“I thought you wanted to go to my camp.”
“It’s on the way,” Mat said. Well, sort of, it was. “And those Deathwatch Guards won’t expect it. Burn me, Egwene, but I think they’ve guessed where we were heading.”
Egwene—after pausing for a moment—opened them a gateway to the Traveling ground atop the Knob. They stepped through onto it.
More than a hill, less than a mountain, Dashar Knob rose a good hundred feet into the air near the middle of the battlefield. The rock formation was unscalable, and gateways were the only way to reach the top. From here,
Mat and his commanders would be able to watch the entire battle play out.
“I have never known anyone else,” Egwene said to him, “who will work so hard to avoid hard work, Matrim Cauthon.”
“You haven’t spent enough time around soldiers.” Mat waved at the men who saluted him as he walked out of the Traveling grounds.
He looked north toward the River Mora and across it into Arafel. Then northeast, toward the ruins of what had once been some kind of fort or watchtower. Eastward, toward the rising palisade and the forest. He continued to turn, southward to gaze at the River Erinin in the far distance, and the strange little grove of tall trees that Loial was so in awe of. They said Rand had grown those, during the meeting where the treaty had been signed. Mat looked southwest toward the only good ford on the Mora nearby, named Hawal Ford by the locals who had farmed this area; beyond the ford on the Arafel side was a large expanse of bogs.
Westward, across the Mora, lay Polov Heights—a forty-foot-tall plateau with a steep slope on the east and more gradual slopes on the other sides. Between the base of the southwestern slope and the bogs was a corridor roughly two hundred paces across, well worn by travelers who used the ford to cross between Arafel and Shienar. Mat could use these features to his advantage. He could use them all. Would that be enough? He could feel something pulling on him, tugging him northward. Rand would need him soon.
He turned, ready to bolt, as someone approached across the top of the Knob, but it was not the Deathwatch Guards. It was just leather-faced Jur Grady.
“I fetched those soldiers for you,” Grady said, pointing. Mat could see a small force coming through a gateway to the Traveling grounds near the palisade. A hundred men of the Band, led by Delarn, flying a bloody red flag. The Redarms were accompanied by some five hundred people in worn clothing.
“What was the point of this?” Grady asked. “You sent those hundred to a village in the south to recruit, I assume?”
That, and more. I saved your life, man, Mat thought, trying to pick Delarn out of the group. And then you volunteer for this. Bloody fool. Delarn acted as if it were his fate.
“Take them upriver,” Mat said. “The maps show there is only one good place to block the Mora, a narrow canyon a few leagues northeast of here.”
“All right,” Grady said. “There will be channelers involved.”
“You will have to handle them,” Mat said. “Mostly, though, I want you to let those six hundred men and women defend the river. Don’t risk yourself too much. Let Delarn and his people do the work.”
“Pardon,” Grady said. “But that doesn’t seem like a very large force. Most of them aren’t trained soldiers.”
“I know what I’m doing,” Mat said. I hope.
Grady nodded reluctantly and moved off.
Egwene watched Mat with curious eyes. “We can’t fall back from this fight,” Mat said softly. “We don’t retreat. There isn’t anywhere to go. We stand here, or we lose it all.”
“There is always a retreat,” Egwene said.
“No,” Mat said. “Not anymore.” He rested his ashandarei on his shoulder, his other hand out, palm forward. He scanned the landscape, memories appearing as if from light and dust before him. Rion at Hune Hill. Naath and the San d’ma Shadar. The Fall of Pipkin. Hundreds upon hundreds of battlefields, hundreds of victories. Thousands of deaths.
Mat watched figments of memories flash across the field. “Have you spoken to the supply masters? We’re out of food, Egwene. We can’t win a protracted war, fighting and falling back. The enemy will overwhelm us if we do that. Just like Eyal in the Marches of Maighande. We are at our strongest now, broken though we are. Fall back, and we resign ourselves to starvation as the Trollocs destroy us.”
“Rand,” Egwene said. “We just have to hold out until he is victorious.”
“That’s true in a fashion,” Mat said, turning toward the Heights. In his mind’s eye, he saw what could come, the possibilities. He imagined riders on the Heights, like shadows. He would lose if he tried to hold those Heights, but maybe…“If Rand loses, it won’t matter. The Wheel is bloody broken, and we all become nothing, if we’re lucky. Well, we can’t do anything more about it. But here’s the thing. If he does what he’s supposed to, we could still lose—we will lose, if we don’t stop the Shadow’s armies.”
He blinked, seeing it, the entire battlefield spread before him. Fighting at the ford. Arrows from the palisade. “We can’t just beat them, Egwene,” Mat said. “We can’t just stand and hold on. We have to destroy them, drive them away, then hunt them to the last Trolloc. We can’t just survive… we have to win.”
“How are we going to do that?” Egwene asked. “Mat, you’re not talking sense. Weren’t you just saying yesterday how outnumbered we’ll be?”
He looked toward the bog, imagining shadows trying to slog through it. Shadows of dust and memory. “I have to change it all,” he said. He could not do what they would expect. He could not do what spies might have reported he was planning. “Blood and bloody ashes… one last toss of the dice. Everything we have, piled into a heap…” A group of men in dark armor came through a gateway to the top of the Knob, panting deeply, as if they’d had to chase down a damane to get them up here. Their breastplates were lacquered a deep red, but this batch did not need a fearsome display to be frightening. They looked furious enough to scramble eggs with a stare.
“You,” said the lead Deathwatch Guard, a man named Gelen, pointing at Mat, “are needed at the—”
Mat held up a hand to cut him off.