Robert Jordan - The Dragon Reborn

"No! Perrin, it is not right! Faile was so free. It is not right to trap her!"

Perrin peered up at Loial's face, and suddenly remembered the old stories that claimed Ogier were implacable enemies. Loial's ears had laid back along the sides of his head, and his broad face was as hard as an anvil.

"Loial, I am going to try to help Faile. But I will be helpless myself while I do. Will you guard my back?"

Loial raised those huge hands that held books so carefully, and his thick fingers curled as if to crush stone. "None will pass me while I live, Perrin. Not Myrddraal or the Dark One himself." He said it like a simple statement of fact.

Perrin nodded, and looked through the door again. It has to work. I don't care if Min warned me against her or not! With a snarl he leaped toward Faile, stretching out his hand. He thought he touched her ankle before he was gone.

Whether this dream of the trap was Tel'aran'rhiod or not, Perrin did not know, but he knew it for the wolf dream. Rolling, grassy hills surrounded him, and scattered thickets. He saw deer browsing at the edges of the trees, and a herd of some sort of running animal bounding across the grass, like brown-striped deer, but with long, straight horns. The smells on the wind told him they were good to eat, and other scents spoke of more good hunting all around him. This was the wolf dream.

He was wearing the blacksmith's long leather vest, he realized, with his arms bare. And there was a weight at his side. He touched the axe belt, but it was not the axe hanging from its loop. He ran his fingers over the head of the heavy smith's hammer. It felt right.

Hopper alighted in front of him.

Again you come, like a fool. The sending was of a cub sticking its nose into a hollow tree trunk to lap honey despite the bees stinging its muzzle and eyes. The danger is greater than ever, Young Bull. Evil things walk the dream. The brothers and sisters avoid the mountains of stone the two-legs pile up, and almost fear to dream to one another. You must go!

"No," Perrin said. "Faile is here, somewhere, trapped. I have to find her, Hopper. I have to!" He felt a shifting inside him, something changing. He looked down at his curly-haired legs, his wide paws. He was an even larger wolf than Hopper.

You are here too strongly! Every sending carried shock. You will die, Young Bull!

If I do not free the falcon, I do not care, brother.

Then we hunt, brother.

Noses to the wind, the two wolves ran across the plain, seeking the falcon.

The rooftops of Tear were no place for a sensible man to be in the night, Mat decided as he peered into the moon shadows. A little more than fifty paces of broad street, or perhaps narrow plaza, separated the Stone from his tiled roof, itself three stories above the paving stones. But when was I ever sensible? The only people I ever met who were sensible all the time were so boring that watching them could put you to sleep. Whether the thing was a street or a plaza, he had followed it all the way around the Stone since nightfall; the only place it did not go was on the river side, where the Erinin ran right along the foot of the fortress, and nothing interrupted it except the city wall. That wall was only two houses to his right. So far, the top of the wall seemed the best path to the Stone, but not one he would be overjoyed to take.

Picking up his quarterstaff and a small, wire-handled tin box, he moved carefully to a brick chimney a little nearer the wall. The roll of fireworks — what had been the roll of fireworks before he worked on it back in his room — shifted on his back. It was more of a bundle, now, all jammed together as tight as he could make it, but still too big for carrying around rooftops in the dark. Earlier, a slip of his foot because of the thing had sent a roof tile skittering over the edge, and roused the man sleeping in a room below to bellow "thief!" and send him running. He hitched the bundle back into position without thinking about it, and crouched in the shadows of the chimney. After a moment he set the tin box down; the wire handle was beginning to grow uncomfortably warm.

It felt a little safer, studying the Stone from the shadows, but not much more encouraging. The city wall was not nearly as thick as those he had seen in other places, in Caemlyn or Tar Valon, no more than a pace wide, supported by great stone buttresses cloaked in darkness, now. A pace was more than sufficient width for walking, of course, except that the fall to either side was nearly ten spans. Through the dark, to hard pavement. But some of these bloody houses back right up against it, I can make it to the top easily enough, and it bloody runs straight to the bloody Stone!

It did that, but that was no particular comfort. The sides of the Stone looked like cliffs. Eyeing the height again, he told himself he should be able to climb it. Of course, I can. Just like those cliffs in the Mountains of Mist. Over a hundred paces straight up before there was a battlement. There must be arrowslits lower down, but he could not make them out in the night. And he could not squeeze through an arrowslit. A hundred bloody paces. Maybe a hundred and twenty. Burn me, even Rand would not try to climb that. But it was the one way in he had found. Every gate he had seen had been shut tight and looked strong enough to stop a herd of bulls, not to mention the dozen or so soldiers guarding very nearly every last one, in helmets and breastplates, and swords at their belts.

Suddenly he blinked, and squinted at the side of the Stone. There was some fool climbing it, just visible as a moving shadow in the moonlight, and over halfway up already, with a drop of seventy paces to the pavement under his feet. Fool, is he? Well, I'm as big a one, because I am going up, too. Burn me, he'll probably raise an alarm in there and get me caught. He could not see the climber anymore. Who in the Light is he? What does it matter who he is? Burn me, but this is a bloody way to win a wager. I'm going to want a kiss from all of them, even Nynaeve!

He shifted to peer toward the wall, trying to choose his spot to climb, and suddenly there was steel across his throat. Without thinking, he knocked it away and swept the man's feet out from under him with his staff. Someone else kicked his own feet away and he fell almost on top of the man he had knocked down. He rolled off onto the roof tiles, loosing the bundle of fireworks — If that falls into the street, I'll break their necks! — staff whirling; he felt it strike flesh, and a second time, heard grunts. Then there were two blades at his throat.

He froze, arms outflung. The points of short spears, dull so they hardly caught the faint light of the moon at all, pressed into his flesh just short of bringing blood. His eyes followed them up to the faces of whoever was holding them, but their heads were shrouded, their faces veiled in black except for their eyes, staring at him. Burn me, I have to run into real thieves! What happened to my luck?

He put on a grin, with plenty of teeth so they could see it in the moonlight. "I do not mean to trouble you in your work, so if you let me go my way, I'll let you go yours and say nothing." The veiled men did not move, and neither did their spears. "I want no more outcry than you. I'll not betray you." They stood like statues, staring down at him. Burn me, I do not have time for this. Time to toss the dice. For a chilling moment he thought the words in his head had been strange. He tightened his grip on the quarterstaff, lying out to one side of him — and almost cried out when someone stepped hard on his wrist.

He rolled his eyes to see who. Burn me for a fool, I forgot the one I fell on. But he saw another shape moving behind the one standing on his wrist, and decided maybe it was as well he had not managed to bring the staff into use after all.