He eyed her sideways. She spoke of fighting and killing as calmly as another woman might speak of baking. He had never heard of any Great Blackwood, but the Forest of Shadows lay just south of the Two Rivers. “Are you following me? You were staring at me, back at the inn. Why? And why didn’t you tell them what you saw?”

“An Ogier,” she said, staring at the river, “is obviously an Ogier, and the others were not much more difficult to figure out. I managed a much better look inside Lady Alys’s hood than Orban did, and her face makes that stone-faced fellow a Warder. The Light burn me if I’d want that one angry with me. Does he always look like that, or did he eat a rock for his last meal? Anyway, that left only you. I do not like things I cannot account for.”

Once again he considered tossing her over the side. Seriously, this time. But Remen was now only a blotch of light well behind them in the darkness, and no telling how far it was to shore.

She seemed to take his silence as an urging to go on. “So there I have an”—she looked around, then dropped her voice, though the closest crewman was working a sweep ten feet away—“an Aes Sedai, a Warder, an Ogier—and you. A countryman, by first look at you.” Her tilted eyes rose to study his yellow ones intently—he refused to look away—and she smiled. “Only you free a caged Aielman, hold a long talk with him, then help him chop a dozen Whitecloaks into sausage. I assume you do this regularly; you certainly looked as if it were nothing out of the ordinary for you. I scent something strange in a party of travelers such as yours, and strange trails are what Hunters look for.”

He blinked; there was no mistaking that emphasis. “A Hunter? You? You cannot be a Hunter. You’re a girl.”

Her smile became so innocent that he almost walked away from her. She stepped back, made a flourish with each hand, and was holding two knives as neatly as old Thom Merrilin could have done it. One of the men at the sweeps made a choking sound, and two others stumbled; sweeps thrashed and tangled, and the Snow Goose lurched a little before the captain’s shouts set things right. By that time, the black-haired girl had made the knives disappear again.

“Nimble fingers and nimble wits will take you a good deal further than a sword and muscles. Sharp eyes help, as well, but fortunately, I have these things.”

“And modesty, as well,” Perrin murmured. She did not seem to notice.