Knife of Dreams

Chapter Thirty-Seven Prince of the Ravens

Leaning on the tall pommel of his saddle, ashandarei slanted across Pips’ neck, Mat frowned at the sky. The sun was well past its noon height. If Vanin and those Deathwatch Guards did not return soon, he might find himself fighting a battle with the sun in the crossbowmen’s eyes, or worse, in twilight. Worst of all, dark clouds loomed over the mountains to the east. The gusting wind was out of the north. No help there. Rain would put the weasel in the henyard. Bowstrings fared poorly in rain. Well, any rain was a few hours off, with luck, but he had never noticed his luck saving him from getting soaked in a downpour. He had not dared wait until tomorrow. Those fellows hunting Tuon might have gotten another whiff of Karede’s men, and then he would have had to try attacking them, or laying an ambush, and carry it out before they could catch Karede. Better to have them come to him, at a place of his choosing. Finding the proper spot had not been difficult, between Master Roidelle’s collection of maps on the one hand and Vanin and the other scouts on the other.

Aludra was fussing over one of her tall, metal-bound lofting tubes, beaded braids hiding her face as she examined something at the broad wooden base. He wished she had been willing to remain with the pack animals like Thorn and Mistress Anan. Even Noal had been willing to stay, if only to help Juilin and Amathera make sure Olver did not run off to watch the battle. The boy was dead eager, which could soon lead to plain dead. Matters had been bad enough when only Harnan and the other three had been corrupting Olver, but now he had half the men teaching him how to use a sword or dagger or fight with his hands and feet, and apparently filling his head with tales of heroes from the way he had been behaving, begging to go on raids with Mat and the like. Aludra was near as bad. Anybody could have used one of those strikers to light the fuse once she had loaded that tube, but she insisted on doing it herself. She was a fierce woman, Aludra was, and none too pleased at finding herself on the same side as Seanchan, however temporary the arrangement was. It seemed wrong to her that they would see some of her handiwork without being on the receiving end. Leilwin and Domon sat their horses nearby keeping an eye on her, as much to make sure she did nothing foolish as to protect her. Mat hoped Leilwin did nothing foolish herself. Since there was apparently only one Seanchan with the people they would fight today, she had decided it was all right to be there, and the way she glared at Musenge and the other Deathwatch Guards, it seemed she might think she had something to prove to them.

The three Aes Sedai, standing together with their reins in hand, cast dark looks at the Seanchan, too, as did Blaeric and Fen, who caressed their sword hilts perhaps unconsciously. Joline and her two Warders had been the only ones aghast at Sheraine’s willing departure with Tuon—what an Aes Sedai felt on any subject was usually how her Warders felt on it, too—but the memory of being leashed had to be too fresh for Edesina or Teslyn to feel comfortable around Seanchan soldiers. Bethamin and Seta stood very meekly, hands folded at their waists, a little apart from the sisters. Bethamin’s light-colored bay nudged her shoulder with his nose, and the tall, dark woman half reached up to stroke the animal before snatching her hand back down and resuming her humble pose. They still would take no part. Joline and Edesina had made that plain, yet it seemed they wanted the two women under their eyes to make sure of it. The Seanchan women plainly were looking at anything but the Seanchan soldiers. For that matter. Bethamin, Seta and Leilwin might as well not have existed for all of Musenge and that lot. Burn him, there were so many tensions in the air he could almost feel that hanging rope around his neck again.

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 running grooms and marrying to serve the Empire. How was marrying him supposed to serve the flaming Empire?

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 bannerman. The only lancer present, standing beside his horse, every line of him saying he had nothing to do with the crossbowmen, held no lance, but rather a long banner-staff cased for half its length in leather.

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 donning your armor. Highness?”

“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.

“Time to get your people in place, Musenge.” Mat said loudly.

The Deathwatch Guards formed a single line abreast with the Gardeners on the end. Anybody who took one glance through a looking glass would know what they were. Light, all they needed was to see Ogier in armor and the sun glinting off all that red and black. And if they stopped to think how few of the Guards there were, they would still see they had Mat outnumbered, and there would be only one way to find out whether Tuon was with him.

Vanin galloped behind the wall, flung himself out of the saddle and immediately began walking his lathered dun to cool the animal down. As soon as he passed the wrall, crossbowmen began dropping the tools and running to put on helmets and pick up crossbows. Those had been laid so that the men formed three spaced ranks with gaps where the sling-men stood. It no longer mattered if anyone was watching from the forest. What they saw would seem natural.

