The street in front of the inn was as crowded as inside, with people who could not find a place in the common room peering in through the windows, and twice as many huddling around the doors to listen to Orban’s tale. No one glanced at Perrin twice, though his passage brought muttered complaints from those jostled a little further from the door.
Everyone who was out in the night must have been at the inn, for he saw no one as he walked to the square. Sometimes the shadow of a person moved across a lighted window, but that was all. He had the feel of being watched, though, and looked around uneasily. Nothing but night-cloaked streets dotted with glowing windows. Around the square, most of the windows were dark except a few on upper floors.
The gibbet stood as he remembered, the man—the Aiel—still in the cage, hanging higher than he could reach. The Aiel seemed to be awake—at least his head was up—but he never looked down at Perrin. The stones the children had been throwing were scattered beneath the cage.
The cage hung from a thick rope tied to a ring on one of the upper bars and running through a heavy pulley on the crosspiece down to a pair of stubs, waist-high from the bottom of the upright on either side. The excess rope lay in a careless tangle of coils at the foot of the gibbet.
Perrin looked around again, searching the dark square. He still had the feel of being watched, but he still saw nothing. He listened, and heard nothing. He smelled chimney smoke and cooking from the houses, and man-sweat and old blood from the man in the cage. There was no fear scent from him.
His weight, and then there’s the cage, he thought as he moved closer to the gibbet. He did not know when he had decided to do this, or even if he really had decided, but he knew he was going to do it.
Hooking a leg around the heavy upright, he heaved on the rope, hoisting the cage enough to gain a little slack. The way the rope jerked told him the man in the cage had finally moved, but he was in too much of a hurry to stop and tell him what he was doing. The slack let him unwind the rope from around the stubs. Still bracing himself with his leg around the upright, he quickly lowered the cage hand over hand to the paving blocks.
The Aiel was looking at him now, studying him silently. Perrin said nothing. When he got a good look at the cage, his mouth tightened. If a thing was made, even a thing like this, it should be made well. The entire front of the cage was a door, on rude hinges made by a hasty hand, held by a good iron lock on a chain as badly wrought as the cage. He fumbled the chain around until he found the worst link, then jammed the thick spike on his axe through it. A sharp twist of his wrist forced the link open. In seconds he separated the chain, rattled it free, and swung open the front of the cage.
The Aiel sat there, knees yet under his chin, staring at him.
“Well?” Perrin whispered hoarsely. “I opened it, but I’m not going to bloody carry you.” He looked hastily around the night-dark square. Still nothing moved, but he still had the feel of eyes watching.
“You are strong, wetlander.” The Aiel did not move beyond working his shoulders. “It took three men to hoist me up there. And now you bring me down. Why?”
“I don’t like seeing people in cages,” Perrin whispered. He wanted to go. The cage was open, and those eyes were watching. But the Aiel was not moving. If you do a thing, do it right. “Will you get out of there before somebody comes?”
The Aiel grasped the frontmost overhead bar of the cage, heaved himself out and to his feet in one motion, then half hung there, supporting himself with his grip on the bar. He would have been nearly a head taller than Per
rin, standing straight. He glanced at Perrin’s eyes—Perrin knew how they must shine, burnished gold in the moonlight—but he did not mention them. “I have been in there since yesterday, wetlander.” He sounded like Lan. Not that their voices or accents were anything alike, but the Aiel had that same unruffled coolness, that same calm sureness. “It will take a moment for my legs to work. I am Gaul, of the Imran sept of the Shaarad Aiel, wetlander. I am Shae’en M’taal, a Stone Dog. My water is yours.”
“Well, I am Perrin Aybara. Of the Two Rivers. I’m a blacksmith.” The man was out of the cage; he could go now. Only, if anyone came along before Gaul could walk, he would be right back into the cage unless they killed him, and either way would waste Perrin’s work. “If I had thought, I’d have brought a waterbottle, or a skin. Why do you call me ‘wetlander’?”
