Winter's Heart (14 page)

“Good news,” Perrin said flatly. Dumai’s Wells flashed into his head again, stronger than before. For a moment, he was back-to-back with Loial again, fighting desperately, sure that every breath would be his last. For the first time that day, he shivered. At least Rand knew about the Seanchan. At least he did not have to worry about that.

He became aware of Balwer eyeing him. Considering him, like a bird considering a strange insect. He had seen him shiver. The little man liked to know everything, but there were some secrets no one would ever know.

Perrin’s eyes returned to the hawk, barely visible now even to him. It made him think of Faile, his fierce falcon of a wife. His beautiful falcon of a wife. He put Seanchan and Whitecloaks and battle and even Masema out of his mind. For the time, at least.

“Let’s pick up the pace a little,” he called back to the others. The hawk might see Faile before he did, but unlike the bird, he would be seeing the love of his heart. And today, he would not shout at her no matter what she did.

The hawk soon passed out of sight, and the road remained empty of other travelers, but press as Perrin would, frozen ruts ready to break a horse’s leg and a rider’s neck allowed no great speed. The wind carried ice, and a promise of snow again tomorrow. It was midafternoon by the time he turned off through the trees into white drifts that were knee-deep on the horses in places, and covered the last mile to the forest camp where he had left the Two Rivers men and the Aiel, the Mayeners and Ghealdanin. And Faile. Nothing there was as he expected.

As always, there were four camps spaced out among the trees, in truth, but the Winged Guards’ smoking campfires stood abandoned around Berelain’s striped tents, amid overturned kettles and bits of gear dropped on the snow, and the same signs of haste dotted the trampled ground where Alliandre’s soldiers had been set up when he left that morning. The only evidence of life in either place was the horse handlers and farriers and cart drivers, bundled in woolens and huddled in clumps around the horselines and high-wheeled supply carts. They were all staring toward what caught his eye and held it.

Five hundred paces from the rocky, flat-topped hill where the Wise Ones had placed their low tents, the gray-coated Mayeners were drawn up, all nine hundred or so of them, horses stamping impatiently, red cloaks and the long red streamers on their lances rippling in the cold breeze.
Nearer the hill and off to one side, just at the near bank of a frozen stream, the Ghealdanin made a block of lances just as large, these with green streamers. The mounted soldiers’ green coats and armor appeared drab compared with the Mayeners’ red helmets and breastplates, but their officers sparkled in silvered armor and scarlet coats and cloaks, with reins and saddlecloths fringed in crimson. A brave show, for men on parade, but they were not parading. The Winged Guards faced toward the Ghealdanin, the Ghealdanin toward the hill. And the crest of the hill was ringed by Two Rivers men, longbows in hand. No one had drawn, yet, but every man had a shaft nocked and ready. It was madness.

Booting Stayer to as near a gallop as the bay could manage, Perrin plowed through the snow, followed by the others, until he reached the head of the Ghealdanin formation. Berelain was there, in a fur-trimmed red cloak, and Gallenne, the one-eyed Captain of her Winged Guards, and Annoura, her Aes Sedai advisor, all apparently arguing with Alliandre’s First Captain, a short, hard-bitten fellow named Gerard Arganda, who was shaking his head so hard the fat white plumes quivered on his gleaming helmet. The First of Mayene looked ready to bite iron, vexation showed through Annoura’s Aes Sedai calm, and Gallenne was fingering the red-plumed helmet hanging at his saddle as though deciding whether to don it. At the sight of Perrin, they broke off and turned their mounts toward him. Berelain sat her saddle erect, but her black hair was windblown, and her fine-ankled white mare was shivering, the lather of a hard run freezing on her flanks.

With so many people about, it was all but impossible to make out individual scents, but Perrin did not need his nose to recognize trouble hanging by a hair. Before he could demand to know what in the Light they thought they were doing, Berelain spoke with a porcelain-faced formality that made him blink at first.

“Lord Perrin, your Lady wife and I were hunting with Queen Alliandre when we were attacked by Aiel. I managed to escape. No one else in the party has returned, yet, though it may be the Aiel took prisoners. I have sent a squad of lancers to scout. We were about ten miles to the southeast, so they should return with news by nightfall.”

“Faile was captured?” Perrin said thickly. Even before crossing into Amadicia from Ghealdan they had heard of Aiel burning and looting, but it had always been somewhere else, the next village over or the one beyond that, if not farther. Never close enough to worry about, or to be sure they were more than rumor. Not when he had Rand bloody al’Thor’s orders to carry out! And look what it had cost.

“Why are you all still here?” he demanded aloud. “Why aren’t you all searching for her?” He realized he was shouting. He wanted to howl, to savage them. “Burn you all, what are you waiting for?” The levelness of her reply, as if reporting how much fodder was left for the horses, pushed needles of rage into his head. The more so because she was right.

“We were ambushed by two or three hundred, Lord Perrin, but you know as well as I, from what we have heard there easily could be a dozen or more such bands roaming the countryside. If we pursue in force, we may find a battle that will cost us heavily, against Aiel, without even knowing whether they are the ones who hold your Lady wife. Or even if she still lives. We must know that first, Lord Perrin, or the rest is worse than useless.”

If she still lived. He shivered; the cold was inside him, suddenly. In his bones. His heart. She had to be alive. She had to be. Oh, Light, he should have let her come to Abila with him. Annoura’s wide-mouthed face was a mask of sympathy framed by thin Taraboner braids. Suddenly he became aware of pain in his hands, cramping on the reins. He forced them to loosen their grip, flexed his fingers inside his gauntlets.

