Rand narrowed his eyes, watching the dust-tail that rose ahead, three or four bends of the road away. Mat was already headed toward the wild hedgerow alongside the roadway. Its evergreen leaves and densely intermeshed branches would hide them as well as a stone wall, if they could find a way through to the other side. The other side of the road was marked by the sparse brown skeletons of head-high bushes, and beyond was an open field for half a mile to the woods. It might have been part of a farm not too long abandoned, but it offered no quick hiding place. He tried to judge the speed of the dust-tail, and the wind.
A sudden gust swirled road dust up around him, obscuring everything. He blinked and adjusted the plain, dark scarf across his nose and mouth. None too clean now, it made his face itch, but it kept him from inhaling dust with every breath. A farmer had given it to him, a long-faced man with grooves in his cheeks from worry.
“I don’t know what you’re running from,” he had said with an anxious frown, “and I don’t want to. You understand? My family.” Abruptly the farmer had dug two long scarves out of his coat pocket and pushed the tangle of wool at them. “It’s not much, but here. Belong to my boys. They have others. You don’t know me, understand? It’s hard times.”
Rand treasured the scarf. The list of kindnesses he had made in his mind in the days since Whitebridge was a short one, and he did not believe it would get much longer.
Mat, all but his eyes hidden by the scarf wrapped around his head, hunted swiftly along the tall hedgerow, pulling at the leafy branches. Rand touched the heron-marked hilt at his belt, but let his hand fall away. Once already, cutting a hole through a hedge had almost given them away. The dust-tail was moving toward them, and staying together too long. Not the wind. At least it was not raining. Rain settled the dust. No matter how hard it fell, it never turned the hard-packed road to mud, but when it rained there was no dust. Dust was the only warning they had before whoever it was came close enough to hear. Sometimes that was too late.
“Here,” Mat called softly. He seemed to step right through the hedge.
Rand hurried to the spot. Someone had cut a hole there, once. It was partly grown over, and from three feet away it looked as solid as the rest, but close up there was only a thin screen of branches. As he pushed through, he heard horses coming. Not the wind.
He crouched behind the barely covered opening, clutching the hilt of his sword as the horsemen rode by. Five . . . six . . . seven of them. Plainly dressed men, but swords and spears said they were not villagers. Some wore leather tunics with metal studs, and two had round steel caps. Merchants’ guards, perhaps, between hirings. Perhaps.
One of them casually swung his eyes toward the hedge as he went by the opening, and Rand bared an inch of his sword. Mat snarled silently like a cornered badger, squinting above his scarf. His hand was under his coat; he always clutched the dagger from Shadar Logoth when there was danger. Rand was no longer sure if it was to protect himself or to protect the ruby-hilted dagger. Of late Mat seemed to forget he had a bow, sometimes.
The riders passed at a slow trot, going somewhere with a purpose but not too great a haste. Dust sifted through the hedge.
Rand waited until the clop of the hooves faded before he stuck his head cautiously back through the hole. The dust-tail was well down the road, going the way they had come. Eastward the sky was clear. He climbed out onto the roadway, watching the column of dust move west.
“Not after us,” he said, halfway between a statement and a question.
Mat scrambled out after him, looking warily in both directions. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe.”
Rand had no idea which way he meant it, but he nodded. Maybe. It had not begun like this, their journey down the Caemlyn Road.
For a long time after leaving Whitebridge, Rand would suddenly find himself staring back down the road behind them. Sometimes he would see someone who made his breath catch, a tall, skinny man hurrying up the road, or a lanky, white-haired fellow up beside the driver on a wagon, but it was always a pack-peddler, or farmers making their way to market, never Thom Merrilin. Hope faded as the days passed.
There was considerable traffic on the road, wagons and carts, people on horses and people afoot. They came singly and in groups, a train of merchants’ wagons or a dozen horsemen together. They did not jam the road, and often there was nothing in sight except the all but leafless trees lining the hard-packed roadbed, but there were certainly more people traveling than Rand had ever seen in the Two Rivers.
