Tam nodded, and the others turned with him. Verin was studying Perrin thoughtfully. The Aiel peeled away short of the farm to wait to the north, Gaul running a little apart from the Maidens.
Perrin did not know the Torfinns nor they him, yet to his surprise, once the excitement of strangers was past, the staring at Tomas and Verin and Faile, they listened and began hitching horses to two wagons and a pair of high-wheeled carts before he and the others rode on.
Three more times he stopped when their route took them near to farmhouses, once at a cluster of five close together. It was always the same. The people protested they could not just leave their farms, but each time he left behind a bustle of packing and a gathering of farm animals.
Something else happened, too. He could not stop Wil and his cousin, or the Lewins, from talking with the young men on the farms. Their party grew by thirteen, Torfinns and al’Dais, Ahans and Marwins, armed with bows and riding an ill-matched assortment of ponies and plow horses, all eager to rescue the prisoners from the Whitecloaks.
It was not as smooth as that, of course. Wil and the others from the al’Seen farm thought it unfair that he warned the newcomers about the Aiel, spoiling the fun they hoped to have seeing them jump. They jumped more than enough to suit Perrin, and the way they peered at every bush, much less every stand of trees, made it clear that they thought there must be more Aiel about no matter what he said. At first Wil tried lording it over the Torfinns and the rest on the grounds that he had been the first to join Perrin—one of the first, at least, he admitted when Ban and the Lewins glared at him—while they were latecomers.
Perrin put an end to it by dividing them into two groups of about the same size and putting Dannil and Ban each in charge of one, though there was some grumbling over that, too, in the beginning. The al’Dais thought the leaders should be chosen according to age—Bili al’Dai being the eldest by a year—while others put forward Hu Marwin as the best tracker, and Jaim Torfinn as the best shot, while Kenley Ahan had been to Watch Hill often before the Whitecloaks came and would know his way around the village. They all seemed to think it a lark. Tell’s phrase about casting defiance was repeated more than once.
Finally Perrin rounded on them in cold anger, forcing everyone to halt in the grass between two copses. “This is not a game, and it isn’t a Bel Tine dance. You do what you’re told, or else go back home. I don’t know what use you are anyway, and I’ve no intention of getting killed because you think you know what you are doing. Now line up and shut up. You sound like the Women’s Circle meeting in a wardrobe.”
They did it, stringing themselves out in two columns behind Ban and Dannil. Wil and Bili wore disgruntled frowns, but they held whatever objections they had. Faile gave Perrin an approving nod, and so did Tomas. Verin watched it all with a smooth, unreadable face, no doubt thinking she was seeing a ta’veren at work. Perrin saw no need to tell her he had just tried to think of what a Shienaran he knew, a soldier named Uno, would have said, though no doubt Uno would have put it in harsher words.
Farms began to appear more frequently as they approached Watch Hill, coming in clumps closer together until they ran on continuously the way they did near Emond’s Field, a patchwork of hedged or stone-walled fields separated by narrow lanes, footways and wagon paths. Even with their pauses at the four farms, there was still some daylight left, still men working their crops, and boys driving sheep and cattle in from pasture for the night. No one would be leaving their animals out these days.
Tam suggested Perrin cease warning people, and he reluctantly agreed. They would all head for Watch Hill here, alerting the Whitecloaks. Twenty-odd people riding together by the back ways attracted enough eyes, though most people appeared too busy to do more than glance. It would have to be done sooner or later, though, and the sooner the better. So long as people remained in the countryside, needing Whitecloak protection, then the Whitecloaks had a foothold in the Two Rivers they might not want to give up.
Perrin kept a sharp eye out for any sign of Whitecloak patrols, but except for one dust cloud over toward the North Road, heading south, he saw none. After a time Tam suggested they dismount and lead their horses. Afoot there was less chance of being spotted, and the hedges and even the low stone walls shielded them a little.
Tam and Abell knew a thicket that gave a good view of the Whitecloak camp, a tangle of oak and sourgum and leatherleaf that covered three or four hides little more than a mile south and west of Watch Hill over an open stretch of ground. They entered from the south, hurrying. Perrin hoped no one had seen them go in, no one to wonder why they did not come out and comment on it.
