The Path of Daggers (74 page)

Swinging into Quick’s saddle, he rode back to Jeordwyn and the others. “We go around,” he ordered, ignoring Jeordwyn’s nods as much as he did Gueyam and Amondrid’s scowls. “Triple scouts out. I mean to push hard, but I don’t want to trip over a
damane
.” No one laughed.

Rochaid had gathered the other five Asha’man around him, one with a silver sword pinned to his collar, the others without. There had been two more with bare collars when they started out that morning, but if Asha’man knew how to kill, so did
damane
. Waving his arms angrily, Rochaid appeared to be arguing with them. His face was red, theirs blank and stubborn. Bashere just hoped Rochaid could keep all of them from deserting. Today had been costly enough without adding that sort of man wandering about loose.

A light rain fell. Rand scowled at the thick black clouds gathering the sky, already beginning to obscure a pale sun halfway down to the far horizon. Light rain now, but it would thicken like those clouds! Irritably he returned to studying the land ahead of him. The Crown of Swords pricked his temples. With the Power in him, the land was clear as a map despite the weather. Clear enough, anyway. Hills sinking away, some covered with thickets or olive trees, others bare grass or just stone and weeds. He thought he saw movement at the edge of a copse, then again among the rows of an olive orchard on another hill a mile from the copse. Thinking was not enough. Dead men lay across the miles behind, dead enemies. Dead women, too, he knew, but he had stayed away from anywhere
sul’dam
and
damane
had died, refused to see their faces. Most thought it was hatred for those who killed so many of his followers.

Tai’daishar frisked a few steps on the hilltop before Rand settled him with a firm hand and the pressure of his knees. A fine thing if a
sul’dam
spotted
his
movement. The few trees around him were not enough to hide much. Vaguely, he realized he did not recognize a one of them. Tai’daishar tossed his head. Rand tucked the Dragon Scepter into his saddlebags, just the carved butt end sticking out, to free both hands in case the gelding was not satisfied. He could have taken weariness from the horse with
saidin
, but he knew no way to make it obey with the Power.

He could not see how the gelding retained enough energy.
Saidin
filled him, bubbled in him, but his distantly felt body wanted to sag with weariness. Part of that was the sheer amount of the Power he had handled today. Part was the strain of fighting
saidin
to make it do what he wanted. Always,
saidin
had to be conquered, forced, but never before like today. The half-healed, never-healing wounds in his left side were agony, the older an auger trying to drill through the Void, the newer a blaze of raw flame.

“It was an accident, my Lord Dragon,” Adley said suddenly. “I swear it was!”

“Shut up and watch!” Rand told him harshly. Adley’s eyes sank to his hands on his own reins for a moment, then he raked damp hair out of his face and jerked his head up obediently.

Today, here, controlling
saidin
was harder than ever, but letting it slip anytime, anywhere, could kill you. Adley had let it slip, and men had died in uncontrolled bursts of fire, not just the Amadicians he had been aiming at, but near thirty of Ailil’s armsmen and almost as many of Anaiyella’s.

Except for his slip, Adley would have been with Morr, with the Companions in the woods half a mile to the south. Narishma and Hopwil were with the Defenders, to the north. Rand wanted Adley under his eye. Had any other “accidents” happened, out of his sight? He could not watch everyone, all the time. Flinn’s face was grim as day-old death, and Dashiva, far from looking vague, seemed on the point of sweating with concentration. He still muttered to himself under his breath, so low Rand could not hear even with the Power in him, but the man mopped rain from his face continually with a sodden lace-edged linen handkerchief that had grown more than grimy as the day wore on. Rand did not think they had slipped. In any case, neither they nor Adley held the Power now. Nor would until he instructed them to seize it.

“Is it done?” Anaiyella asked behind him.

Heedless of who might be watching out there, Rand wheeled Tai’daishar around to face her. The Tairen woman started back in her saddle, the hood of her richly elaborate rain cape falling to her shoulders. Her cheek gave a twitch. Her eyes might have been full of fear, or hate. At her side, Ailil fingered her reins calmly with red-gloved hands.

“What more can you want?” the smaller woman asked in a cool voice. A lady being polite to a menial. Barely. “If the size of a victory is accounted by dead enemies, I think today alone will put your name in the histories.”