Most traveled in the same direction that they did, eastward toward Caemlyn. Sometimes they got a ride in a farmer’s wagon for a little distance, a mile, or five, but more often they walked. Men on horseback they avoided; when they spotted even one rider in the distance they scrambled off the road and hid until he was past. None ever wore a black cloak, and Rand did not really think a Fade would let them see him coming, but there was no point in taking chances. In the beginning it was just the Halfmen they feared.
The first village after Whitebridge looked so much like Emond’s Field that Rand’s steps dragged when he saw it. Thatched roofs with high peaks, and goodwives in their aprons gossiping over the fences between their houses, and children playing on a village green. The women’s hair hung unbraided around their shoulders, and other small things were different, too, but the whole together was like home. Cows cropped on the green, and geese waddled self-importantly across the road. The children tumbled, laughing, in the dust where the grass was gone altogether. They did not even look around when Rand and Mat went by. That was another thing that was different. Strangers were no oddity there; two more did not draw so much as a second glance. Village dogs only raised their heads to sniff as he and Mat passed; none stirred themselves.
It was coming on evening as they went through the village, and he felt a pang of homesickness as lights appeared in the windows. No matter what it looks like, a small voice whispered in his mind, it isn’t really home. Even if you go into one of those houses Tam won’t be there. If he was, could you look him in the face? You know, now, don’t you? Except for little things like where you come from and who you are. No fever-dreams. He hunched his shoulders against taunting laughter inside his head. You might as well stop, the voice snickered. One place it as good as another when you aren’t from anywhere, and the Dark One has you marked.
Mat tugged at his sleeve, but he pulled loose and stared at the houses. He did not want to stop, but he did want to look and remember. So much like home, but you’ll never see that again, will you?
Mat yanked at him again. His face was taut, the skin around his mouth and eyes white. “Come on,” Mat muttered. “Come on.” He looked at the village as if he suspected something of hiding there. “Come on. We can’t stop yet.”
Rand turned in a complete circle, taking in the whole village, and sighed. They were not very far from Whitebridge. If the Myrddraal could get past Whitebridge’s wall without being seen, it would have no trouble at all searching this small village. He let himself be drawn on into the countryside beyond, until the thatch-roofed houses were left behind.
Night fell before they found a spot by moonlight, under some bushes still bearing their dead leaves. They filled their bellies with cold water from a shallow rivulet not far away and curled up on the ground, wrapped in their cloaks, without a fire. A fire could be seen; better to be cold.
Uneasy with his memories, Rand woke often, and every time he could hear Mat muttering and tossing in his sleep. He did not dream, that he could remember, but he did not sleep well. You’ll never see home again.
That was not the only night they spent with just their cloaks to protect them from the wind, and sometimes the rain, cold and soaking. It was not the only meal they made from nothing but cold water. Between them they had enough coins for a few meals at an inn, but a bed for the night would take too much. Things cost more outside the Two Rivers, more this side of the Arinelle than in Baerlon. What money they had left had to be saved for an emergency.
One afternoon Rand mentioned the dagger with the ruby in its hilt, while they were trudging down the road with bellies too empty to rumble, and the sun low and weak, and nothing in view for the coming night but more bushes. Dark clouds built up overhead for rain during the night. He hoped they were lucky; maybe no more than an icy drizzle.
He went on a few steps before he realized that Mat had stopped. He stopped, too, wriggling his toes in his boots. At least his feet felt warm. He eased the straps across his shoulders. His blanket roll and Thom’s bundled cloak were not heavy, but even a few pounds weighed heavy after miles on an empty stomach. “What’s the matter, Mat?” he said.
“Why are you so anxious to sell it?” Mat demanded angrily. “I found it, after all. You ever think I might like to keep it? For a while, anyway. If you want to sell something, sell that bloody sword!”
Rand rubbed his hand along the heron-marked hilt. “My father gave this sword to me. It was his. I wouldn’t ask you to sell something your father gave you. Blood and ashes, Mat, do you like going hungry? Anyway, even if I could find somebody to buy it, how much would a sword bring? What would a farmer want with a sword? That ruby would fetch enough to take us all the way to Caemlyn in a carriage. Maybe all the way to Tar Valon. And we’d eat every meal in an inn, and sleep every night in a bed. Maybe you like the idea of walking halfway across the world and sleeping on the ground?” He glared at Mat, and his friend glared back.
