The Path of Daggers Read online

  “Perhaps you should all come to my camp,” Perrin said, finally releasing the bridle. “You’ll be safe from . . . brigands . . . there.” He half expected Maighdin to make a break for the nearest tree line, but she turned her horse with his, back toward the goatpen. She smelled . . . resigned.

  Even so, she said, “I thank you for the offer, but I . . . we . . . must continue our journey. We will go on, Lini,” she added firmly, and the older woman frowned at her so sternly that he wondered whether they were mother and daughter despite her use of the woman’s name. They certainly looked nothing alike. Lini was narrow-faced and parchment-skinned, all sinew, while Maighdin might be beautiful under that dust. If a man liked fair hair.

  Perrin glanced over his shoulder at the man trailing after. A hard-looking fellow, in need of a razor. Perhaps he liked fair hair. Perhaps he liked it too much. Men had made trouble for themselves as well as others for that reason before this.

  Ahead, Faile was sitting Swallow and peering over the wall of the pen at the people inside. Perhaps one of them had been hurt. Seonid and the Wise Ones were nowhere in sight. Aram had understood, apparently; he was close to Faile, though looking impatiently toward Perrin. The danger was clearly past, though.

  Before Perrin was halfway to the goatpen, Teryl appeared with a narrow-eyed, stubble-cheeked man stumbling along beside his roan, the collar of his coat gripped in the Warder’s fist. “I thought we should catch one of them,” Teryl said with a hard grin. “Always best to hear both sides, whatever you thought you saw, my old da always said.” Perrin was surprised; he had thought Teryl could not think beyond the end of his sword.

  Even hiked up as it was, the stubble-cheeked fellow’s frayed coat was plainly too big for him. Perrin doubted anyone else had been able to see well enough at the distance, but he recognized that thrusting nose, too. This man had been the last to run, and he was not cowed now, either. His sneer took them all in. “You’re all in deep muck, for this,” he rasped. “We was doing the Prophet’s bidding, we was. The Prophet says if a man bothers a woman as doesn’t want him, he dies. This lot was chasing after her” — he jerked his chin at Maighdin — “and she was running hard. The Prophet’ll have your ears for this!” He spat for emphasis.

  “That is ridiculous,” Maighdin announced in a clear voice. “These people are my friends. This man completely misunderstood what he saw.”

  Perrin nodded, and if she thought he was agreeing with her, all well and good. But putting what this fellow said alongside what Lini had . . . Not simple at all.

  Faile and the others joined them, followed by the rest of Maighdin’s traveling companions, three more men and another woman, all leading worn-down horses with few miles left in them. Not that they had been prime horseflesh in some years, if ever. A finer collection of buck knees, bow hocks, spavins, and swaybacks, Perrin could not recall. As always, his gaze went first to Faile — his nostrils strained for her scent — but Seonid snagged his eyes. Slumped in her saddle, flushing scarlet, she wore a sullen glower, and her face looked odd, her cheeks puffed out and her mouth not quite closed. There was something, a bit of red-and-blue . . . Perrin blinked. Unless he was seeing things, she had a wadded-up scarf stuffed into her mouth! Apparently when Wise Ones told an apprentice to be quiet, even an Aes Sedai apprentice, they meant it.

  He was not the only one with sharp eyes; Maighdin’s mouth fell open when she saw Seonid, and she gave him a long, considering look as if he were responsible for the scarf. So she knew an Aes Sedai on sight, did she? Uncommon, for the country woman she appeared. She did not sound one, though.

  Furen, riding behind Seonid, wore a thunderhead for a face, but it was Teryl who made everything even less simple by tossing something to the ground. “I found this behind him,” he said, “where he might have dropped it, running.”

  At first, Perrin did not know what he was looking at, a long loop of rawhide thickly strung with what appeared to be tags of shriveled leather. Then he did know, and his teeth bared in a snarl. “The Prophet would have our ears, you said.”

  The stubble-cheeked man stopped gaping at Seonid and licked his lips. “That . . . that’s Hari’s work!” he protested. “Hari’s a mean one. He likes to keep count, take trophies, and he . . . uh . . . ” Shrugging in his captive coat, he sank in on himself like a cornered dog. “You can’t tie that to me! The Prophet’ll hang you if you touch me! He’s hanged nobles before, fine lords and ladies. I walk in the Light of the blessed Lord Dragon!”

