Causeway and marsh ended together, some two miles or so from the city, but the road kept on, slowly bearing a little eastward. Cloud-dark evening faded into night, and the misting rain continued. Moiraine and Lan kept a steady, ground-eating pace. The horses’ hooves splashed through puddles on the hard-packed dirt. The moon shone through gaps in the clouds. Low hills began to rise around them, and trees to appear more and more often. Perrin thought there must be forest ahead, but he was not sure how he liked the idea. Woods could hide them from pursuit; woods could let pursuit come close before they saw.

A thin howl rose far behind them. For a moment he thought it was a wolf; he surprised himself by nearly reaching out to the wolf before he could stop. The cry came again, and he knew it was no wolf. Others answered it, all miles behind, eerie wails holding blood and death, cries that spoke of nightmares. To his surprise, Lan and Moiraine slowed, the Aes Sedai studying the hills around them in the night.

“They are a long way,” he said. “They’ll not catch us if we keep on.”

“The Darkhounds?” Zarine muttered. “Those are the Darkhounds? Are you sure it isn’t the Wild Hunt, Aes Sedai?”

“But it is,” Moiraine replied. “It is.”

“You can never outrun the Darkhounds, blacksmith,” Lan said, “not on the fastest horse. Always, you must face them and defeat them, or they will pull you down.”

“I could have stayed in the stedding, you know,” Loial said. “My mother would have had me married by now, but it would not have been a bad life. Plenty of books. I did not have to come Outside.”

“There,” Moiraine said, pointing to a tall, treeless mound well off to their right. There were no trees that Perrin could see for two hundred paces or more around it, either, and they were still sparse beyond that. “We must see them coming to have a chance.”

The Darkhounds’ dire cries rose again, closer, yet still far.

Lan quickened Mandarb’s pace a little, now that Moiraine had chosen their ground. As they climbed, the horses’ hooves clattered on rocks half-buried in the dirt and slicked by the drizzle. To Perrin’s eyes, most of them had too many squared corners to be natural. At the top, they dismounted around what seemed to be a low, rounded boulder. The moon appeared through a gap in the clouds, and he found himself looking at a weathered stone face two paces long. A woman’s face, he thought from the length of the hair. The rain made her seem to be weeping.

Moiraine dismounted and stood looking off in the direction of the howls. She was a shadowed, hooded shape, rain catching moonlight as it rolled down her oiled cloak.