A Memory of Light

to avoid the risk of meeting Mat’s gaze.

All in all, Elayne was impressed by how easily the scout mixed his obeisance and his report. She was also sickened. No ruler should demand such of her subjects. A nation’s strength came from the strength of its people; break them, and you were breaking your own back.

“You knew I was coming,” Elayne said after Mat gave a few more orders to his aides. “And you anticipated the anger your changing of plans would cause. Burn you, Matrim Cauthon, why did you feel the need to do this? I thought our battle plan was sound.”

“It was,” Mat said.

“Then why change it!”

“Elayne,” Mat said, glancing at her. “Everyone put me in charge, against my will, because I cant have my mind changed by the Forsaken, right?

That was the general idea,” Elayne said. “Though I’d guess it has less to do with that medallion of yours and more to do with you having too thick a head for Compulsion to penetrate.”

“Bloody right,” Mat said. “Anyway, if the Forsaken are using Compulsion on people in our camps, they probably have a few spies in our meetings.”

“I suppose so.”

“So they know our plan. Our great plan, that we spent so long preparing. They know it.”

Elayne hesitated.

“Light!” Mat said, shaking his head. “The first and most important rule to winning a war is knowing what your enemy is going to do.”

“I though the first rule was to know your terrain,” Elayne said, folding her arms.

“That, too. Anyway, I realize that if the enemy knows what we're going to do, we have to change. Immediately. Bad battle plans are better than ones your enemy will anticipate.”

“Why didn’t you guess this would happen?” Elayne demanded.

He looked at her, expressionless. One side of his mouth twitched up, then he pulled his hat down, shading his eyepatch.

“Light,” Elayne said. “You knew. You spent this whole week planning with us, and you knew the entire time you’d throw it out with the dishwater.”

“That’s giving me too much bloody credit,” Mat said, looking back at his maps. “I think a part of me might have known all along, but I didn’t figure it out until just before the Sharans got here.”

“So what is the new plan?”

He didn’t reply.

“You’re going to keep it in your head,” Elayne said, her legs feeling weak. “You’re going to lead the battle, and none of us are going to know what in the Light you’re planning, are we? Otherwise, someone might overhear, and the news would travel to the Shadow.”

He nodded.

“Creator shelter us,” she whispered.

Mat scowled. “You know, that’s what Tuon said.”

On the Heights, Uno held his ears as the nearby dragons belched fire at the Trollocs and Sharans west of them. The scent of something pungent burned in the air, and the blasts were so deafening, he couldn’t hear his own bloody cursing.

Down below, Lan Mandragoran’s riders were sweeping the sides of the assault force, keeping them contained so that the dragons could do more damage. The Sharans had Trollocs with them. They’d have channelers with them, too, lots of them. Farther upriver, another large army of Trollocs, the ones that had done so much damage to Dai Shan’s forces, had come down from the northeast, and would soon reach the Field of Merrilor.

The dragons stilled momentarily, the dragoners stuffing the maws again with whatever it was that made them work. Uno wasn’t going to step bloody close to them. Bad luck, those were. He was certain of it.

The leader of the dragoners was a wiry Cairhienin, and Uno had never had much use for those folk. They bloody scowled at him whenever he talked. This one sat haughtily upon his horse, and didn’t flinch when the dragons fired again.

The Amyrlin Seat had thrown her lot in with these men, and with the Seanchan, too. Uno wasn’t going to flaming complain. They needed every sword they could get, Cairhienin and bloody Seanchan included.

“You like our dragons, Captain?” the leader-Talmanes-called to Uno. Captain. Uno had bloody been promoted. He now led a force of newly recruited Tower pikemen and light cavalry.

He shouldn’t have been in charge of bloody anything; he had been happy as a regular soldier. But he had both training and battle experience, things that were in slim supply these days, or so Queen Elayne had said. So now he was a flaming officer, and leading cavalry and foot soldiers no less! Well, he knew his way around a pike, if he had to use one, though he usually preferred to fight on horseback.

His men were ready to defend the rim of the Heights should the enemy make it up the slope. So far, the archers situated in front of the dragoners had prevented that, but soon enough, the archers would have to pull back, and then it would be bloody regular soldiers doing the bloody fighting. Below, the Sharans pulled aside to let the main Trolloc forces storm up onto the slope.

The pikemen would advance, resisting the Trolloc attack, and pikes would work well here, as the Trollocs would be pushing uphill. Add in some flaming cavalry on their flanks, and some bloody archers shooting through those gateways made high up in the air, and they could probably sit here for days. Maybe weeks. When they were pushed off by superior numbers, they’d let go inch by inch, clinging to every speck of ground.

Uno figured there was no way he was going to survive this flaming battle. He was surprised he’d made it this long. Really, flaming Masema should have had his head, or the Seanchan near Falme, or a Trolloc here and there. He had tried to keep himself lean so he’d taste flaming terrible when they stuffed him in one of those flaming cookpots.

The dragons fired again, blasting enormous holes in the hordes of advancing Trollocs. Uno clapped his hands to his ears. “Warn a man when you do that, you flaming bits hanging from a goat’s-”

The next shot drowned him out.

The Trollocs below were blown into the air, the dragons pulverizing the ground beneath them. Those eggs exploded once they were shot from those cursed tubes. What kind of thing, other than the One Power, could make metal explode? Uno was certain he flaming didn’t want to know.

Talmanes stepped up to the rim of the Heights, inspecting the damage. He was joined by a Taraboner woman, the one who had invented these weapons. She looked over and saw Uno, then tossed him something. A small bit of wax. The Taraboner woman tapped her ear, then began speaking with Talmanes, gesturing. He might have command of the troops, but the woman had charge of the devices. She told the men where to position the dragons to fight.

Uno grumbled, but pocketed the wax. A fist of Trollocs had pushed through the blast, about a hundred strong, and he didn’t have time to bother with his ears. Uno grabbed a pike, leveling it and signaling for his men to do the same. They all wore the white of the Tower; Uno himself wore a white tabard.

He shouted orders, readying his pike by standing sideways near the top of the slope, the heel of its shaft raised. One hand gripped the shaft in front of him to guide and reinforce the thrust; the other hand, palm down, gripping it an arm’s length from the heel, would drive home the thrust as the Trollocs came into range. Several ranks of pikemen behind Uno stood ready to advance following the initial impact.

“Steady with the pikes, you flaming sheepherders!” Uno bellowed. “Steady!”

The Trollocs scrambled up the hill, crashing into the line of pikes. The beasts in the vanguard tried to knock the pikes aside with sweeps of their weapons, but Uno’s men stepped forward, skewering Trollocs, often two pikes per beast. Uno grunted, pulling his pike back into line to catch a Trolloc through the throat.

First rank, back!” Uno yelled, pulling his pike backward to free it from the Trolloc he’d killed. His companions did the same, pulling their weapons free and leaving the corpses to roll down the slope.

The pikemen in the front rank fell back as those in the second rank came forward between them, ramming pikes into snarling Trollocs. Each rank rotated up front in succession until, minutes later, the entire group of Trollocs was dead. “Nice work,” Uno said, raising his pike to the upright position, a trickle of rancid Trolloc blood winding down the shaft from the pike head. “Nice work.”