away everything that was blown into the river, but soon the snow on the riverbank was trampled underfoot and the gray slush layered with insects dead or dying from the cold, and a liberal coating of oats and barley speckled with red beans. There was always a new layer to replace what feet mashed into the snow. What was left on the baskets seemed cleaner, though, if not entirely clean when it was poured back into the coarse jute bags, which had been turned inside out and beaten fiercely with sticks by children to shake out vermin. The refilled sacks went into the Cairhienin’s carts as soon as the tops were tied, but the piles of empty bags grew at a prodigious rate.
He was leaning on the pommel of Stayer’s saddle, trying to calculate whether it was taking two whole cart loads from the warehouses to fill one of his carts with grain, when Berelain brought her white mare up beside him, holding her scarlet cloak close against the wind with one red-gloved hand. Annoura reined in a few paces away, her ageless face smooth and unreadable. The Aes Sedai appeared to be giving them privacy, yet she was close enough to hear anything above whispers even without any tricks of the Power. Smooth face or no, her beak of a nose gave her a predatory look today. Her beaded braids seemed some strange eagle’s lowered crest.
“You cannot save everyone,” Berelain said calmly. Away from the stink of the town, her scent was sharp with urgency, and razor-edged with anger. “Sometimes, you must choose. So Habor is Lord Cowlin’s duty. He had no right to abandon his people.” Not angry with him, then.
Perrin frowned. Did she think he felt guilty? Balanced against Faile’s life, the troubles of So Habor could not budge the scales a hair. But he turned his bay so he was looking at the gray town walls across the river, not the hollow-eyed children piling up empty sacks. A man did what he could. What he had to. “Does Annoura have an opinion on what’s happening here?” he growled. Quietly, but somehow he had no doubt the Aes Sedai heard.
“I’ve little idea what Annoura thinks,” Berelain replied, making no effort to lower her voice. She not only did not care who overheard, she wanted to be heard. “She is not as forthcoming as she once was. As I once thought she was. It is up to her to mend what she has torn.” Without looking at the Aes Sedai, she turned and rode away.
Annoura remained behind, eyes unblinking on Perrin’s face. “You are
“Those threads are people,” Perrin said wearily. “Sometimes maybe people don’t want to be woven into the Pattern without any say.”
“And you think this makes a difference?” Not waiting on an answer, she lifted her reins and heeled her fine- ankled brown mare after Berelain in a gallop that fanned her cloak behind her.
She was not the only Aes Sedai who wanted words with Perrin.
“No,” he told Seonid firmly after listening to her, patting Stayer’s neck. It was the rider wanted soothing, though. He wanted to be away from So Habor. “I said no, and I mean no.”
She sat her saddle stiffly, a pale little woman carved of ice. Except that her eyes were dark coals burning, and she reeked of affronted fury barely in check. Seonid was mild as milk-water with the Wise Ones, but he was not a Wise One. Behind her, Alharra’s dark face was a stone, gray streaking his curly black hair like frost. Wynter’s face was red above his curled mustaches. They had to accept what passed between their Aes Sedai and the Wise Ones, but Perrin was not… The wind whipped their Warder cloaks about, leaving their hands free for swords if need be. Rippling in the wind, the cloaks shifted in shades of gray and brown, blue and white. It was easier on the stomach than seeing them make parts of a man disappear. Some easier.
“If I have to, I’ll send Edarra to bring you back,” he warned.
Her face stayed cold, her eyes hot, yet a quiver ran through her, swaying the small white gem hanging on her forehead. Not from fear of what the Wise Ones would do to her if she had to be brought back, just from the same offense at Perrin that made her scent a hooked thorn. He was growing accustomed to offending Aes Sedai. Not a habit a wise man got into, but there seemed no way out of it.
“What about you?” he asked Masuri. “Do you want to stay in So Habor as well?”
The slim woman was known for speaking straight to the point, direct as a Green for all she was Brown, but she said calmly, “Would you not send Edarra after me, too? There are many ways to serve, and we cannot always pick the ways we would wish.” Which, come to think, might be to the point, in a way. He still had no idea why she visited Masema in secret. Did she suspect that he knew? Masuri’s face was a bland mask. Kirklin wore a bored expression, now they were out of So Habor. He managed to seem slumped while sitting his horse erect, without a worry in the world or a thought in his head. A man who believed that of Kirklin would return the next day to buy a second pig in a poke.
