Riding slowly along the ranks, he felt the women's eyes following him, and the children's. Fear scent, and worry; the children showed it on their toopale faces, but all smelled of it. He reined in where Marin al'Vere and Daise Congar and the rest of the Women's Circle stood together. Alsbet Luhhan had one of her husband's hammers on her shoulder, and her Whitecloak helmet acquired the night of her rescue sat slightly crooked because of her thick braid. Neysa Ayellin held a longbladed carving knife firm in her hand, and had two more stuck behind her belt.
“We have planned this out,” Daise said, looking up at him as if she expected an argument and did not intend to allow it. She held a pitchfork, fastened to a pole nearly three feet taller than she, upright in front of her. “If the Trollocs break through anywhere, you men are going to be busy, so we will take the children out. The older ones know what to do, and they've all played hideandseek in the woods. Just to keep them safe until they can come out.”
The older ones. Boys and girls of thirteen and fourteen had toddlers strapped on their backs, and held smaller children by the hand. Girls older than that stood in the ranks with the women; Bode Cauthon had a woodaxe gripped in both hands, her sister Eldrin a boar spear with a broad point. Boys older were out with the men, or up on the thatched rooftops with their bows. The Tinkers were in with the children. Perrin glanced down at Aram, standing by his stirrup. They would not fight, but each adult had two babes fastened on his or her back and another cradled in the crook of an elbow. Raen and Ila, each with an arm around the other, would not look at him. Just to keep them safe until they could come out.
“I'm sorry.” He had to stop and clear his throat. He had not meant it to come to this. Think as hard as he could, nothing else came that he could have done. Even giving himself to the Trollocs would not have stopped them killing and burning. The end would have been the same. “It was not fair, what I did with Faile, but I had to. Please understand that. I had to.”“Don't be silly, Perrin,” Alsbet said, voice emphatic but round face smiling warmly. “I can never abide it when you're silly. Do you think we would expect you to do any different?”
A heavy cleaver in one hand, Marin reached up to pat his knee with the other. “Any man worth cooking a meal for would have done the same.”
“Thank you.” Light, but he sounded hoarse. In a minute he would be snuffling like a girl. But for some reason he could not smooth his voice. They must think him an idiot. “Thank you. I shouldn't have fooled you, but she'd not have gone if she suspected.”
“Oh, Perrin.” Marin laughed. She actually laughed, with all they faced, and smelling of fear as she did; he wished he had half her courage. “We knew what you were up to before you ever put her on her horse, and I am not sure she didn't as well. Women do find themselves doing what they don't want just to please you men. Now you go on and do what you have to. This is Women's Circle business,” she added firmly.
Somehow he managed to smile back at her. “Yes, mistress,” he said, knuckling his forehead. “Beg pardon. I know enough to keep my nose out of that.” The women around her laughed in soft amusement as he turned Stepper away.
Ban and Tell were riding right behind him, he realized, with the rest of the Companions strung out after Wil and the banner. He motioned the pair to come up beside him. “If things go badly today,” he said when they were on either side of him, “the Companions are to come back here and help the women.”
“But —”
He cut Tell's protest short. “You do what I say! If it goes wrong, you get the women and children out! You hear me?” They nodded; reluctantly, but they did it.
“What about you?” Ban asked quietly.
Perrin ignored him. “Aram, you stick with the Companions.”
Striding along between Stepper and Tell's shaggy horse, the Tinker did not even look up. “I go where you go.” He said it simply, but his tone left no room for argument; he was going to do as he wanted whatever Perrin said. Perrin wondered if real lords ever had problems like this.
At the west end of the Green, the Whitecloaks were all mounted, cloaks with the golden sunburst bright, helmets and armor gleaming, lance points shining, a long column of fours that stretched back between the nearest houses. They must have spent half the night polishing. Dain Bornhald and Jaret Byar swung their horses to face Perrin. Bornhald sat straight in his saddle, but he smelled of apple brandy. Byar's gaunt face twisted with an even deeper rage than usual as he stared at Perrin.
“I thought you would be at your places by now,” Perrin said.
Bornhald frowned at his horse's mane, not answering. After a moment, Byar spat, “We are leaving here, Shadowspawn.” An angry mutter rose from the Companions, but the holloweyed man ignored them as he did Aram's reaching over his shoulder to his sword hilt. “We will cut our way back to Watch Hill through your friends and rejoin the rest of our men.”
Leaving. Over four hundred soldiers, leaving. Whitecloaks, but mounted soldiers, not farmers, soldiers who had agreed — Bornhald had agreed! — to support the Two Rivers men wherever the fighting was hottest. If Emond's Field was to have any chance at all, he had to hang on to these men. Stepper tossed his head and snorted as if catching his rider's mood. “Do you still believe I'm a Darkfriend, Bornhald? How many attacks have you seen so far? Those Trollocs have tried to kill me as much as anybody else.”
Bornhald raised his head slowly, eyes haunted and at the same time halfglazed. Hands in steelbacked gauntlets flexed on his reins unconsciously. “Do you think I do not know by now that these defenses were prepared without you? It was none of your doing, yes? I will not keep my men here to watch you feed your own villagers to the Trollocs. Will you dance atop a pile of their bodies when it is done, Shadowspawn? Not ours! I mean to live long enough to see you brought to justice!”
