Lord of Chaos twot-6 Read online

  A handful of others dotted the members of the Band. Here a lean, fork-bearded Kandori with a moonstone the size of his thumbnail in one earlobe and silver chains across the chest of his red coat, there a copper-skinned Domani woman, though wearing a modest blue dress, with quick eyes and gemmed rings on all her fingers, elsewhere a Taraboner in a conical flat-topped blue cap, thick mustache hidden behind a transparent veil. Plump men in Tairen coats tight to the waist or bony fellows in Murandian coats hanging to the knee; sharp-eyed women in dresses high-necked or ankle-length, but always in well-cut wool of sober color. Merchants all, ready to leap in when trade reopened between Andor and Cairhien. And in every common room two or three men sat apart from the others, usually alone, for the most part hard-eyed fellows, some well dressed, others little better garbed than the refugees, but every one looking as if he knew how to use the sword at his hip or on his back. Mat identified two women with that lot, though neither showed a weapon; one had a long walking staff propped against her table, and he supposed the other had knives hidden in her riding dress. He carried a few throwing knives tucked about his person, too. He was sure he knew what she and the others were about, and she was a fool if she went at it unarmed.

  As he and Edorion stepped out of The Wagoner’s Whip, Mat stopped to watch a blocky woman in divided brown skirts wend her way through the crowds. Unblinking eyes that caught everything in the street belied the apparent placidity of her round face, and so did the studded cudgel at her belt, and a dagger heavy-bladed enough to do for an Aielman. So, a third woman in the lot. Hunters for the Horn was what they were, the legendary Horn of Valere that would call dead heroes back from the grave to fight in the Last Battle. Whoever found it would earn a place in the histories. If there’s anyone left to write a bloody history, Mat thought wryly.

  Some believed the Horn would turn up where there was turmoil and strife. Four hundred years since the Hunt of the Horn was last called, and this time people had all but dropped out of the trees to take the oaths. He had seen flocks of Hunters in the streets of Cairhien, and he expected to see more flocks when he reached Tear. Without doubt they would be streaming toward Caemlyn now as well. He wished one of them had found the thing. To the best of his knowledge the Horn of bloody Valere lay somewhere deep in the White Tower, and if he knew anything about Aes Sedai he would be surprised if a dozen of them were aware of it.

  A troop of foot behind a mounted officer in a dented breastplate and a Cairhienin helmet marched between him and the blocky woman, close to two hundred pikemen, weapons a tall forest of spikes, followed by fifty or more archers with quivers on hips and bows slung on shoulders. Not the Two Rivers longbow Mat had grown up with, but a fair enough weapon. He had to find enough crossbows to go around, though the archers would not willingly make the change. They sang as they marched, the massed voices enough to punch through the rest of the noise.

  "You’ll feed on beans and on rotten hay,

  and a horse’s hoof come your naming day.

  You’ll sweat and bleed till you grow old,

  and your only gold will be dreams of gold,

  if you go to be a soldier.

  If you go to be a soldier."

  A fat knot of civilians trailed along behind, townsmen and refugees mingled, young men all, watching curiously and listening. It never ceased to amaze Mat. The worse the song made soldiering seem — this was far from the worst — the larger the crowd. Sure as water was wet, some of those men would be talking to a bannerman before the day was out, and most who did would sign their names or make their mark. They must think the song was an attempt to scare them off and keep the glory and loot. At least the pikes were not singing "Dance with Jak o’ the Shadows." Mat hated that song. Once the lads realized Jak o’ the Shadows was death, they started panting to find a bannerman.

  "Your girl will marry another man.

  A muddy grave will be all your land.

  Food for the worms and none to mourn.

  You’ll curse the day you were ever born,

  if you go to be a soldier.

  If you go to be a soldier."

  "There’s a good deal of wondering," Edorion said casually as the formation swung on down the street with its trail of idiots, "about when we’ll be heading south. There are rumors." He peered at Mat from the corner of his eye, measuring his mood. "I noticed the farriers checking the teams for the supply wagons."

  "We’ll move when we move," Mat told him. "No need to let Sammael know we’re coming."

