Winter's Heart

them.

Faile felt no sympathy. The fools had earned every stripe, in her opinion. Frostbite and cut feet aside, the longer they remained outside without clothes, the more chance that some of them might not survive to escape. The Shaido had to be taking them to some sort of shelter, and Alliandre and Maighdin had delayed reaching it. Maybe it was little more than a quarter hour's delay, but minutes could be the difference between the living and the dead. On top of which, even Aiel would surely let down their guard a little once they found shelter and made fires. And they could rest, being carried. They could be ready to take their chance when it came.

Carrying their prisoners, the Shaido set out again at that ground-covering pace. If anything, they seemed to move through the forest more quickly than before. The hard leather bow case bumped Faile's side as she swayed, and she began to feel dizzy. Rolan's every long stride sent a jolt through her middle. Surreptitiously, she tried to find some position where she would not be poked and thudded quite so vigorously.

'Be still, or you will fall,' Rolan muttered, patting her hip as he might have patted a horse to soothe it.

Raising her head, Faile peered back at Alliandre, scowling. There was not much to be seen of the Queen of Ghealdan, and that crisscrossed by scarlet welts from the tops of her hips almost to the backs of her knees. Come to think of it, a short delay and a few stripes might be a small price to pay for biting a chunk out of this oaf toting her like a sack of grain. Not his hand, though. His throat would be about right.

Bold thoughts, and worse than useless. Foolish. Even being carried, she knew she must fight the cold. In some ways, she began to realize, being carried was worse. Walking, at least she had had the struggle to stay erect and on her feet to keep her awake, but as evening came on and deepened to darkness, the swaying motion on Rolan's shoulder seemed to have a lulling effect. No. It was the cold that was numbing her mind. Making her blood sluggish. She had to fight it, or she would die.

Rhythmically she worked her hands and bound arms, tensed her legs and relaxed them, tensed and relaxed, forcing her muscles to work her blood. She thought of Perrin, solid planning thoughts of what he should do about Masema, and how she could convince him if he balked. She went over the argument they would have when he learned she been using Cha Faile as spies, planned how she would meet his anger and turn it. There was an art to guiding a husband's anger in the direction you wanted, and she had learned from an expert, her mother. It would be a splendid argument. And a splendid making-up, after.

Thinking about making up with him made her forget to work her muscles, so she tried to concentrate on the argument, on the planning. Cold dulled her thoughts, though. She began losing the thread, having to shake her head and start over. Rolan's growls at her to be still helped, a voice to focus on, to keep her awake. Even the accompanying slaps on her upturned bottom helped, as much as she hated to admit the fact, each one a shock that jolted her to wakefulness. After a while, she began shifting more, then struggling almost to the point of falling, courting the rude smacks. Anything to stay awake. She could not have said how much time passed, but her twists and wriggles began to weaken, until Rolan no longer growled, much less gave her a slap. Light, she wanted the man to play her like a drum!

Why in the Light would I want a thing like that? she thought dully, and a dim corner of her mind realized the battle was lost. The night seemed darker than it should be. She could not even make out the glow of moonlight on the snow. She could feel herself sliding, though, sliding faster and faster toward a deeper dark. Wailing silently, she sank into a stupor.

Dreams came. She was sitting on Perrin's lap with his arms so tight around her she could barely move, before a great fire roaring in a broad stone fireplace. His curly beard scratched her cheeks as he nipped her ears almost painfully. Suddenly a huge wind howled through the room, snuffing the fire like a candle. And Perrin turned to smoke that vanished in the gale. Alone in bitter darkness, she fought the wind, but it tumbled her end over end until she was so dizzy she could not tell up from down. Alone and endlessly tumbling into icy dark, knowing she would never find him again.

She ran across a frozen land, floundering from snowdrift to snowdrift, falling, scrambling up to run on in panic, gulping air so cold it sliced her throat like shards of glass. Icicles sparkled on stark branches around her, and a frigid wind keened through the leafless forest. Perrin was very angry, and she had to get away.

