“Faile!” he whispered.
“I see it.” Her bundle concealed the sack with the Horn in it. She added, more to herself, “Light. How are we going to reach Mat?”
They moved off to the side as the rest of her group came through the gateway. They had swords, but carried them bundled up like arrows, in packs, atop the backs of a few of the men as if they were tied-up supplies for the battlefield.
“Blood and ashes,” Mandevwin whispered, joining the two of them. Captives whimpered from a pen nearby. “Maybe they’ll put us in there? We could sneak out in the night.”
Faile shook her head. “They’ll take our bundles. Leave us unarmed.
“Then what do we do?” Mandevwin asked, glancing to the side as a group of Trollocs passed, dragging corpses harvested from the front lines. “Start fighting? Hope Lord Mat sees us, and sends help?”
Olver didn’t think much of that plan. He wanted to fight, but those Trollocs were big. One passed nearby, and its wolf-featured head swung his way. Eyes that could have belonged to a man looked him up and down, as if hungry. Olver stepped back, then reached toward his bundle, where he’d hidden his knife.
“We’ll run,” Faile whispered, once the Trolloc passed. “Scatter in a dozen different directions, and in doing so, try to disorient them. Maybe a few of us will escape.” She frowned. “What is delaying Aravine?”
Almost as she said it, Aravine strode through the gateway. The woman in white who had channeled followed her out, and then Aravine pointed at Faile.
Faile jerked into the air. Olver gasped, and Mandevwin cursed, throwing down his bundle and digging for his sword while Arrela and Selande shouted. All three were hauled into the air by weaves moment later, and Aiel in red veils ran through the gateway, weapons out.
Pandemonium followed. A few of Faile’s soldiers fell as they tried to fight back with their fists. Olver dove for the ground, hunting for his knife, but by the time he had his hand on its hilt, the skirmish was over. The others were all subdued or tied in air.
So fast! Olver thought with despair. Why hadn’t anyone warned him that fighting happened so quickly?
They seemed to have forgotten him, but he didn’t know what to do.
Aravine walked up to Faile, still hanging in the air. What was happening? Aravine . . . she had betrayed them?
“I am sorry, my Lady,’’ Aravine said to Faile. Olver could barely hear. Nobody paid any attention to him; the Aiel kept watch on the soldiers, shoving them into a group to be guarded. More than a few of their number lay bleeding on the ground.
Faile struggled in the air, her face growing red as she strained. Her mouth was obviously gagged. Faile would never remain quiet at a time like this.
Aravine untied the Horn’s bag from Faile’s back, then checked inside it. Her eyes widened. She pulled the sack tight at the top and held it close. “I had hoped,” she whispered to Faile, “to leave my old life behind. To start fresh and new. I thought I could hide, or that I would be forgotten, that I could come back to the Light. But the Great Lord does not forget, and one cannot hide from him. They found me the very night we reached Andor. This is not what I intended, but it is what I must do.”
Aravine turned away. “A horse!” she called. “I will deliver this package to Lord Demandred myself, as I have been commanded.”
The woman in white walked up beside her, and the two started arguing in hushed tones. Olver glanced about. Nobody was looking at him.
His fingers started trembling. He’d known that Trollocs were big, and that they were ugly. But . . . these things were nightmares. Nightmares all around. Oh, Light!
What would Mat do?
“Dovie’andi se tovya sagain,” Olver whispered, unsheathing his knife. With a cry, he threw himself at the woman in white and rammed his knife into her lower back.
She screamed. Faile dropped free of her bonds of Air. And then, suddenly, the captive pens burst open and a group of yelling men scrambled to freedom.
“Raise it higher!” Doesine cried. “Flaming quickly!”
Leane obeyed, weaving Earth with the other sisters. The ground trembled in front of them, buckling and slumping like a bunched-up rug. They finished, then used the mound for cover as fire dropped from upslope.
Doesine led the motley bunch. A dozen or so Aes Sedai, a smattering of Warders and soldiers. The men clutched their weapons, but lately those had proven about as effective as loaves of bread. The Power crackled and sizzled in the air. The improvised bulwark thumped as Sharans pounded it with fire.
Leane peeked above the defences, clutching the One Power. She had recovered from her encounter with the Forsaken Demandred. It had been an unsettling experience—she had been totally in his power, and her life could have been snuffed out in an instant. She had also been unnerved by the intensity of his ravings; his hatred of the Dragon Reborn was unlike anything she had ever seen.
A group of Sharans moved down the slope, and together they sent weaves at the makeshift fortification. Leane sliced one weave from the air, working like a surgeon cutting away withered flesh. Leane was much weaker in the One Power now than she had once been.
She had to be more efficient with her channeling. It was remarkable what a woman could achieve with less.
The bulwark exploded.
Leane threw herself aside as clods of soil rained down. She rolled through curling smoke, coughing and clinging to saidar. It was those Sharan men! She couldn’t see their weaves. She picked herself up, her dress tattered from the explosion, her arms scored by scratches. She caught a hint of blue peeking from a furrow nearby. Doesine. She scrambled over.
She found the woman’s body there. Not her head, though.
Leane felt an immediate, almost overpowering, sense of loss and grief. Doesine and she had not been close, but they had been fighting together here. It was wearing on Leane—the loss, the destruction. How much could they take? How many more would she have to watch die?
She steeled herself with difficulty. Light, this was a disaster. They had anticipated enemy Dreadlords, but there were hundreds upon hundreds of those Sharans. An entire nation’s worth of channelers, all trained in war. The battlefield was strewn with bright bits of color, fallen Aes Sedai. Their Warders charged up the hillside, screaming in rage at the loss of their Aes Sedai as they were cut down by blasts of the Power.
Leane stumbled toward where a group of Reds and Greens fought from a hollowed out piece of ground on the western slope. The terrain protected them for now, but how long could the women hold out?
Still, she felt proud. Outnumbered and overwhelmed, the Aes Sedai kept fighting. This was nothing like the night the Seanchan attacked, when a fractured Tower had broken from the inside out. These women held firm; each time a pocket of them was scattered, they grouped back together and continued fighting. Fire fell from above, but nearly as much flew back, and lightning struck on either side.
Leane carefully made her way over to the group, joining Raechin Connoral, who crouched next to a boulder while launching weaves of Fire at the advancing Sharans. Leane watched for return weaves, then deflected one with a quick weave of Water, making the ball of fire burn away in tiny sparks.
Raechin nodded to her. “And here I thought you’d stopped being useful for anything other than batting your eyes at men.”
“The Domani art is about achieving what you want, Raechin,” Leane said coolly, “with as little effort as possible.”
Raechin snorted and launched a few fireballs toward the Sharans. “I should ask advice from you on that sometime,” she said. “If there really is a way to make men do as you like, I should like very much to know it.”