bad as the graves — he had known some of those people since he was a child — but it all crashed down on him at once anyway, like the scent in his nose made solid and smashing him between the eyes. The memories he wanted to forget came rushing back. Dumai’s Wells had been a killing ground, a dying ground, but now it was worse. Less than a mile away, the charred remains of wagons stood around a small copse of trees nearly hiding the low stone copings of the wells. And surrounding that . . .
A seething sea of black, vultures and ravens and crows in tens of thousands, swirling up in waves and settling again, concealing the broken earth. For which Perrin was more than grateful. The Asha’man’s methods had been brutal, destroying flesh and ground with equal impartiality. Too many Shaido had died to bury in less than days, even had anyone cared to bury them, so the vultures gorged, and the ravens, and the crows. The dead wolves were down there, too; he had wanted to bury them, but that was not the wolves’ way. Three Aes Sedai corpses had been found, their channeling unable to save them from spears and arrows in the madness of battle, and half a dozen dead Warders, too. They were buried in the clearing near the wells.
The birds were not alone with the dead. Far from it. Black-feathered waves rose around Lord Dobraine Taborwin and over two hundred of his mounted Cairhienin armsmen, and Lord Lieutenant Havien Nurelle with all that remained of his Mayeners aside from the guards on the Warders. Con with two white diamonds on blue picked out the Cairhienin officers, all but Dobraine himself, and the Mayeners’ red armor and red-streamered lances made a brave show amid the carnage, but Dobraine was not the only one who held a cloth to his nose. Here and there a man leaned from the saddle trying to empty a stomach already emptied earlier. Mazrim Taim, almost as tall as Rand, was afoot in his black coat with the blue-and-gold Dragons climbing the sleeves, and maybe a hundred more of the Asha’man. Some of them heaved up their bellies, too. There were Maidens by the score, more siswai’aman than Cairhienin and Mayeners and Asha’man combined, and several dozen Wise Ones to boot. All supposedly in case the Shaido returned, or perhaps in case some of the dead were only shamming, though Perrin thought anyone who pretended at being a corpse here would soon go insane. All centered around Rand.
Perrin should have been down there with the Two Rivers men. Rand had asked for them, spoken about trusting men from home, but Perrin had made no promises. He’ll have to settle for me, and late, he thought. In a little bit, when he managed to steel himself to the butcher’s yard below. Only, butcher knives did not mow down people, and they were tidier than axes, tidier than vultures.
The black-coated Asha’man faded into the sea of birds, death swallowed by death, and ravens and crows surging up hid the others, but Rand stood out in the tattered white shirt he had been wearing when rescue came. Though perhaps he hardly needed deliverance by that time. The sight of Min, close beside Rand in pale red coat and snug breeches, made Perrin grimace. That was no place for her, or anyone, but she stayed closer to Rand since the rescue than even Taim did. Somehow Rand had managed to free both himself and her well before Perrin broke through, or even the Asha’man, and Perrin suspected she saw Rand’s presence as the only real safety.
Sometimes as he strode across that charnel ground, Rand patted Min’s arm or bent his head as if speaking to her, but not with his main attention. Dark clouds of birds billowed around them, the smaller darting away to feed elsewhere, the vultures giving ground reluctantly, some refusing to take wing, extending featherless necks and squawking defiantly as they waddled back. Now and then Rand stopped, bending over a corpse. Sometimes fire darted from his hands to strike down vultures that did not give way. Every time, Nandera, who led the Maidens, or Sulin, her second, argued with him. Sometimes Wise Ones did, too, from the way they tugged at the body’s coat as if demonstrating something. And Rand would nod and move on. Not without backward glances, though. And only until another body caught his attention.