He’d fallen from the horse not long after starting for the city gate. He could remember that, most of the time. Pain made it hard to think. People yelled at one another.
I should have . . . I should have taunted Mat more, he thought, a hint of a smile cracking his lips. Stupid time to be thinking of such things. I have to . . . have to find the dragons. Or did we find them already . . . ?
"I’m telling you, the bloody things don’t work like that!" Dennel’s voice. "They’re not bloody Aes Sedai on wheels. We can’t make a wall of fire. We can send these balls of metal hurtling through the Trollocs".
"They explode". Guybon’s voice. "We could use the extras like I say".
Talmanes’ eyes drifted closed.
"The balls explode, yes", Dennel said. "But we have to launch them first. Setting them all in a row and letting the Trollocs run over them wont do much".
A hand shook Talmanes’ shoulder. "Lord Talmanes", Melten said. "There is no dishonor in letting it end now. I know the pain is great. May the last embrace of the mother shelter you".
A sword being drawn. Talmanes steeled himself.
Then he found that he really, really didn’t want to die.
He forced his eyes open and held up a hand to Melten, who stood over him. Jesamyn hovered nearby with arms folded, looking worried.
"Help me to my feet", Talmanes said.
Melten hesitated, then did so.
"You shouldn’t be standing", Jesamyn said.
"Better than being beheaded in honor", Talmanes grumbled, gritting his teeth against the pain. Light, was that his hand? It was so dark, it looked as if it had been charred in a fire. "What . . . what is going on?"
"We're cornered, my Lord", Melten said grimly, eyes solemn. He thought them all as good as dead. "Dennel and Guybon are arguing over placement of the dragons for a last stand. Aludra is measuring the charges".
Talmanes, finally standing, sagged against Melten. Before him, two thousand people clustered in the large city square. They huddled like men in the wilderness seeking one another’s warmth on a cold night. Dennel and Guybon had set up the dragons in a half-circle bowed outward, pointing toward the center of the city, refugees behind. The Band was now committed to manning the dragons; three pairs of hands were needed to operate each weapon. Almost all of the Band had had at least some training.
The buildings nearby had caught fire, but the light was doing strange things. Why didn’t it reach the streets? Those were all too dark. As if they’d been painted. Like . . .
He blinked, clearing the tears of pain from his eyes, realization dawning. Trollocs filled the streets like ink flowing toward the half-circle of dragons that were pointed at them.
Something held the Trollocs back for the moment. They’re waiting until they are all together for a rush, Talmanes thought.
Calls and snarls came from behind. Talmanes pivoted, then clutched Melten’s arm as the world lurched. He waited for it to steady. The pain . . . the pain was actually dulling. Like glowing flames running out of fresh coal. It had feasted upon him, but there wasn’t much left of him for it to eat.
As things steadied, Talmanes saw what was creating the snarls. The square they were in adjoined the city wall, but the townspeople and soldiers had kept their distance from the wall, for it was coated with Trollocs, like a thick grime. They raised weapons in the air and roared down at the people.
"They throw down spears at anyone who comes too close, Melten said. "We’d been hoping to reach the wall, then follow it along to the gate, but we can’t—not with those things up there raining death upon us. All other routes are cut off".
Aludra approached Guybon and Dennel. "Charges, I can set under the dragons", she said to them; softly, but not as softly as she should have. "These charges, they will destroy the weapons. They may hurt the people in an unpleasant way".
"Do it", Guybon said very softly. "What the Trollocs would do is worse, and we cannot allow the dragons to fall into the Shadow’s hands. That’s why they’re waiting. Their leaders are hoping that a sudden rush will give them time to overwhelm us and seize the weapons".
"They’re moving!" a soldier called from beside the dragons. "Light, they’re coming!"
That dark slime of Shadowspawn bubbled down the streets. Teeth, nails, claws, too-human eyes. The Trollocs came from all sides, eager for the kill. Talmanes struggled to draw breath.
On the walls, the calls grew excited. We’re surrounded, Talmanes thought.
Pressed back against the wall, caught in a net. We . . .
Pressed back against the wall.
"Dennel!" Talmanes shouted over the din. The captain of dragons turned from his line, where men waited with burning punks for the call to launch the one volley they’d have.
Talmanes took a deep breath that made his lungs burn. "You told me that you could level an enemy bulwark in only a few shots".
"Of course", Dennel called. "But we're not trying to enter . . " He trailed off.
Light, Talmanes thought. We’re all so exhausted. We should have seen this. "You in the middle, Ryden’s dragon squad, about-face!" Talmanes screamed. "The rest of you, stay in position and fire at the oncoming Trollocs! Move, move, mover
The dragoners sprang into motion, Ryden and his men hastily turning their weapons about, wheels creaking. The other dragons began to fire a pattern of shot that sprayed through the streets entering the square. The booms were deafening, causing refugees to scream and cover their ears. It sounded like the end of the world. Hundreds, thousands of Trollocs went down in pools of blood as dragons’ eggs exploded in their midst. The square filled with white smoke that poured from the mouths of the dragons.