  Edorion gave him a level look. This Tairen was no dunce. Not that Nalesean was — he was just overeager sometimes — but Edorion had a sharp mind. Nalesean would never have noticed the farriers. Too bad that House Aldiaya outranked House Selorna, or Mat would have had Edorion in Nalesean’s place. Fool nobles and their fool fixation on rank. No, Edorion was no blockhead; he knew that as soon as the Band moved south word would speed ahead with the river traffic, and maybe by pigeon as well. Mat would not have placed a bet against spies in Maerone if he had felt his luck strong enough to pound his skull apart.

  "There’s also a rumor the Lord Dragon was in the town yesterday," Edorion said, as softly as the street noise would allow.

  "The biggest thing that happened yesterday," Mat said wryly, "was I had my first bath in a week. Now come on. It’s going to take half what daylight is left to finish this as it is."

  He would have given a pretty to find out how that rumor began. Only off by a half day, and there certainly had been no one to see. It had been the small hours of morning when a slash of light suddenly appeared in his room at The Golden Stag. He had thrown himself desperately across the four-posted bed, one boot on and one half off, pulling the knife he wore hanging between his shoulder blades before he realized it was Rand, stepping out of one of those bloody holes in nothing, apparently from the palace in Caemlyn by the columns visible before the opening winked out. It was startling, him coming in the middle of the night, without any Aiel, and popping right into Mat’s room, which last still made the hair on Mat’s neck stand up. That thing could have sliced him in two had he been standing in the wrong place. He did not like the One Power. The whole thing had been very strange.

  "Make haste slowly, Mat," Rand said, striding up and down. He never looked in Mat’s direction. Sweat slicked his face, and his jaw was tight. "He has to see it coming. Everything depends on it."

  Seated on his bed, Mat jerked his boot the rest of the way off and dropped it on the scrap of rug Mistress Daelvin had given him. "I know," he said sourly, pausing to rub an ankle he had cracked on a bedpost. "I helped make the bloody plan, remember?"

  "How do you know you’re in love with a woman, Mat?" Rand did not stop his striding, and he dropped it in as if it fit what he had been saying.

  Mat blinked. "How in the Pit of Doom should I know? That’s one snare I’ve never put a foot in. What brought that on?"

  But Rand only moved his shoulders as though shrugging something off. "I’ll finish Sammael, Mat. I promised that; I owe it to the dead. But where are the others? I need to finish them all."

  "One at a time, though." He barely managed to keep the question out of that; there was no telling what Rand might take into his head these days.

  "There are Dragonsworn in Murandy, Mat. In Altara, too. Men sworn to me. Once Illian is mine, Altara and Murandy will drop like ripe plums. I’ll make contact with the Dragonsworn in Tarabon — and in Arad Doman — and if the Whitecloaks try to keep me out of Amadicia, I’ll crush them. The Prophet has Ghealdan primed, and Amadicia almost, so I hear. Can you imagine Masema as the Prophet? Saldaea will come to me; Bashere is sure of it. All the Borderlands will come. They have to! I am going to do it, Mat. Every land united before the Last Battle. I’m going to do it!" Rand’s voice had taken on a feverish tone.

  "Sure, Rand," Mat said slowly, depositing his other boot beside the first. "But one thing at a time, right?"

  "No man should have another man’s voice in his head," Rand muttered, and Mat’s hand
s froze in the act of tugging off a woolen stocking. Oddly, he found himself wondering whether the pair had another day’s wear in them. Rand knew something of what had happened inside that ter’angreal in Rhuidean — knew he had somehow gained knowledge of soldiering, anyway — but not the whole of it. Mat thought not the whole of it. Not about other men’s memories. Rand did not seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. He just scrubbed fingers through his hair and went on. "He can be gulled, Mat — Sammael always thinks in straight lines — but is there any opening he can slip through? If there’s any mistake, thousands will die. Tens of thousands. Hundreds will anyway, but I don’t want it to be thousands."