Mat trotted Pips to Vanin and dismounted. The two human Deathwatch Guards and the two Ogier went to join the others. The horses’ nostrils flared with their heavy breathing, but the Ogier were panting no harder. One was Hartha, a stone-eyed fellow who apparently ranked very close to Musenge.

Vanin scowled at the men who had not gotten down to walk their horses. A horsethief he might be, reformed or not, but he disliked mistreating horseflesh. “They went up like one of her nightflowers when they glimpsed us,” he said, nodding toward Aludra. “We made sure they got a good look at that fancy armor, then high-tailed it as soon as they started getting mounted. They’re coming hard behind us. Harder than they should.” He spat on the ground. “I didn’t get a good look at their animals, but I doubt they’re all good for that run. Some’ll founder before they get here.”

“The more the better,” Mat said. “The fewer who make it, the better in my book.” All he needed was to give Tuon a day or two head start on them, and if that came from their ruining horses, if they rode out of the trees and decided he had too many men to take on, he would take that over a battle any day. After today’s six-mile gallop, they would need to rest their horses a few days before they were fit to travel any distance at all. Vanin directed that scowl at him. Others might go around calling him my Lord and Highness, but not Chel Vanin.

Mat laughed and clapped him on the shoulder before swinging back into Pips’ saddle. It was good there was someone who did not think he was a fool noble, or at least, did not care whether or not he was. He rode to join the Aes Sedai, who were mounted now.

Blaeric and Fen, the one on a bay gelding, the other on a black, gave him stares almost as dark as those they had directed at Musenge. They still suspected he had something to do with what had happened to Joline. He thought of telling Fen that his stub of a topknot looked ridiculous. Fen shifted in his saddle and stroked his sword hilt. Then again, maybe not.

“… what I told you,” Joline was telling Bethamin and Seta, shaking an admonitory finger. Her dark bay gelding looked a war-horse, but was not. The animal had a good turn of speed, yet its temperament was mild as milk-water. “If you even think about embracing saidar, you’ll regret it.”

Teslyn grunted sourly. She patted her white-faced chestnut mare, a much more feisty creature than Joline’s mount, and spoke to the air. “She does train wilders and expects them to behave once out of her sight. Or perhaps she does think the Tower will accept over-age novices.” Spots of color appeared in Joline’s cheeks, but she straightened in her saddle without saying anything. As usual when those two got into a conflict, Edesina concentrated on something else, in this case brushing imaginary dust from her divided skirts. Enough tension to choke on.

Suddenly riders poured out of the trees at the far end of the meadow in a torrent that swelled into a spreading lake of steel-tipped lances as they drew rein, no doubt in surprise at what lay before them, h seemed that not as many horses had foundered as Mat had hoped for. Pulling the looking glass from its scabbard tied to his saddle’s pommel, he raised it to his eye. The Taraboners were easy to pick out, with mail veils hiding their faces to the eyes, but the others wore every sort of helmet, rounded or conical, with face-bars and without. He even saw a few ridged Tairen helmets, though that did not mean there were Tairens among them. Most men used whatever armor they could find. Don’t think, he thought. The woman is here. That hundred thousand gold crowns is waiting. Don’t bloody—

A shrill Seanchan bugle sounded, thin with the distance, and the horsemen began advancing at a walk, already spreading out to extend beyond the wall’s edges.

“Uncase the banner, Macoll,” Mat ordered. So these flaming sons of goats thought they were coming to murder Tuon, did they? “This time, we’ll let them know who’s killing them. Mandevwin, you have the command.”

Mandevwin turned his bay to face front. “Stand ready!” he shouted, and under-officers and bannermen echoed the cry.

Macoll pulled the leather case off, carefully fastening it to his saddle, and the banner streamed on the wind, a red-fringed white square with a large, open red hand in the center, and beneath it, embroidered in red, the words Dovie’andi se tovya sagain. It’s time to toss the dice. Mat thought, translating. And so it was. He saw Musenge eyeing it. He seemed very calm for a man with ten thousand lances coming toward him.

“Are you ready. Aludra?” Mat called.

“Of course I am ready,” she replied. “I only wish I had my dragons!” Musenge shifted his attention to her. Burn her, she needed to watch her tongue! Mat wanted those dragons to be a shock when the Seanchan first faced them.

Perhaps twelve hundred paces from the wall, the ranks of lancers began to trot, and at six hundred they began to gallop, but not as hard as they might have. Those horses were tired after a long run already. They lumbered. None of the lances had come down, yet. They would not until the last hundred paces. Some of those carried streamers that floated behind them in the air, a large knot of red here, a clump of green or blue there. They might have been House colors, or perhaps they marked mercenary companies. All those hooves made a noise like distant thunder rolling.

