“And will you stop me?” She was still holding the source. “Do you think you could manage it?”
He ground his teeth. But he said nothing. Siuan turned and walked away from him, straight toward the fires at the palisade gate.
“Blasted woman,” Bryne said from behind. “You’ll be the death of me.”
She turned, raising an eyebrow.
“I’ll come,” he said, hand gripping the hilt of his sheathed sword. He cut an imposing figure in the night, the straight lines of his coat matching the set cast of his face. “But there are two conditions.”
“Name them,” she said.
“The first is that you bond me as your Warder.”
Siuan started. He wanted. . . . Light! Bryne wanted to be her Warder? She felt a surge of excitement.
But she hadn’t considered taking a Warder, not since Alric’s death. Losing him had been a terrible experience. Did she want to risk that again?
Did she dare pass the
opportunity to have this man bonded to her, to feel his emotions, have him by her side? After all that she had dreamed and all that she had wished?
Feeling reverent, she stepped back up to Bryne, then laid a hand against his chest and wove the required weaves of Spirit and laid them over him. He breathed in sharply as new awareness blossomed inside of both of them, a new connection. She could feel his emotions, could sense his concern for her, which was shockingly powerful. It was ahead of his worry for Egwene and concern for his soldiers! Oh, Gareth, she thought, feeling herself smile at the sweetness of his love for her.
“I always wondered what that would feel like,” Bryne said, raising his hand and making a fist a few times in the torchlight. He sounded amazed. “Would that I could give this to each man in my army!”
Siuan sniffed. “I highly doubt that their wives and families would approve of that.”
“They would if it kept the soldiers alive,” Bryne said. “I could run a thousand leagues and never want for breath. I could stand against a hundred foes at once and laugh at them all.”
She rolled her eyes. Men! She had given him a deeply personal and emotional connection to another person—the likes of which even husbands and wives would never know—and all he could think about was how much better he might have become at swordplay!
“Siuan!” a voice called. “Siuan Sanche!”
She turned. Gawyn, riding a black gelding, approached. Another horse trotted behind him—a shaggy brown mare. “Bela!” Siuan exclaimed.
“Is she suitable?” Gawyn said, sounding slightly out of breath. “Bela was once Egwene’s horse, I recall, and the stablemaster said she was the most placid he had.”
“She’ll do just fine,” Siuan said, turning back to Bryne. “You said you had two requirements?”
“I’ll tell you the second at a later time.” Bryne still sounded a little breathless.
“That’s rather ambiguous.” Siuan folded her arms. “I don’t like giving an open promise.”
“Well, you’ll have to do it anyway,” Bryne said, meeting her eyes.
“Fine, but it had better not be indecent, Gareth Bryne.”
He frowned.
“What?”
“It’s odd,” he said, smiling. “I can sense your emotions now. For instance I could tell. . . .” He cut off, and she could sense him growing just faintly embarrassed.
He can tell that I half want him to demand something indecent of me! Siuan realized, aghast. Bloody ashes! She felt herself blushing. This was going to be very inconvenient. “Oh, for the Blessed Light. . . . I agree to your terms, you lout. Get moving! We have to go.”
He nodded. “Let me prepare my captains to take charge in case the fight spills out of the city. I’ll bring a guard of my best hundred with us. That should be small enough to get in, assuming this gate really is passable.”
“It will be,” she said. “Go!”