  Perrin walked Stepper to the man, careful to keep the dun’s hooves clear of the . . . thing . . . on the ground. He wanted nothing less than to have the fellow’s scent in his nose, but he bent down, putting his face closer. Sour sweat warred with fear, panic, a tinge of anger. A pity he could not sniff out guilt. “Might have dropped” was not “had dropped.” Close-set eyes widened, and the man pressed back against Teryl’s gelding. Yellow eyes had their uses.

  “If I could tie that to you, you’d hang from the nearest tree,” he growled. The fellow blinked, began to brighten as he understood what that meant, but Perrin gave him no time to regain his bluster. “I’m Perrin Aybara, and your precious Lord Dragon sent me here. You spread the word. He sent me, and if I find a man with . . . trophies . . . he hangs! If I find a man burning a farm, he hangs! If one of you looks at me cross-eyed, he hangs! And you can tell Masema I said so, too!” Disgusted, Perrin straightened. “Let him go, Teryl. If he isn’t out of my sight in two shakes . . .!”

  Teryl’s hand opened, and the fellow dashed off at a dead run for the nearest trees, never so much as glancing back. Part of Perrin’s disgust was for himself. Threatening! If one of them looked at him cross-eyed? But if the nameless man had not cut off ears himself, he had watched it and done nothing.

  Faile was smiling, pride shining through the sweat on her face. Her look washed away some of Perrin’s revulsion. He would walk barefoot through fire for that look.

  Not everyone approved, of course. Seonid’s eyes were squeezed shut, and her gloved fists quivered on her reins as though she desperately wanted to yank that scarf from her mouth and tell him what she thought. He could guess anyway. Edarra and Nevarin had gathered their shawls around them and were eyeing him darkly. Oh, yes; he could guess.

  “I thought it was to be all secrecy,” Teryl said casually, watching the stubble-cheeked man run. “I thought Masema wasn’t to know you were here till you spoke in his pink ear.”

  That had been the plan. Rand had suggested it as a precaution, Seonid and Masuri had insisted on it every chance they got. After all, Prophet of the Lord Dragon or no, Masema might not want to come face-to-face with someone Rand sent, considering the things he was said to have allowed. Those ears were not the worst, if the tenth part of rumor was to be believed. Edarra and the other Wise Ones saw Masema as a possible enemy, to be ambushed before he could set his own trap.

  “I’m supposed to stop . . . that,” Perrin said, gesturing angrily to the rawhide string on the ground. He had heard the rumors, and done nothing. Now he had seen. “I might as well start now.” And if Masema decided he was an enemy? How many thousands followed the Prophet, out of belief or fear? It did not matter. “It stops, Teryl. It stops!”

  The Murandian nodded slowly, eyeing Perrin as though seeing him for the first time.

  “My Lord Perrin?” Maighdin said. He had forgotten all about her and her friends. The others had gathered with her a little way off, most still afoot. There were three men aside from the fellow who had followed Maighdin, and two of those were hiding behind their horses. Lini appeared the wariest of all, eyes focused on him worriedly; she had her horse close to Maighdin’s and seemed ready to seize the bridle herself. Not to stop the younger woman bolting, but to bolt herself and take Maighdin with her. Maighdin herself appeared completely at ease, but she also studied Perrin. Little wonder, after all that talk of the Prophet and the Dragon Reborn, on top of his eyes. Not to mention an Aes Sedai gagged. He expected her to say that they wanted to go n
ow, immediately, but what she said instead was “We will accept your kind offer. A day or two resting in your camp might be just the thing.”

  “As you say, Mistress Maighdin,” he said slowly. Masking his surprise was difficult. Especially since he had just recognized the two men trying to keep their horses between them and him. Ta’veren work, to bring them here? A strange twist in any case. “It might be just the thing at that.”

  Chapter 8

  A Simple Country Woman

  * * *

  The camp lay about a league farther on, well back from the road among low, wooded hills, just beyond a stream that was ten paces’ width of stones and only five of water never deeper than a man’s knees. Tiny green and silver fish darted away from the horses’ hooves. Casual passersby were unlikely to come on them here. The nearest inhabited farm was over a mile away, and Perrin had checked personally to make sure those folk took their animals to water elsewhere.

