As he slipped the axe haft through the thick loop on his belt, a deeper shadow beside a nearby cart grew taller and resolved into a man swathed in a cloak that seemed black in the darkness. Perrin was not surprised; the nearby horselines thickened the air with the smell of several thousand animals, mounts and remounts and cart horses, not to mention the sweet stink of horse dung, but he still had caught the other’s scent on waking. Man smell always stood out. Besides, Aram was always there when Perrin woke, waiting. A waning sickle moon low in the sky still gave enough light for him to make out the other man’s face, if not clearly, and the brass-pommeled hilt of his sword slanting up past his shoulder. Aram had been a Tinker once, but Perrin did not think he would be again, even if he did wear a brightly striped Tinker coat. There was a frowning hardness about Aram now that moon shadows could not hide. He stood as though ready to draw that sword, and since Faile was taken, anger seemed a permanent part of his scent. A great deal had changed when Faile was taken. Anyway, Perrin understood anger. He had not, not really, before Faile was taken.

“They want to see you, Lord Perrin,” Aram said, jerking his head toward two dim forms farther away between the lines of carts. The words came out in a faint mist in the cold air. “I told them to let you sleep.” It was a fault Aram had, looking after him too much, unasked.

Testing the air, Perrin separated out the scents of those two shadows from the masking smell of the horses. “I’ll see them now. Have Stepper readied for me, Aram.” He tried to be in the saddle before the rest of the camp woke. Partly that was because standing still for long seemed beyond him. Standing still was not catching the Shaido. Partly it was to avoid having to share anyone’s company he could avoid. He would have gone out with the scouts himself if the men and women already doing that job were not so much better at it than he.

“Yes, my Lord.” A jaggedness entered Aram’s scent as he trudged away across the snow, but Perrin barely noted it. Only something important would make Sebban Balwer root himself out of his blankets in the dark, and as for Selande Darengil …