“Blood and bloody ashes!” Mat said. “Send sixteen damane and sul’dam down there now! Send to the northern archery units and bring squads forty-two and fifty down. And tell the scouts I’ll have them flogged if they let anything like this happen again.”
“Great One,” the scout said, saluting and scrambling to his feet, backing out of the room without looking up to avoid the risk of meeting Mat’s gaze.
All in all, Elayne was impressed by how easily the scout mixed his obeisance and his report. She was also sickened. No ruler should demand such of her subjects. A nation’s strength came from the strength of its people; break them, and you were breaking your own back.
“You knew I was coming,” Elayne said after Mat gave a few more orders to his aides. “And you anticipated the anger your changing of plans would cause. Burn you, Matrim Cauthon, why did you feel the need to do this? I thought our battle plan was sound.”
“It was,” Mat said.
“Then why change it!”
“Elayne,” Mat said, glancing at her. “Everyone put me in charge, against my will, because I can’t have my mind changed by the Forsaken, right?”
“That was the general idea,” Elayne said. “Though I’d guess it has less to do with that medallion of yours and more to do with you having too thick a head for Compulsion to penetrate.”
“Bloody right,” Mat said. “Anyway, if the Forsaken are using Compulsion on people in our camps, they probably have a few spies in our meetings.”
“I suppose so.”
“So they know our plan. Our great plan, that we spent so long preparing. They know it.”
Elayne hesitated.
“Light!” Mat said, shaking his head. “The first and most important rule to winning a war is knowing what your enemy is going to do.”
“I thought the first rule was to know your terrain,” Elayne said, folding her arms.
“That, too. Anyway, I realize that if the enemy knows what we’re going to do, we have to change. Immediately. Bad battle plans are better than ones your enemy will anticipate.”
“Why didn’t you guess this would happen?” Elayne demanded.
He looked at her, expressionless. One side of his mouth twitched up, then he pulled his hat down, shading his eyepatch.
“Light,” Elayne said. “You knew. You spent this whole week planning with us, and you knew the entire time you’d throw it out with the dishwater.”
“That’s giving me too much bloody credit,” Mat said, looking back at his maps. “I think a part of me might have known all along, but I didn’t figure it out until just before the Sharans got here.”
“So what is the new plan?”
He didn’t reply.
“You’re going to keep it in your head,” Elayne said, her legs feeling weak. “You’re going to lead the battle, and none of us are going to know what in the Light you’re planning, are we? Otherwise, someone might overhear, and the news would travel to the Shadow.”
He nodded.
“Creator shelter us,” she whispered.
Mat scowled. “You know, that’s what Tuon said.”
On the Heigh
ts, Uno held his ears as the nearby dragons belched fire at the Trollocs and Sharans west of them. The scent of something pungent burned in the air, and the blasts were so deafening, he couldn’t hear his own bloody cursing.
Down below, Lan Mandragoran’s riders were sweeping the sides of the assault force, keeping them contained so that the dragons could do more damage. The Sharans had Trollocs with them. They’d have channelers with them, too, lots of them. Farther upriver, another large army of Trollocs, the ones that had done so much damage to Dai Shan’s forces, had come down from the northeast, and would soon reach the Field of Merrilor.
The dragons stilled momentarily, the dragoners stuffing the maws again with whatever it was that made them work. Uno wasn’t going to step bloody close to them. Bad luck, those were. He was certain of it.
The leader of the dragoners was a wiry Cairhienin, and Uno had never had much use for those folk. They bloody scowled at him whenever he talked. This one sat haughtily upon his horse, and didn’t flinch when the dragons fired again.