“Aludra!” Mat shouted without looking back. A hollow thump and an acrid sulphur smell announced the lofting tube sending its nightflower aloft, and a loud pop the blooming of a ball of red streaks overhead. Some of the galloping horsemen pointed to it as if in amazement. None looked behind them to see Talmanes leading the three banners of horse out of the forest below the lake. Their lances had been left with the pack animals, but every man would have his horsebow out. Spreading out in a single line, they began following the galloping riders, increasing speed as they came. Their horses had been ridden far last night, but not pressed too hard, and they had been rested all morning. The distance between the two groups of riders began to narrow.

“Front rank!” Mandevwin shouted when the horsemen were four hundred paces away. “Loose!” Above a thousand bolts flashed out, dark streaks in the air. Immediately the front rank bent to fasten their cranks to their crossbows and the second rank raised their weapons. “Second rank!” Mandevwin shouted. “Loose!” Another thousand quarrels streaked for the oncoming horsemen.

At that range, they could not punch through a breastplate despite heads designed to do just that, but men with shattered legs toppled from their saddles and men with ruined arms reined in frantically to try stemming the flow of blood. And the horses… Ah. Light, the poor horses. Horses fell by the hundreds, some kicking and screaming, struggling to stand, others not moving at all, many of them tripping more animals. Catapulted riders tumbled across the meadow grass until they were trampled by the riders behind.

“Third rank! Loose!” Mandevwin shouted, and as soon as those bolts were away, the front rank straightened. “Front rank!” Mandevwin called. “Loose!” And another thousand bolts added to the carnage. “Second rank! Loose!”

It was not so one-sided as an ambush, of course. Some of the galloping horsemen had flung down their lances and uncased their horsebows. Arrows began to fall among the crossbowmen. Shooting accurately from a galloping horse was no easy task, and the range was too far at the start for the arrows to kill, but more than one man struggled to work his crossbow with a shaft jutting from an arm. The wall protected their legs, yet. Too far to kill unless your target’s luck had run out. Mat saw a man fall with an arrow in his eye, another with a shaft taken in the throat. There were other gaps in the ranks, as well. Men shuffled forward quickly to fill them.

“You could join in any time, Joline,” he said.

“Third rank! Loose!”

The Aes Sedai shook her head irritably. “I must be in danger. I don’t feel in danger yet.” Teslyn nodded. She was watching the charge as if it were a parade, and a not very interesting one at that.

“If you would allow Seta and me,” Bethamin began, but Joline looked over her shoulder coldly, and the Seanchan woman subsided and dropped her eyes to her hands on the reins. Seta smiled nervously, but it slid off her face under Joline’s stare.

“Front rank! Loose!”

Mat rolled his eyes to the heavens and muttered a prayer that was half curse. The bloody women did not feel in danger! He felt as though his bloody head was on the chopping block!

“Second rank! Loose!”

Talmanes had come in range, now, and announced himself with a volley from four thousand bows at three hundred paces that cleared saddles. Closing the distance, they fired again. Again. The enemy ranks seemed to ripple with the shock. Some men whirled about and charged at Talmanes’ line with lances coming down. Others began returning his hail of arrows with their own. Most continued on, though.

“Form square!” Mandevwin shouted a heartbeat before Mat could. He hoped the man had not left it too bloody late.

The Band was well-trained, though. The men on the flanks fell back at the run, as calmly as if arrows were not pelting them, clanging off breastplates and helmets. And sometimes not. Men fell. The three ranks never lost cohesion, though, as they bent into a hollow box with Mat at its center. Musenge and the other human Deathwatch Guards had their swords out, and the Ogier were hefting their long axes.

“Sling-men!” Mandevwin shouted. “Loose at will! Front rank, west! Loose!” Sling-men along the western rank shifted their sling-staffs so they could touch the fuses coming from the stubby cylinders to the slow-matches held in their teeth and, as the volley lanced out from the crossbows, whipped cheir slings back and then forward. The dark cylinders flew more than a hundred paces to land among the on-rushing horsemen. The sling-men were already fitting more of the cylinders to their slings before the first fell. Aludra had marked each fuse with pieces of thread to indicate different burning times, and each cylinder erupted with a roar in a burst of flame, some on the ground, some as high as a mounted man’s head. The explosion was not the real weapon, though a man struck in the face was suddenly headless. He stayed upright in the saddle for three strides before toppling. No, Aludra had wrapped a layer of hard pebbles around the powder inside each cylinder, and those pierced flesh deeply when they hit. Shrieking horses fell to thrash on the ground. Riders fell to lie still.

