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Down the slope, behind Fli
Dashiva smiled, a twisted self-satisfied smile. "I ca
The silver-blue slash of a gateway rotated open atop one of the bare hills, half a mile to the west, and a Soldier pulled his horse through and mounted hurriedly, returning from the scout. Even at a distance, Rand could make out the faint shimmer of the weaves surrounding the gateway before they vanished. The rider had not reached the bottom of the hill before another gateway opened on the crest, and then a third, a fourth, more, one after another, almost as fast as the preceding man could get out of the way.
"But it did form," Rand said. So had the scouts’ gateways. "If saidinis hard to control, it’s always hard, and it still does what you want." But why more difficult here? A question for another time. Light, he wished Herid Fel were still alive; the old philosopher might have had an answer. "Get back with the others, Dashiva," he ordered, but the man stared at him in astonishment, and he had to repeat himself before the fellow let the ward vanish, jerked his horse around without a salute and thumped the animal back down the slope with his heels.
"Some trouble, my Lord Dragon?" Anaiyella simpered. Ailil merely looked at Rand with flat eyes.
Seeing the first scout on the way toward Rand, the others fa
Rand issued his orders as Nalaam galloped away, and his column began moving west. The Defenders and the Companions rode on either flank. The Legionmen marched at the rear, just behind Denharad. A reminder to the noblewomen, and their armsmen, if they needed one. Anaiyella certainly looked over her shoulder often enough, and Ailil’s refusal to was pointed. Rand formed the main thrust of the column, Rand and Fli
Madness waits for some, Lews Therin whispered. It creeps up on others.
Miraj rode near the head of his army marching east along a muddy road that wound through hilly olive groves and patchy forest. Not at the head. A full regiment, most Seanchan, rode between him and the forward scouts. He had known generals who wanted to be at the very front. Most were dead. Most had lost the battles they died in. Mud kept down dust, yet word of an army on the move ran like wildfire on the Sa’las Plains, whatever the land. Here and there among the olive trees he spotted an overturned wheelbarrow or an abandoned pruning hook, but the workers had vanished long since. Luckily, they would avoid his opponents as much as they did him. With luck, lacking raken, his opponents would not know he was on them until it was too late. Ke
Aside from under-officers ready to produce maps or copy orders and messengers ready to carry them, he rode accompanied only by Abaldar Yulan, small enough to make his quite ordinary brown gelding seem immense, a fiery man with the nails of his little fingers painted green who wore a black wig to conceal his baldness, and Lisaine Jarath, a gray-haired woman from Seandar itself, whose pale plump face and blue eyes were a study in serenity. Yulan was not calm; Miraj’s coal-dark Captain of the Air often wore a scowl for the rules that seldom let him touch the reins of a rakenanymore, but today his frown went bone deep. The sky was clear, perfect weather for raken, but by Suroth’s command, none of his fliers would be in the saddle today, not here. There were too few rakenwith the Hailene to risk them u
Within his sight were twenty damaneflanking the horsemen, each walking beside her sul’dam’s mount. The sul’dambobbed in their saddles, bending to pat a damane’s head, straightening only to bend again to stroke her hair. The damanelooked steady enough to his eye, but plainly the sul’damwere on razor’s edge. And ebullient Lisaine rode silent as a stone.
A tormappeared ahead, racing down the column. Well off to the side, on the edge of the groves, yet horses whickered and shied as the bronze-scaled creature flowed past. A trained tormwould not attack horses – at least not unless the killing frenzy overtook it, the reason tormwere no good in battle – but horses trained to be calm around tormwere in as short supply as tormthemselves.
Miraj sent a ski
"The enemy is less than five miles due east, my Lord Captain-General, marching in our direction. They are deployed in five columns spaced approximately one mile apart."
So much for luck. But Miraj had considered how he would attack forty thousand with only five himself, and fifty damane. Quickly men were galloping with orders to deploy to meet an attempted envelopment, and the regiments behind him began turning into the groves, sul’damriding among them with their damane.
Gathering his cloak against a sudden cold wind, Miraj noticed something that made him feel colder still. Lisaine was watching the sul’damvanish into the trees, too. And she had begun to sweat.
Bertome rode easily, letting the wind stream his cloak to one side, but he studied the forested country ahead with a wariness he barely attempted to conceal. Of his four countrymen at his back, only Doressin was truly skilled in the Game of Houses. That fool Tairen dog Weiramon was blind, of course. Bertome glared at the puffed-up buffoon’s back. Weiramon rode well ahead of the rest in deep conversation with Gedwyn, and if Bertome needed any further proof that the Tairen would smile at what gagged a goat, it was how he tolerated that hot-eyed young monster. He noticed Kiril glancing sideways at him, and reined his gray further from the towering man. He had no particular enmity toward the Illianer, but he did hate people looming over him. He could not wait to return to Cairhien, where he did not have to be surrounded by ungainly giants. Kiril Drapeneos was not blind, though, however over-tall. He had sent a dozen scouts forward, too. Weiramon had sent one.