“I mean to drive the Seanchan into the sea!” Rand snapped. Light, he
had
to finish them now, when he had the chance! He could not fight the Seanchan and the Forsaken and the Light alone knew who or what else, all at the same time! “I did it before, and I will again!”

Do you have the Horn of Valere hidden in your pocket this time
? Lews Therin asked slyly. Rand snarled at him silently.

“There’s someone below,” Flinn said suddenly. “Riding up this way. From the west.”

Rand pulled his mount back around. Legionmen ringed the slopes of the hill, though they hid well enough that he seldom caught sight of a blue coat. None of them had a horse. Who would be riding . . .

Bashere’s bay trotted up the slope almost as though it were level ground. Bashere’s helmet hung from his saddle, and the man himself looked tired. Without preamble, he spoke in a flat voice. “We’re finished, here. Part of fighting is knowing when to go, and it’s time. I’ve left five hundred dead behind, near enough, and two of your Soldiers for salt. I sent three more to find Semaradrid, Gregorin and Weiramon and tell them to rally on you. I doubt they’re in any better condition than I am. How does
your
butcher’s bill run?”

Rand ignored the question. His own dead topped Bashere’s by close to two hundred. “You had no right sending orders to the others. So long as there are half a dozen Asha’man left—so long as there’s me!—I have enough! I mean to find the rest of the Seanchan army and destroy it, Bashere. I won’t let them add Altara to Tarabon and Amadicia.”

Bashere knuckled his thick mustaches with a wry laugh. “You want to find them. Look out there.” He swept a gauntleted hand across the hills to the west. “I can’t point to a particular spot, but there are ten, maybe fifteen thousand close enough to see from here, if those trees weren’t in the way. I danced with the Dark One getting through them unseen to reach you. Maybe a hundred
damane
down there. Maybe more. More coming, for sure, and more men. Seems their general has decided to concentrate on you. I suppose it isn’t always cheese and ale being
ta’veren
.”

“If they’re out there . . .” Rand scanned the hills. The rain fell more heavily. Where had he seen movement? Light, he was tired.
Saidin
hammered at him. Unconsciously he touched the wrapped bundled beneath his stirrup leather. His hand jerked away of its own accord. Ten thousand, even fifteen . . . Once Semaradrid reached him, and Gregorin, and Weiramon . . . More important, once the rest of the Asha’man did . . . “If they’re out there, that’s where I’ll destroy them, Bashere. I’ll hit them from all sides, the way we intended in the first place.”

Frowning, Bashere reined his horse closer, until his knee almost touched Rand’s. Flinn moved his mount away, but Adley was too focused on staring through the rain to notice anything so near, and Dashiva, still wiping his face incessantly, stared with open interest. Bashere lowered his voice to a murmur. “You aren’t thinking straight. That was a good plan, in the beginning, but their general thinks fast. He spread out to blunt our attacks before we could fall on him spread out marching. We’ve cost him even so, it seems, and he now he’s pulling everything together. You won’t catch him by surprise. He
wants
us to come at him. He’s out there
waiting
for it. Asha’man or no Asha’man, if we stand nose-to-nose with this fellow, I think maybe the vultures grow fat and nobody rides away.”

“Nobody stands nose-to-nose with the Dragon Reborn,” Rand growled. “The Forsaken could tell him that, whoever he is. Right, Flinn? Dashiva?” Flinn nodded uncertainly. Dashiva flinched. “You think I can’t surprise him, Bashere? Watch!” Pulling the long bundle loose, he stripped away the cloth covering, and Rand heard gasps as raindrops glistened on a sword seemingly made of crystal. The Sword That Is Not a Sword. “Let’s see if he’s surprised by
Callandor
in the hands of the Dragon Reborn, Bashere.”

Cradling the translucent blade in the crook of his elbow, Rand rode Tai’daishar forward a few steps. There was no reason to. He had no clearer view from there. Except . . . Something spidered across the outer surface of the Void, a wriggling black web. He was afraid. The last time he had used
Callandor
, really used it, he had tried to bring the dead back to life. He had been sure he could do anything, then, anything at all. Like a madman thinking he could fly. But he was the Dragon Reborn. He
could
do anything. Had he not proved it time and again? He reached for the Source through the Sword That Is Not a Sword.

