Perrin opened his mouth, then shut it. He licked his lips as he looked around, for the first time really aware of what he was seeing. The sun was down. All the way down, now, and clouds hid the full moon, but it still seemed like the deep purple fringes of twilight to him. "I felt the rock," he said finally. "That's what it has to be. They won't be able to pick us out against the shadow of it even if they come this far." He took Bela's bridle to lead her to the shelter of the hand. He could feel Egwene's eyes on his back.

As he was helping her down from the saddle, the night broke out in shouts back toward the pool. She laid a hand on Perrin's arm, and he heard her unspoken question.

"The men saw Wind," he said reluctantly. It was difficult to pick out the meaning of the wolves' thoughts. Something about fire. "They have torches." He pressed her down at the base of the fingers and crouched beside her. "They're breaking up into parties to search. So many of them, and the wolves are all hurt." He tried to make his voice heartier. "But Dapple and the others should be able to keep out of their way, even injured, and they don't expect us. People don't see what they don't expect. They'll give up soon enough and make camp." Elyas was with the wolves, and would not leave them while they were hunted. So many riders. So persistent. Why so persistent?

He saw Egwene nod, but in the dark she did not realize it. "We'll be all right, Perrin."

Light, he thought wonderingly, she's trying to comfort me.

The shouts went on and on. Small knots of torches moved in the distance, flickering points of light in the darkness.

"Perrin," Egwene said softly, "will you dance with me at Sunday? If we're home by then?"

His shoulders shook. He made no sound, and he did not know if he was laughing or crying. "I will. I promise." Against his will his hands tightened on the axe, reminding him that he still held it. His voice dropped to a whisper. "I promise," he said again, and hoped.

Groups of torch-carrying men now rode through the hills, bunches of ten or twelve. Perrin could not tell how many groups there were. Sometimes three or four were in sight at once, quartering back and forth. They continued to shout to one another, and sometimes there were screams in the night, the screams of horses, the screams of men.

He saw it all from more than one vantage. He crouched on the hillside with Egwene, watching the torches move through the darkness like fireflies, and in his mind he ran in the night with Dapple, and Wind, and Hopper. The wolves had been too hurt by the ravens to run far or fast, so they intended to drive the men out of the darkness, drive them to the shelter of their fires. Men always sought the safety of fires in the end, when wolves roamed the night. Some of the mounted men led strings of horses without riders; they whinnied and reared with wide, rolling eyes when the gray shapes darted among them, screaming and pulling their lead ropes from the hands of the men who held them, scattering in all directions as fast as they could run. Horses with men on their backs screamed, too, when gray shadows flashed out of the dark with hamstringing fangs, and sometimes their riders screamed as well, just before jaws tore out their throats. Elyas was out there, also, more dimly sensed, stalking the night with his long knife, a two-legged wolf with one sharp steel tooth. The shouts became curses more often than not, but the searchers refused to give up.

Abruptly Perrin realized that the men with torches were following a pattern. Each time some of the parties came in view, one of them, at least, was closer to the hillside where he and Egwene were hiding. Elyas had said to hide, but ... What if we run? Maybe we could hide in the dark, if we keep moving. Maybe. It has to he dark enough for that.

He turned to Egwene, but as he did the decision was taken away from him. Bunched torches, a dozen of them, came around the base of the hill, wavering with the trot of the horses. Lanceheads gleamed in the torchlight. He froze, holding his breath, hands tightening on his axe haft.

The horsemen rode past the hill, but one of the men shouted, and the torches swung back. He thought desperately, seeking for a way to go. But as soon as they moved they would be seen, if they had not already been, and once they were marked they would have no chance, not even with the darkness to help.

The horsemen drew up at the foot of the hill, each man holding a torch in one hand and a long lance in the other, guiding his horse by the pressure of his knees. By the light of the torches Perrin could see the white cloaks of the Children of the Light. They held the torches high and leaned forward in their saddles, peering up at the deep shadows under Artur Hawkwing's fingers.

"There is something up there," one of them said. His voice was too loud, as if he was afraid of what lay outside the light of his torch. "I told you somebody could hide in that. Isn't that a horse?"

Egwene laid a hand on Perrin's arm; her eyes were big in the dark. Her silent question plain despite the shadow hiding her features. What to do? Elyas and the wolves still hunted through the night. The horses below shifted their feet nervously. If we run now, they'll chase us down.

One of the Whitecloaks stepped his horse forward and shouted up the hill. "If you can understand human speech, come down and surrender. You'll not be harmed if you walk in the Light. If you don't surrender, you will all be killed. You have one minute." The lances lowered, long steel heads bright with torchlight.

"Perrin," Egwene whispered, "we can't outrun them. If we don't give up, they'll kill us. Perrin?"

Elyas and the wolves were still free. Another distant, bubbling scream marked a Whitecloak who had hunted Dapple too closely. If we run ... Egwene was looking at him, waiting for him to tell her what to do. If we run ... He shook his head wearily and stood up like a man in a trance, stumbling down the hill toward the Children of the Light. He heard Egwene sigh and follow him, her feet dragging reluctantly. Why are the Whitecloaks so persistent, as if they hate wolves with a passion? Why do they smell wrong? He almost thought he could smell the wrongness himself, when the wind gusted from the riders.

"Drop that axe," the leader barked.

Perrin stumbled toward him, wrinkling his nose to get rid of the smell he thought he smelt.

"Drop it, bumpkin!" The leader's lance shifted toward Perrin's chest.

For a moment he stared at the lancehead, enough sharp steel to go completely through him, and abruptly he shouted, "No!" It was not at the horseman he shouted.

Out of the night Hopper came, and Perrin was one with the wolf. Hopper, the cub who had watched the eagles soar, and wanted so badly to fly through the sky as the eagles did. The cub who hopped and jumped and leaped until he could leap higher than any other wolf, and who never lost the cub's yearning to soar through the sky. Out of the night Hopper came and left the ground in a leap, soaring like the eagles. The Whitecloaks had only a moment to begin cursing before Hopper's jaws closed on the throat of the man with his lance leveled at Perrin. The big wolf's momentum carried them both off the other side of the horse. Perrin felt the throat crushing, tasted the blood.

Hopper landed lightly, already apart from the man he had killed. Blood matted his fur, his own blood and that of others. A gash down his face crossed the empty socket where his left eye had been. His good eye met Perrin's two for just an instant. Run, brother! He whirled to leap again, to soar one last time, and a lance pinned him to the earth. A second length of steel thrust through his ribs, driving into the ground under him. Kicking, he snapped at the shafts that held him. To soar.

Pain filled Perrin, and he screamed, a wordless scream that had something of a wolf's cry in it. Without thinking he leaped forward, still screaming. All thought was gone. The horsemen had bunched too much to be able to use their lances, and the axe was a feather in his hands, one huge wolf's tooth of steel. Something crashed into his head, and as he fell, he did not know if it was Hopper or himself who died.