She opened her mouth to speak, and the sun went out.
Elayne froze, looking upward with shock. The clouds had parted above them—they often did when she was near, one way the bond with Rand manifested—and so she’d been expecting an open sky and light for this battle.
The sun still shone up there, but occluded. Something solid and dark rolled in front of it.
All across her army, men looked up, raising fingers as they were swallowed by darkness. Light! It was hard to keep from trembling.
She heard cries through the army. Lamentations, worries, cries of despair. Elayne gathered her confidence and kicked her horse forward.
"This is the place", she announced, enhancing her voice with the One Power to project across the field, "where I promise you we will win. This is where I tell you that days will continue, that the land will recover. This is the time when I promise you that the light will return, that hope will survive, that we will continue to live".
She paused. Behind the army, people lined the top of Cairhien’s city walls: children, women, and the elderly who were armed with kitchen knives and pots to throw down, should the Trollocs destroy the army and come for the city. There had barely been time to contact them; a skeleton force of soldiers guarded the city. Now, their distant figures huddled down as darkness ate the sky.
Those walls offered a false safety; they meant little when the enemy had Dreadlords. She needed to defeat the Trolloc army quickly, not hide and allow them to be reinforced by the larger force to the south.
"I am supposed to reassure you", Elayne shouted to the men. "But I cannot! I will not tell you that the land will survive, that the Light will prevail. Doing so would remove responsibility.
"This is our duty! Our blood that will be spilled this day. We have come here to fight. If we do not, then the land will die! The Light will fall to the Shadow. This is not a day for empty promises. Our blood! Our blood is the fire within us. Today, our blood must drive us to defeat the Shadow".
She turned her horse. The men had looked away from the darkness above, toward her. She wove a light, high in the sky above her, drawing their attention.
"Our blood is our passion", she shouted. "Too much of what I hear from my armies is about resistance. We cannot merely resist! We must show them our anger, our fury, at what they have done. We must not resist. Today, we must destroy.
"Our blood is our land. This place is ours, and we claim it! For our fathers and mothers, for our children.
"Our blood is our life. We have come to give it. Across the world, other armies are pushed back. We will not retreat. Our task is to spend our blood, to die advancing. We will not remain still, no!
"If we are to have the Light again, we must make it ours! We must reclaim it and cast out the Shadow! He seeks to make you despair, to win this battle before it begins. We will not give him that satisfaction! We will destroy this army before us, then destroy the one behind. And from there, we bring our blood—our life, our fire, our passion—to the others who fight. From there it spreads to victory and the Light!"
She honestly didn’t know what kind of response to expect from a battlefield speech. She’d read all of the great ones, particularly those given by queens of Andor. When younger, she’d imagined the soldiers clapping and shouting—the response given to a gleeman at a rowdy tavern.
Instead, the men raised weapons to her. Drawn swords, pikes lifted, then thumped back against the ground. The Aiel did give some whoops, but the Andorans looked at her with solemn eyes. She had not inspired them to excitement, but to determination. That seemed the more honest emotion. They ignored the darkness in the sky and turned eyes on the goal.
Birgitte walked up beside her horse. "That was quite good, Elayne. When did you change it?"
Elayne blushed, thinking of the carefully prepared speech she’d memorized last night while repeating it half a dozen times to Birgitte. It had been a work of beauty, with allusions to the sayings of queens through the ages.
She’d forgotten every word of it once that darkness had come. This one had spurted out instead.
"Come on", Elayne said, looking over her shoulder. The Trolloc army was arriving opposite hers. "I need to move into position".
"Into position?" Birgitte asked. "You mean that you need to go back to the command tent".
"I’m not going there", Elayne said, turning Moonshadow.
"Blood and bloody ashes, you aren’t! I—"
"Birgitte", Elayne snapped. "I am in command, and you are my soldier. You will obey".
Birgitte recoiled as if slapped.
"Bashere has the command tent", Elayne said. "I’m one of the few channelers of any strength this army has, and I’ll be drawn and quartered before I let myself sit out the fight. I’m easily worth a thousand soldiers on this battlefield".
"The babes—"
"Even if Min hadn’t had that viewing, I’d still insist on fighting. You think the babes of these soldiers aren’t at risk? Many of them line the walls of that city! If we fail here, they will be slaughtered. No, I will not keep myself out of danger, and no, I will not sit back and wait. If you think it’s your duty as my Warder to stop me, then I will bloody sever this bond right here and now and send you to someone else! I’m not going to spend the Last Battle lounging on a chaise and drinking goat’s milk!"
Birgitte fell silent, and Elayne could feel her shock through the bond. "Light", the woman finally said. "I won’t stop you. But will you at least agree to back away for the initial arrow volleys? You can do more good helping the lines where they’re weakened".
