Page 130 (1/1)

Arrowstraight the strearound and bounced on the crest, al to lower unless there was a e to send Besides, when it was left down so the joins

Bakuun strode straight to his tent, but his First Lieutenant was already waiting with the e tube Tiras was a bony man a head taller than hi to the point of his chin

The report rolled up in the thin h, ritten simply He had never been forced to ride on raken or to’raken -- the Light be thanked, and the Eht she live forever, be praised! -- but he doubted it was easy to handle a pen in a saddle strapped to the back of a flying lizard What it said made him flip open the lid of his small camp desk and write hurriedly

"There’s a force not ten miles east of here," he told Tiras "Five or six tierated sometimes, but not often by much How had thatspotted before? He had seen the coast to the east, and he wanted his burial prayers paid for before he tried a landing there Burn his eyes, the fliers boasted they would see a flea e "No reason to think they knoe’re here, but I’d not ive them a brush of the damane, and that will be that if they outnumber us by twenty tiood soldier, though

"And if they have a few Aes Sedai?" Bakuun said quietly, hardly stu over the name, as he stuffed the flier’s report back into the tube with his own brief e He had not really believed anyone could let those women run free

Tiras’ face showed that he remembered the tales about an Aes Sedai weapon The red streae tube

Soon enough tube and streae pole, a tiny breeze stirring the long red strip fifteen paces above the hill crest The raken soared toward it along the valley, outstretched wings still as death Abruptly one of the fliers swung down fro -- upside down! -- below the raken’s trailing claws It made Bakuun’s stomach hurt to watch But her hand closed on the streae tube pulled free of the clip, and she scrambled back up as the creature climbed in slow circles

Bakuun thankfully put raken and fliers out of his , nearly flat except for this hill, and surrounded by steep wooded slopes; only a goat could enter, except by the passes in his sight With the daed to try attacking across that h; if the eneht on, they would arrive before any possible reinforcements by three days at best How had they come this far unseen?

He had missed the last battles of the Consolidation by two hundred years, but so on Marendalar, thirty thousand dead, and fifty ti notice of the strange kept a soldier alive Ordering the ca his co in the east, another of those cursed stor of War, Storuided Tai’daishar around an uprooted tree lying across the slope and frowned down at a dead man sprawled on his back behind the tree trunk The felloas short and blocky, his face creased, and his arreen, but staring sightlessly at the black clouds overhead, he looked a deal like Eagan Padros, even to theAn officer, plainly; the sword beside his outflung hand had an ivory hilt carved in the likeness of a woe insect’s head, bore two long thin blue plumes

Uprooted trees and shattered ones, a fair nu froood five hundred paces Bodies, too, men broken or ripped apart when saidin harrowed the mountainside Most wore steel veils across their faces, and breastplates painted in horizontal stripes No woht The injured horses had been put down, another thing to be thankful for It was incredible how loudly a horse could screah was rasping Do you? His voice turned to pained rage The dead howl at ht sadly I can’t afford to listen, but how do you shut thereat victory," Weiramon intoned behind Rand, then muttered, "But small honor in it The old ways are best" Mud liberally decorated Rand’s coat, yet surprisingly, Weiramon appeared as pristine as he had back on the Silver Road His heled, at the end, lances and courage against the One Power, and Weirae to break them Without orders, and followed by every Tairen save the Defenders, even a halfdrunk Torean, surprisingly By Seorin Panar, too, withstill had been hard by that ti he actually could corips with The Asha’man could have done it faster If so, except to sit his saddle where men could see him He had been afraid to seize the Power He did not dare display weakness for theibbered with horror at the very idea

Equally surprising as Weiramon’s unsullied coat, Anaiyella rode with hi Her face was pinched and disapproving Strangely, it did not spoil her looks nearly so e herself, of course, any more than Ailil, but Anaiyella’s Master of the Horse had, and the h his chest She did not like that one bit But why did she accoether? Maybe She had been with Sunamon, the last Rand had seen

Bashere walked his bay up the slope, picking his way around the dead while see to pay them nostuauntlets were stuffed behind his sword belt He was ht si