Towers of Midnight (Page 88)

Foolish cub, Hopper sent.

“You’d leave them?” Perrin said, voice ragged.

Not foolish to dig in the hole. Foolish for not waiting for me in case hornets came out. Hopper turned toward the dome. Help me if I fall. He padded forward, then touched his nose to the dome. Hopper stumbled, but righted himself and continued on slowly. On the other side, he collapsed, but his chest continued to move.

“How did you do it?” Perrin asked, rising.

I am me. Hopper as he saw himself—which was identical to who he was. Also scents of strength and stability.

The trick, it seemed, was to be in complete control of who you were. Like many things in the wolf dream, the strength of one’s mental image was more powerful than the substance of the world itself.

Come, Hopper sent. Be strong, pass through.

“I have a better idea,” Perrin said, standing up. He charged forward at full speed. He hit the violet dome and immediately went limp, but his momentum carried him to the other side, where he rolled to a stop. He groaned, shoulder hurt, arm scraped.

Foolish cub, Hopper sent. You must learn.

“Now isn’t the time,” Perrin said, climbing to his feet. “We have to help the others.”

Arrows in the wind, thick, black, deadly. The hunter’s laughter. The scent of a man who was stale. The killer was here. Hopper and Perrin ran down the road, and Perrin found that he could increase his speed within the dome. Tentatively, he tried jumping forward with a thought, and it worked. But when he tried to send himself outside, nothing happened.

So the dome was a barrier. Within it, he could move freely, but he could not move to a place outside it by imagining himself elsewhere. He had to pass the dome’s wall physically if he wanted out.

Oak Dancer, Boundless and Sparks were ahead. And Slayer, too. Perrin growled—frantic sendings flooded him. Dark woods. Slayer. He seemed so tall to the wolves, a dark monster with a face chiseled as if from rock.

Blood on the grass. Pain, anger, terror, confusion. Sparks was wounded. The other two jumped back and forth, taunting and distracting Slayer while Sparks crawled toward the border of the dome.

Care, Young Bull, Hopper sent. This man hunts well. He moves almost like a wolf, though he is something wrong.

“I’ll distract him. You get Sparks.”

You have arms. You carry. There was more to the sending than that, of course: Hopper’s age and experience, Perrin still a pup.

Perrin gritted his teeth, but didn’t argue. Hopper was more experienced than he was. They parted, Perrin reaching out for Sparks, finding where he was—hidden within a patch of trees—and taking himself directly there.

The dark brown wolf had an arrow in his thigh, and he was whimpering softly, trailing blood as he crawled. Perrin knelt quickly and pulled the arrow out. The wolf continued to whimper, smelling frightened. Perrin held the arrow up. It smelled evil. Disgusted, he tossed it aside and picked up the wolf.

Something crackled nearby, and Perrin spun. Boundless leaped between two trees, smelling anxious. The other two wolves were leading Slayer away.

Perrin turned and ran toward the dome’s nearest edge, carrying Sparks. He couldn’t leap directly to the edge of the dome because he didn’t know where it was.

He burst from the trees, heart thumping. The wolf in his arms seemed to grow stronger as they left the arrow behind. Perrin ran more quickly, using a speed that felt reckless, moving hundreds of paces with blurring speed. The dome wall approached, and he pulled to a stop.

Slayer was suddenly there, standing before him, bow drawn. He wore a black cloak that billowed around him; he was no longer smiling, and his eyes were thunderous.

He released. Perrin shifted and never saw where the arrow landed. He appeared in the place where he’d first entered the dome; he should have gone there first. He hurled himself through the violet dome, collapsing on the other side, sending Sparks tumbling.

The wolf yelped. Perrin hit hard.

Young Bull! Sparks sent an image of Slayer, dark like a thunderhead, standing right inside the barrier with bow drawn.

Perrin didn’t look. He shifted, sending himself to the slopes of Dragonmount. Once there, he leaped to his feet, anxious, hammer appearing in his hand. Groups of nearby wolves sent greeting. Perrin ignored them for the moment.

Slayer did not follow. After a few tense moments, Hopper appeared. “Did the others get away?” Perrin asked.

They are free, he sent. Whisperer is dead. The sending showed the wolf—from the viewpoint of the others in the pack—being killed moments after the dome appeared. Sparks had taken an arrow as he nuzzled at her side in panic.

Perrin growled. He nearly jumped away to confront Slayer again, but a caution from Hopper stopped him. Too soon! You must learn!

“It’s not only him,” Perrin said. “I need to look at the area around my camp and that of the Whitecloaks. Something smells wrong there in the waking world. I need to see if something is odd there.”

Odd? Hopper sent the image of the dome.

“It is probably related.” The two oddities seemed likely to be more than mere coincidence.

Search another time. Slayer is too strong for you.

Perrin took a deep breath. “I have to face him eventually, Hopper.”

Not now.

“No,” Perrin agreed. “Not now. Now we practice.” He turned to the wolf. “As we will do every night until I am ready.”

Rodel Ituralde rolled over in his cot, neck slick with sweat. Had Saldaea always been this hot and muggy? He wished for home, the cool ocean breezes of Bandar Eban.

