Robert Jordan - The Eye of the World

I will, she vowed silently.

Even if she did marry, would Rand make a good husband? She was not sure what made a good husband. Someone like her father, brave and kind and wise. She thought Rand was kind- He had carved her a whistle once, and a horse, and he had given her an eagle’s black-tipped feather when she said it was pretty, though she still suspected he had wanted to keep it for himself. And he watched his father’s sheep in pasture, so he had to be brave. The sheep-dog would help, if wolves came, or a bear, but the boy watching had to be ready with his sling, or a bow if he was old enough. Only … She saw him every time he and his father came in from their farm, but she did not really know him. She hardly knew anything about him. Now was as good a time as any to start learning. She eased back to the cornerpost and peeked around it again.

“I’d like to a be a king,” Rand was saying. “That’s what I’d like to be.” He flourished his arm and made an awkward bow, laughing to show that he was joking. A good thing, too. Egwene grimaced. A king!She studied his face. No, he was not pretty. Well, perhaps he was. Maybe it did not matter. But it might be nice to have a husband she liked to look at. His eyes were blue. No, gray. They seemed to change-while you watched. Nobody else in the Two Rivers had blue eyes. Sometimes his eyes looked sad. His mother had died when he was little, and Egwene thought he envied boys who had mothers. She could not imagine losing her mother. She did not even want to try.

“A king of sheep!” Mat hooted. He was smaller than the others, always bouncing on his toes. One glance at his face, and you knew he was looking for mischief. He always looked for mischief. And usually found it. “Rand al’Thor, King of the Sheep.” Lem snickered. Ban punched him on the shoulder, and Lem punched Ban back, and then they both snickered. Egwene shook her head.

“It’s better than saying you want to run off and never have to work,” Rand said mildly. He never seemed to get angry. Not that she had seen, anyway. “How could you live without working, Mat?”

“Sheep aren’t so bad,” Elam said, rubbing at his long nose. His hair was cut short, and he had a cowlick that stood up at the back. He looked a little like a sheep.

“I’ll rescue an Aes Sedai, and she’ll reward me,” Mat shot back. “Anyway, I don’t go around looking for work when there’s more than work enough without looking.” He grinned and poked Perrin’s shoulder.

Perrin rubbed his nose, abashed. “Sometimes you have to be sensible, Mat,” he said slowly. “Sometimes you have to think ahead.” Perrin always talked slowly, when he talked at all. And he moved carefully, as if he was afraid he might break something. Rand spoke before he thought, sometimes, and he always looked as though he was ready to start haring off and not stop until he caught the horizon.

“‘Sensible’ says I’ll work in my da’s mill,” Lem sighed. “Inherit it one day, I expect. Not too soon, I hope. I’d like to have an adventure first, though, wouldn’t you, Rand?”

“Of course.” Rand laughed. “But where do I find an adventure in the Two Rivers?”

“There has to be a way,” Ban muttered. “Maybe there’s gold up in the mountains. Or Trollocs?” He suddenly sounded as if he was not so certain about going up in the mountains. Did he really believe in Trollocs?

“I want to have more sheep than anybody in the whole Two Rivers,” Elam said stoutly. Mat rolled his eyes in exasperation.

Dav had been sitting back on his heels listening, and now he shook his head. “You look like a sheep, Elam,” he muttered. At least she had not said it aloud. Dav was taller than Mat, and stockier, but his eyes had that same light. His clothes were always rumpled from something he should not have been doing.“Listen, I just got a great idea.”

“I just got a better one,” Mat put in quickly. “Come on. I’ll show you.” He and Dav glared at one another.

Elam and Ban and Lem looked ready to follow either one, or both, if they could figure out how. Rand put a hand on Mat’s shoulder, though. “Hold on. Let’s hear these great ideas, first.” Perrin nodded thoughtfully.

Egwene sighed. Dav and Mat seemed to compete to see who could get into the most trouble. And Rand might sound sensible, but when he was around the village, they often managed to pull him along, too. And Perrin, as well. The other three would fall in with anything at all Mat or Dav suggested.

It seemed time for her to leave. She would not be able to follow them to see what they were getting upto, not without them seeing her. She would die before she let Rand suspect that she had been watching him like some goosebrain. And I didn’t even learn anything.

As she walked back along the sheep-pen to where she had left her bucket, Dannil Lewin passed her, heading toward the back of the pen. At thirteen, he was even skinnier than Rand, with a thrusting nose. She hesitated over the bucket, listening. At first, she heard nothing but murmurs Then …

“The Mayor wants me?” Mat exclaimed. “He can’t want me! I haven’t done anything!”

“He wants all of you, and double quick,” Dannil said. “I’d get over to him now, if it was me.”

Quickly picking up the bucket, Egwene walked slowly away from the sheep-pen, back toward the river. Rand and the others soon passed her, trotting in the same direction. Egwene smiled, a small smile. When her father sent for people, they came. Even the Women’s Circle knew Brandelwyn al’Vere was no man to trifle with. Egwene was not supposed to know that, but she had overheard Mistress Luhhan and Mistress Ayellin and some of the others talking to her mother about her father being stubborn and how her mother had to do something about it. She let the boys get a little ahead-just a little-then increased her pace to keep up.

“I don’t understand it,” Mat grumbled as they came near the line of men shearing. “Sometimes the Mayor knows what I’m doing as soon as I do it. My mother does it, too. But how?”

“The Women’s Circle probably tells your mother,” Dav muttered. “They see everything. And the Mayor’s the Mayor.” The other boys nodded glumly.

Ahead of them Egwene saw her father, a round man with thinning gray hair, his shirtsleeves rolled up past his elbows, a pipe in his teeth, and a set of shears in his hand. And ten paces off from the sheepshearers, watching the boys approach, stood Mistress Cauthon, Mat’s mother, flanked by her two daughters, Bodewhin and Erdman. Natti Cauthon was a calm, collected woman, as she would have to be with a son like Mat, and at the moment she wore a contented smile. Bodewhin and Eldrin wore almost identical smiles, and they watched Mat twice as hard as his mother did. Bode was not quite old enough to carry water, yet, and it would be two years before Eldrin could. Rand and the others must be blind! Egwene thought. Anyone with eyes could see how Mistress Cauthon always knew. Mistress Cauthon and her daughters slipped away into the crowd as the boys approached Egwene’s father. None of the boys appeared to notice her. They all had eyes for no one but Egwene’s father. All but Mat looked wary; he wore a big grin that made him look guilty of something, for sure. Rand’s father glanced up from the sheep he was bent over, and caught Rand’s eye with a smile that made Rand, at least, seem less like a heron ready to take flight.

Egwene began offering water to the men shearing with her father, all of them on the Village Council. Well, Master Cole appeared to be taking a nap with his back against a waist-high stone thrusting out of the ground. He was as old as the Wisdom, maybe older, though he still had all of his hair, white as it was. But the others were shearing, the fleece falling away from the sheep in thick white sheets. Master Buie, the thatcher, a gnarled man but spry, muttered under his breath as he worked, and the others did two sheep to his one, but everyone else seemed caught up in the work. When a man was done, he let the sheep go to be gathered up by waiting boys and herded away while another was brought to him. Egwene went slowly, to have an excuse to linger. She was not really slacking; she just wanted to know what was going to happen.