Lying motionless on his back, he sent his mind questing, feel­ing for wolves. He had tried using wolves to help his hunt, to no avail. Convincing them to take an interest in the doings of two-legs was difficult, to say the least. They avoided large parties of men, and for them, half a dozen was large enough to stay clear of. Men chased away game, and most men tried to kill a wolf on sight. His thoughts found nothing, but then, after a time, he touched wolves, at a distance. How far, he could not be sure, but it was like catching a whisper almost on the edge of hearing. A long way. That was strange. Despite scattered villages and manors and even the occasional town, this was prime country for wolves, untouched forest for the most part, with plenty of deer and smaller game.

There was always a formality to speaking with a pack you were not part of. Politely, he sent his name among wolves, Young Bull, shared his scent, and received theirs in reply, Leafhunter and Tall Bear, White Tail and Feather and Thunder Mist, a cascade of oth­ers. It was a sizable pack, and Leafhunter, a female with a feel of quiet certainty, was their leader. Feather, clever and in his prime, was her mate. They had heard of Young Bull, were eager to speak with the friend of the fabled Long Tooth, the first two-legs who had learned to speak with wolves after a gap of time that carried the feel of Ages vanished into the mists of the past. It was all a tor­rent of images and memories of scents that his mind turned into words, as the words he thought somehow became images and scents they could understand.

There is something I want to learn, he thought, once the greetings were done. What would a wolf hate more than the Neverborn? He tried to recall the scent from the dream, to add that, but it was gone from his memory. Something that a wolf knows means death.

Silence answered him, and a thread of fear blended with hatred and determination and reluctance. He had felt fear from wolves before – above all things they feared the wildfire that raced through a forest, or so he would have said – but this was the prick­ling sort of fear that made a man’s skin crawl, made him shiver and jump at things unseen. Laced with the resolution to go on no mat­ter what, it felt close to terror. Wolves never experienced that kind of dread. Except that these did.

One by one they faded from his consciousness, a deliberate act of shutting him out, until only Leafhunter remained. The Last Hunt is coming, she said at last, and then she also was gone.

Did I offend? he sent. If I did, it was in ignorance. But there was no reply. These wolves, at least, would not speak with him again, not any time soon.

The Last Hunt is coming. That was what wolves called the Last Battle, Tarmon Gai’don. They knew they would be there, at the final confrontation between the Light and the Shadow, though why was something they could not explain. Some things were fated, as sure as the rise and fall of the sun and the moon, and it was fated that many wolves would die in the Last Hunt. What they feared was something else. Perrin had a strong sense that he also had to be there, was meant to be at least, but if the Last Battle came soon, he would not be. He had a job of work in front of him that he could not shirk – would not! – even for Tarmon Gai’don.

Putting nameless fears and the Last Battle alike out of his mind, he fumbled his gauntlets off and felt in his coat pocket for the length of rawhide cord he kept there. In a morning ritual, his fingers made another knot mechanically, then slid down the cord, counting. Twenty-two knots. Twenty-two mornings since Faile was kidnapped.

At the start, he had not thought there was need to keep count. That first day, he had believed he was cold and numb but focused, yet looking back he could see he had been overwhelmed by unbound rage and a consuming need to find the Shaido as fast as possible. Men from other clans had been among the Aiel who had stolen Faile, yet on the evidence, most were Shaido, and that was how he thought of them. The need to rip Faile away from them, before she could be hurt, had gripped him by the throat till he almost choked. He would rescue the other women captured with her, of course, but sometimes he had to list their names in his head to make sure he did not forget them entirely. Alliandre Maritha Kigarin, Queen of Ghealdan, and his liege woman. It still seemed off-kilter to have anyone oathsworn to him, especially a queen – he was a blacksmith! He had been a blacksmith, once – but he had responsibilities toward Alliandre, and she would never have been in danger except for him. Bain of the Black Rock Shaarad and Chiad of the Stones River Goshien, Aiel Maidens of the Spear who had followed Faile to Ghealdan and Amadicia. They had faced Trollocs in the Two Rivers, as well, when Perrin needed every hand that could raise a weapon, and that earned them the right to call on him. Arrela Shiego and Lacile Aldorwin, two foolish young women who thought they could learn to be Aiel, or some strange version of Aiel. They were oathsworn to Faile, and so was Maighdin Dorlain, a penniless refugee Faile had taken under her wing as one of her maids. He could not abandon Faile’s people. Faile ni Bashere t’Aybara.

The litany came back to her, his wife, the breath of his life. With a groan, he clutched the cord so tightly that the knots impressed themselves painfully on a hand hardened by long days swinging the hammer at a forge. Light, twenty-two days!

Working iron had taught him that haste ruined metal, but in the beginning, he had been hasty, Traveling southward through gateways created by Grady and Neald, the two Asha’man, to where the farthest traces of the Shaido had been found, then leaping south again, the direction their tracks went, as soon as the Asha’man could make more gateways. Fretting every hour it took them to rest from making the first and holding them open long enough for everyone to pass through, his mind was eaten up with freeing Faile at any cost. What he found were days of increasing pain as the scouts spread farther and farther through uninhabited wilderness without locating the slightest sign that anyone had been that way before, until he knew he had to retrace his path, frittering away more days to cover ground the Asha’man had taken him across in a step, searching for any indication of where the Shaido had turned aside.

He should have known they would turn. South took them toward warmer lands, without the snow that seemed so strange to Aiel, yet it took them closer to the Seanchan in Ebou Dar, as well. He knew about the Seanchan, and he should have expected the Shaido to learn! They were after pillage, not a fight with Seanchan and damam. Days of slow marching with the scouts fanning out ahead, days when falling snow blinded even the Aiel and forced them all to a chafing halt, until finally Jondyn Barran found a tree scraped by a wagon and Elyas dug a broken Aiel spear shaft from beneath the snow. And Perrin at last turned east, at most two days south of where he had Traveled to the first time. He had wanted to howl when he realized that, yet he kept a tight hold on himself. He could not give way, not so much as an inch, not when Faile was depending on him. That was when he began to husband his anger, began to forge it.

Her kidnappers had gained a long lead because he was hasty, but since then, he had been as careful as he had been in a smithy. His anger was hardened and shaped to a purpose. Since finding the Shaido’s trail again, he had Traveled no farther in one jump than the scouts could go and come between sunrise and sunset, and it was well that he had been cautious, because the Shaido changed directions suddenly several times, zigzagging almost as though they could not decide on a destination. Or maybe they had turned to joined others of their kind. All he had to go by were old traces, old camps buried by snow, yet all of the scouts agreed the Shaido’s numbers had swollen. There had to be at least two or three septs together, maybe more, a formidable quarry to hunt. Slowly but surely, though, he had begun overtaking them. That was what was important.