Below, the spearmen suddenly moved, sidestepping with good discipline, narrowing their formations, opening wide gaps between. Gaps into which the Trollocs poured, roaring bestial cries, like a black, oozing tide of death.

He drew his sword, raised it high. “Forward the Heart Guard!” He dug his heels in, and his mount leaped down the slope. Behind him, hooves thundered in the charge. “Forward!” He was first to strike into the Trollocs, his sword rising and falling, his bannerman close behind. “For the honor of the Red Eagle!” The Heart Guard pounded into the gaps between the spearmen, smashing the tide, hurling it back. “The Red Eagle!” Half-human faces snarled at him, oddly curved swords sought him, but he cut his way ever deeper. Win or die. “Manetheren!”

Mat’s hand trembled as he raised it to his forehead. “Los Valdar Cuebiyari,” he muttered. He was almost sure he knew what it meant—“Forward the Heart Guard,” or maybe “The Heart Guard will advance”—but that could not be. Moiraine had told him a few words of the Old Tongue, and those were all he knew of it. The rest might as well be magpie chatter.

“Crazy,” he said roughly. “It probably isn’t even the Old Tongue at all. Just gibberish. That Aes Sedai is crazy. It was only a dream.”

Aes Sedai. Moiraine. He suddenly became aware of his too-thin wrist and bony hand, and looked at them. He had been sick. Something to do with a dagger. A dagger with a ruby in the hilt, and a long-dead, tainted city called Shadar Logoth. It was all foggy and distant, and made no real sense, but he knew it was no dream. Egwene and Nynaeve had been taking him to Tar Valon to be Healed. He remembered that much.

He tried to sit up, and fell back, as weak as a newborn lamb. Laboriously, he pulled himself up and shoved the single woolen blanket aside. His clothes were gone, perhaps into the vine-carved wardrobe standing against the wall. For the moment he did not care about clothes. He struggled to his feet, tottered across the flowered carpet to cling to a high-backed armchair, and lurched from the chair to the table, gilded scrolls on its legs and edges.

Beeswax candles, four to each tall stand and small mirrors behind the flames, lit the room brightly. A larger mirror on the wall above the highly polished washstand threw his reflection back at him, gaunt and wasted, cheeks hollow and dark eyes sunken, hair sweat-matted, bent like an old man and wavering like pasture grass in a breeze. He made himself stand straight, but it was not much improvement.