The Great Hunt (The Wheel of Time #2)

The Great Hunt (The Wheel of Time #2) Page 60

Perrin made a sound in his throat, nearly a growl.

“As bad as ever I've seen, my Lord,” Hurin said faintly. “As bad as ever I've smelled, excepting the dungeon at Fal Dara that night.”

Frantically Rand sought the void. The flame seemed to get in the way, the queasy light fluttering in time with his convulsive swallows, but he pushed on until he had wrapped himself in emptiness. The queasiness pulsed in the void with him, though. Not outside, for once, but inside. No wonder, looking at this. The thought skittered across the void like a drop of water on a hot griddle. What happened to them?

“Skinned alive,” he heard someone behind him say, and the sounds of somebody else retching. He thought it was Mat, but it was all far away from him, inside the void. But that nauseous flickering was in there, too. He thought he might throw up himself.

“Cut them down,” Ingtar said harshly. He hesitated a moment, then added, “Bury them. We cannot be sure they were Darkfriends. They could have been taken prisoner. They could have been. Let them know the last embrace of the mother, at least.” Men rode forward gingerly with knives; even for battlehardened Shienarans it was no easy task, cutting down the flayed corpses of men they knew.

“Are you all right, Rand?” Ingtar said. “I am not used to this either.”

“I ... am all right, Ingtar.” Rand let the void vanish. He felt less sick without it; his stomach still curdled, but it was better. Ingtar nodded and turned his horse so he could watch the men working.

The burial was simple. Two holes dug in the ground, and the bodies laid in as the rest of the Shienarans watched in silence. The grave diggers began shoveling earth into the graves with no more ado.

Rand was shocked, but Loial explained softly. “Shienarans believe we all came from earth, and must return to earth. They never use coffins or shrouds, and the bodies are never clothed. The earth must hold the body. The last embrace of the mother, they call it. And there are never any words except `The Light shine on you, and the Creator shelter you. The last embrace of the mother welcome you home.'” Loial sighed and shook his huge head. “I do not think anyone will say them this time. No matter what Ingtar says, Rand, there cannot be much doubt that Changu and Nidao slew the guards at the Dog Gate and let the Darkfriends into the keep. It had to be they who were responsible for all of it.”

“Then who shot the arrow at — at the Amyrlin?” Rand swallowed. Who shot at me? Loial said nothing.

Uno arrived with the rest of the men and the packhorses as the last earth was being shoveled onto the graves. Someone told him what they had found, and the oneeyed man spat. “Goatkissing Trollocs do that along the Blight, sometimes. When they want to shake your bloody nerve, or flaming warn you not to follow. Burn me if it works here, either.”

Before they rode away, Ingtar paused on his horse beside the unmarked graves, two mounds of bare earth that looked too small to hold men. After a moment he said, “The Light shine on you, and the Creator shelter you. The last embrace of the mother welcome you home.” When he raised his head, he looked at each man in turn. There was no expression on any face, least of all on Ingtar's. “They saved Lord Agelmar at Tarwin's Gap,” he said. Several of the lancers nodded. Ingtar turned his horse. “Which way, Hurin?”

“South, my Lord.”

“Take the trail! We hunt!”

The forest soon gave way to gently rolling flatland, sometimes crossed by a shallow stream that had dug itself a highbanked channel, with never more than a low rise or a squat hill that barely deserved the name. Perfect country for the horses. Ingtar took advantage of it, setting a steady, groundcovering pace. Occasionally Rand saw what might have been a farmhouse in the distance, and once what he thought was a village, with smoke rising from chimneys a few miles off and something flashing white in the sun, but the land near them stayed empty of human life, long swathes of grass dotted with brush and occasional trees, with now and again a small thicket, never more than a hundred paces across.

Ingtar put out scouts, two men riding ahead, in sight only when they topped an occasional rise. He had a silver whistle hanging around his neck to call them back if Hurin said the trail had veered, but it did not. South. Always south.

“We will reach the field of Talidar in three or four days at this rate,” Ingtar said as they rode. “Artur Hawkwing's greatest single victory, when the Halfmen led the Trollocs out of the Blight against him. Six days and nights, it lasted, and when it was done, the Trollocs fled back into the Blight and never dared challenge him again. He raised a monument there to his victory, a spire a hundred spans high. He would not let them put his own name on it, but rather the names of every man who fell, and a golden sun at the top, symbol that there the Light had triumphed over the Shadow.”

“I would like to see that,” Loial said. “I have never heard of this monument.”

Ingtar was silent for a moment, and when he spoke his voice was quiet. “It is not there any longer, Builder. When Hawkwing died, the ones who fought over his empire could not bear to leave a monument to a victory of his, even if it did not mention his name. There's nothing left but the mound where it stood. In three or four days we can see that, at least.” His tone did not allow much conversation afterwards.

With the sun hanging golden overhead, they passed a structure, square and made of plastered brick, less than a mile from their path. It was not tall, no more than two stories still standing anywhere he saw, but it covered a good hide of ground. An air of long abandonment hung about it, roofs gone except for a few stretches of dark tile clinging to bits of rafter, most of the oncewhite plaster fallen to bare the dark, weathered brick beneath, walls fallen to show courtyards and decaying chambers inside. Brush, and even trees, grew in the cracks of what had once been courtyards.

“A manor house,” Ingtar explained. The little humor he had regained seemed to fade as he looked at the structure. “When Harad Dakar still stood, I expect the manorman farmed this land for a league around. Orchards, maybe. The Hardani loved their orchards.”

“Harad Dakar?” Rand said, and Ingtar snorted.

“Does no one learn history any longer? Harad Dakar, the capital city of Hardan, which nation this once was that we are riding across.”

“I've seen an old map,” Rand replied in a tight voice. “I know about the nations that aren't there anymore. Maredo, and Goaban, and Carralain. But there wasn'