Mat shook his head. "We need to make a unified stand". He hesitated. "Could we bring her through one of these gateways? At least contact her?" There seemed to be no good objection. In a short time, another gateway opened in the tent with Egwene and the Sitters. Elayne strode through, thick with child, eyes practically on fire. Behind her, Mat caught a glimpse of soldiers with slumped postures, trudging across a dim evening field. "Light", Elayne said, "Mat, what is it you want?"
"You’ve won your battle?" Mat asked.
"Barely, but yes. The Trollocs in Cairhien have been destroyed. The city is safe, as well".
Mat nodded. "I need to withdraw from our position here".
"Fine", Elayne said. "Perhaps we can meld your force with what’s left of the Borderlanders".
"I want to do more than that, Elayne", Mat said, stepping forward. "This ploy the Shadow tried . . . it was clever, Elayne. Bloody clever. We’re bloodied and almost broken. We don’t have the luxury of fighting on multiple battlefronts anymore".
"What, then?"
"A last stand", Mat said softly. "All of us, together, at one place where the terrain favors us".
Elayne quieted, and someone brought her a chair to sit beside Egwene. She maintained the posture of a queen, but her disheveled hair and clothing burned in several places indicated what she’d been through. Mat could smell smoke coming from her battlefield, where the gateway was still open.
"That sounds desperate", Elayne finally said.
"We are desperate", Saerin said.
"We should ask our commanders . ". Elayne trailed off. "If there are any we can trust not to be under Compulsion".
"There’s only one", Mat said grimly, meeting her eyes. "And he’s telling you we are finished if we continue as we have. The earlier plan was a good enough one, but after what we lost today . . . Elayne, we’re dead unless we choose one place to stand, gather together, and fight".
One last toss of the dice.
Elayne sat for a time. "Where?" she finally asked.
"Tar Valon?" Gawyn asked.
"No", Mat said. "They’d just besiege it and move on. It can’t be a city where we can get boxed in. We need a territory that will work in our favor, also a land that can’t feed the Trollocs".
"Well, a place in the Borderlands should work for that", Elayne said with a grimace. "Lan’s army burned almost every city or field they passed to deny the Shadow resources".
"Maps", Mat said, waving. "Someone get me maps. We need a location in southern Shienar or Arafel. Someplace close enough that the Shadow will see it as tempting, a place to fight us all at once . .
"Mat", Elayne asked. "Won’t that be giving them what they want? A chance to wipe us out?"
"Yes", Mat said softly as the Aes Sedai sent over maps. These had markings on them, notations that appeared to be in General Bryne’s hand, judging by what they said. "We have to be a tempting target. We have to draw them in, face them and either defeat them or be crushed".
A drawn-out fight would serve the Shadow. Once enough Trollocs reached southern lands, there would be no containing them. He had to win or lose quickly.
One last toss of the dice indeed.
Mat pointed at a location on the maps, a place that Bryne had annotated. It had a good water supply, a nice meeting of hills and rivers. "This place. Merrilor? You’ve been using it as a supply dump?"
Saerin chuckled softly. "And so we go back where we began, do we?"
"It does have some small fortifications", Elayne said. "The men built a palisade on one side, and we could expand it".
"It’s what we need", Mat said, envisioning a battle there.
Merrilor would put them where the two major Trolloc armies could come in, try to crush the humans between them. That would be tempting. But the terrain would be wonderful for Mat to use . . .
Yes. It would be like the Battle of the Priya Narrows. If he put archers along those cliffs—no, dragons—and if he could give the Aes Sedai a few days of rest . . . Priya Narrows. He had counted on using a large river to trap the Hamarean army at the mouth of the Narrows. But as he sprung the trap, the blasted river dried up on him; the Hamareans had dammed it up on the other side of the Narrows. They had stepped right over the riverbed, and got clean away. That’s a lesson I won’t forget.
"This will do", Mat said, placing his hand on the map. "Elayne?"
"Let it be done", Elayne said. "I hope you know what you’re doing, Mat".
As she spoke, the dice started tumbling inside his head.
Galad closed Trom’s eyes. He’d searched the battlefield north of Cairhien for over an hour to find him. Trom had bled out, and only a few corners of his cloak were still white. Galad ripped the officer’s knots off his shoulder—amazingly unsoiled—and stood up.
He felt weary to the bone. He started back across the battlefield, passing heaps of the dead. The crows and the ravens had come; they blanketed the landscape behind him. An undulating, quivering blackness that coated the ground like mold. From a distance, it seemed as if the ground had been burned, there were so many carrion birds.
Occasionally, Galad passed men like himself who sifted through the corpses for friends. There were surprisingly few looters—you had to watch for those on a battlefield. Elayne had caught a few trying to sneak out of Cairhien. She’d threatened to hang them.