  He truly had been trying to avoid notice as much as possible, traveling by back roads and the smallest country paths when they could not keep to the forests. A futile effort, really. The horses could be pastured wherever there was grass, but they required at least some grain, and even a small army had to buy food, and a lot of it. Every man needed four pounds a day, in flour and beans and meat. Rumors must have been floating all over Ghealdan, though with luck, no one suspected who they were. Perrin grimaced. Perhaps they had not, until he went and opened his mouth. Still, he would have done nothing differently.

  It was three camps really, close to one another and none far from the stream. They traveled together, all following him, obeying him supposedly, but there were too many personalities involved, and no one was entirely sure the others aimed at the same goal. Some nine hundred or so Winged Guards had their cook fires crowded between rows of picketed horses in a broad meadow of trampled brown grass. He tried to close his nose to the mingled smells of horses, sweat, dung and boiling goat meat, an unpleasant combination on a hot day. A dozen mounted sentries rode a slow circuit in pairs, their long, red-streamered lances all at precisely the same angle, but the rest of the Mayeners had shed breastplates and helmets. Coatless and often shirtless in the sun, they lay sprawled on their blankets or diced as they waited on the food. Some looked up as Perrin passed, a number straightened from what they were doing to study the additions to his party, but none came running, so the patrols were still out. Small patrols, without lances, who could see without being seen. Well, that was the hope. It had been.

  A handful of gai’shain moved at various chores among the Wise Ones’ low gray-brown tents on the sparsely wooded crest of the hill above the Mayeners. At this distance, the white-robed figures appeared harmless, eyes downcast and meek. Up close, they would look the same, but most were Shaido. The Wise Ones claimed gai’shain were gai’shain; Perrin did not trust any Shaido out of his sight. Off to one side on the slope, beneath a bedraggled sourgum, perhaps a dozen Maidens in cadin’sor knelt in a circle around Sulin, the toughest of them despite her white hair. She had sent out scouts, too, women who could move as fast afoot as the Mayeners on their horses and were much more likely to escape unwanted attention. None of the Wise Ones up there were in the open, but a slender woman stirring a large stew kettle straightened, knuckling her back as she watched Perrin and the others pass. A woman in a green silk riding dress.

  He could see the glare on Masuri’s face. Aes Sedai did not stir kettles, nor perform twenty other tasks the Wise Ones had her and Seonid doing. Masuri laid it at Rand’s feet, but he was not here, and Perrin was. Given half a chance, she would peel his hide for him.

  Edarra and Nevarin turned up that way, even in those bulky skirts barely disturbing the layers of dead leaves that carpeted the ground. Seonid followed, her cheeks still bulging around that scarf. She twisted in her saddle, peering back at Perrin. If he could have believed an Aes Sedai looking anxious, that was what he would have called her. Riding behind her, Furen and Teryl wore scowls.

  Masuri saw them coming and hastily bent back to the black kettle, stirring with renewed vigor, trying to make out that she had never stopped. So long as Masuri stayed in the Wise Ones’ charge, Perrin thought he did not have to worry about his hide. The Wise Ones seemed to keep a very short leash.

  Nevarin looked back over her shoulder at him, another of those dark stares he had been getting from her and Edarra since sending his warning, his threat, by the stubble-cheeked fellow. Perrin exhaled in exasperation. He did not have to worry about his pelt unless the Wise Ones decided they wanted it. Too many personalities. Too many goals.

  Maighdin rode at Faile’s side, seemingly paying no attention to what they passed, but he would not have wagered a split copper on it. Her eyes had widened a hair at sight of the Mayener sentries. She knew what red breastplates and helmets like rimmed pots meant, as surely as she had recognized an Aes Sedai face. Most people would not have known either, especially not folk dressed as she was. She was a mystery, this Maighdin. For some reason, she seemed vaguely familiar.