The refugees behind, already terrified by what they had just witnessed, shrieked as Ryden’s dragons turned on them, and most of them fell to the ground in fright, clearing a path. A path that exposed the Trolloc-infested city wall. Ryden’s line of dragons bowed inward like a cup, the reverse formation of those firing into the Trollocs behind, so that the tubes were pointed at the same section of city wall.
"Give me one of those bloody punks!" Talmanes shouted, holding out a hand. One of the dragoners obeyed, passing him a flaming brand with a glowing red tip. He pushed away from Melten, determined to stand on his own for the moment.
Guybon stepped up. The man’s voice sounded soft to Talmanes’ strained ears. "Those walls have stood for hundreds of years. My poor city. My poor, poor city".
"It’s not your city any longer", Talmanes said, raising his flaming brand high in the air, defiant before a wall thick with Trollocs, a burning city to his back. "It’s theirs".
Talmanes swiped the brand down in the air, leaving a trail of red. His signal ignited a roar of dragonfire that echoed throughout the square.
Trollocs—pieces of them, at least—blew into the air. The wall under them exploded like a stack of children’s blocks kicked at a full run. As Talmanes wavered, his vision blackening, he saw the wall crumble outward. When he toppled, slipping into unconsciousness, the ground seemed to tremble from the force of his fall.
CHAPTER 1
Eastward the Wind Blew
The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.
Eastward the wind blew, descending from lofty mountains and coursing over desolate hills. It passed into the place known as the Westwood, an area that had once flourished with pine and leatherleaf. Here, the wind found little more than tangled underbrush, thick save around an occasional towering oak. Those looked stricken by disease, bark peeling free, branches drooping. Elsewhere needles had fallen from pines, draping the ground in a brown blanket. None of the skeletal branches of the Westwood put forth buds.
North and eastward the wind blew, across underbrush that crunched and cracked as it shook. It was night, and scrawny foxes picked over the rotting ground, searching in vain for prey or carrion. No spring birds had come to call, and—most telling—the howls of wolves had gone silent across the land.
The wind blew out of the forest and across Taren Ferry. What was left of it. The town had been a fine one, by local standards. Dark buildings, tall above their redstone foundations, a cobbled street, built at the mouth of the land known as the Two Rivers.
The smoke had long since stopped rising from burned buildings, but there was little left of the town to rebuild. Feral dogs hunted through the rubble for meat. They looked up as the wind passed, their eyes hungry.
The wind crossed the river eastward. Fiere, clusters of refugees carrying torches walked the long road from Baerlon to Whitebridge despite the late hour. They were sorry groups, with heads bowed, shoulders huddled. Some bore the coppery skin of Domani, their worn clothing displaying the hardships of crossing the mountains with little in the way of supplies. Others came from farther off. Taraboners with haunted eyes above dirty veils. Farmers and their wives from northern Ghealdan. All had heard rumors that in Andor, there was food. In Andor, there was hope.
So far, they had yet to find either.
Eastward the wind blew, along the river that wove between farms without crops. Grasslands without grass. Orchards without fruit.
Abandoned villages. Trees like bones with the flesh picked free. Ravens often clustered in their branches; starveling rabbits and sometimes larger game picked through the dead grass underneath. Above it all, the omnipresent clouds pressed down upon the land. Sometimes, that cloud cover made it impossible to tell if it was day or night.
As the wind approached the grand city of Caemlyn, it turned northward, away from the burning city—orange, red and violent, spewing black smoke toward the hungry clouds above. War had come to Andor in the still of night. The approaching refugees would soon discover that they’d been marching toward danger. It was not surprising. Danger was in all directions. The only way to avoid walking toward it would be to stand still.
As the wind blew northward, it passed people sitting beside roads, alone or in small groups, staring with the eyes of the hopeless. Some lay as they hungered, looking up at those rumbling, boiling clouds. Other people trudged onward, though toward what, they knew not. The Last Battle, to the north, whatever that meant. The Last Battle was not hope. The Last Battle was death. But it was a place to be, a place to go.
In the evening dimness, the wind reached a large gathering far to the north of Caemlyn. This wide field broke the forest-patched landscape, but it was overgrown with tents like fungi on a decaying log. Tens of thousands of soldiers waited beside campfires that were quickly denuding the area of timber.
The wind blew among them, whipping smoke from fires into the faces of soldiers. The people here didn’t display the same sense of hopelessness as the refugees, but there was a dread to them. They could see the sickened land. They could feel the clouds above. They knew.