Perrin patted Stepper's neck to quiet the stallion. He had to keep these men. “You want me? Very well. When it's over, when the Trollocs are done, I'll not resist if you try to arrest me.”
“No!” Ban and Tell shouted together, and growls built behind them from the others. Aram peered up at Perrin, stricken.
“An empty promise,” Bornhald sneered. “You mean everyone to die here save yourself!”
“You'll never know if you run away, will you?” Perrin made his voice hard and contemptuous. “I will keep my promise, but if you run, you might never find me again. Run, if you want! Run, and try to forget what happens here! All your talk of protecting people from Trollocs. How many died at Trolloc hands after you came? My family wasn't the first, and certainly not the last. Run! Or stay, if you can remember you're men. If you need to find the courage, look at the women, Bornhald. Any one of them is braver than the whole lot of you Whitecloaks!”
Bornhald shook as though every word were a blow; Perrin thought the man might fall out of his saddle. Swaying upright, Bornhald stared at him. “We will remain,” he said hoarsely.
“But, my Lord Bornhald,” Byar protested.
“Clean!” Bornhald roared at him. “If we must die here, we will die clean!” He wrenched his head back to Perrin, spittle on his lips. “We will remain. But at the last I will see you dead, Shadowspawn! For my family, for my father, I—will— see—you—dead!” Sawing his horse around roughly, he cantered back to his whitecloaked column. Byar bared his teeth in a wordless snarl at Perrin before following.
“You do not mean to keep that promise?” Aram said anxiously. “You cannot.”
“I have to check everyone,” Perrin said. Small chance he would live long enough to keep it. “There isn't much time.” He booted Stepper in the flanks and the horse leaped forward, toward the west end of the village.
Behind the sharp stakes facing the Westwood, men crouched with their spears and halberds and polearms fashioned by Haral Luhhan, who was there in his blacksmith's vest with a scythe blade on the end of an eightfoot shaft. Behind them stood the men with bows in ranks broken by four catapults, Abell Cauthon walking along slowly to speak to each man.
Perrin reined in beside Abell. “Word is they're coming from north and south,” he said quietly, “but keep a sharp eye.”
“We'll watch. And I'm ready to send half my men wherever they are needed. They'll not find Two Rivers folk easy meat.” Abell's grin was reminiscent of his son's.
To Perrin's embarrassment, the men raised a ragged cheer as he rode by, with the Companions and the banner at his heels: “Goldeneyes! Goldeneyes!” and now and then a “Lord Perrin!” He knew he should have stamped harder on that in the beginning.
To the south, Tam had charge, more grimfaced than Abell and striding almost like a Warder, hand resting on his sword hilt. That wolfish, deadly grace looked strange on the blocky, grayhaired farmer. Yet his words to Perrin were not so different from Abell's. “We Two Rivers folk are a tougher lot than most know,” he said quietly. “Don't you worry we will not do ourselves proud today.”
Alanna was at one of the six catapults here, fussing over a large stone being lifted into the cup on the end of the thick arm. Ihvon sat his horse near her in his Warder's colorchanging cloak, slender as a steel blade and alert as a hawk; there was no doubt he had chosen his ground — wherever Alanna was — and his fight — to bring her out alive whatever. He barely looked at Perrin. But the Aes Sedai paused, hands hovering over the stone, eyes following him as he passed. He could all but feel her weighing and measuring and judging. Those cheers followed him, too.
Where the hedge of stakes ran beyond the few houses east of the Winespring Inn, Jon Thane and Samel Crawe had charge between them. Perrin told them what he had Abell, and once again got much the same reply. Jon, in a mail shirt with holes rusted through in several places, had seen the smoke of his mill burning, and Samel, with his horse face and long nose, was sure he had seen the smoke of his farm. Neither expected an easy day, but both wore stony determination like cloaks.
It was to the north that Perrin had decided to make his fight. Fingering the ribbon hanging down one lapel, he peered in the direction of Watch Hill, the direction Faile had gone, and wondered why he had chosen the north side. Fly free, Faile. Fly free, my heart. He supposed it was good a place to die as any.
Bran supposedly was in charge here, in his steel cap and discsewn metal jerkin, but he stopped checking the men along the hedge to give Perrin as much of a bow as his girth would allow. Gaul and Chiad stood ready, heads wrapped in shoufa and faces hidden to the eyes behind black veils. Side by side, Perrin noted; whatever had passed between them, it seemed to outweigh their clans' blood feud. Loial had a pair of woodaxes, dwarfed in his huge hands; his tufted ears thrust forward fiercely, and his wide face was grim.
Do you think I would run away? he had said when Perrin suggested he could slip off into the night after Faile. His ears had dropped with weariness and hurt. I came with you, Perrin, and I will stay until you go. And then he had laughed suddenly, a deep booming sound that almost rattled the dishes. Perhaps someone will even tell a story of me, one day. We do not go in for such things, but there could be an Ogier hero, I suppose. A joke, Perrin. I made a joke. Laugh. Come, we will tell each other jokes, and laugh, and t