Winter's Heart (The Wheel of Time #9)

Winter's Heart (The Wheel of Time #9) Page 27

One by one, the images that his mind turned to words faded away, until only one lingered. Mourn, and meet her again in the Wolf Dream. Then that also was gone.

“Are you listening?” Arganda demanded roughly. He was not a smooth-faced noble, and despite his silks and the gold-work atop the silver of his breastplate he looked like what he was, a graying soldier who had first hefted a lance as a boy and probably carried two dozen scars. His dark eyes were almost as fevered as those of Masema’s men. He smelled of rage, and fear. “Those savages took Queen Alliandre, as well!”

“We will find your Queen when we find my wife,” Perrin said, his voice as cold and hard as the edge of his axe. She had to be alive. “Suppose you tell me what all this is about, you drawn up ready to charge, it looks like. And facing my people, at that.” He had other responsibilities, too. Acknowledging that was bitter as gall. Nothing else counted alongside Faile. Nothing! But the Two Rivers men were his people.

Arganda dashed his mount close and seized Perrin’s sleeve in a gauntleted fist. “You listen to me! The First Lady Berelain says it was Aiel took Queen Alliandre, and there are Aiel sheltering behind those archers of yours. I have men who will be happy enough to put them to the question.” His heated gaze swung back to Edarra and Carelle for a moment. Perhaps he was thinking that they were Aiel with no archers barring his path.

“The First Captain is . . . overwrought,” Berelain murmured, laying a hand on Perrin’s other arm. “I have explained to him that none of the Aiel here were involved. I’m sure that I can convince him — ”

He shook her off, ripped his arm away from the Ghealdanin., “Alliandre swore fealty to me, Arganda. You swore fealty to her, and that makes me your lord. I said I’ll find Alliandre when I find Faile.” The edge of an axe. She was alive. “You question no one, touch no one, unless I say. What you will do is take your men back to your camp, now, and be ready to ride when I give the order. If you’re not ready when I call, you will be left behind.”

Arganda stared at him, breathing hard. His eyes strayed again, this time toward Grady and Neald, then jerked back to Perrin’s face. “As you command, my Lord,” he said stiffly. Wheeling his roan, he shouted orders to his officers and was already galloping away before they began issuing their own. The Ghealdanin began to peel away by columns, riding after their First Captain. Toward their camp, though whether Arganda intended to remain there was anyone’s guess. And whether it might not be for the worse if he did.

“You handled that very well, Perrin,” Berelain said. “A difficult situation, and a painful time for you.” Not formal at all, now. Just a woman full of pity, her smile compassionate. Oh, she had a thousand guises, Berelain did.

She stretched out a red-gloved hand, and he backed Stayer away before she could touch him. “Give it over, burn you!” he snarled. “My wife has been taken! I’ve no patience for your childish games!”

She jerked as if he had struck her. Color bloomed in her cheeks, and she changed again, becoming supple and willowy in her saddle. “Not childish, Perrin,” she murmured, her voice rich and amused. “Two women contesting over you, and you the prize? I would think you’d be flattered. Attend me, Lord Captain Gallenne. I suppose we, too, should be ready to ride at command.”

The one-eyed man rode back toward the Winged Guards at her side, as close to a canter as the snow made possible. He was leaning toward her as if hearing instructions. Annoura paused where she was, gathering the reins other brown mare. Her mouth was a razored line beneath her beak of a nose. “Sometimes you are a very large fool, Perrin Aybara. Quite often, in fact.”

He did not know what she was talking about, and did not care. At times she seemed resigned to Berelain chasing after a married man, and other times amused by it, even helping out by arranging for Berelain to be alone with him. Right then, First and Aes Sedai both disgusted him. Heeling Stayer in the flanks, he trotted away from her without a word.

The men on the hilltop opened enough to let him through, muttering to one another and watching the lancers below ride toward their respective camps, parted again to let the Wise Ones and Aes Sedai and Asha’man pass. They did not break up and crowd around him, as he had expected, for which he was grateful. The whole hilltop smelled of wariness. Most of it did.

The snow atop the hill had been trampled until some patches were clear except for frozen clumps and others were sheets of ice. The four Wise Ones who had remained behind when he rode to Abila were standing in front of one of the low Aiel tents, tall unruffled women with dark woolen shawls around their shoulders, watching the two sisters dismount with Carelle and Edarra, and seemingly paying no mind to what was going on around them. The gai’shain who served them in place of servants were going about their normal tasks quietly, meekly, faces hidden in the deep cowls of their white robes. One fellow was even beating a carpet hung over a rope tied between two trees! The only sign among the Aiel that they might have been on the brink of a fight was Gaul and the Maidens. They had been squatting on their heels, shoufa around their heads and black veils hiding all but their eyes, short spears and bull-hide bucklers in hand. As Perrin jumped down from his saddle, they rose.

Dannil Lewin trotted up, chewing worriedly at the thick mustache that made his nose look even bigger than it was. He had his bow in one hand and was sliding an arrow back into the quiver at his belt. “I didn’t know what else to do, Perrin,” he said in a jerky voice. Dannil had been at Dumai’s Wells, and faced Trollocs back home, but this was outside his view of the world. “By the time we found out what happened, those Ghealdanin fellows were already starting this way, so I sent off Jondyn Barran and a couple of others, Hu Marwin and Get Ayliah, told the Cairhienin and your servants to make a circle with the carts and stay inside it — had to just about tie up those folks who’re always following the Lady Faile around; they wanted to go off after her, and not a one of them knows a footprint from an oak tree — then I brought everybody else here. I thought those Ghealdanin might charge us, until the First got there with her men. They must be crazy, thinking any of our Aiel would hurt the Lady Faile.” Even when they Perrined him, Faile nearly always received the honorific from the Two Rivers men.

“You did right, Dannil,” Perrin said, tossing him Stayer’s reins. Hu and Get were good woodsmen, and Jondyn Barran could follow yesterday’s wind. Gaul and the Maidens were starting to leave, in single file. They were still veiled. “Tell off one man in three to stay here,” Perrin told Dannil hurriedly; just because he had faced Arganda down was no reason to believe the man had changed his mind, “and send the rest back to pack up. I want to ride as soon as