She’s grown harder, Galad thought, trudging back toward camp. His boots felt like lead on his feet. That is good. As a child, she had often made decisions with her heart. She was a queen now, and acted it. Now, if only he could right her moral compass. She wasn’t a bad person, but Galad wished that she—like other monarchs—could see as clearly as he did.
He was beginning to accept that they didn’t. He was beginning to accept that it was all right, so long as they tried their best. Whatever he had inside of him that allowed him to see the right of things was obviously a gift of the Light, and holding others to scorn because they had not been born with it was wrong. Just as it would be wrong to hold a man to scorn because he had been born with only one hand, and was therefore an inferior swordsman.
Many of the living he passed sat on the ground in the rare spots where there were no corpses and no blood. These men did not look like the victors of a battle, though the arrival of the Asha’man had saved this day. The trick with the lava had given Elayne’s army the breather it needed to regroup and attack.
That battle had been swift, but brutal. Trollocs did not surrender, and they couldn’t be allowed to break and flee. So Galad and the others had fought, bled and died long past when it was obvious they would be victorious.
The Trollocs were dead now. The remaining men sat and stared out at the blanket of corpses, as if numbed by the prospect of searching out the few living among the many thousands dead.
The setting sun and choking clouds made the light red, and gave faces a bloody cast.
Galad eventually reached the long hill that had marked the division between the two battlefields. He climbed it, slowly, forcing down thoughts of how good a bed would feel. Or a pallet on the floor. Or some flat rock in an out-of-the-way place, where he could roll up in his cloak.
The fresher air atop the hill shocked him. He’d been smelling blood and death for so long that now it was the clean air that smelled wrong. He shook his head, walking past tired Borderlanders who were trudging through gateways. The Asha’man had gone to hold off the Trollocs to the north so Lord Mandragoran’s armies could escape.
From what Galad heard, the Borderlander armies were a fraction of what they had been. The betrayal of the great captains had been felt most deeply by Lord Mandragoran and his men. It sickened Galad, for this battle had not gone easily for him or anyone else with Elayne. It had been horrible—and as bad as it had been, the fight had gone more poorly for the Borderlanders.
Galad kept his stomach settled with difficulty as his view from atop the hill let him see just how many carrion birds had come to feast. The Dark Ones minions fell, and the Dark One’s minions glutted themselves.
Galad eventually found Elayne. Her passionate words, being spoken to Tam al’Thor and Arganda, took him by surprise.
"Mat is right", she said. "The Field of Merrilor is a good battlefield. Light! I wish we could give the people more time to rest. We’ll have only a few days, a week at most, before the Trollocs reach Merrilor behind us". She shook her head. "We should have seen those Sharans coming. When the deck starts to look like it’s stacked against the Dark One, of course he will just add a few new cards to the game".
Galad’s pride demanded that he remain standing as he listened to Elayne talk to the other commanders. For once, however, his pride lost out, and he settled down on a stool and slumped forward.
"Galad", Elayne said, "you really should allow one of the Asha’man to wash away your fatigue. Your insistence upon treating them like outcasts is foolish".
Galad straightened up. "It has nothing to do with the Asha’man", he snapped. Too argumentative. He was tired. "This fatigue reminds me of what we lost today. It is an exhaustion my men must endure, and so I will, lest I forget just how tired they are and push them too far".
Elayne frowned at him. He had stopped worrying that his words offended her long ago. It seemed he couldn’t claim that a day was pleasant or his tea warm without her taking offense somehow.
It would have been nice if Aybara hadn’t run off. That man was a leader—one of the few that Galad had ever met—that one could actually talk to without worrying that he’d take offense. Perhaps the Two Rivers would be a good place for the Whitecloaks to settle.
Of course, there was something of a history of bad blood between them. He could work on that . . .
I called them Whitecloaks, he thought to himself a moment later. Inside my head, that’s how I thought of the Children just now. It had been a long time since he’d done that by accident.
"Your Majesty", Arganda said. He stood beside Logain, the leader of the Asha’man, and Havien Nurelle, the new commander of the Winged Guard. Talmanes of the Band of the Red Hand trudged up with a few commanders from the Saldaeans and the Legion of the Dragon. Elder Haman of the Ogier sat on the ground a short distance away; he stared off, toward the sunset, seeming dazed.
"Your Majesty", Arganda continued, "I realize you consider this a great victory—"
"It is a great victory", Elayne said. "We must persuade the men to see it that way. Not eight hours ago, I assumed that our entire army would be slaughtered. We won".
"At a cost of half of our troops", Arganda said softly.
"I will count that a victory", Elayne insisted. "We were expecting complete destruction".
"The only victor today is the butcher", Nurelle said softly. He looked haunted.
"No", Tam al’Thor said, "she’s right. The troops have to understand what their losses earned. We must treat this as a victory. It must be recorded that way in the histories, and the soldiers must be convinced to see it so".