They stood like that in the middle of the road until Mat suddenly gave an uncomfortable shrug, and dropped his eyes to the road. “Who would I sell it to, Rand? A farmer would have to pay in chickens; we couldn’t buy a carriage with chickens. And if I even showed it in any village we’ve been through, they’d probably think we stole it. The Light knows what would happen then.”
After a minute Rand nodded reluctantly. “You’re right. I know it. I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s only that I’m hungry and my feet hurt.”
“Mine, too.” They started down the road again, walking even more wearily than before. The wind gusted up, blowing dust in their faces. “Mine, too.” Mat coughed.
Farms did provide some meals and a few nights out of the cold. A haystack was nearly as warm as a room with a fire, at least compared to lying under the bushes, and a haystack, even one without a tarp over it, kept all but the heaviest rain off, if you dug yourself in deeply enough. Sometimes Mat tried his hand at stealing eggs, and once he attempted to milk a cow left unattended, staked out on a long rope to crop in a field. Most farms had dogs, though, and farm dogs were watchful. A two-mile run with baying hounds at their heels was too high a price for two or three eggs as Rand saw it, especially when the dogs sometimes took hours to go away and let them down out of the tree where they had taken shelter. The hours were what he regretted.
He did not really like doing it, but Rand preferred to approach a farmhouse openly in broad daylight. Now and again they had the dogs set on them anyway, without a word being said, for the rumors and the times made everyone who lived apart from other people nervous about strangers, but often an hour or so chopping wood or hauling water would earn a meal and a bed, even if the bed was a pile of straw in the barn. But an hour or two doing chores was an hour or two of daylight when they were standing still, an hour or two for the Myrddraal to catch up. Sometimes he wondered how many miles a Fade could cover in an hour. He begrudged every minute of it—though admittedly not so much when he was wolfing down a goodwife’s hot soup. And when they had no food, knowing they had spent every possible minute moving toward Caemlyn did not do much to soothe an empty belly. Rand could not make up his mind if it was worse to lose time or go hungry, but Mat went beyond worrying about his belly or pursuit.
“What do we know about them, anyway?” Mat demanded one afternoon while they were mucking out stalls on a small farm.
“Light, Mat, what do they know about us?” Rand sneezed. They were working stripped to the waist, and sweat and straw covered them both liberally, and motes of straw-dust hung in the air. “What I know is they’ll give us some roast lamb and a real bed to sleep in.”
Mat dug his hayfork into the straw and manure and gave a sidelong frown at the farmer, coming from the back of the barn with a bucket in one hand and his milking stool in the other. A stooped old man with skin like leather and thin, gray hair, the farmer slowed when he saw Mat looking at him, then looked away quickly and hurried on out of the barn, slopping milk over the rim of the bucket in his haste.
“He’s up to something, I tell you,” Mat said. “See the way he wouldn’t meet my eye? Why are they so friendly to a couple of wanderers they never laid eyes on before? Tell me that.”
“His wife says we remind her of their grandsons. Will you stop worrying about them? What we have to worry about is behind us. I hope.”
“He’s up to something,” Mat muttered.
When they finished, they washed up at the trough in front of the barn, their shadows stretching long with the sinking sun. Rand toweled off with his shirt as they walked to the farmhouse. The farmer met them at the door; he leaned on a quarterstaff in a too-casual manner. Behind him his wife clutched her apron and peered past his shoulder, chewing her lip. Rand sighed; he did not think he and Mat reminded them of their grandsons any longer.
“Our sons are coming to visit tonight,” the old man said. “All four of them. I forgot. They’re all four coming. Big lads. Strong. Be here any time, now. I’m afraid we don’t have the bed we promised you.”
His wife thrust a small bundle wrapped in a napkin past him. “Here. It’s bread, and cheese, and pickles, and lamb. Enough for two meals, maybe. Here.” Her wrinkled face asked them to please take it and go.
Rand took the bundle. “Thank you. I understand. Come on, Mat.”
Mat followed him, grumbling while he pulled his shirt over his head. Rand thought it best to cover as many miles as they could before stopping to eat. The old farmer had a dog.