“Stay here,” he told Wil and the other young men while they were tying their horses to branches. “Keep your bows handy, and be ready to run if you hear a shout. But don’t move unless you hear me shout. And if anybody makes any noise, I’ll pound his head like an anvil. We’re here to look, not pull the Whitecloaks down on us by tramping around like blind bulls.” Fingering their bows nervously, they nodded. Perhaps it was beginning to dawn on them just what they were doing. The Children of the Light might not take kindly to finding Two
Rivers folk riding about in an armed bunch.
“Were you ever a soldier?” Faile asked quizzically in a low voice. “Some of my father’s … guards talk that way.”
“I’m a blacksmith.” Perrin laughed. “I’ve just heard soldiers talk. It seems to work, though.” Even Wil and Bili were peering about uneasily and hardly daring to move.
Creeping from tree to tree, he and Faile followed Tam and Abell to where the Aiel were already crouching near the thicket’s north edge. Verin was there, too, and Tomas, of course. The brush made a thin screen of leaves, enough to hide them but no hindrance to observation.
The Whitecloak encampment stretched out at the foot of Watch Hill like a village itself. Hundreds of men, some armored, moved among long, straight rows of white tents, with lines of horses, five deep, staked out to east and west. Animals being unsaddled and curried indicated patrols finishing their day, while a double column of maybe a hundred mounted men, pristine and precise, trailed off toward the Waterwood at a brisk walk, lances all at the same angle. At intervals around the encampment white-cloaked guards marched up and down, lances shouldered like spears, burnished helmets flashing in the sinking sun.
A rumble came to Perrin’s ears. Well to the west twenty horsemen appeared, galloping from the direction of Emond’s Field, hurrying toward the tents. From the direction he and the others had come. A few minutes slower, and they would have been seen for sure. A horn sounded, and men began moving to the cook fires.
Off to one side lay a much smaller camp, its tents set haphazardly. Some sagged against their guy ropes. Whoever stayed there, most were gone now. Only a few horses flicking their tails against flies along a short picket rope indicated that anyone was there at all. Not Whitecloaks. The Children of the Light were too rigidly tidy for that camp.
Between the thicket and the two sets of tents was an expanse of grass and wildflowers. Very likely the local farmers used to use it for pasture. Not now, however, It was fairly flat ground. Whitecloaks galloping like that patrol could cover it in a minute.
Abell directed Perrin’s attention to the large camp. “You see that tent near the middle, with a man standing watch at either end? Can you make it out?” Perrin nodded. The low sun was slanting sharp shadows eastward, but he could see well enough. “That’s where Natti and the girls are. And the Luhhans. I’ve seen them come out and go in. One at a time, and always with a guard, even to the latrines.”
“We have tried to sneak in at night three times,” Tam said, “but they keep a tight watch over the perimeter of the camp. We barely got away the last time.”
It would be like trying to stick your hand into an anthill without being stung. Perrin sat down at the base of a tall leatherleaf with his bow across his knees. “I want to think on this awhile. Master al’Thor, will you settle Wil and that lot down? See none of them takes it into his head to run for home. Like as not they’d ride straight for the North Road, not thinking, and we’d have half a hundred of those Whitecloaks over here to investigate. If any of them thought to bring food, you could see they get something to eat. If we have to run, we may spend the rest of the night in the saddle.”
Abruptly he realized he was giving orders, but when he tried to apologize, Tam grinned and said, “Perrin, you took charge back at Jac’s place. This isn’t the first time I’ve followed a younger man who could see what had to be done.”
“You are doing good, Perrin,” Abell said before the two older men slipped back into the trees.
Perplexed, Perrin scratched his beard. He had taken charge? Now that he thought of it, neither Tam nor Abell had really made a decision since leaving the al’Seen farm, only offered suggestions and left it to him. Neither had called him “lad” since then, either.
“Interesting,” Verin said. She had her small book out. He wished he could have a chance to read what she had written.
“You going to caution me about being foolish again?” he said.
Instead of answering, she said in a meditative voice, “It will be even more interesting to see what you do next. I cannot say you are shifting the world on its foundations, as Rand al’Thor is, but the Two Rivers is surely moving. I wonder if you have a clue as to where you are moving it.”