Things felt wrong. Why hadn’t the Shadowspawn attacked? A hundred possibilities rattled in his mind. Were they waiting for new siege engines? Were they scouting out forests in order to build them? Or were their commanders content with a siege? The entire city was surrounded, but there had to be enough Trollocs out there to overwhelm it now.

They had taken to beating drums. All hours. Thump, thump, thump. Steady, like the heartbeat of an enormous animal, the Great Serpent itself, coiling around the city.

Dawn was beginning to shine outside. He hadn’t turned in until well after midnight. Durhem—who commanded the morning watch—had ordered that Ituralde not be disturbed until noon. His tent was in a shadowed alcove of the courtyard. He had wanted to be close to the wall, and had refused a bed. That had been foolish. Though a cot had been fine for him in previous years, he wasn’t as young as he’d once been. Tomorrow, he’d move.

Now, he told himself, sleep.

It wasn’t that easy. The accusation that he was Dragonsworn left him unsettled. In Arad Doman, he’d been fighting for his king, someone he’d believed in. Now he was fighting in a foreign land for a man he’d met only once. All because of a gut feeling.

Light, but it was hot. Sweat ran down his cheeks, making his neck itch. It shouldn’t be this hot so early in the morning. It wasn’t natural. Those burning drums, still pounding.

He sighed, climbing off his sweat-dampened cot. His leg ached. It had for days now.

You’re an old man, Rodel, he thought, stripping off his sweaty smallclothes and getting out some freshly washed ones. He stuffed his trousers into knee-high riding boots. A simple white shirt with black buttons went on next, and then his gray coat, buttoning straight up to the collar.

He was strapping on his sword when he heard hurried footsteps outside, followed by whispers. That conversation grew heated, and he stepped outside just as someone said, “Lord Ituralde will wish to know!”

“Know what?” Ituralde asked. A messenger boy was arguing with his guards. All three turned toward him sheepishly.

“I’m sorry, my Lord,” Connel said. “We were instructed to let you sleep.”

“A man who can sleep in this heat must be half-lizard, Connel,” Ituralde said. “Lad, what’s the word?”

“Captain Yoeli is on the wall, sir,” the youth said. Ituralde recognized the young man—he’d been with him from near the beginning of this campaign. “He said you should come.”

Ituralde nodded. He laid a hand on Connel’s arm. “Thank you for watching me, old friend, but these bones aren’t so frail as you think.”

Connel nodded, blushing. The guard fell into place behind as Ituralde crossed the courtyard. The sun had risen. Many of his troops were up. Too many. He wasn’t the only one having difficulty sleeping.

Atop the wall, he was greeted by a disheartening sight. On the dying land, thousand upon thousands of Trollocs camped, burning fires. Ituralde didn’t like to think about where the wood for those fires came from. Hopefully all of the nearby homesteaders and villagers had heeded the call to evacuate.

Yoeli stood gripping the crenelated stone of the wall, next to a man in a black coat. Deepe Bhadar was senior among the Asha’man whom al’Thor had given him, one of only three who wore both the Dragon and the sword pins on his collar. The Andoran man had a flat face and black hair that he wore long. Ituralde had sometimes heard some of the black-coated men mumbling to themselves, but not Deepe. He seemed fully in control.

Yoeli kept glancing at the Asha’man; Ituralde didn’t feel comfortable with men who could channel either. But they were an excellent tool, and they hadn’t failed him. He preferred to let experience, instead of rumor, rule him.

“Lord Ituralde,” Deepe said. The Asha’man never saluted Ituralde, just al’Thor.

“What is it?” Ituralde asked, scanning the hordes of Trollocs. They didn’t seem to have changed since he’d bedded down.

“Your man claims to be able to feel something,” Yoeli said. “Out there.”

“They have channelers, Lord Ituralde,” Deepe said. “I suspect at least six, perhaps more. Men, since I can feel the Power they’re wielding, doing something powerful. If I squint at the far camps, I think I can sometimes see weaves, but it may be my imagination.”

Ituralde cursed. “That’s what they’ve been waiting for.”

“What?” Yoeli asked.

“With Asha’man of their own—”

“They are not Asha’man,” Deepe said fervently.

“All right, then. With channelers of their own, they can tear this wall down easily as knocking over a pile of blocks, Yoeli. That sea of Trollocs will surge in and fill your streets.”

“Not so long as I stand,” Deepe said.

“I like determination in a soldier, Deepe,” Ituralde said, “but you look as exhausted as I feel.”

Deepe shot him a glare. His eyes were red from lack of sleep, and he clenched his teeth, the muscles in his neck and face tense. He met Ituralde’s eyes, then took a long, forced breath.

“You are correct,” Deepe said. “But neither of us can do anything about that.” He raised his hand, doing something that Ituralde couldn’t see. A flash of red light appeared over his hand—the signal he used to draw the others to him. “Prepare your men, General, Captain. It will not be long. They cannot continue to hold that kind of Power without…consequences.”

Yoeli nodded, then hurried away. Ituralde took Deepe’s arm, drawing his attention.

“You Asha’man are too important a resource to lose,” Ituralde said. “The Dragon sent us here to help, not to die. If this city falls, I want you to take the others and whatever wounded you can and get out. Do you understand, soldier?”