The rest of the camp made a thin ring around the horses and carts, facing the encircling forest, with the Two Rivers men divided into four groups and the lancers from Ghealdan and Mayene spaced between them. Whoever came at them, from whatever direction, would face Two Rivers longbows and trained cavalry. It was not a sudden appearance by the Shaido that Perrin feared, but rather Masema. The man seemed to be following him meekly enough, but aside from this news of raiding, nine Ghealdanin and eight Mayeners had vanished in the last two weeks, and no one believed they had deserted. Before that, on the day Faile was stolen, twenty Mayeners had been ambushed and killed, and no one believed it had been anyone but Masema’s men who did the killing. So an uneasy peace existed, a strange thorny sort of peace, yet a copper wagered on it lasting forever was likely a copper lost. Masema pretended to be unaware of any danger to that peace, but his followers seemed not to care one way or the other, and whatever Masema pretended, they took their lead from him. Somehow, though, Perrin intended to see that it endured until Faile was free. Making his own camp too tough a nut to crack was one way of making the peace last.

The Aiel had insisted on having their own thin wedge of the strange pie, though there were fewer than fifty of them, counting the gai’shain who served the Wise Ones, and he paused to study their low dark tents. The only other tents erected anywhere in the camp were those of Berelain and her two serving women, on the other side of the camp, not far from Brytan’s few houses. Fleas and lice in hordes made those uninhabitable, even for hardened soldiers seeking shelter from the cold, and the barns were putrid ramshackle affairs that let the wind howl through and harbored worse vermin than the houses. The Maidens and Gaul, the only man among the Aiel not gai’shain, were all out with the scouts, and the Aiel tents were silent and still, though the smell of smoke coming from some of the vent holes told him the gai’shain were preparing breakfast for the Wise Ones, or serving it. Annoura was Berelain’s adviser, and usually shared her tent, but Masuri and Seonid would be with the Wise Ones, maybe even helping the gai’shain with breakfast. They still tried to hide the fact that the Wise Ones considered them apprentices, though everyone in camp must be aware of it by now. Anyone who saw an Aes Sedai actually carrying firewood or water, or heard one being switched, could make it out. The two Aes Sedai were oathsworn to Rand—again the colors whirled in his head, an explosion of hues; again they melted under his constant anger—but Edarra and the other Wise Ones had been sent to keep an eye on them.