An exclamation from one of the Aes Sedai made him look over his shoulder, and he followed Masuri’s pointing finger north to a shape flying through the air. It might have been taken for a large bat at first glance, sweeping eastward on long ribbed wings, a strange bat with a long neck and a long thin tail trailing behind. Gallenne barked an oath and pressed his looking glass to his eye. Perrin could see it well enough unaided, and even make out the figure of a human being clinging to the creature’s back, riding it like a horse.

“Seanchan,” Berelain breathed, both her voice and the smell of her worried.

Perrin twisted in his saddle to watch the thing’s flight until the glare of the sunrise made him turn away. “Nothing to do with us,” he said. If Neald had made a mistake, he would strangle the man.

CHAPTER

26

In So Habor

As it happened, Neald, who had had to remain to hold the gateway open till Kireyin and the Ghealdanin were through, had placed the hole in the air very close to where he aimed. He and Kireyin caught up at a gallop just as Perrin topped a rise and drew rein with the town of So Habor in front of him, on the other side of a small river crossed by a pair of arching timber bridges. Perrin was no soldier, but he knew right away why Masema had left this place alone. Hard against the river, the town had two massive stone walls dotted with towers around it, the inner rising taller than the outer. A pair of barges were tied to a long wharf that ran along the river wall from bridge to bridge, yet the wide bridge gates, iron-strapped and closed tight, seemed to be the only openings in that expanse of rough gray stone, and battlements topped the whole length of it. Built to hold off greedy neighboring nobles, So Habor would have had little fear of the Prophet’s rabble even if they came by thousands. Anyone wanting to break into this town would need siege engines and patience, and Masema was more comfortable terrorizing villages and towns without walls or defenses.

“Well, it’s glad I am to see people on the walls over there,” Neald said. “I was beginning to think everyone in this country was dead and buried.” He sounded only half joking, and his grin looked forced.

“As long as they’re alive enough to sell grain,” Kireyin murmured in his nasal, bored voice. Unbuckling his silvery, white-plumed helmet, he lifted it down to the tall pommel of his saddle. His eyes swept past Perrin and paused briefly on Berelain before he twisted around to address the Aes Sedai in the same weary tone. “Are we going to sit here, or go down?” Berelain arched an eyebrow at him, a dangerous look, as a man with any brains would see. Kireyin did not see.