Robert Jordan - The Path of Daggers

The Silver Road ran from the City to Lugard, and carried all of the inland trade for the west. There was a Gold Road, too, that led to Far Madding. Roads and names alike dated from before there had been an Illian. Centuries of wagon wheels, hooves and boots had beaten them hard, and the cemaros could only skim them with mud. They were among the few reliable highways in Illian for moving large groups of men in winter. Everyone knew about the Seanchan in Ebou Dar by this time, though a good many of the tales Rand had heard among the armsmen made the invaders seem Trollocs’ meaner cousins. If the Seanchan intended to strike into Illian, the Silver Road was a good place to gather for defense.

Semaradrid and the others thought they knew what he planned: he must have learned that the Seanchan were coming, and the Asha’man were there to destroy them when they did. Given the stories about the Seanchan, no one seemed too upset that that left little for them to do. Of course, Weiramon had to have it explained to him finally, by Tihera, and he was upset, though he tried to mask it behind a grand speech about the wisdom of the Lord Dragon and the military genius of the Lord of the Morning, along with how he, personally, would lead the first charge against these Seanchan. A pure bull-goose fool. With luck, anyone else who learned of a gathering on the Silver Road would at least not be too much brighter than Semaradrid or Gregorin. With luck, no one who mattered would learn before it was too late.

Settling in to wait, Rand thought it would only be another day or so, but as the days stretched out, he began to wonder whether he might be nearly as big a fool as Weiramon.

Most of the Asha’man were out searching across Illian and Tear and the Plains of Maredo for the rest of those Rand wanted. Searching through the cemaros. Gateways and Traveling were all very well, but even Asha’man took time to find who they sought when downpours hid anything fifty paces away and quagmires dragged rumor to a near halt. Searching Asha’man passed within a mile of their quarry in ignorance, and turned only to learn the men had moved on again. Some had farther to go, seeking people not necessarily eager to be found. Days passed before the first brought news.

The High Lord Sunamon joined Weiramon, a fat man with an unctuous manner — toward Rand, at least. Smooth in his fine silk coat, always smiling, he was voluble in his declarations of loyalty, but he had plotted against Rand so long that he probably did so in his sleep. The High Lord Torean came, with his lumpy farmer’s face and his vast wealth, stammering about the honor of riding once more at the Lord Dragon’s side. Gold concerned Torean more than anything else, except possibly the privileges Rand had taken away from the nobles in Tear. He seemed particularly dismayed to learn there were no serving girls in the camp, and not so much as a village nearby where compliant farmgirls might be found. Torean had schemed against Rand every bit as often as Sunamon. Maybe even more than Gueyam, or Maraconn, or Aracome.

There were others. There was Bertome Saighan, a short, ruggedly handsome man with the front of his head shaved. He supposedly did not mourn the death of his cousin Colavaere too greatly, both because that made him the new High Seat of House Saighan and because rumor said Rand had executed her. Or murdered her. Bertome bowed and smiled, and his smile never reached his dark eyes. Some said he had been very fond of his cousin. Ailil Riatin came, a slim dignified woman with big dark eyes, not young but quite pretty, protesting that she had a Lance-captain to lead her armsmen and no desire to take the field in person. Protesting her loyalty for the Lord Dragon, too. But her brother Toram claimed the throne Rand meant for Elayne, and it was whispered that she would do anything for Toram, anything at all. Even join with his enemies; to hamper or to spy or both, of course. Dalthanes Annallin came, and Amondrid Osiellin, and Doressin Chuliandred, lords who had supported Colavaere’s seizure of the Sun Throne when they thought Rand would never return to Cairhien.

Cairhienin and Tairen, they were brought in one by one, with fifty retainers, or at most a hundred. Men and women he trusted even less than he did Gregorin or Semaradrid. Most were men, not because he thought the women any less dangerous — he was not that big a fool; a woman would kill you twice as fast as a man, and usually for half the reason! — but because he could not bring himself to take any woman except the most dangerous, where he was going. Ailil could smile warmly while she calculated where to plant the knife in your ribs. Anaiyella, a willowy simpering High Lady who gave a fair imitation of a beautiful goosebrain, had returned to Tear from Cairhien and openly begun talking of herself for the as-yet-nonexistent throne of Tear. Perhaps she was a fool, but she had managed to gain a great deal of support, both among nobles and in the streets.

So he gathered them in, all the folk who had been too long out from under his eye. He could not watch all of them all the time, but he could not afford to let them forget that he did watch sometimes. He gathered them, and he waited. For two days. Gnashing his teeth, he waited. Five days. Eight.

Rain was beating a diminishing drum on his tent when the last man he was waiting for finally arrived.

Shaking a small torrent from his oiled-cloth cape, Davram Bashere blew out his thick, gray-streaked mustaches in disgust and tossed the cape over a barrel chair. A short man with a great hooked beak of a nose, he seemed larger than he was. Not because he strutted, but because he assumed that he was as tall as any man present, and other men took him so. Wise men did. The wolf-headed ivory baton of the Marshal-General of Saldaea, tucked carelessly behind his sword belt, had been earned on scores of battlefields and at as many council tables. He was one of the very few men Rand would trust with his life.

"I know you don’t like explaining," Bashere muttered, "but I could use a little illumination." Adjusting his serpentine sword, he sprawled in another chair and flung a leg over the arm of it. He always seemed at his ease, but he could uncoil faster than a whip. "That Asha’man fellow wouldn’t say more than you needed me yesterday, yet he said not to bring more than a thousand men. I only had half that with me, but I brought them. It can’t be a battle. Half the sigils I saw out there belong to men who’d bite their tongues if they saw a fellow behind you with a knife, and most of the rest to men who’d try to hold your attention. If they hadn’t paid the knife man in the first place."

Seated behind his writing table in his shirtsleeves, Rand wearily pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. With Boreane Carivin left behind, the lamp wicks needed proper trimming, and a faint haze of smoke hung in the air. Besides, he had been awake most of the night poring over the maps scattered across the table. Maps of southern Altara. No two agreed on very much.

"If you’re going to fight a battle," he told Bashere, "who better to pay the butcher’s bill than men who want you dead? Anyway, it isn’t soldiers who’ll win this battle. All they have to do is keep anybody from sneaking up on the Asha’man. What do you think of that?"

Bashere snorted so hard that his heavy mustaches stirred. "I think it’s a deadly stew, is what I think. Somebody’s going to choke to death on it. The Light send it isn’t us." And then he laughed as if that were a fine joke.

Lews Therin laughed, too.

Under a steady drizzle Rand’s small army formed columns across the low folded hills facing the Nemarellin peaks, dark and sharp against the western sky. There was no real need to face the direction you intended to Travel, but it always felt askew to Rand otherwise. Despite the rain, rapidly thinning gray clouds let through startlingly bright sunshine. Or maybe the day only seemed bright, after all the recent gloom.