“I’m bold,” Slayer said, striding forward. “And I’m tired of being afraid. In this life, there are predators and there are prey. Often, the predators themselves become food for someone else. The only way to survive is to move up the chain, become the hunter.”
“That’s why you kill wolves?”
Slayer smiled a dangerous smile, his face in shadows. With the storm clouds above and the high walls of water, it was dim here at the bottom—though the strange light of the wolf dream pierced this place, if in a muted way.
“Wolves and men are the finest hunters in this world,” Slayer said softly. “Kill them, and you elevate yourself above them. Not all of us had the privilege of growing up in a comfortable home with a warm hearth and laughing siblings.”
Perrin and Slayer rounded one another, shadows blending, lightning blasts above shimmering through the water.
“If you knew my life,” Slayer said, “you’d howl. The hopelessness, the agony… I soon found my way. My power. In this place, I am a king.”
He leaped across the space, his form a blur. Perrin prepared to swing, but Slayer didn’t draw his sword. He crashed into Perrin, throwing them both into the wall of water. The sea churned and bubbled around them.
Darkness. Perrin created light, somehow making the rocks at his feet glow. Slayer had hold of his cloak with one hand and was swinging at him in the dark water, his sword trailing bubbles but moving as quickly as in the air. Perrin yelled, bubbles coming from his mouth. He tried to block, but his arms moved lethargically.
In that frozen moment, Perrin tried to imagine the water not impeding him, but his mind rejected that thought. It wasn’t natural. It couldn’t be.
In desperation, Slayer’s sword nearly close enough to bite, Perrin froze the water solid around both of them. Doing so nearly crushed him, but it held Slayer still for a precarious moment while Perrin oriented himself. He made his cloak vanish so he wouldn’t take Slayer with him, then shifted away.
Perrin landed on the rocky beach beside a steep hillside that was half broken away by the power of the sea. He fell on hands and knees, gasping. Water streamed from his beard. His mind felt… numb. He had trouble thinking the water away from him to dry himself.
What’s happening? he thought, trembling. Around him, the storm raged, the bark ripping from tree trunks, their limbs already stripped away. He was just so… tired. Exhausted. How long had it been since he slept? Weeks had passed in the real world, but it couldn’t actually have been weeks here, could it? It—
The sea boiled, churning. Perrin turned. He’d kept his hammer, somehow, and he raised it to face Slayer.
The waters continued to move, but nothing came from them. Suddenly, behind him, the hill split in half. Perrin felt something heavy hit him in the shoulder, like a punch. He fell to his knees, twisting to see the hillside broken in two, Slayer standing on the other side, nocking another arrow to his bow.
Perrin shifted, desperate, pain belatedly flaring up his side and across his body.
“All I’m saying is that battles are being fought,” Mandevwin said, “and we are not there.”
“Battles are always being fought somewhere,” Vanin replied, leaning back against the wall outside a warehouse in Tar Valon. Faile listened to them with half an ear. “We’ve fought our share of them. All I’m saying is that I’m pleased to avoid this particular one.”
“People are dying,” Mandevwin said, disapproving. “This is not simply a battle, Vanin. It is Tarmon Gai’don itself!”
“Which means nobody is paying us,” Vanin said.
Mandevwin sputtered, “Paying… to fight the Last Battle… You knave! This battle means life itself.”
Faile smiled as she looked over the supply ledgers. The two Redarms idled by the doorway as servants wearing the Flame of Tar Valon loaded Faile’s caravan. Behind them, the White Tower rose over the city.
At first, she had been annoyed by the banter, but the way Vanin poked at the other man reminded her of Gilber, one of her father’s quartermasters back in Saldaea.
“Now, Mandevwin,” Vanin said, “you hardly sound like a mercenary at all! What if Lord Mat heard you?”
“Lord Mat wil
l fight,” said Mandevwin.
“When he has to,” Vanin said. “We don’t have to. Look, these supplies are important, right? And someone has to guard them, right? Here we are.”
“I just do not see why this job requires us. I should be helping Talmanes lead the Band, and you lot, you should be guarding Lord Mat…”
Faile could almost hear the end of that line, the one they were all thinking. You should be guarding Lord Mat from those Seanchan.
The soldiers had taken in stride Mat’s disappearance, then his reappearance with the Seanchan. Apparently, they expected this kind of behavior from “Lord” Matrim Cauthon. Faile had a squad of fifty of the Band’s best, including Captain Mandevwin, Lieutenant Sandip and several Redarms who came highly recommended by Talmanes. None of them knew their true purpose in guarding the Horn of Valere.
She would have brought ten times this number if she could. As it was, fifty was suspicious enough. Those fifty were the Band’s very best, some pulled from command positions. They would have to do.