She allowed Birgitte and her guards to lead the way back to a hillside near Aludra’s dragons. Talmanes, Aludra and their crews waited with more anxiety and eagerness than the regular troops. They were tired, too, but they’d also seen little use during the forest battles and the retreat. Today was their chance to shine.
Bashere’s battle plan was as complex as any that Elayne had been a part of. The bulk of the army positioned itself almost a mile north of the city, beyond the Foregate ruins outside the city walls. The army’s lines ran east from the Alguenya, across a hillside that sloped down across an approach road to the Jangai Gates on the flats, all the way to the ruins of the Illuminators’ chapter house.
Ranks of foot soldiers—mostly Andorans and Cairhienin, but some Ghealdanin and Whitecloaks as well—bowed out like a half-moon across the front of Elayne’s forces. Six squadrons of dragons rolled up atop the hill behind the foot.
The Trollocs would not reach the city without defeating this army. Estean had the Band’s cavalry on one flank while the Mayener Winged Guards covered the other. The rest of the cavalry was held in reserve.
Elayne waited with patience, watching the Trolloc army prepare. Her biggest worry was that they’d just sit there, waiting for their fellow Trollocs to arrive from the south and attack Elayne simultaneously. Fortunately, that didn’t happen—they had apparently been commanded to take the city, and they were planning to do it.
Bashere’s scout reports indicated that the second army was a little over a day’s march away, and could arrive late on the morrow if they marched hard. Elayne had until then to defeat this northern force.
Come on, Elayne thought. Move.
The Trollocs finally began to surge forward. Bashere and Elayne were counting on them to employ their usual tactic: Overwhelming numbers and sheer force. Indeed, today, the Trollocs crashed forward in a large mass. Their goal would be to overwhelm the defenders, shattering their lines.
Her troops stood firm, knowing what was coming next. The dragons began to bellow, each like innumerable hammers falling at exactly the same moment. Elayne was now a good hundred paces from them, and still she had the urge to cover her ears. Rolling clouds of white smoke began to fill the sky above the dragons as they fired.
The first few shots fell short, but Aludra and her men used the shots to adjust range. After that, the eggs fell among Trollocs, ripping through their ranks, tossing them into the air. Thousands of body parts fell to the crimson-splattered ground. For the first time, Elayne was frightened of the weapons.
Light, Birgitte has been right all along, Elayne thought, imagining what it would be like to charge a fortified position equipped with dragons. Normally, in war, at least a man could depend on one thing: that his skill would be placed against that of his foe. Sword against sword. Trollocs were bad enough. What would it be like for men to have to face this kind of power?
We’ll make sure it doesn’t happen, she told herself. Rand had been right to force that peace upon them.
The dragoners had trained well, and their reloading speeds were impressive. Each set off three volleys before the Trollocs hit the front lines. Elayne hadn’t watched the exchange of arrows—she’d been too focused on the dragons—but she did see that some of her lines were struck with black-fletched arrows, and men were down and bleeding.
The Trollocs crashed into her front ranks of crossbowmen and pikemen, who were already fading back to make way for halberdiers. Nobody used swords and maces against Trollocs, at least not while on foot, if they could help it.
"Let’s go", Elayne said, moving Moonshadow forward.
Birgitte followed; Elayne could sense the woman’s reluctant resignation. They moved down off the hill through some reserve units and entered the battle.
Rodel Ituralde had almost forgotten what it was like to have adequate resources at his command.
It had been some time since he had commanded legions of men and full banners of archers. For once, his men weren’t half-starved, and Healers, fletchers and good smiths stood ready to repair his troops and equipment nightly. What a wonder it was to be able to ask for something—no matter how unusual—and have it located and brought to him, often within the hour!
He was still going to lose. He faced a numberless host of foes, Dreadlords by the dozen and even some of the Forsaken. He’d brought his force into this dead-end valley, seizing the jewel of the Dark One’s lands—his very footstool, the black mountain. And now the sun itself had gone out, though the Aes Sedai said that would pass.
Ituralde puffed on his pipe as he rode his horse along the ridge that edged the valley to the north. Yes, he was going to lose. But with these resources, he’d do it with style.
He followed along the ridge, reaching a point above the pass into Thakan’dar. The valley, deep in the heart of the Blasted Lands, ran east to west, with Shayol Ghul at the western side and the pass on the east. One could reach this vantage only after hours of very hard climbing—or one quick step through a gateway. Handy, that. It was perfect for surveying his defenses.
The pass into Shayol Ghul was like a large slot canyon, the top completely inaccessible from the eastern side except by gateway. With a gateway, he could reach the top and look down into the canyon, which was perhaps wide enough to march fifty men down shoulder-to-shoulder. A perfect bottleneck. And he could position archers up top here, to fire down on those coming through the pass.
The sun finally burned out from behind the blackness above, like a drop of molten steel. So the Aes Sedai had been right. Still, those swirling black thunderheads spun back, as if to consume all the sky.