The townsfolk worked mechanically as the sun rose higher, like people who wanted to lose themselves in the task at hand and feared the return of memories when they stopped. Perrin decided So Habor was making him fanciful. Still, he thought he was right. The air beyond the walls still looked too dim, as though a shading cloud hung over the town.
At noon, the cart drivers cleared patches of snow on the slope rising from the river to make small fires and brew weak tea with leaves brewing their third pot, or maybe fourth. There had been no tea to be had in the town. Some of the drivers looked at the bridges as if thinking to enter So Habor and see what they could find to eat. A glance at the dirt-caked people working the winnowing baskets sent them back to dig out their small bags of oatmeal and ground acorn. At least they knew that mix was clean. A few eyed the sacks already loaded on the carts, but the beans needed to be soaked and the grain run through the large handrnills that had been left back in the camp, and that was after the cooks picked out as many more weevils as they thought men could not stomach eating.
Perrin had no appetite, not for the cleanest bread, but he was drinking what passed for tea from a battered tin cup when Latian found him. The Cairhienin did not actually come to him. Instead, the short man in the striped dark coat rode slowly past the small fire where Perrin was standing, then reined in with a frown a little upslope. Dismounting, Latian lifted his gelding’s near forehoof and frowned at it. Of course, he did look up twice to see whether Perrin was coming.
With a sigh, Perrin returned the dented cup to the blocky little woman he had borrowed it from, a graying cart driver who spread her dark skirts in a curtsy. And grinned and shook her head at Latian. Likely, she could sneak ten times as well as the fellow. Neald, squatting by the fire with his hands wrapped around another tin cup, laughed out loud so hard he had to wipe a tear from his eye. Maybe he was beginning to go crazy. Light, but this place gave a man cheerful thoughts.
Latian straightened long enough to make Perrin a leg and say, “I see you, my Lord,” then ducked back down to snatch up the foreleg again like a fool. You did not grab at a horse’s legs that way unless you wanted kicking. But then, Perrin expected nothing but foolishness, really. First there was Latian’s playing at being Aiel, with his shoulder-long hair tied off in a tail at the nape of his neck in weak imitation of how Aiel cut theirs, and now the man was playing at being a spy. Perrin rested a hand on the gelding’s neck to soothe the animal after all that snatching and put an interested look on his face as he peered at a hoof that had absolutely nothing wrong with it. Except for a nick in the shoe where the iron might break in a few days if it was not replaced. His hands itched for farrier’s tools. It seemed years since he had changed a horse’s shoes, or worked a forge.
“Master Balwer sends word, my Lord,” Latian said softly, head down. “His friend is traveling to sell his wares, but is expected back tomorrow or the next day. He said to ask whether it will be all right if we catch up to you then.” Peering under the horse’s belly at the winnowers down by the river, he added, “Though it hardly looks as if you will be away before.”
Perrin scowled down at the winnowing. He scowled at the line of carts waiting their turn to be loaded, at the half dozen or so that already had their canvas covers lashed down. One of those held the first of the leather for patching boots and candles and such. No oil, though. The lamp oil in So Habor smelled as rancid as the cooking oil. What if Gaul and the Maidens brought word of Faile? An actual sighting, perhaps? He would give anything to talk to someone who had seen her, could tell him she was unharmed. What if the Shaido began to move suddenly? “Tell Balwer not to wait too long,” he growled. “As for me, I’ll be away inside the hour.”
He was as good as his word. Most of the carts and drivers had to be left behind to make the one-day journey back to camp on their own, and Kireyin and his green-helmeted soldiers to guard them, with orders that no one was to cross the bridges. Cold-eyed, appearing completely recovered from his breakdown, the Ghealdanin assured him that he was fit and ready. Very likely, orders or not, he would be going back into So Habor just to convince himself he was not afraid. Perrin did not waste time trying to talk him out of it. For one thing, Seonid had to be found. She was not precisely hiding, yet she had learned of his departure, and, leaving her Warders to hold her horse quite