Somehow, she could not recall the specifics of the argument, just that somehow she had pushed her beautiful wolf to real anger, to the point of throwing things. Only, Perrin did not throw things. He was going to turn her over his knee, as he had done once, long ago. Why was she running from that, though? There would still be the making-up. And she would make him pay for the humiliation, of course. Anyway, she had drawn a little blood from him a time or two with a well-aimed bowl or pitcher, not really meaning to, and she knew he would never really hurt her. But she also knew that she had to run, to keep moving, or she would die.

If he catches me, she thought dryly, at least part of me will be warm. And she began to laugh at that, until the dead white land spun around her, and she knew that soon she would be dead, too.

The monstrous bonfire loomed over her, a towering pile of thick logs roaring with flame. She was naked. And cold, so cold. No matter how near the fire she edged, her bones felt frozen, her flesh ready to shatter at a blow. She moved closer, closer. The heat of the blaze grew till she flinched at it, but the bitter cold remained trapped inside her skin. Closer. Oh, Light, it was hot, too hot! And still cold within. Closer. She began to scream at the burning, the searing pain, but she was still ice inside. Closer. Closer. She was going to die. She shrieked, but there was only silence, and the cold.

It was daylight, but leaden clouds filled the sky. Snow fell in a steady shower, feathery flakes swirling in the wind through the trees. Not a fierce wind, but it licked with tongues of ice. Ridges of white built on branches until they were tall enough to collapse from their own weight and the wind, sending heavier showers to the ground below. Hunger gnawed her belly with dull teeth. A very tall, bony man with a white woolen cowl sheltering his face forced something into her mouth, the rim of a large clay mug. His eyes were a startling green, like emeralds, and surrounded by puckered scars. He was kneeling on a large brown woolen blanket with her, and another blanket, striped in gray, was draped around her nakedness. The taste of hot tea thick with honey exploded on her tongue, and she seized the man's sinewy wrist weakly with both hands in case he tried to take the mug away. Her teeth chattered against the mug, but she gulped the steaming syrupy liquid greedily.

'Not too fast; you must not spill any,' the green-eyed man said meekly. Meekness sounded odd from that fierce face, and in a gravelly voice. 'They offended your honor. But you are a wetlander, so maybe it does not count with you.'

Slowly it dawned on her that this was no dream. Thought came in a trickle of shadows that melted if she tried to hold them too hard. The white-robed brute was gai'shain. Her leash and bonds were gone. He pulled his wrist away from her feeble grip, but only to pour a dark stream from a leather water bag hanging from his shoulder. Steam rose from the mug, and the aroma of tea.

Shivering so hard she almost fell over, she clutched the thick striped blanket around her. Fiery pain was blossoming in her feet. She could not have stood had she tried. Not that she wanted to. The blanket managed to cover everything but her feet so long as she remained in a crouch; standing would have bared her legs and maybe more. It was warmth she thought of, not decency, though there was little of either to be had. Hunger's teeth grew sharp, and she could not stop shaking. She was frozen inside, the tea's heat already just a memory. Her muscles were week-old congealed pudding. She wanted to stare at the filling mug, coveting the contents, but she made herself look for her companions.

They were all there in a line with her, Maighdin and Alliandre and everyone, slumped on their knees atop blankets, shivering inside blankets speckled with snow. In front of each a gai'shain knelt with a bulging water bag and a mug or cup, and even Bain and Chiad drank like women half-dead of thirst. Someone had cleaned the blood from Bain's face, but unlike the last time Faile had seen them, the two Maidens were as drawn and unsteady as anyone else. From Alliandre to Lacile, her companions looked—what was Perrin's phrase? —as if they had been dragged through a knothole backward. But everyone was still alive; that was the important thing. Only the living could escape.

Rolan and the other algai’d’siswai who had had charge of them made a cluster at the far end of the kneeling line. Five men and three women, the snow on the ground nearly knee-deep on the Maidens. Black veils hanging down their chests, they watched their prisoners and the gai'shain impassively. For a moment, she frowned at them, trying to grasp a slippery thought. Yes; of course. Where were the others? Escape would be easier if the rest had gone for some reason. There was something more, another misty question she could not quite catch.