Tuon set herself to watching for omens, but nothing caught her eye. Bright-feathered birds darted among the trees. Once they spotted a herd of perhaps fifty tall, lean cattle with very long horns that stuck out almost straight to either side. The animals had heard them coming and were squared up, facing them. A bull tossed his head and pawed at the ground. Toy and Talmanes led the careful way around the herd, keeping their distance. She looked over her shoulder. The Redarms—why were they called that? She would have to ask Toy—the Redarms were leading the packhorses, but Gorderan had raised his crossbow, and the others had arrows nocked to their bows. So these cattle were dangerous. There were few omens concerning cattle, and she was relieved when the herd dwindled behind them. She had not come all this way to be killed by a cow. Or to see Toy killed by one.

After a time, Thom and Aludra came up to ride beside her. The woman glanced at her once, then looked straight ahead. The Taraboner's face, framed by those brightly beaded braids, was always wooden when she looked at her or Selucia, so clearly she was one of those who refused to accept the Return. She was watching Toy, and she looked . . . satisfied. As if something had been confirmed for her, perhaps. Why had Toy brought her along? Surely not for her fireworks. Those were pretty enough, but they could not compare with Sky Lights performed by even a half-trained damane.

Thom Merrilin was much more interesting. Patently, the white-haired old man was an experienced spy. Who had sent him to Ebou Dar? The White Tower seemed the most obvious candidate. He spent little time around the three who called themselves Aes Sedai, but a well-trained spy would not give himself away in that fashion. His presence troubled her. Until the last Aes Sedai was leashed, the White Tower was something to be wary of. Despite everything, she still had troubling thoughts at times that somehow, Toy was part of a White Tower plot. That was impossible unless some of the Aes Sedai were omniscient, yet the thought sometimes came to her.

"A strange coincidence, wouldn't you say, Master Merrilin?" she said. "Encountering part of Toy's army in the middle of an Altaran forest."

He stroked his long mustaches with a knuckle, failing to mask a small smile. "He's ta'veren, my Lady, and you can never tell what will happen around a ta'veren. It's always . . . interesting . . . when you travel with one of those. Mat has a tendency to find what he needs when he needs it. Sometimes before he knows he needs it."

She stared at him, but he seemed serious. "He's tied to the Pattern?" That was how the word would translate. "What is that supposed to mean?"

The old man's blue eyes widened in astonishment. "You don't know? But it's said Artur Hawkwing was the strongest ta'veren anyone had ever seen, perhaps as strong as Rand al'Thor. I'd have thought you of all people would. . . . Well, if you don't, you don't. Ta'veren are people the Pattern shapes itself around, people who were spun out by the Pattern itself to maintain the proper course of the weaving, perhaps to correct flaws that were creeping in. One of the Aes Sedai could explain better than I." As if she would have conversation with a marath'damane, or worse, a runaway damane.

"Thank you,'' she told him politely. "I think I've heard enough." Ta'veren. Ridiculous. These people and their endless superstitions! A small brown bird, surely a finch, flew out of a tall oak and circled widdershins three times above Toy's head before flying on. She had found her omen. Stay close to Toy. Not that she had any intention of doing otherwise. She had given her word, playing the game as it had to be played, and she had never broken her word in her life.

Little more than an hour after setting out, as a bird warbled ahead, Selucia pointed out the first sentry, a man with a crossbow up in the thick branches of a spreading oak cupping a hand to his mouth. Not a bird, then. More birdcalls heralded their advance, and soon they were riding through a tidy encampment. There were no tents, but the lances were neatly stacked, the horses picketed on scattered lines among the trees, near to the blankets of the men who would ride them, with a saddle or packsaddle at every animal's head. It would not take long for them to break camp and be on the march. Their fires were small and gave off little smoke.

As they rode in, men in dull green breastplates with that red hand on their coatsleeves and red scarves tied to their left arms began rising to their feet. She saw grizzled faces with scars and fresh young faces, all with their eyes on Toy and expressions she could only call eager. A growing murmur of voices rose, rustling through the trees like a breeze. "It's Lord Mat." "Lord Mat is back." "Lord Mat's found us." "Lord Mat."

