She shook her head and continued walking, entering the supply ring, where food wagons had been unloaded for the horde of cooks and serving maids. The supply ring was almost a village itself, with hundreds of people quickly wearing pathways in the muddy grass. She passed a group of dirty-faced youths digging pits in the ground, then a patch of women chattering and humming as they peeled potatoes, children gathering the rinds and throwing them into the pits. There weren’t many of those children, but Perrin’s force had gathered a number of families from around the countryside who—starving—had begged to join.

Serving men ran baskets of peeled potatoes to cooking pots, which were slowly being filled with water by young women making trips to the stream. Journeyman cooks prepared coals for roasting and older cooks were mixing spices into sauces that could be poured over other foods, which was really the only way to give flavor to such mass quantities.

Elderly women—the few in the camp—shuffled past with bent backs and light wicker baskets bearing herbs clutched on thin arms, their shawls rippling as they chatted with crackling voices. Soldiers hurried in and out, carrying game. Boys between childhood and manhood gathered sticks for tinder; she passed a small gaggle of these who had grown distracted capturing spiders.

It was a tempest of confusion and order coexisting, like two sides of a coin. Strange how well Faile fit in here. Looking back at herself only a few years before, she was amazed to realize that she saw a spoiled, self-centered child. Leaving the Borderlands to become a Hunter for the Horn? She’d abandoned duties, home and family. What had she been thinking?

She passed some women milling grain, then walked around a fresh batch of wild scallions lying on a blanket beside them, waiting to be made into soup. She was glad she’d left and met Perrin, but that didn’t excuse her actions. With a grimace, she remembered forcing Perrin to travel the Ways in the darkness, alone. She didn’t even recall what he’d done to set her off, though she’d never admit that to him.

Her mother had once called her spoiled, and she’d been right. Her mother had also insisted that Faile learn to run the estates, and all the while Faile had dreamed of marrying a Hunter for the Horn and spending her life far away from armies and the boring duties of lords.

Light bless you, Mother, Faile thought. What would she, or Perrin, have done without that training? Without her mother’s teachings, Faile would have been useless. Administration of the entire camp would have rested on Aravine’s shoulders. Capable though the woman was as Perrin’s camp steward, she couldn’t have managed this all on her own. Nor should she have been expected to.

Faile reached the quartermaster’s station, a small pavilion at the very heart of the cooking pits. The breeze brought an amalgamation of scents: fat seared by flames, potatoes boiling, peppered sauces spiced with garlic, the wet, sticky scent of potato peelings being carried to the small herd of hogs they’d managed to bring out of Malden.