Page 141 of The Gathering Storm (The Wheel of Time 12)

“Thom!” Mat called, recognizing the cloak.

“Get on your horse!” Thom’s voice called back. “I’m running out of knives!”

Mat swept out with his spear, dropping two more villagers, then dashed forward and leaped into his saddle, trusting Thom to cover his retreat. Indeed, he heard a few cries of pain from behind. A moment later, a thundering sound on the road announced the imminent approach of horses. Mat pulled himself into his saddle as the creatures tore through the black morass, scattering the villagers.

“Mat, you fool!” Talmanes shouted from one of the horses, barely visible as a silhouette against the night.

Mat smiled gratefully at Talmanes, turning Pips, and caught Delarn as the man almost slid free. The Redarm was alive, for he struggled weakly, but there was a slick wet patch at his side. Mat held the man in front of him, ignoring the reins in the darkness and controlling Pips with a quick twist of the knees. He didn’t know horseback battle commands himself, but those blasted memories did, and so he’d trained Pips to obey.

Thom galloped past, and Mat turned Pips to follow, steadying Delarn with one hand and carrying his spear in the other. Talmanes and Harnan rode to either side of him, charging down the corridor of madness toward the inn at the end.

“Come on, man,” Mat whispered to Delarn. “Hang on. The Aes Sedai are just ahead. They’ll fix you up.”

Delarn whispered something back.

Mat leaned forward. “What was that?”

“. . . and toss the dice until we fly,” Delarn whispered. “To dance with Jak o’ the Shadows. . . .”

“Great,” Mat muttered. There were lights ahead, and he could see they were coming from the inn. Perhaps they’d find one place in this flaming village where the people’s brains hadn’t turned inside out.

But no. Those bursts of light were familiar. Balls of fire, flashing in the upper-story windows of the inn.

“Well,” Talmanes noted from his left, “looks like the Aes Sedai still live. That’s something, at least.”

Figures clustered around the front of the inn, fighting in the darkness, their forms periodically lit from above by the flashes in the windows.

“Round to the back,” Thom suggested.

“Go,” Mat said to them, charging past the fighting figures. Talmanes, Thom and Harnan followed close on Pips’ hooves. Mat blessed his luck that they didn’t hit a hole or rut in the ground as they crossed the softer earth coming around behind the inn. The horses could easily have tripped and broken a leg, throwing all of them into disaster.

The back of the inn was silent, and Mat reined in. Thom leaped from his horse, his agility defying his earlier complaints about his age. He took up position watching the side of the building to see that they weren’t followed.

“Harnan!” Mat said, thrusting his spear toward the stables. “Get the women’s horses out and ready them. Saddle them if you can, but be ready to go without those if we have to. Light willing, we won’t have to ride far, just a mile or so to get out of the village and away from this insanity.”

Harnan saluted in the darkness, then dismounted and dashed over to the stables. Mat waited long enough to determine that nobody was going to jump out at him from the darkness, then spoke to Delarn, still held in front of him. “You still conscious?”

Delarn nodded weakly. “Yes, Mat. But I’ve taken a gut wound. I. . . .”

“We’ll get the Aes Sedai,” Mat said. “All you need to do is sit right here. Stay in the saddle, all right?”

Delarn nodded again. Mat hesitated at the weakness in the man’s motions, but Delarn took

Pips’ reins, and seemed determined. So Mat slid out of the saddle, holding his ashandarei at the ready.

“Mat,” Delarn said from the saddle.

Mat turned back.

“Thank you. For coming back for me.”

“I wasn’t going to leave a man to that,” Mat said, shivering. “Dying on the battlefield is one thing, but to die out there, in that darkness. . . . Well, I wasn’t going to let it happen. Talmanes! See if you can find some light.”

“Working on it,” the Cairhienin said from beside the inn’s back door. He had found a lantern hanging there. A few strikes of flint and steel later, and a small, soft glow lit the backyard of the inn. Talmanes quickly closed the shield, keeping the light mostly hidden.

Thom trotted back to them. “No one following, Mat,” he said.

Mat nodded. By the lanternlight, he could see that Delarn was in bad shape. Not just the gut wound, but scrapes across the face, rips in his uniform, one eye swollen shut.