Search another time. Slayer is too strong for you.
Perrin took a deep breath. 'I have to face him eventually, Hopper.'
Not now.
'No,' Perrin agreed. 'Not now. Now we practice.' He turned to the wolf. 'As we will do every night until I am ready.'
Rodel Ituralde rolled over in his cot, neck slick with sweat. Had Saldaea always been this hot and muggy? He wished for home, the cool ocean breezes of Bandar Eban.
Things felt wrong. Why hadn't the Shadowspawn attacked? A hundred possibilities rattled in his mind. Were they waiting for new siege engines?
Were they scouting out forests in order to build them? Or were their commanders content with a siege? The entire city was surrounded, but there had to be enough Trollocs out there to overwhelm it now.
They had taken to beating drums. All hours. Thump, thump, thump. Steady, like the heartbeat of an enormous animal, the Great Serpent itself, coiling around the city.
Dawn was beginning to shine outside. He hadn't turned in until well after midnight. Durhem—who commanded the morning watch—had ordered that Ituralde not be disturbed until noon. His tent was in a shadowed alcove of the courtyard. He had wanted to be close to the wall, and had refused a bed. That had been foolish. Though a cot had been fine for him in previous years, he wasn't as young as he'd once been. Tomorrow, he'd move.
Now, he told himself, sleep.
It wasn't that easy. The accusation that he was Dragonsworn left him unsettled. In Arad Doman, he'd been fighting for his king, someone he'd believed in. Now he was fighting in a foreign land for a man he'd met only once. All because of a gut feeling.
Light, but it was hot. Sweat ran down his cheeks, making his neck itch. It shouldn't be this hot so early in the morning. It wasn't natural. Those burning drums, still pounding.
He sighed, climbing off his sweat-dampened cot. His leg ached. It had for days now.
You're an old man, Rodel, he thought, stripping off his sweaty smallclothes and getting out some freshly washed ones. He stuffed his trousers into knee-high riding boots. A simple white shirt with black buttons went on next, and then his gray coat, buttoning straight up to the collar.
He was strapping on his sword when he heard hurried footsteps outside, followed by whispers. That conversation grew heated, and he stepped outside just as someone said, 'Lord Ituralde will wish to know!'
'Know what?' Ituralde asked. A messenger boy was arguing with his guards. All three turned toward him sheepishly.
'I'm sorry, my Lord,' Connel said. 'We were instructed to let you sleep.'
'A man who can sleep in this heat must be half-lizard, Connel,' Ituralde said. 'Lad, what's the word?'
'Captain Yoeli is on the wall, sir,' the youth said. Ituralde recognized the young man—he'd been with him from near the beginning of this campaign. 'He said you should come.'
Ituralde nodded. He laid a hand on Connel's arm. 'Thank you for watching me, old friend, but these bones aren't so frail as you think.'
Connel nodded, blushing. The guard fell into place behind as Ituralde crossed the courtyard. The sun had risen. Many of his troops were up. Too many. He wasn't the only one having difficulty sleeping.
Atop the wall, he was greeted by a disheartening sight. On the dying land, thousand upon thousands of Trollocs camped, burning fires. Ituralde didn't like to think about where the wood for those fires came from. Hopefully all of the nearby homesteaders and villagers had heeded the call to evacuate.
Yoeli stood gripping the crenelated stone of the wall, next to a man in a black coat. Deepe Bhadar was senior among the Asha'man whom al'Thor had given him, one of only three who wore both the Dragon and the sword pins on his collar. The Andoran man had a flat face and black hair that he wore long. Ituralde had sometimes heard some of the black-coated men mumbling to themselves, but not Deepe. He seemed fully in control.
Yoeli kept glancing at the Asha'man; Ituralde didn't feel comfortable with men who could channel either. But they were an excellent tool, and they hadn't failed him. He preferred to let experience, instead of rumor, rule him.
'Lord Ituralde,' Deepe said. The Asha'man never saluted Ituralde, just al'Thor.
'What is it?' Ituralde asked, scanning the hordes of Trollocs. They didn't seem to have changed since he'd bedded down.
'Your man claims to be able to feel something,' Yoeli said. 'Out there.'
'They have channelers, Lord Ituralde,' Deepe said. 'I suspect at least six, perhaps more. Men, since I can feel the Power they're wielding, doing something powerful. If I squint at the far camps, I think I can sometimes see weaves, but it may be my imagination.'
Ituralde cursed. 'That's what they've been waiting for.'
'What?' Yoeli asked.
'With Asha'man of their own—'
'They are not Asha'man,' Deepe said fervently.
'All right, then. With channelers of their own, they can tear this wall down easily as knocking over a pile of blocks, Yoeli. That sea of Trollocs will surge in and fill your streets.'
'Not so long as I stand,' Deepe said.
'I like determination in a soldier, Deepe,' Ituralde said, 'but you look as exhausted as I feel.'
Deepe shot him a glare. His eyes were red from lack of sleep, and he clenched his teeth, the muscles in his neck and face tense. He met Ituralde's eyes, then took a long, forced breath.
'You are correct,' Deepe said. 'But neither of us can do anything about that.' He raised his hand, doing something that Ituralde couldn't see. A flash of red light appeared over his hand—the signal he used to draw the others to him. 'Prepare your men, General, Captain. It will not be long. They cannot continue to hold that kind of Power without… consequences.'
Yoeli nodded, then hurried away. Ituralde took Deepe's arm, drawing his attention.
'You Asha'man are too important a resource to lose,' Ituralde said. 'The Dragon sent us here to help, not to die. If this city falls, I want you to take the others and whatever wounded you can and get out. Do you understand, soldier?'
'Many of my men will not like this.'
'But you know it is for the best,' Ituralde said. 'Don't you?'
Deepe hesitated. 'Yes. You are correct, as you so often are. I will get them out.' He spoke in a lower voice. 'This is a hopeless resistance, my Lord. Whatever is happening out there, it will be deadly. It galls me to suggest it… but what you have said about my Asha'man applies to your soldiers as well. Let us flee.' He said the word 'flee' with bitterness.
'The Saldaeans wouldn't leave with us.'
'I know.'
Ituralde considered it. Finally, he shook his head. 'Every day we delay up here keeps these monsters away from my homeland a day longer. No, I cannot go, Deepe. This is still the best place to fight. You've seen how fortified those buildings are; we can hold inside for a few days, split apart, keep the army busy.'
'Then my Asha'man could stay and help.'
'You have your orders, son. You follow them. Understand?'
Deep snapped his jaw shut, then nodded curtly. 'I will take—'
Ituralde didn't hear the rest. An explosion hit.
He didn't feel it arrive. He was standing with Deepe one moment, then round himself on the floor of the wall walk, the world strangely silent around him. His head screamed with pain and he coughed, raising a trembling hand to find his face bleeding. There was something in his right eye; it seared with pain when he blinked. Why was everything so quiet?
He rolled over, coughing again, right eye squeezed shut, the other watering. The wall ended a few inches away from him.
He gasped. An enormous chunk of the northern wall was simply gone.
He groaned, looking back in the other direction. Deepe had been standing beside him…