Tuon exchanged glances with Selucia. The affection in those voices was unfeigned. That was rare, and often went with a commander who had a slack hand at discipline. But then, she expected any army of Toy's to be a ragtag affair, full of men who spent their time drinking and gambling. Only, these men looked no more ragtag than any regiment that had crossed a mountain range and ridden several hundred miles. No one looked unsteady on his feet with drink.

"Mostly we camp during the day and move at night to avoid being seen by the Seanchan,” Talmanes said to Toy. "Just because we have seen none of those flying beasts does not mean some might not be around. Most of the Seanchan seem to be farther north or farther south, but apparently they have a camp not thirty miles north of here, and rumor says there is one of the creatures there."

"You seem pretty well informed," Toy said, studying the soldiers they passed. He nodded suddenly, as if he had reached a decision. He seemed grim and . . . could it be resigned?

"I am that, Mat. I brought half the scouts, and I also signed some Altarans who were fighting the Seanchan. Well, most of them seem to have been stealing horses more than anything else, but some were willing to give that up for a chance to really fight them. I think I know where most of the Seanchan camps are from the Malvide Narrows south to here."

Suddenly a man began to sing in a deep voice, and others joined in, the song spreading rapidly.

There're some delight in ale and wine, and some in girls with ankles fine, but my delight, yes, always mine, is to dance with Jak o’ the Shadows.

Every man in the camp was singing, now, thousands of voices roaring the song.

We'll toss the dice however they fall, and snuggle the girls be they short or tall, then follow Lord Mat whenever he calls, to dance with Jak o’ the Shadows.

They finished with shouts, laughing and clapping one another on the shoulder. Who under the Light was this Jak o' the Shadows?

Reining in, Toy raised the hand holding his odd spear. That was all, yet silence spread through the soldiers. So he was not soft with discipline. There were a few other reasons for soldiers to be fond of their officers, but the most common seemed unlikely to apply to Toy, of all people.

"Let's not let them know we're here until we want them to know," Toy said loudly. He was not orating, just making sure his voice carried. And the men heard, repeating his words over their shoulders to be passed back to men beyond the sound of his voice. "We're a long way from home, but I mean to get us home. So be ready to move, and move fast. The Band of the Red Hand can move faster than anybody else, and we're going to have to prove it." There was no cheering, but plenty of nods. Turning to Talmanes, he said, "Do you have maps?"

"The best to be found," Talmanes replied. "The Band has its own mapmaker, now. Master Roidelle already had good maps of everything from the Aryth Ocean to the Spine of the World, and since we crossed the Damonas, he and his assistants have been making new maps of the country we crossed. They even marked a map of eastern Altara with what we have learned of the Seanchan. Most of those camps are temporary, though. Soldiers heading somewhere else."

Selucia shifted in her saddle, and Tuon signed PATIENCE in high imperative form, a command. She kept her face smooth, but inside, she was furious. Knowing where soldiers were gave clues to where they were going. There had be some way to burn that map. That would be as important as laying hands on one of the crossbow cranks.

"I'll want to talk with Master Roidelle, too," Toy said.

Soldiers came to take the horses, and fo

r a while all seemed confusion and milling about. A gap-toothed fellow took Akein's reins, and Tuon gave him explicit instructions on caring for the mare. He returned her a sour look along with his bow. Commoners in these lands seemed to believe themselves equal to everyone. Selucia gave the same sort of instructions to the lanky young man who took Rosebud. She thought that an appropriate name for a dresser's horse. The young man stared at Selucia's chest, until she slapped him. Hard. He only grinned and led the dun away rubbing his cheek. Tuon sighed. That was all very well for Selucia, but for herself, striking a commoner would lower her eyes for months.

Soon enough, though, she was settled on a folding stool with Selucia at her back, and stout Lopin presented them with tin cups full of dark tea, bowing quite properly to Selucia as well as to her. Not deeply enough, but the balding man did try. Her tea was honeyed to perfection, lightly, but then, he had served her often enough to know how she liked it.

Activity bustled about them. Talmanes had a brief reunion with gray-haired Nerim, who apparently was his serving man, and happy to be reunited with him. At least, the thin man's normally mournful countenance actually flashed a momentary smile. That sort of thing should have been done in private.