It could have been worse, he thought. Three days earlier, while they were still working, they’d had the dogs set on them. The dogs, and the farmer, and his two sons waving cudgels chased them out to the Caemlyn Road and half a mile down it before giving up. They had barely had time to snatch up their belongings and run. The farmer had carried a bow with a broad-head arrow nocked.
“Don’t come back, hear!” he had shouted after them. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but don’t let me see your shifty eyes again!”
Mat had started to turn back, fumbling at his quiver, but Rand pulled him on. “Are you crazy?” Mat gave him a sullen look, but at least he kept running.
Rand sometimes wondered if it was worthwhile stopping at farms. The further they went, the more suspicious of strangers Mat became, and the less he was able to hide it. Or bothered to. The meals got skimpier for the same work, and sometimes not even the barn was offered as a place to sleep. But then a solution to all their problems came to Rand, or so it seemed, and it came at Grinwell’s farm.
Master Grinwell and his wife had nine children, the eldest a daughter not more than a year younger than Rand and Mat. Master Grinwell was a sturdy man, and with his children he probably had no need of any more help, but he looked them up and down, taking in their travel-stained clothes and dusty boots, and allowed as how he could always find work for more hands. Mistress Grinwell said that if they were going to eat at her table, they would not do it in those filthy things. She was about to do laundry, and some of her husband’s old clothes would fit them well enough for working. She smiled when she said it, and for a minute she looked to Rand just like Mistress al’Vere, though her hair was yellow; he had never seen hair that color before. Even Mat seemed to lose some of his tension when her smile touched him. The eldest daughter was another matter.
Dark-haired, big-eyed, and pretty, Else grinned impudently at them whenever her parents were not looking. While they worked, moving barrels and sacks of grain in the barn, she hung over a stall door, humming to herself and chewing the end of one long pigtail, watching them. Rand she watched especially. He tried to ignore her, but after a few minutes he put on the shirt Master Grinwell had loaned him. It was tight across the shoulders and too short, but it was better than nothing. Else laughed out loud when he tugged it on. He began to think that this time it would not be Mat’s fault when they were chased off.
Perrin would know how to handle this, he thought. He’d make some offhand comment, and pretty soon she’d be laughing at his jokes instead of mooning around where her father can see. Only he could not think of any offhand comment, or any jokes, either. Whenever he looked in her direction, she smiled at him in a way that would have her father loosing the dogs on them if he saw. Once she told him she liked tall men. All the boys on the farms around there were short. Mat gave a nasty snicker. Wishing he could think of a joke, Rand tried to concentrate on his hayfork.
The younger children, at least, were a blessing in Rand’s eyes. Mat’s wariness always eased a little when there were children around. After supper they all settled in front of the fireplace, with Master Grinwell in his favorite chair thumbing his pipe full of tabac and Mistress Grinwell fussing with her sewing box and the shirts she had washed for him and Mat. Mat dug out Thom’s colored balls and began to juggle. He never did that unless there were children. The children laughed when he pretended to be dropping the balls, snatching them at the last minute, and they clapped for fountains and figure-eights and a six-ball circle that he really did almost drop. But they took it in good part, Master Grinwell and his wife applauding as hard as their children. When Mat was done, bowing around the room with as many flourishes as Thom might have made, Rand took Thom’s flute from its case.
He could never handle the instrument without a pang of sadness. Touching its gold-and-silver scrollwork was like touching Thom’s memory. He never handled the harp except to see that it was safe and dry—Thom had always said the harp was beyond a farmboy’s clumsy hands—but whenever a farmer allowed them to stay, he always played one tune on the flute after supper. It was just a little something extra to pay the farmer, and maybe a way of keeping Thom’s memory fresh.
With a laughing mood already set by Mat’s juggling, he played “Three Girls in the Meadow.” Master and Mistress Grinwell clapped along, and the smaller children danced around the floor, even the smallest boy, who could barely walk, stomping his feet in time. He knew he would win no prizes at Bel Tine, but after Thom’s teaching he would not be embarrassed to enter.
Else was sitting cross-legged in front of the fire, and as he lowered the flute after the last note, she leaned forward with a long sigh and smiled at him. “You play so beautifully. I never heard anything so beautiful.”