  Mat grimaced so fiercely that a sweaty-faced hawker trying to sell him a dagger, the hilt half-covered in colorful glass "gems" nearly dropped the thing burying himself in the crowd. It had all been like that with Rand, bouncing from the invasion of Illian to the Forsaken to women — Light, Rand was the one who always had the way with women, him and Perrin — from the Last Battle to the Maidens of the Spear to things Mat hardly understood, seldom listening to Mat’s replies and sometimes not even waiting for them. Hearing Rand talk about Sammael as if he knew the man was more than just disconcerting. He knew Rand would go mad eventually, but if madness was creeping in already…

  And what of the others, those fools Rand was gathering who wanted to channel, and this fellow Taim, who already could? Rand had just dropped that in casually; Mazrim Taim, false bloody Dragon, teaching Rand’s bloody students or whatever they were. When they all started going insane, Mat did not want to be within a thousand miles.

  Only he had as much choice as a leaf in a whirlpool. He was ta’veren, but Rand was more so. Nothing in the Prophecies of the Dragon about Mat Cauthon, but he was caught, a shoat under a fence. Light, but he wished he had never seen the Horn of Valere.

  It was with a grim face that he stalked through the next dozen taverns and common rooms, circling out from The Golden Stag. They were really no different from the first, packed tables full of men drinking and dicing and arm-wrestling, musicians often as not drowned out by the uproar, Redarms quashing fights as soon as they began, a gleeman reciting The Great Hunt in one — that was popular even without Hunters about — in another a short, pale-haired woman singing a slightly bawdy song somehow made bawdier by her round face of wide-eyed innocence.

  His bleak mood held when he left The Silver Horn — idiotic name! — and its innocent-faced singer. Maybe that was why he went running toward the shouting that erupted down the street in front of another inn. The Redarms would take care of it if it involved soldiers, but Mat shoved his way through the crowd anyway. Rand going mad, leaving him hanging out in the storm. Taim and those other idiots ready to follow him into insanity. Sammael waiting in Illian, and the rest of the Forsaken the Light knew where, all probably looking for a chance to take Mat Cauthon’s head in passing. That did not even count what the Aes Sedai would do to him if they laid hands on him again: the ones who knew too much, anyway. And everybody thinking he was going to go out and be a bloody hero! He usually tried to talk his way out of a fight if he could not walk wide of it, but right then he wanted an excuse to punch somebody in the nose. What he found was not anything he expected.

  A crowd of townspeople, short, drably clothed Cairhienin and a sprinkling of taller Andorans in brighter colors, made an expressionless ring around two tall lean men with curled mustaches, long Murandian coats in bright silk, and swords with ornate, gilded pommels and quillons. The fellow in a red coat stood grinning in amusement while he watched the one in yellow shake a boy little taller than Mat’s waist by the collar like a dog shaking a rat.

  Mat held on to his temper; he reminded himself that he did not know what had started all this. "Easy with the boy," he said, laying a hand on yellow-coat’s arm. "What did he do to deserve—?"

  "He touched me horse!" the man snapped in a Mindean accent, shaking off Mat’s hand. Mindeans boasted — boasted! — that they had the worst tempers of anyone in Murandy. "I’ll break his skinny peasant neck for him! I’ll wring his scrawny—!"

  Without another word Mat brought the butt of his spear up hard, straight between the fellow’s legs. The Murandian’s mouth opened, but no sound came out… His eyes rolled up till almost nothing showed but white. The boy darted off as the man’s legs folded, depositing him on knees and face in the street. "No, you won’t," Mat said.

  That was not the end of it, of course; the man in the red coat snatched at his sword. He managed to bare an inch of blade before Mat cracked his wrist with the spear-butt. Grunting, he let go the sword hilt, but grabbed for the long-bladed dagger on his belt with his other hand. Hastily Mat clipped him over the ear; not hard, but the fellow went down atop the other man. Bloody fool! Mat was not sure whether he was describing red-coat or himself.

  Half a dozen Redarms had finally pushed through the onlookers, Tairen cavalrymen awkward afoot in knee boots, their swollen black-and-gold sleeves crushed under the armbands. Edorion had the boy in hand, a gaunt sullen-looking lad of six or so, wriggling bare toes in the dust and now and again giving an experimental tug at Edorion’s grip. He was perhaps the ugliest child Mat had ever seen, with a squashed nose, a mouth too wide for his face and ears too big that stuck out besides. By the holes in his coat and breeches, he was one of the refugees. He looked more dirt than anything else.