  Lini and Tallanvor — that was what he had heard Maighdin call the fellow who had ridden after her; “young” Tallanvor, though there could not have been more than four or five years between them if that — stayed as close behind Maighdin as possible, with Aram in the way trying to heel Perrin. So did a little stick of a fellow with a pursed mouth, called Balwer, who seemed to pay less heed to their surroundings than Maighdin pretended. Even so, Perrin thought Balwer saw more than she did. He could not say why, precisely, but the few times he had caught the bony little man’s scent, he had been minded of a wolf testing the air. Strangely, there was no fear in Balwer, only quickly suppressed ridges of irritation shot through with the quivery smell of impatience. The remainder of Maighdin’s companions trailed along well back. The third woman, Breane, was whispering fiercely to a hulking fellow who kept his eyes down and sometimes nodded silently, sometimes shook his head. A shoulder-striker and street tough if ever there was one, but the short woman had an edge of toughness about her, too. The last man sheltered behind those two, a stout man with a battered straw hat pulled low to hide his face. On him, the sword the men all wore looked as strange as it did on Balwer.

  The third part of the camp, spread out among the trees just around the curve of the hill from the Mayeners, covered as much ground as the Winged Guards’ though it held far fewer people. Here, the horses were picketed well away from the cook fires, so the unblemished smell of dinner filled the air. Roasting goat, this time, and hard turnips the farmers probably had intended to feed to their pigs even with times as hard as they were. Close on to three hundred Two Rivers men who had followed Perrin away from home were tending meat on spits, mending clothes, checking over arrows and bows, all scattered in haphazard clumps of five or six friends around a fire. Nearly every one of them waved and shouted greetings, though there was too much of “Lord Perrin” and “Perrin Goldeneyes” to suit him. Faile had a right to the titles they gave her.

  Grady and Neald, unsweating in their night-black coats, did not cheer; standing beside the cook fire they had built a little away from everyone else, they merely looked at him. Expectant looks, he thought. Expecting what? That was the question he always asked himself about them. The Asha’man made him uneasy, more than Aes Sedai or Wise Ones. Women channeling the Power was natural, if not exactly anything a man could be comfortable around. Plain-faced Grady appeared a farmer despite his coat and sword, and Neald a popinjay with his curled mustaches, yet Perrin could not forget what they were, what they had done at Dumai’s Wells. But then, he had been there, too. The Light help him, he had. Pulling his hand from the axe at his belt, he dismounted.

  Servants, men and women from Lord Dobraine’s estates in Cairhien, came running from the lines where the horses were picketed, to take their mounts. None stood taller than Perrin’s shoulder, country-clad folk, forever bowing and curtsying obsequiously. Faile said he just upset them when he tried to make them stop, or at least not to bob around him so often; in
truth, that was how they smelled when he did, and they always went back to bobbing in an hour or two. Others, nearly as many as the Two Rivers men, were working with the horses or around the long rows of high-wheeled carts that hauled all their supplies. A few were darting in and out of a large red-and-white tent.

  As usual, that tent made Perrin grunt gloomily. Berelain had a larger one back in the Mayener part of the camp, plus one for her two maids and another for the pair of thief-catchers she had insisted on bringing. Annoura had a tent of her own, and Gallenne as well, but only he and Faile possessed one here. For himself, he would have slept under the sky like the other men from home. They had nothing over them at night but a blanket. There was certainly no fear of rain. The Cairhienin servants bedded down beneath the carts. He could not ask Faile to do that, though, not when Berelain had a tent. If only he could have left Berelain in Cairhien. But then he would have had to send Faile into Bethal.

  A pair of banners on tall, fresh-cut poles in the middle of a clear space near the tent soured his mood further. The breeze had picked up a trifle, though it was still too warm; he thought he heard that thunder again, faint in the west. The flags unfolded in slow waves, collapsed of their own weight, rippled open again. His crimson-bordered Red Wolfhead and the Red Eagle of long-dead Manetheren, out in the open again despite his orders. Perhaps he had stopped trying to hide, after a fashion, but what was now Ghealdan had been part of Manetheren; Alliandre would not be soothed by hearing of that banner! He managed a pleasant face and a smile for the stocky little woman who curtsied deeply and took Stepper away, but it was a near thing. Lords were supposed to be obeyed, and if he was supposed to be a lord, well, he seemed to be making a poor job of it.