Leilwin and Domon allowed Master Charin to lead Olver off to explore the camp with Juiiin and Thera—Thom and Aludra went too, to stretch their legs—then deliberately took stools close by. Leilwin even went so far as to stare unblinking at Tuon for a long moment. Selucia made a low sound very like a growl, but Tuon ignored the provocation and gestured Mistress Anan to bring her stool over beside her. Eventually, the traitors would be punished, and the thief, the property restored to its rightful owners, and the marath'damane leashed, but those things had to wait on what was more important.

Three more officers appeared, young noblemen with that red hand on their dark silk coats, and had their own reunion with Toy, with a great deal of laughing and hitting each other on the shoulder, which they seemed to take as a sign of fondness. She soon had them sorted out. Edorion was the dark, lean man with the serious expression except when smiling, Reimon the broad-shouldered fellow who smiled a great deal, and Carlomin the tall, slender one. Edorion was cleanshaven, while Reimon and Carlomin both had dark beards that were trimmed to points and glistened as if oiled. All three made much over the Aes Sedai, bowing deeply. They even bowed to Bethamin and Seta! Tuon shook her head.

"I've told you often enough it's a different world than you're used to," Mistress Anan murmured, "but you still don't quite believe it, do you?"

"Just because a thing is a certain way." Tuon replied, "doesn't mean it should be that way, even if it has been for a long time."

"Some might say the same of your people, my Lady."

"Some might." Tuon let it rest there, though she usually enjoyed her private conversations with the woman. Mistress Anan argued against leashing marath'damane, as might be expected, and even against keeping da'covale, of all things, yet they were discussions rather than arguments, and Tuon had made her concede a few points. She had hopes of bringing the woman around eventually. Not today, though. She wanted her mind focused on Toy.

Master Roidelle appeared, a graying, round-faced man whose bulk strained his dark coat, followed by six fit-appearing younger men each carrying a long, cylindrical leather case. "I brought all the maps of Altara I have, my Lord," he told Talmanes in a musical accent as he bowed. Did everyone in these lands speak as if racing to get the words out? "Some cover the whole country, they do, some no more than a hundred square miles. The best are my own, of course, those I made these past weeks."

"Lord Mat will tell you what he wants to see," Talmanes said. "Shall we leave you to it, Mat?"

But Toy was already telling the mapmaker what he wanted, the map marked with the Seanchan camps. In short order it was sorted out from the others in one of the cases and spread on the ground with Toy squatting on his heels beside it. Master Roidelle sent one of his assistants running to fetch him a stool. He would have burst his coat buttons trying to imitate Toy, and likely have fallen over besides. Tuon stared at that map hungrily. How to get her hands on it?

Exchanging glances and laughing as if being snubbed were the funniest thing in the world, Talmanes and the other three men strolled toward Tuon. The Aes Sedai gathered around the map on the ground until Toy told them to quit peering over his shoulder. They moved off a little, Bethamin and Seta heeling them at a distance, and began talking quietly among themselves, occasionally glancing in his direction. If Toy had been paying any heed to their expressions, especially Joline's, he might have been worried in spite of the incredible ter'angreal Mistress Anan said he carried.

"We're about here, right?" he said, marking a spot with his finger. Master Roidelle murmured that they were. "So this is the camp where the raken supposedly is? The flying beast?" Another murmur of assent. "Good. What kind of camp is it? How many men are there?"

"Reportedly it's a supply camp, my Lord. For resupplying patrols." The young man returned with another folding stool, and the stout man eased himself down with a grunt. "Supposedly about a hundred soldiers, mostly Altaran, and about two hundred laborers, but I'm told there can be as many as five hundred more soldiers at times." A careful man, Master Roidelle.

Talmanes made one of those odd bows, with one foot forward, and the other three mirrored him. "My Lady," Talmanes said, "Vanin told me of your circumstances, and the promises Lord Mat made. I just want to tell you, he keeps his word."

"That he does, my Lady," Edorion murmured. "Always." Tuon motioned him to step aside so she could continue to watch Toy, and he did so with a surprised glance at Toy and another for her. She gave him a stern look. The last thing she wanted was for these men to start imagining things. Not everything had fallen out as it had to, yet. There was still a chance this could all go awry. "Is he a lord or is he not?" she demanded.