“She’s right,” Elyas said quietly, moving his gelding closer. “Hold on to yourself. Blunder around with Aiel, and you’re asking to die. Maybe take a lot of men with you to a bad end. Dying does no good if it leaves your wife a prisoner.” He tried to make his voice lighter, but Perrin could smell the strain. “Anyway, we’ll find her, boy. She could well have escaped them, a woman like that. Be trying to make her way back here afoot. Take time, that would, in a dress. The First’s scouts will locate traces.” Raking fingers through his long beard, Elyas gave a self-deprecating chuckle. “If I can’t find more than the Mayeners, I’ll eat bark. We’ll get her back for you.”

Perrin was not fooled. “Yes,” he said harshly. Nobody could escape Aiel afoot. “Go now. Hurry.” Not fooled at all. The man expected to find Faile’s body. She had to be alive, and that meant captive, but better a prisoner than . . .

They could not talk between themselves as they did with wolves, but Elyas hesitated as if he understood Perrin’s thoughts. He did not try to deny them, though. His gelding set off southeast at a walk, as quick as the snow would allow, and after a quick glance at Perrin, Aram followed, his face dark. The one-time Tinker did not like Elyas, but he near enough worshipped Faile, if only because she was Perrin’s wife.

It would do no good to founder the animals, Perrin told himself, frowning at their retreating backs. He wanted them to run. He wanted to run with them. Fine cracks seemed to be spidering through him. If they
returned with the wrong news, he would shatter. To his surprise, the three Warders trotted their mounts through the trees after Elyas and Aram in splashes of snow, plain woolen cloaks streaming behind, then matched speed when they caught up.

He managed to give Masuri and Seonid a grateful nod, and included Edarra and Carelle. Whoever had made the suggestion, there was no doubt who had granted permission. It was a measure of the control the Wise Ones had established that neither sister was trying to take charge. They very likely wanted to, but their gloved hands remained folded on the pommels of their saddles, and neither betrayed impatience by so much as the flicker of an eyelid.

Not everyone was watching the departing men. Annoura alternated between beaming sympathy at him and studying the Wise Ones out of the corner of her eye. Unlike the other two sisters, she had made no promises, but she was almost as circumspect with the Aielwomen as they. Gallenne’s one eye was on Berelain, awaiting a sign he should draw the sword he was gripping, while she was intent on Perrin, her face still smooth and unreadable. Grady and Neald had their heads together, casting quick, grim glances in his direction. Balwer sat very still, like a sparrow perched on the saddle, trying to be invisible, listening intently.

Arganda pushed his tall roan gelding past Gallenne’s heavy-chested black, ignoring the Mayener’s one-eyed glare of outrage. The First Captain’s mouth worked angrily behind the shining face-bars of his helmet, but Perrin heard nothing. Faile filled his head. Oh, Light, Faile! His chest felt bound with iron straps. He was near to panic, holding to the precipice with his fingernails.

Desperately he reached out with his mind, frantically searching for wolves. Elyas must have tried this already—Elyas would not have given way to panic at the news—but he had to try himself.

Searching, he found them, Three Toes’ pack and Cold Water’s, Twilight’s and Springhorn’s and others. Pain flowed out with his plea for help, but grew greater inside him rather than less. They had heard of Young Bull, and they commiserated over the loss of his she, but they kept clear of the two-legs, who frightened away all the game and were death for any wolf caught alone. There were so many packs of two-legs about, afoot and riding the hard-footed four-legs, that they could not say whether any they knew of were the one he sought. Two-legs were two-legs, to them, indistinguishable except for those who could channel, and the few who could speak with them. Mourn, they told him, and move on, and meet her again in the wolf dream.

One by one, the images that his mind turned to words faded away, until only one lingered. Mourn, and meet her again in the wolf dream. Then that also was gone.

“Are you listening?” Arganda demanded roughly. He was not a smooth-faced noble, and despite his silks and the gold-work atop the silver of his breastplate he looked like what he was, a graying soldier who had first hefted a lance as a boy and probably carried two dozen scars. His dark eyes were almost as fevered as those of Masema’s men. He smelled of rage, and fear. “Those savages took Queen Alliandre, as well!”

“We will find your Queen when we find my wife,” Perrin said, his voice as cold and hard as the edge of his axe. She had to be alive. “Suppose you tell me what all this is about, you drawn up ready to charge, it looks like. And facing my people, at that.” He had other responsibilities, too. Acknowledging that was bitter as gall. Nothing else counted alongside Faile. Nothing! But the Two Rivers men
were
his people.

Arganda dashed his mount close and seized Perrin’s sleeve in a gauntleted fist. “You listen to me! The First Lady Berelain says it was Aiel took Queen Alliandre, and there are Aiel sheltering behind those archers of yours. I have men who will be happy enough to put them to the question.” His heated gaze swung back to Edarra and Carelle for a moment. Perhaps he was thinking that they were Aiel with no archers barring his path.

“The First Captain is . . . overwrought,” Berelain murmured, laying a hand on Perrin’s other arm. “I have explained to him that none of the Aiel here were involved. I’m sure that I can convince him—”

He shook her off, ripped his arm away from the Ghealdanin. “Alliandre swore fealty to me, Arganda. You swore fealty to her, and that makes me your lord. I said I’ll find Alliandre when I find Faile.” The edge of an axe. She
was
alive. “You question no one,
touch
no one, unless I say. What you will do is take your men back to your camp,
now,
and be ready to ride when I give the order. If you’re not ready when I call, you will be left behind.”