Knife of Dreams

Pips stamped a hoof, impatient at standing in one place so long, and Mat patted his neck then scratched the scar forming on his own jaw. Tuon’s ointments had stung as badly as she had said they would, but they worked. His new collection of scars did itch yet, though. Tuon. His wife. He was married. He had known it was coming, had known for a long time, but just the same… Married. He should have felt… different… somehow, but he still felt like himself. He intended to keep it that way, burn him if he did not! If Tuon expected Mat Cauthon to settle down, to give up gambling or some such, she had another think coming. He supposed he would have to give over chasing after women, much less catching them, but he would still enjoy dancing with them. And looking at them. Just not when he was with her. Burn him if he knew when that would be. He was not about to go anywhere she had the upper hand, her and her talk of cupbearers and ru

Musenge left the other ten men and five Ogier in red-and-black armor and trotted his black gelding up to Mat. The horse had good lines, built for speed and endurance both, as far as Mat could tell without a thorough examination. Musenge looked built for endurance, a stocky, stolid man, his face worn but hard, his eyes like polished stones. “Forgiveness, Highness,” he drawled, banging a gauntleted fist against his breastplate, “but shouldn’t the men be back to work?’’ He slurred his words worse than Selucia, almost to unintelligibility. “Their rest break has stretched a long time. I doubt they can complete the wall before the traitor arrives as it is.” Mat had wondered how long it would take him to mention that. He had expected it earlier.

Open-faced helmets off but breastplates strapped on, the crossbow-men were sitting on the ground behind a long curving wall, perhaps a third of a circle made of earth thrown up out of the four-foot deep trench fronting it, with a thicket of sharpened stakes driven into the ground in front of that and extending a little beyond the ends of the trench. They had finished that in short order. Infantry needed to be as handy with shovel, mattock and axe as they were with weapons. Even cavalry did, but making horsemen believe was harder. Footmen knew it was better to have something between you and the enemy if you could. The tools lay scattered along the trench, now. Some of the men were dicing, others just taking their ease, even napping. Soldiers slept any chance they got. A few were reading books, of all things. Reading! Mandevwin moved among them, fingering his eyepatch and now and then bending to say a few words to a ba

It was perfect terrain for what Mat had in mind. Near two miles of grassy meadow dotted with wildflowers and a few low bushes stretched from the wall to the tall trees at the western end. To the north was a blackwater swamp, full of oaks and odd. white-flowering trees that seemed half thick roots, with a lake clinging to its western edge and forest below the lake. A small river flowed south out of the swamp, half a mile behind Mat, before curving away to the west on his left. A small river, but wide enough and deep enough that horses would have to swim it. The far bank lay beyond bowshot. There was only one way for any attacker to get at the wall. Come straight for it.

“When they arrive, I don’t want them stopping to count how many men in red and black are here,” he replied. Musenge winced slightly for some reason. “I want them to see an unfinished wall and tools thrown down because we learned they were close. The promise of a hundred thousand crowns gold has to have their blood up, but I want them too excited to think straight. They’ll see us vulnerable, our defenses incomplete, and with any luck, they’ll rush in straight away. They’ll figure close to half of them will die when we loose, but that will just raise the chances for one of the others to get that gold. They’ll only expect us to manage one volley.” He slapped his hands together, and Pips shifted. “Then the trap closes.”

“Still, Highness, I wish we had more of your crossbowmen. I’ve heard you may have as many as thirty thousand.” Musenge had heard him tell Tuon he would fight the Seanchan. too. The man was probing for information.

“I have fewer than I did.” Mat said with a grimace. His victories had hardly been bloodless, only remarkably close to it. Near four hundred crossbowmen lay in Altaran graves, and close to five hundred of the cavalry. A small enough butcher’s bill, considering, yet he liked it best when the butcher presented no bill. “But what I have is enough for the day.”

“As you say. Highness.” Musenge’s voice was so neutral he could have been commenting on the price of beans. Strange. He did not look like a diffident man. “I have always been ready to die for her.” There was no need for him to say which “her” he meant.

“I guess I am, too. Musenge.” Light, he thought he meant that! Yes, he did mean it. Did that mean he was in love? “Better to live for her. though, wouldn’t you say?”

“Should you not be do

“I don’t intend getting close enough to the fighting to need armor. A general who draws his sword has put aside his baton and become a common soldier.”

He was only quoting Comadrin again-he seemed to do that a lot when discussing soldiering, but then, the man had known just about everything there was to know about the craft-just quoting, yet it appeared to impress the weathered man, who saluted him again and asked bloody permission before riding back to his men. Mat was tempted to ask what that “Highness” foolishness was about. Likely it was just some Seanchan way of calling him a lord, but he had not heard anything like it in Ebou Dar, and he had been surrounded by Seanchan there.

Five figures appeared out of the forest at the foot of the meadow, and he did not need a looking glass to know them. The two Ogier in armor striped bright red and black would have told him even if Vanin’s bulk had not. The mounted men were at a flat gallop, yet the Ogier kept pace, long arms swinging, axes swinging like a sawmill’s drive-shaft.

“Sling-men get ready!” Mat shouted. “Everybody else go pick up a shovel!” The appearance had to be just right.

As most of the crossbowmen scattered to pick up tools and make a show of working on the trench and wall, fifty others strapped on their helmets and lined up in front of Aludra. Tall men, they still carried the shortswords they called cat-gutters, but instead of crossbows, they were armed with four-foot long sling-staffs. He would have liked more than fifty, but Aludra only had so much of her powders. Each man wore a cloth belt sewn with pockets slung across his breastplate, and each pocket held a stubby leather cylinder larger than a man’s fist with a short length of dark fuse sticking out of the end. Aludra had not come up with a fancy name for them yet. She would, though. She was one for fancy names. Dragons, and dragons’ eggs.

One by one the men held up long pieces of slow-match for her to light with a striker. She did it quickly, using each striker until the long wooden stick had burned down nearly to her fingertips, but she never winced, just dropped the thing and lit another while telling the sling-men to be faster, she was getting low on strikers. Light, but she was tight with the things. She had five more boxes that Mat knew of. As each man turned away from her, he put the smoking slow-match between his teeth and secured one of the cylinders to his sling-staff as he walked to the wall. There were wide intervals between sling-men. They had to cover the whole length of the wall.