An arrow tugged at Mat’s left sleeve, another pierced his right sleeve, only the fletchings keeping it from going through cleanly, and a third ripped open the right shoulder of his coat. He put a finger behind the scarf around his neck and tugged. The bloody thing felt awfully tight of a sudden. Maybe he should consider wearing armor at times like this. The enemy flanks were beginning to curl in, now, preparing to envelop the crossbowmen behind the wall. Talmanes’ men still peppered their rear with arrows, but several hundred men had been forced to drop their bows to defend themselves with swords, and it was unlikely that all of the horses with empty saddles out there had belonged to Taraboners or Amadicians. He had left a gap in the center of his line, a path for anyone who decided to flee, yet no one was taking the offering. They could smell that hundred thousand crowns gold.

“I think,” Joline said slowly. “Yes. I feel in danger, now.” Teslyn simply drew back her hand and threw a sphere of fire larger than a horse’s head. The explosion hurled dirt and pieces of men and horses into the air. It was about bloody time!

Facing in three directions, the Aes Sedai began hurling fireballs as fast as they could swing their arms, but the devastation they wrought did nothing to slow the attack. Those men should have been able to see there was no woman matching Tuon’s description inside the square by this time, but their blood was no doubt on fire, the scent of riches in their nostrils. A man could live the rest of his life like a noble with a hundred thousand crowns gold. The square was encircled, and they fought to close on it, fought and died as volleys from the crossbows lashed them and sling-men killed them. Another wall began to rise, made of dead and dying men and horses, a wall that some tried to ride over and joined in the attempt. More scrambled down from their saddles and tried to clamber over. Crossbow bolts hurled them back. This close, bolts penetrated breastplates like hot knives going into butter. On they came, and died.

The silence seemed to come suddenly. Not quite silence. The air was full of the sound of panting men who had been working those cranks as fast as they could. And there was moaning from the wounded. A horse was still shrieking, somewhere. But Mat could see no one on his feet between the wall of dead and Talmanes, no one in the saddle except men in green helmets and breastplates. Men who had lowered their bows and swords. The Aes Sedai folded their hands on the high pommels of their saddles. They were breathing hard, too.

“It is done, Mat!” came Talmanes’ shout. “Those who are not dead are dying. Not one of the fools tried to escape.”

Mat shook his head. He had expected them to be half-mad with the lust for gold. They had been completely mad with it.

It would be necessary to haul away dead men and horses for Mat and the others to get out, and Talmanes set men to work, fastening ropes to horses to drag them aside. No one wanted to climb over that. No one but the Ogier.

“I want to see if I can find the traitor,” Hartha said, and he and the other six Gardeners shouldered their axes and walked over the mound of bodies as if it were dirt.

“Well, at least we settled this,” Joline said, patting her face with a lace-edged handkerchief. Sweat dotted her forehead. “You owe a debt, Mat. Aes Sedai do not become involved in private wars as a rule. I shall have to think on how you can pay it.” Mat had a pretty good idea what she would come up with. She was mad herself if she thought he would agree.

“Crossbows settled this, marath’damane” Musenge said. His helmet, breastplate and coat were orf, his left shirt-sleeve ripped away so one of the other Guards could wrap a bandage around where an arrow had gone through. The sleeve had come away very neatly, as if the stitching had been weak. He had a raven tattooed on his shoulder. “Crossbows and men with heart. You never had more than this, did you, Highness.” That was not a question. “This and whatever losses you suffered.”

“I told you,” Mat said. “I had enough.” He was not going to reveal anything more to the man than he could not avoid, but Musenge nodded as if he had confirmed everything.

By the time an opening could be cleared so that Mat and the others could ride through, Hartha and the Gardeners had returned. “I found the traitor,” Hartha said, holding up a severed head by its hair.

Musenge’s eyebrows climbed at the sight of that dark, hook-nosed face. “She will be very interested to see this,” he said softly. Softly as the sound of sword being drawn is soft. “We must carry it to her.”

“You know him?” Mat asked.

“We know him. Highness.” Musenge’s face, suddenly seeming carved from stone, said he would say no more on the subject.

“Look, would you stop calling me that? My name is Mat. After today, I’d say you have a right to use it.” Mat surprised himself by sticking out his hand.

That stone mask crumpled in astonishment. “I could not do that, Highness,” he said in scandalized tones. “When she married you, you became Prince of the Ravens. To speak your name would lower my eyes forever.”

Mat took off his hat and scrubbed fingers through his hair. He had told everyone who would listen that he did not like nobles, did not want to be one, and he had meant it. He still meant it. And now he bloody was one! He did the only thing he could. He laughed until his sides ached.