Gaul gestured toward the river; even Perrin’s eyes could not be sure in the moonlight, but he thought the Aiel looked uneasy for the first time. “Three days ago, I watched a girl sporting in a huge pool of water. It must have been twenty paces across. She . . . pulled herself out into it.” He made an awkward swimming gesture with one hand. “A brave girl. Crossing these . . . rivers . . . has nearly unmanned me. I never thought there could be such a thing as too much water, but I never thought there was so much water in the world as you wetlanders have.”
Perrin shook his head. He knew the Aiel Waste held little water—it was one of the few things he knew about the Waste or the Aiel—but he had not thought it could be scarce enough to cause this reaction. “You’re a long way from home, Gaul. Why are you here?”
“We search,” Gaul said slowly. “We look for He Who Comes With the Dawn.”
Perrin had heard that name before, under circumstances that made him sure who it meant. Light, it always comes back to Rand. I am tied to him like a mean horse for shoeing. “You are looking in the wrong direction, Gaul. I’m looking for him, too, and he is on his way to Tear.”
“Tear?” The Aiel sounded surprised. “Why . . . ? But it must be. Prophecy says when the Stone of Tear falls, we will leave the Three-fold Land at last.” That was the Aiel name for the Waste. “It says we will be changed, and find again what was ours, and was lost.”
“That may be. I don’t know your prophecies, Gaul. Are you about ready to leave? Somebody could come any minute.”
“It is too late to run,” Gaul said, and a deep voice shouted, “The savage is lose!” Ten or a dozen white-cloaked men came running across the square, drawing swords, their conical helmets shining in the moonlight. Children of the Light.
As if he had all the time in the world, Gaul calmly lifted a dark cloth from his shoulders and wrapped it around his head, finishing with a thick black veil that hid his face except for his eyes. “Do you like to dance, Perrin Aybara?” he asked. With that, he darted away from the cage. Straight at the oncoming Whitecloaks.
For an instant they were caught by surprise, but an instant was apparently all the Aiel needed. He kicked the sword out of the grip of the first to reach him, then his stiffened hand struck like a dagger at the Whitecloak’s throat, and he slid around the soldier as he fell. The next man’s arm made a loud snap as Gaul broke it. He pushed that man under the feet of a third, and kicked a fourth in the face. It was like a dance, from one to the next without stopping or slowing, though the tripped fellow was climbing back to his feet, and the one with the broken arm had shifted his sword. Gaul danced on in the midst of them.
Perrin had only an amazed moment himself, for not all the Whitecloaks had put their attentions on the Aiel. Barely in time, he gripped the axe haft with both hands to block a sword thrust, swung . . . and wanted to cry out as the half-moon blade tore the man’s throat. But he had no time for crying out, none for regrets; more Whitecloaks followed before the first fell. He hated the gaping wounds the axe made, hated the way it chopped through mail to rend flesh beneath, split helmet and skull with almost equal ease. He hated it all. But he did not want to die.
Time seemed to compress and stretch out, both at once. His body felt as if he fought for hours, and breath rasped raw in his throat. Men seemed to move as though floating through jelly. They seemed to leap in an instant from where they started to where they fell. Sweat rolled down his face, yet he felt as cold as quenching water. He fought for his life, and he could not have said whether it lasted seconds or all night.
When he finally stood, panting and nearly stunned, looking at a dozen white-cloaked men lying on the paving blocks of the square, the moon appeared not to have moved at all. Some of the men groaned; others lay silent and still. Gaul stood among them, still veiled, still empty-handed. Most of the men down were his work. Perrin wished they all were, and felt ashamed. The smell of blood and death was sharp and bitter.
“You do not dance the spears badly, Perrin Aybara.”
Head spinning, Perrin muttered, “I don’t see how twelve men fought twenty of you and won, even if two of them are Hunters.”
“Is that what they say?” Gaul laughed softly. “Sarien and I were careless, being so long in these soft lands, and the wind was from the wrong direction, so we smelled nothing. We walked into them before we knew it. Well, Sarien is dead, and I was caged like a fool, so perhaps we paid enough. It is time for running now, wetlander. Tear; I will remember it.” At last he lowered the black veil. “May you always find water and shade, Perrin Aybara.” Turning, he ran into the night.