Page 50 of The Gathering Storm (The Wheel of Time 12)

He felt hollow. It was like . . . like the time when his father had promised him something special as a gift for Winternight. Perrin had waited months, eager, doing his chores to earn the unknown gift. When he’d finally received the small wooden horse, he’d been excited for a moment. But the next day, he’d been shockingly melancholy. Not because of the gift, but because there had no longer been anything to strive for. The excitement was gone, and only then had he realized how much more precious he’d found that anticipation than the gift itself.

Soon after that he’d begun visiting Master Luhhan’s forge, eventually becoming his apprentice.

He was glad to have Faile back. He rejoiced. And yet, now what was there for him? These blasted men saw him as their leader. Some even thought of him as their king! He’d never asked for that. He’d had them put away the banners every time they put them out, up until Faile had persuaded him that using them would be an advantage. He still didn’t believe that the wolfhead banner belonged there, flapping insolently above his camp.

But could he take it down? The men did look to it. He could smell pride on them every time they passed it. He couldn’t turn them away. Rand would need their aid—he’d need everyone’s aid—at the Last Battle.

The Last Battle. Could a man like him, a man who didn’t want to be in charge, lead these forces to the most important moment in their lives?

The colors swirled, showing him Rand, sitting in what appeared to be a stone Tairen home. Perrin’s old friend had a dark cast to his expression, like a man troubled by weighty thoughts. Even sitting like that, Rand looked regal. He was what a king was supposed to be, with that rich red coat, that noble bearing. Perrin was just a blacksmith.

He sighed, shaking his head and dispelling the image. He needed to seek out Rand. He could feel something tugging at him, pulling him.

Rand needed him. That had to be his focus now.

CHAPTER 10

The Last of the Tabac

Rodel Ituralde puffed quietly on his pipe, smoke curling from it like the sinuous coils of a snake. The smoke tendrils wrapped around themselves, pooling at the ceiling above him, then leaking out through cracks in the roof of the ramshackle shed. The boards in the walls were warped from age, opening slits to the outside, and the gray wood was cracked and splintering. A brazier burned in the corner and winds whistled through the cracks in the walls. Ituralde faintly worried those winds would blow over the entire building.

He sat on a stool, several maps on the table before him. At the corner of the table, his tabac pouch weighed down a wrinkled piece of paper. The small square was weathered and folded from being carried in his inside coat pocket.

“Well?” Rajabi asked. Thick of neck and determined of attitude, he was brown-eyed, with a wide nose and a bulbous chin. He was completely bald now, and faintly resembled a large boulder. He tended to act like a boulder, too. It could take a lot of work to get him rolling, but once you did, he was bloody hard to stop. He had been one of the first to join Ituralde’s cause, for all the fact that he had been poised to rebel against the king just a short time before.

It had been nearly two weeks since Ituralde’s victory at Darluna. He’d extended himself far for that victory. Perhaps too far. Ah, Alsalam, he thought. I hope this was all worth it, old friend. I hope you haven’t just gone mad. Rajabi might be a boulder, but the Seanchan are an avalanche, and we’ve brought them thundering down upon us.

“What now?” Rajabi prodded.

“We wait,” Ituralde said. Light, but he hated waiting. “Then we fight. Or maybe we run again. I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

“The Taraboners—”

“Won’t come,” Ituralde said.

“They promised!”

“They did.” Ituralde had gone to them himself, had roused them, had asked them to fight the Seanchan just one more time. They’d yelled and cheered, but had not followed with any haste. They would drag their feet. He’d gotten them to fight “one last time” on half a dozen different occasions now. They could see where this war was going, and he could no longer depend on them. If he’d ever been able to in the first place.

“Bloody cowards,” Rajabi muttered. “Light burn them, then! We’ll do it alone. We have before.”

Ituralde took a long, contemplative puff on his pipe. He’d chosen to finally use the Two Rivers tabac. This pipeful was the last in his store; he’d been saving it for months, now. Good flavor. Best there was.

He studied his maps again, holding a smaller one up before him. He could use better maps, that was certain. “This new Seanchan general,” Ituralde said, “is marshaling over three hundred thousand men, with a good two hundred damane.”

“We’ve beat large forces before. Look what we did at Darluna! You crushed them, Rodel!”

And doing so had required every bit of craftiness, skill and luck Ituralde could muster. Even then, he’d lost well over half his men. Now he ran, limping, before this second, larger force of Seanchan.

This time, they weren’t making any mistakes. The Seanchan didn’t rely solely on their raken. His men had intercepted several foot scouts, and that meant dozens hadn’t been caught. This time, the Seanchan knew Ituralde’s true numbers and his true location.

His enemies were done being herded and goaded; instead they hunted him, relentlessly, avoiding his traps. Ituralde had planned to retreat deeper and deeper into Arad Doman; that would favor his forces and stretch the Seanchan supply lines. He’d figured he could keep it up for another four or five months. But those plans were useless now; they’d been made before Ituralde had discovered there was an entire bloody army of Aiel running about Arad Doman. If the reports were to be believed—and reports about Aiel were often exaggerations, so he wasn’t sure how much to believe—there were upwards of a hundred thousand of them holding large sections of the north, Bandar Eban included.

A hundred thousand Aiel. That was as good as two hundred thousand Domani troops. Perhaps more. Ituralde well remembered the Blood Snow twenty years ago, when it had seemed he’d lost ten men for each Aiel who fell.

He was trapped, a walnut crushed between two stones. The best he’d been able to do was retreat here, to this abandoned stedding. That would give him an edge against the Seanchan. But only a small one. The Seanchan had a force six times the size of his own, and the greenest of commanders knew that fighting those odds was suicide.

“Have you ever seen a master juggler, Rajabi?” Ituralde asked, studying the map.