Hopper fell from the air, landing gracefully on the ground. Always be ready, the wolf sent. Always, but especially when you move. An image of a careful wolf, testing the air before moving out into an open pasture.

“I understand.”

But do not come too strongly, Hopper chided.

Immediately, Perrin forced himself to remember Faile and the place where he slept. His home. He…faded slightly. His skin didn’t grow translucent, and the wolf dream stayed the same, but he felt more exposed.

Good, Hopper sent. Always ready, but never holding on too strong. Like carrying a pup in your jaws.

“That’s not going to be an easy balance,” Perrin said.

Hopper gave a slightly confused scent. Of course it was difficult.

Perrin smiled. “What now?”

Running, Hopper sent. Then more practice.

The wolf dashed away, zipping in a blur of gray and silver off toward the road. Perrin followed. He sensed determination from Hopper—a scent that was oddly similar to the way Tam smelled when training the refugees to fight. That made Perrin smile.

They ran down the road, and Perrin practiced the balance of not being in the dream too strongly, yet being ready to solidify his sense of self at any moment. Occasionally Hopper would attack him, trying to throw him from the wolf dream. They continued until Hopper—suddenly—stopped running.

Perrin took a few extra steps, surging ahead of the wolf, before stopping. There was something in front of him. A translucent violet wall that cut directly through the roadway. It extended up into the sky and distantly to both the right and the left.

“Hopper?” Perrin asked. “What is this?”

Wrongness, Hopper sent. It should not be here. The wolf smelled angry.

Perrin stepped forward and raised a hand toward the surface, but hesitated. It looked like glass. He’d never seen anything like this in the wolf dream. Might it be like the bubbles of evil? He looked up at the sky.

The wall flashed suddenly and was gone. Perrin blinked, stumbling back. He glanced at Hopper. The wolf sat on his haunches, staring at the place where the wall had been. Come, Young Bull, the wolf finally sent, standing. We will practice in another place.

He loped away. Perrin looked back down the road. Whatever the wall had been, it had left no visible sign of its existence.

Troubled, Perrin followed after Hopper.

“Burn me, where are those archers!” Rodel Ituralde climbed up to the top of the hillside. “I wanted them formed up on the forward towers an hour ago to relieve the crossbowmen!”

Before him, the battle clanged and screamed and grunted and thumped and roared. A band of Trollocs had surged across the river, crossing on ford rafts or a crude floating bridge fashioned from log rafts. Trollocs hated crossing water. It took a lot to get them over.

Which was why this fortification was so useful. The hillside sloped directly down to the only ford of reasonable size in leagues. To the north, Trollocs boiled through a pass out of the Blight and ran right into the River Arinelle. When they could be forced across, they faced the hillside, which had been dug with trenches, piled with bulwarks and set with archer towers at the top. There was no way to reach the city of Maradon from the Blight except by passing over this hill.