Robert Jordan - New Spring - The Novel

"Twenty-three behind at thirty paces," Bukama called. "No bows. On your word."

No difference at all, against a band large enough to attack most merchant trains. He did not loose, however. So long as the men only sat their horses, a chance remained. A small one. Life and death often turned on small chances.

"Let's not be too hasty," the helmeted man called, removing it to reveal a grizzled head of greasy hair and a narrow, dirty face that had last been touched by a razor a week gone. His wide smile showed two missing teeth. "You might be able to kill two or three of us before we cut you down, but there's no need for that. Let us have your coin and the pretty lady's jewelry, and you can go on your way. Pretty ladies in silk and fur always have lots of jewels, eh?" He leered past Lan at Alys. Maybe he thought it a friendly smile.

There was no temptation in the offer. These fellows wanted no casualties among themselves if they could manage it so, but surrender meant that he and Bukama and Ryne would have their throats slit. They probably intended to keep Alys alive until they decided she was a danger. If she had some trick of the Power up her sleeve, he wished she would-

"You dare impede the way of an Aes Sedai?" she thundered, and it was thunder, setting some of the brigands' horses snorting and plunging. Cat Dancer, knowing what dropped reins meant, remained still beneath him, awaiting the pressures of knee and heel. "Surrender or face my wrath!" And red fire exploded with a roar above the bandits' heads, sending more of their mounts into panicked bucking that tumbled two of the poorer riders to the road.

"I told you she was Aes Sedai, Coy," whined a fat, balding fellow in a breastplate that was too small for him. "Didn't I say that, Coy? A Green with her three Warders, I said."

The lean man backhanded him across the face without taking his eyes from Lan. Or more likely, from Alys, behind him.

"No talk of surrender, now. There's still fifty of us and four of you. Rather than face the noose, we'll take our chances on how many you can kill before we take you."

"Well and good," Lan said. "But if I can see one of you at the count of ten, it begins." With the last word, he started counting in a loud voice.

The bandits did not let him reach two before they were galloping back toward the trees; by four, the dismounted pair stopped trying to gain the saddles on their wild-eyed animals and took off afoot as fast as they could go. There was no need to follow. The pounding and crackle of horses being galloped through brush rather than around it was fast fading into the distance. In the circumstances, it was the best end that could be hoped for. Except that Alys did not see it so.

"You had no right to let them go," she said indignantly, anger flashing in her eyes as she did her best to skewer each of them with her gaze. She reined her mare around to make certain they each received a dose. "Had they attacked, I could have used the One Power against them. How many people have they robbed and murdered, how many women ravished, how many children orphaned? We should have fought them and taken the survivors to the nearest magistrate."

Lan, Bukama and Ryne took turns trying to convince her how unlikely it was that any of the four of them would have been among the survivors-the bandits would have fought hard to avoid the gallows, and sheer numbers did count-but she actually seemed to believe she could have defeated close on fifty men by herself. A very strange woman.

Had it been only storms and bandits, that would have been more than he expected on any journey. Ryne's foolishness and Bukama's complaints could have been taken as a matter of course, too. But Alys was blind about a great deal, and that made all the difference.

That first night he had sat in the wet to let her know he would accept what she had done. If they were to travel together, better to end it with honors even, as she must see it. Except that she did not. The second night she remained awake till dawn and made sure he did as well, with sharp flicks of an invisible switch whenever he nodded off. The third night, sand somehow got inside his clothes and boots, a thick coating of it. He had shaken out what he could and, without water to wash, rode covered in grit the next day. The night after the bandits… He could not understand how she managed to make ants crawl into his smallclothes, or make them all bite at once. It had been her doing for sure. She was standing over him when his eyes shot open, and she appeared surprised that he did not cry out.

Clearly, she wanted some response, some reaction, but he could not see what. If she felt that she had not been repaid for her wetting, then she was a very hard woman, but a woman could set the price for her insult or injury, and there were no other women here to call an end when she went beyond what they considered just. All he could do was endure until they reached Chachin. The following night she discovered a patch of blisterleaf near their campsite, and to his shame, he almost lost his temper.

He did not mention the incidents to Bukama or Ryne, of course, though he was certain they knew, but he began to pray for Chachin to loom up ahead at the next rise. Perhaps Edeyn had set the woman to watch him, but it was beginning to seem she meant to kill him after all. Slowly.

– Ťť-Ťť-Ťť-

Moiraine could not understand the stubbornness of this Lan Mandragoran, though Siuan said that "stubborn" was a redundancy when it came to men. All she wanted was a display of remorse for dunking her. Well, that and an apology. An abject apology. And a proper regard for an Aes Sedai. But he never displayed the slightest scrap of penitence. He was frozen arrogance to the core! His disbelief of her right to the shawl was so plain he might as well have spoken aloud. A part of her admired his fortitude, but only a part. She would bring him properly to heel. Not to tame him utterly-a completely tame man was no use to himself or anyone else-but to make certain he recognized his mistakes right down to his bones.

She allowed him his days to reflect, while she planned what she would do to him that night. The ants had been a great disappointment. That was one of the Blue Ajah secrets, a way to repel insects or make them gather and bite or sting, though not intended for the use she had put it to. But she was quite proud of the blisterleaf, which at least made him jump a bit, proving that he really was made of human flesh. She had begun to doubt that.

Oddly, neither of the other men ever offered him a word of commiseration that she heard, though they had to know what she was doing. If he voiced no complaints to her, which was peculiar enough in itself, surely he did to his friends; that was one thing friends were for. But the three were strangely reticent in other ways, too. Even in Cairhien people would talk about themselves, a little, and she had been taught that Borderlanders shunned the Game of Houses, yet they revealed almost nothing about themselves even after she primed their tongues with incidents from her own youth in Cairhien and from the Tower. Ryne at least laughed when the story was funny-once he realized he was supposed to laugh, he did-but Lan and Bukama actually looked embarrassed. She thought that was the emotion they displayed; they could have taught Aes Sedai to control their faces. They admitted having met sisters before her, but when she probed ever so delicately to learn where and when "There are Aes Sedai so many places that they are difficult to recall," Lan replied one evening as they rode ahead of their own long shadows. "We had best stop at those farmhouses ahead and see whether we can hire the use of a hayloft for the night. We won't see another house till well after full dark."

That was typical. Those three could have taught Aes Sedai about oblique answers and deflecting questions, too.