Saidin
seemed to leap into
Callandor
before he touched the Source through it. From pommel to point, the crystal sword shone with a white light. He had only thought the Power filled him before. Now he held more than ten men could have unaided, a hundred, he did not know how many. The fires of the sun, searing through his head. The cold of all of the winters of all the Ages, eating into his heart. In that torrent, the taint was all the midden heaps in the world emptying into his soul.
Saidin
still tried to kill him, tried to scour away, burn away, freeze away, every scrap of him, but he fought, and he lived for a moment more, and another moment, another. He wanted to laugh. He
could
do anything!

Once, holding
Callandor
, he had made a weapon that searched out Shadowspawn through the Stone of Tear, struck them dead with hunting lightning wherever they stood or ran or hid. Surely there must be something like that, to use against his enemies here. But when he called to Lews Therin, only anguished whimpers answered, as if that disembodied voice feared the pain of
saidin
.

With
Callandor
blazing in his hand—he did not remember raising the blade overhead—he stared at the hills where his enemies hid. They were gray now, with thickening rain, and dense black clouds blocking the sun. What was it he had told Eagan Padros?

“I am the storm,” he whispered—a shout in his ears, a roar—and he channeled.

Overhead, the clouds boiled. Where they had been the black of soot, they became midnight, the heart of midnight. He did not know what he was channeling. So often, he did not, in spite of Asmodean’s teaching. Maybe Lews Therin was guiding him, in spite of the man’s weeping. Flows of
saidin
spun across the sky, Wind and Water and Fire. Fire. The sky truly did rain lightning. A hundred bolts at once, hundreds, forked blue-white shafts stabbing down as far as he could see. The hills before him erupted. Some flew apart under the torrent of lightning like kicked anthills. Flames sprang up in thickets, trees turning to torches in the rain, flames racing through olive orchards.

Something struck him hard, and he realized he was picking himself up from the ground. The crown had fallen from his head.
Callandor
still blazed in his hand, though. Vaguely, he was aware of Tai’daishar scrambling to his feet, trembling. So they thought to strike back at him, did they.

Shoving
Callandor
high, he screamed at them. “Come against me, if you dare! I
am
the storm! Come if you dare, Shai’tan! I am the Dragon Reborn!” A thousand sizzling lightning bolts hailed down from the clouds.

Again something struck him down. He tried to fight up again.
Callandor
, still shining, lay a pace from his outstretched hand. The sky shattered with lightnings. Suddenly, he realized that the weight atop him was Bashere, that the man was shaking him. It must have been Bashere who had flung him down!

“Stop it!” the Saldaean shouted. Blood fanned down his face from a split across his scalp. “You’re killing us, man! Stop!”

Rand turned his head, and one stunned look was enough. Lightnings flashed
all
around him, in
every
direction. A bolt stabbed down onto the reverse slope, where Denharad and the armsmen were; the screams of men and horses rose. Anaiyella and Ailil were both afoot, trying vainly to quiet mounts that reared, eyes rolling, trying to rip reins free. Flinn was bending over someone, not far from a dead horse with legs already stiff.

Rand let
saidin
go. He let it go, but for moments it still flowed into him, and lightning raged. The flow into him dwindled, tailed off and vanished. Dizziness swept through him in its place. For three more heartbeats, two of
Callandor
shone where they lay on the ground, and lightning fell. Then, silence except for the rising drum of the rain. And the screams from behind the hill.

Slowly Bashere climbed off of him, and Rand rose unaided on tottering legs, blinking as his sight returned to normal. The Saldaean watched him as he might have a rabid lion, fingering his sword hilt. Anaiyella took one look at Rand on his feet and collapsed in a faint; her horse dashed away, reins dangling. Ailil, still fighting her rearing animal, spared few glances for Rand. Rand let
Callandor
lie where it was for the moment. He was not sure he dared pick it up. Not yet.

Flinn straightened, shaking his head, then stood silently as Rand went unsteadily to stand beside him. The rain fell on Jonan Adley’s sightless eyes, bulging as if in horror. Jonan had been one of the first. Those screams from behind the hill seemed to slice through the rain. How many more, Rand wondered. Among the Defenders? The Companions? Among . . . ?