“We can make it,” he said. There was no other choice.

Vanin spat.

There was only one way to cover a great deal of ground quickly on a horse, if you meant to be on a live horse at the end. They walked the animals for half a mile, then trotted half a mile. The same at a canter, then a run, and it was back to a walk. The sun began to slide downward, and the dice spun. Around sparsely forested hills and over tree-topped ridges. Streams that could be crossed in three strides, barely wetting the horses’ hooves, and streams thirty paces across with flat bridges of wood or sometimes stone. The sun sank lower and lower, and the dice spun faster and faster. Almost back to the Eldar, and no sign of Renna except scuffs on the hard dirt of the road that Vanin pointed to as if they were painted signs.

“Getting close, now,” the fat man muttered. He did not sound happy, though.

Then they rounded a hill, and there was another low bridge ahead. Beyond, the road twisted north to cross the next ridge through a saddle. The sun, sitting atop the ridge, blazed in their eyes. Coramen lay on the other side of that ridge. Pulling his hat low for shade, Mat searched the road for a woman, for anyone, mounted or afoot, and his heart sank.

Vanin cursed and pointed.

A lathered bay was laboring its way up the slope on the other side of the river, a woman frantically kicking its flanks, urging it to climb. Renna had been too anxious to reach the Seanchan to stick with the road. She was maybe two hundred paces from them, and she might as well have been miles. Her mount was on the point of collapsing, but she could get down and run within sight of the garrisons before they could reach her. All she had to do was reach the crest, another fifty feet.

“My Lord?” Harnan said. He had an arrow nocked and his bow half raised. Gorderan held the heavy crossbow to his shoulder, a thick pointed bolt in place.

Mat felt something flicker and die inside him. He did not know what. Something. The dice rolled like thunder. “Shoot,” he said.

He wanted to close his eyes. The crossbow snapped; the bolt made a black streak through the air. Renna slammed forward when it hit her back. She had almost managed to push herself erect against the bay’s neck when Harnan’s arrow took her.