Perrin motioned downward, and tension was let off bowstrings reluctantly, bows lowered slowly. "You would not help." His voice was cold iron, anvil-hard. "Since you came to the Two Rivers, the help you've given has been almost accidental. You never really cared if people were burned out, killed, so long as you could find somebody to call Darkfriend." Bornhald shivered, though his eyes still burned. "It is time for you to go. Not just from Emond's Field. It is time for you to gather up your Whitecloaks and leave the Two Rivers. Now, Bornhald. You are going now."
"I will see you hang one day," Bornhald said softly. He jerked his hand for the column to follow and booted his horse forward as if he meant to ride Perrin over.
Perrin moved Stepper aside; he wanted these men gone, not more killing. Let the man have a final gesture of defiance.
Bornhald never turned his head, but hollow-cheeked Byar stared silent hate at Perrin, and Farran seemed to look at him with regret for some reason. The others kept their eyes front as they passed in a jingle of tack and the clop of hooves. Silently the circle opened to let them out, heading north.
A knot of ten or twelve men approached Perrin on foot, some in mismatched bits and pieces of old armor, all grinning anxiously, as the last of the Whitecloaks went by. He did not recognize any of them. A wide-nosed, leathery-faced fellow seemed to be their leader, his white hair bare but a rusty mail shirt covering him to the knees, though the collar of a farmer's coat poked up around his neck. He bowed awkwardly over his bow. "Jerinvar Barstere, my Lord Perrin. Jer, they call me." He spoke hurriedly, as if afraid of being interrupted. "Pardon for bothering you. Some of us will see the Whitecloaks along, if that's all right with you. A good many want to get on home, even if we can't get there before dark. There's as many Whitecloaks again in Watch Hill, but they would not come. Had orders to hold fast, they said. Bunch of fools, if you ask me, and we're more than tired of having them around, poking their noses into people's houses and trying to make you accuse your neighbor of something. We'll see them off, if that's all right with you." He gave Faile an abashed look, ducking his broad chin, but the flow of words did not slow. "Pardon, my Lady Faile. Didn't mean to bother you and your lord. Just wanted to let him know we're with him. A fine woman you have there, my Lord. A fine woman. No offense meant, my Lady. Well, we've daylight still, and talk shears no sheep. Pardon for bothering you, my Lord Perrin. Pardon, my Lady Faile." He bowed again, imitated by the others, and they hurried away with him herding them, muttering at them, "No time for us to be bothering the lord and his lady. There's work to do yet."
"Who was that?" Perrin said, a trifle stunned by the torrent; Daise and Cenn together could not talk that much. "Do you know him, Faile? From Watch Hill?"
"Master Barstere is the Mayor of Watch Hill, and the others are the Village Council. The Watch Hill Women's Circle will be sending a delegation down under their Wisdom once they're certain it is safe. To see if 'this Lord Perrin' is right for the Two Rivers, they say, but they all wanted me to show them how to curtsy to you, and the Wisdom, Edelle Gaelin, is bringing you some of her dried-apple tarts."
"Oh, burn me!" he breathed. It was spreading. He knew he should have stamped it down hard in the beginning. "Don't call me that!" he shouted after the departing men. "I'm a blacksmith! Do you hear me? A blacksmith!" Jer Barstere turned to wave at him and nod before hurrying the others on.
Chortling, Faile tugged at his beard. "You are a sweet fool, my Lord Blacksmith. It is too late to turn back now." Suddenly her smile became truly wicked. "Husband, is there any possibility you might be alone with your wife any time soon? Marriage seems to have made me as bold as a Domani gall! I know you must be tired, but —" She cut off with a small shriek and clung to his coat as he booted Stepper to a gallop toward the Winespring Inn. For once the cheers that followed did not bother him at all.
"Goldeneyes! Lord Perrin! Goldeneyes!"
From the thick branch of a leafy oak on the edge of the Westwood, Ordeith stared at Emond's Field, a mile to the south. It was impossible. Scourge them. Flay them. Everything had been going according to plan. Even Isam had played into his hands. Why did the fool stop bringing Trollocs? He should have brought in enough to turn the Two Rivers black with them! Spittle dripped from his lips, but he did not notice, any more than he realized that his hand was fumbling at his belt. Harry them till their hearts burst! Harrow them into the ground screaming! All planned to pull Rand al'Thor to him, and it came to this! The Two Rivers had not even been scratched. A few farms burned did not count, nor a few farmers butchered alive for Trolloc cookpots. I want the Two Rivers to burn, burn so the fire lives in men's memories for a thousand years!
He studied the banner waving over the village, and the one not that far below him. A scarlet wolfhead on scarlet-bordered white, and a red eagle. Red for the blood the Two Rivers must shed to make Rand al'Thor howl. Manetheren. That's meant to be Manetheren's banner. Someone had told them of Manetheren, had they? What did these fools know of the glories of Manetheren? Manetheren. Yes. There was more than one way to scourge them. He laughed so hard he nearly fell out of the oak before he realized that he was not holding on with both hands, that one gripped his belt where a dagger should have hung. The laugh twisted into a snarl as he stared at that hand. The White Tower held what had been stolen from him. What was his by right as old as the Trolloc Wars.
He let himself drop to the ground, and scrambled onto his horse before looking at his companions. His hounds. The thirty or so Whitecloaks remaining no longer wore their white cloaks, of course. Rust spotted their dull plate-and-mail, and Bornhald would never have recognized those sullen, suspicious faces, dirty and unshaven. The humans watched Ordeith, distrustful yet afraid, not even glancing at the Myrddraal in their midst, its slug-pale, eyeless face as bleakly wooden as theirs. The Halfman feared Isam would find it; Isam had not at all been pleased when that raid on Taren Ferry let so many escape to carry away word of what was happening in the Two Rivers. Ordeith giggled at the thought of Isam discomforted. The man was a problem for another time, if he still lived.
"We ride for Tar Valon," he snapped. Hard riding, to beat Bornhald to the ferry. Manetheren's banner, raised again in the Two Rivers after all these centuries. How the Red Eagle had harried him, so long ago. "But Caemlyn first!" Scourge them and flay them! Let the Two Rivers pay first, and then Rand al'Thor, and then...
Laughing, he galloped north through the forest, not looking back to see if the others followed. They would. They had nowhere else to go now.