"Excuse me," Talmanes said, "but would you say that again? I apologize. I must have dirt in my ears." She repeated herself carefully, but it still took them a minute to puzzle out what she had said.

"Burn my soul, no," Reimon said finally with a laugh. He stroked his beard. "Except to us. Lord enough for us."

"He dislikes nobles for the most part," Carlomin said. "I count it an honor to be among the few he doesn't dislike."

"An honor," Reimon agreed. Edorion contented himself with nodding.

"Soldiers, Master Roidelle," Toy said firmly. "Show me where the soldiers are. And more than any few hundred."

"What is he doing?" Tuon said, frowning. "He can't think to sneak this many men out of Altara even if he knows where every last soldier is. There are always patrols, and sweeps by raken." Again they took their time before answering. Perhaps she should try speaking very fast.

"We've seen no patrols in better than three hundred miles, and no—raken?—no raken," Edorion said quietly. He was studying her. Too late to stop his imaginings.

Reimon laughed again. "If I know Mat, he's planning us a battle. The Band of the Red Hand rides to battle again. It's been too long, if you ask me."

Selucia sniffed, and so did Mistress Anan. Tuon had to agree with them. "A battle won't get you out of Altara," she said sharply.

"In that case," Talmanes said, "he's planning us a war." The other three nodded agreement as if that were the most normal thing under the Light. Reimon even laughed. He seemed to think everything was humorous.

"Three thousand?" Toy said. "You're sure?”

“Sure enough, man.”

“Sure enough will do. Vanin can locate them if they haven't moved too far."

Tuon looked at him, squatting there by the map, moving his fingers over its surface, and suddenly she saw him in a new light. A buffoon? No. A lion stuffed into a horse-stall might look like a peculiar joke, but a lion on the high plains was something very different. Toy was loose on the high plains, now.

She felt a chill. What sort of man had she entangled herself with? After all this time, she realized, she had hardly a clue.

>

The night was cool enough to send a small shiver through Perrin whenever the breeze gusted despite his fur-lined cloak. A halo around the fat crescent moon said there would be more rain before long. Thick clouds drifting across the moon made the pale light dim and strengthen, dim and strengthen, yet it was enough for his eyes. He sat Stepper just inside the edge of the trees and watched the cluster of four tall gray stone windmills in a clearing atop the ridge, their pale sails gleaming and shadowed by turns as they rotated. The machinery of the windmills groaned loudly. It seemed doubtful the Shaido even knew they should grease the works of the things. The stone aqueduct was a dark bar stretching east on high stone arches past abandoned farms and rail-fenced fields—the Shaido had planted, too early, with this much rain—toward another ridge and the lake beyond. Maiden lay one more ridge west. He eased the heavy hammer in its loop on his belt. Maiden and Faile. In a few hours, he would add a fifty-fourth knot to the leather cord in his pocket.

He cast his mind out. Are you ready, Snowy Dawn? he thought. Are you close enough yet? Wolves avoided towns, and with Shaido hunting parties in the surrounding forest during the day, they stayed farther from Maiden than usual.

Patience, Young Bull, came the reply, touched with irritation. But then, Snowy Dawn was irascible by nature, a scarred male of considerable age for a wolf who had once killed a leopard by himself. Those old injuries sometimes kept him from sleeping very long at a stretch. Two days from now, you said. We will be there. Now let me try to sleep. We must hunt well tomorrow, since we cannot hunt the day after. They were images and smells rather than words, of course—"two days" was the sun crossing the sky twice, and "hunt" a pack trotting with noses into the breeze blended with the scent of deer—but Perrin's mind converted the images to words even as he saw them in his head.

Patience. Yes. Haste spoiled the work. But it was hard now that he was so close. Very hard.

A form appeared from the dark door at the base of the nearest windmill and waved an Aiel spear back and forth overhead. The groaning had convinced him the windmills must still be deserted—they had been when the Maidens scouted them earlier, and no one would put up with that noise any longer than they had to—but he had sent Gaul and some of the Maidens to be sure one way or another.