It felt a little safer, studying the Stone from the shadows, but not much more encouraging. The city wall was not nearly as thick as those he had seen in other places, in Caemlyn or Tar Valon, no more than a pace wide, supported by great stone buttresses cloaked in darkness, now. A pace was more than sufficient width for walking, of course, except that the fall to either side was nearly ten spans. Through the dark, to hard pavement. But some of these bloody houses back right up against it, I can make it to the top easily enough, and it bloody runs straight to the bloody Stone!

It did that, but that was no particular comfort. The sides of the Stone looked like cliffs. Eyeing the height again, he told himself he should be able to climb it. Of course, I can. Just like those cliffs in the Mountains of Mist. Over a hundred paces straight up before there was a battlement. There must be arrowslits lower down, but he could not make them out in the night. And he could not squeeze through an arrowslit. A hundred bloody paces. Maybe a hundred and twenty. Burn me, even Rand would not try to climb that. But it was the one way in he had found. Every gate he had seen had been shut tight and looked strong enough to stop a herd of bulls, not to mention the dozen or so soldiers guarding very nearly every last one, in helmets and breastplates, and swords at their belts.

Suddenly he blinked, and squinted at the side of the Stone. There was some fool climbing it, just visible as a moving shadow in the moonlight, and over halfway up already, with a drop of seventy paces to the pavement under his feet. Fool, is he? Well, I’m as big a one, because I am going up, too. Burn me, he’ll probably raise an alarm in there and get me caught. He could not see the climber anymore. Who in the Light is he? What does it matter who he is? Burn me, but this is a bloody way to win a wager. I’m going to want a kiss from all of them, even Nynaeve!

He shifted to peer toward the wall, trying to choose his spot to climb, and suddenly there was steel across his throat. Without thinking, he knocked it away and swept the man’s feet out from under him with his staff. Someone else kicked his own feet away and he fell almost on top of the man he had knocked down. He rolled off onto the roof tiles, loosing the bundle of fireworks—If that falls into the street, I’ll break their necks!—staff whirling; he felt it strike flesh, and a second time, heard grunts. Then there were two blades at his throat.