The Path of Daggers

discipline, too.

Shaking his head, Bakuun strode across to the sul’dam’s large tent. Larger than his, of necessity. Four of them were sitting on stools outside in their dark blue dresses with the forked lightning on the skirts, enjoying the sun during this break in the storms. Those were rare enough, now. The gray-clad damane sat at their feet, with Nerith braiding her pale hair. Talking to her, as well, all of them joining in and laughing softly. The bracelet on the end of the silvery a’dam’s leash lay on the ground. Bakuun grunted sourly. He had a favorite wolfhound, back home, and even talked to him sometimes, but he never expected Nip to carry on a conversation!

'Is she well?' he asked Nerith, not for the first time. Or the tenth. 'Is everything well with her?' The damane dropped her eyes and went silent.

'She is quite well, Captain Bakuun.' A square-faced woman, Nerith put the proper degree of respect into her voice and not a whisker beyond. But she stroked the damane’s head soothingly while she talked. 'Whatever the indisposition, it is gone, now. A small thing, in any case. Nothing to worry about.' The damane was trembling.

Bakuun grunted again. Not far from the answer he had received before. Something had been wrong, though, back in Ebou Dar, and not just with this damane. The sul’dam had all been as tight-lipped as clams — and the Blood would not say anything, of course, not to the likes of him! — but he had heard too many whispers. They said the damane were all sick, or insane. Light, he had not seen a single one used around Ebou Dar once the city was secured, not even for a victory display of Sky Lights, and who had ever heard the like of that!

'Well, I hope she…' he began, and cut off as a raken appeared, sweeping through the eastern pass. Its great leathery wings beat powerfully for height, and right above the hill it suddenly tilted and cut a tight circle, one wingtip pointed almost straight down. A thin red streamer fell away under the weight of a lead ball.

Bakuun swallowed a curse. Fliers were always showing off, but if this pair injured one of his men delivering their scouting report, he would have their hides no matter who he had to face to get them. He would not have wanted to fight without fliers to scout, but they were coddled like some Blood’s favorite pet.

Arrow-straight the streamer plummeted. The lead weight struck the ground and bounced on the crest, almost beside the tall thin message pole, which was too long to lower unless there was a message to send. Besides, when it was left down somebody was always stepping a horse on the thing and breaking the joins.

Bakuun strode straight to his tent, but his First Lieutenant was already waiting with the mud-stained streamer and the message tube. Tiras was a bony man a head taller than him, with an unfortunate scrap of beard clinging to the point of his chin.

The report rolled up in the thin metal tube, on a slip of paper Bakuun could almost see through, was written simply. He had never been forced to ride on raken or to’raken — the Light be thanked, and the Empress, might she live forever, be praised! — but he doubted it was easy to handle a pen in a saddle strapped to the back of a flying lizard. What it said made him flip open the lid of his small camp desk and write hurriedly.

'There’s a force not ten miles east of here,' he told Tiras. 'Five or six times our number.' Fliers exaggerated sometimes, but not often by much. How had that many penetrated these mountains so far without being spotted before? He had seen the coast to the east, and he wanted his burial prayers paid for before he tried a landing there. Burn his eyes, the fliers boasted they would see a flea move anywhere in the range. 'No reason to think they know we’re here, but I’d not mind a few reinforcements.'

Tiras laughed. 'We’ll give them a brush of the damane, and that will be that if they outnumber us by twenty times.' His only real fault was a touch of overconfidence. A good soldier, though.

'And if they have a few… Aes Sedai?' Bakuun said quietly, hardly stumbling over the name, as he stuffed the flier’s report back into the tube with his own brief message. He had not really believed anyone could let those… women run free.

Tiras’ face showed that he remembered the tales about an Aes Sedai weapon. The red streamer floated behind him as he ran with the message tube.

Soon enough tube and streamer were attached to the tip of the message pole, a tiny breeze stirring the long red strip fifteen paces above the hill crest. The raken soared toward it along the valley, outstretched wings still as death. Abruptly one of the fliers swung down from the saddle and hung — upside down! — below the raken’s trailing claws. It made Bakuun’s stomach hurt to watch. But her hand closed on the streamer, the pole flexed, then vibrated back upright as the message tube pulled free of the clip, and she scrambled back up as the creature climbed in slow circles.

Bakuun thankfully put raken and fliers out of his mind as he surveyed the valley. Broad and long, nearly flat except for this hill, and surrounded by steep wooded slopes; only a goat could enter, except by the passes in his sight. With the damane, he could cut anybody to pieces before they managed to try attacking across that muddy meadow. He had passed word along, though; if the enemy came straight on, they would arrive before any possible reinforcements by three days at best. How had they come this far unseen?

He had missed the last battles of the Consolidation by two hundred years, but some of those rebellions had not been small. Two years fighting on Marendalar, thirty thousand dead, and fifty times that shipped back to the mainland as property. Taking notice of the strange kept a soldier alive. Ordering the camp struck and all signs of it cleared, he began moving his command to the forested slopes. Dark clouds were massing in the east, another of those cursed storms coming.

Chapter 23 (Insect-Like, Horned Helmet) Fog of War, Storm of Battle

No rain fell, for the moment. Rand guided Tai’daishar around an uprooted tree lying across the slope and frowned down at a dead man sprawled on his back behind the tree trunk. The fellow was short and blocky, his face creased, and his armor all overlapping plates lacquered blue and green, but staring sightlessly at the black clouds overhead, he looked a deal like Eagan Padros, even to the missing leg. An officer, plainly; the sword beside his outflung hand had an ivory hilt carved in the likeness of a woman, and his lacquered helmet, shaped like some huge insect’s head, bore two long thin blue plumes.

Uprooted trees and shattered ones, a fair number burning from end to end, littered the slope of the mountain for a good five hundred paces. Bodies, too, men broken or ripped apart when saidin harrowed the mountainside. Most wore steel veils across their faces, and breastplates painted in horizontal stripes. No women, thank the Light. The injured horses had been put down, another thing to be thankful for. It was incredible how loudly a horse could scream.

Do you think the dead are silent? Lews Therin’s laugh was rasping. Do you? His voice turned to pained rage. The dead howl at me!

At me, too, Rand thought sadly. I can’t afford to listen, but how do you shut them up? Lews Therin began weeping for his lost Ilyena.

'A great victory,' Weiramon intoned behind Rand, then muttered, 'But small honor in it. The old ways are best.' Mud liberally decorated Rand’s coat, yet surprisingly, Weiramon appeared as pristine as he had back on the Silver Road. His helmet and armor shone. How had he managed? The Taraboners charged, at the end, lances and courage against the One Power, and Weiramon had led his own charge to break them. Without orders, and followed by every Tairen save the Defenders, even a half-drunk Torean, surprisingly. By Semaradrid and Gregorin Panar, too, with most of the Cairhienin and Illianers. Standing still had been hard by that time, and every man wanted to come to grips with something he actually could come to grips with. The Asha’man could have done it faster. If somewhat more messily.