Mistress Grinwell suddenly paused in her sewing and raised an eyebrow at her daughter, then gave Rand a long, appraising look.
He had picked up the leather case to put the flute away, but under her stare he dropped the case and almost the flute, too. If she accused him of trifling with her daughter . . . In desperation he put the flute back to his lips and played another song, then another, and another. Mistress Grinwell kept watching him. He played “The Wind That Shakes the Willow,” and “Coming Home From Tarwin’s Gap,” and “Mistress Aynora’s Rooster,” and “The Old Black Bear.” He played every song he could think of, but she never took her eyes off him. She never said anything, either, but she watched, and weighed.
It was late when Master Grinwell finally stood up, chuckling and rubbing his hands together. “Well, this has been rare fun, but it’s way past our bedtime. You traveling lads make your own hours, but morning comes early on a farm. I’ll tell you lads, I have paid good money at an inn for no better entertainment than I’ve had this night. For worse.”
“I think they should have a reward, father,” Mistress Grinwell said as she picked up her youngest boy, who had long since fallen asleep in front of the fire. “The barn is no fit place to sleep. They can sleep in Else’s room tonight, and she will sleep with me.”
Else grimaced. She was careful to keep her head down, but Rand saw it. He thought her mother did, too.
Master Grinwell nodded. “Yes, yes, much better than the barn. If you don’t mind sleeping two to a bed, that is.” Rand flushed; Mistress Grinwell was still looking at him. “I do wish I could hear more of that flute. And your juggling, too. I like that. You know, there’s a little task you could help with tomorrow, and—”
“They’ll be wanting an early start, father,” Mistress Grinwell cut in. “Arien is the next village the way they’re going, and if they intend to try their luck at the inn there, they’ll have to walk all day to get there before dark.”
“Yes, mistress,” Rand said, “we will. And thank you.”
She gave him a tight-lipped smile as if she knew very well that his thanks were for more than her advice, or even supper and a warm bed.
The whole next day Mat twitted him about Else as they made their way down the road. He kept trying to change the subject, and what the Grinwells had suggested about performing at inns was the easiest thing to mind. In the morning, with Else pouting as he left, and Mistress Grinwell watching with a sharp-eyed look of good-riddance and soonest-mended, it was just something to keep Mat from talking. By the time they did reach the next village, it was something else again.
With dusk descending, they entered the only inn in Arien, and Rand spoke to the innkeeper. He played “Ferry O’er the River”—which the plump innkeeper called “Darling Sara”—and part of “The Road to Dun Aren,” and Mat did a little juggling, and the upshot was that they slept in a bed that night and ate roasted potatoes and hot beef. It was the smallest room in the inn, to be sure, up under the eaves in the back, and the meal came in the middle of a long night of playing and juggling, but it was still a bed beneath a roof. Even better, to Rand, every daylight hour had been spent traveling. And the inn’s patrons did not seem to care if Mat stared at them suspiciously. Some of them even looked askance at one another. The times made suspicion of strangers a commonplace, and there were always strangers at an inn.
Rand slept better than he had since leaving Whitebridge, despite sharing a bed with Mat and his nocturnal muttering. In the morning the innkeeper tried to talk them into staying another day or two, but when he could not, he called over a bleary-eyed farmer who had drunk too much to drive his cart home the night before. An hour later they were five miles further east, sprawling on their backs on the straw in the back of Eazil Forney’s cart.
That became the way of their traveling. With a little luck, and maybe a ride or two, they could almost always reach the next village by dark. If there was more than one inn in a village, the innkeepers would bid for them once they heard Rand’s flute and saw Mat juggle. Together they still did not come close to a gleeman, but they were more than most villages saw in a year. Two or three inns in a town meant a better room, with two beds, and more generous portions of a better cut of meat, and sometimes even a few coppers in their pockets when they left besides. In the mornings there was almost always someone to offer a ride, another farmer who had stayed too late and drunk too much, or a merchant who had liked their entertainment enough not to mind if they hopped up on the back of one of his wagons. Rand began to think their problems were over till they reached Caemlyn. But then they came to Four Kings.