Grunting, he closed his eyes again. Cute? Light! And short. Only Aiel could call him short. In every other land he had been in, he was taller than most men, if not always by much. He could remember being tall. Taller than Rand, when he rode against Artur Hawkwing. And a hand shorter than he was now when he fought beside Maecine against the Aelgari. He had spoken to Lan, claiming he had overheard some names; the Warder said Maecine had been a king of Eharon, one of the Ten Nations—that much Mat already knew—some four or five hundred years before the Trolloc Wars. Lan doubted that even the Brown Ajah knew more; much had been lost in the Trolloc Wars, and more in the War of the Hundred Years. Those were the earliest and latest of the memories that had been planted in his skull. Nothing after Artur Paendrag Tanreall, and nothing before Maecine of Eharon.

“Are you cold?” Melindhra said incredulously. “You shivered.” She scrambled off him, and he heard her add wood to the fire; there was enough scrub here for burning. She slapped his bottom hard as she climbed back on, murmuring, “Good muscle.”

“If you keep on like that,” he muttered, “I’ll think you mean to spit me for supper, like a Trolloc.” It was not that he did not enjoy Melindhra—as long as she refrained from pointing out that she was taller, anyway—but the situation made him uncomfortable.

“No spits for you, Matrim Cauthon.” Her thumbs dug hard into his shoulder. “That is it. Relax.”

He supposed that he would marry someday, settle down. That was what you did. A woman, a house, a family. Shackled to one spot for the rest of his life. I never heard of a wife yet that liked her husband having a drink or a gamble. And there was what those folk on the other side of the doorframe ter’angreal had said. That he was fated “to marry the Daughter of the Nine Moons.” A man has to marry sooner or later, I suppose. But he certainly did not mean to take an Aiel wife. He wanted to dance with as many women as he could, while he could.

“You are not made for spits, but for great honor, I think,” Melindhra said softly.

“Sounds fine to me.” Only now he could not get another woman to look at him, not the Maidens or the others. It was as if Melindhra had hung a sign on him saying OWNED BY MELINDHRA OF THE JUMAI SHAIDO. Well, she would not have put that last bit on, not here. Then again, who knew what an Aiel would do, especially a Maiden of the Spear? Women did not think the same as men, and Aielwomen did not think like anybody else in the world.

“It is strange that you efface yourself so.”