  "Settle this out, Harnan," Mat said. That was a lantern-jawed Redarm, a file leader with a long-suffering expression and a crude tattoo of a hawk on his left cheek. The fashion seemed to be spreading through the Band, but most limited themselves to parts of the body normally covered. "Find out what caused all this, then run these two louts out of town." They deserved that much, whatever the provocation.

  A skinny man in a Murandian coat of dark wool wiggled through the onlookers and dropped to his knees beside the man on the ground. Yellow-coat had begun emitting strangled groans, and red-coat was beginning to clutch his head in his hands and mumble what sounded like imprecations. The newcomer made more noise than both together. "Oh, me Lords! Me Lord Paers! Me Lord Culen! Are you killed?" He stretched trembling hands toward Mat. "Oh, don’t kill them, me Lord! Not helpless like this. They’re Hunters for the Horn, me Lord. I’m their man, Padry. Heroes, they are, me Lord."

  "I’m not going to kill anybody," Mat cut in, disgusted. "But you get these heroes on their horses and out of Maerone by sunset. I don’t like grown men who threaten to break a child’s neck. Sunset!"

  "But, me Lord, they’re injured. He’s only a peasant boy, and he was molesting Lord Paers’ horse."

  "I was only sitting on it," the boy burst out. "I was not — what you said."

  Mat nodded grimly. "Boys don’t get their necks broken for sitting on a horse, Padry. Not even peasant boys. You get these two gone, or I’ll see about breaking their necks." He motioned to Harnan, who nodded sharply to the other Redarms — file leaders never did anything themselves, any more than bannermen did — who snatched Paers and Culen up roughly and hustled them away groaning with Padry trailing behind, wringing his hands and protesting that his masters were in no condition to ride, that they were Hunters for the Horn and heroes.

  Edorion still held the source of all this bother by an arm, Mat realized. The Redarms were gone, and the townsfolk drifting away. No one glanced twice at the boy; they had their own children to look after, and a hard enough time doing that. Mat exhaled heavily. "Don’t you realize you could be hurt ‘just sitting’ on a strange horse, boy? A man like that probably rides a stallion that could trample a little boy into the bottom of his stall so no one could ever tell you were there."

  "A gelding." The boy gave another jerk at Edorion’s grip, and finding it had not loosened, put on a sulky face. "It was a gelding, and it would not have hurt me. Horses like me. I am not a little boy: I am nine. And my name is Olver, not boy."

  "Olver, is it?" Nine? He might be. Mat had trouble telling, especially with Cairhienin children. "Well, Olver, where are your mothe
r and father?" He looked around, but the refugees he saw passed by as quickly as the townsfolk. "Where are they, Olver? I have to get you back to them."

  Instead of answering, Olver bit his lip. A tear trickled from one eye, and he scrubbed it away angrily. "The Aiel killed my papa. One of those… Shaido. Mama said we were going to Andor. She said we were going to live on a farm. With horses."

  "Where is she now?" Mat asked softly.

  "She got sick. I— I buried her where there were some flowers." Suddenly Olver kicked Edorion and began thrashing in his grip. Tears rolled down his face. "You let me go. I can take care of myself. You let me go."

  "Take care of him until we can find somebody," Mat told Edorion, who gaped at him in the middle of trying to fend the boy off and hold on to him at the same time.

  "Me? What am I to do with this leopard of a carpet mouse?"

  "Get him a meal, for one thing!" Mat’s nose wrinkled; by the smell, Olver had spent at least a little time on the floor of that gelding’s stall. "And a bath. He stinks."

  "You talk to me," Olver shouted, rubbing at his face. The tears helped him rearrange the dirt. "You talk to me, not over my head!"

  Mat blinked, then bent down. "I’m sorry, Olver. I always hated people doing that to me, too. Now, this is how it is. You smell bad, so Edorion here is going to take you to The Golden Stag, where Mistress Daelvin is going to let you have a bath." The sulkiness on Olver’s face grew. "If she says anything, you tell her I said you could have one. She can’t stop you." Mat held in a grin at the boy’s sudden stare; that would have spoiled it. Olver might not like the idea of a bath, but if someone might try to stop him from having one… "Now, you do what Edorion says. He’s a real Tairen lord, and he’s going to find you a good hot meal, and some clothes without holes in them. And some shoes." Best not to add "somebody to look after you." Mistress Daelvin could take care of that; a little gold would overcome any reluctance.