She rode along the broad road until she caught up with Rand, in his red coat today, and joined Aviendha and Amys and thirty or more Wise Ones she barely knew besides the other two dreamwalkers, all following at a short distance. Mat, with his hat and his blackhafted spear, and Jasin Natael, leathercased harp slung on his back and crimson banner rippling in the breeze, were riding, but hurrying Aiel passed the party by on both sides, because Rand led his dapple stallion, talking with the clan chiefs. Skirts or no skirts, the Wise Ones would have made a good job of keeping up with the passing columns if they were not sticking to Rand like pine sap. They barely glanced at Egwene, their eyes and ears focused on him and the six chiefs.
“... and whoever comes through after Timolan,” Rand was saying in a firm voice, “has to be told the same thing.” Stone Dogs left to watch at Taien had returned to report the Miagoma entering the pass a day behind. “I've come to stop Couladin despoiling this land, not to loot it.”
“A hard message,” Bael said, “for us as well, if you mean we cannot take the fifth.” Han and the rest, even Rhuarc, nodded.
“The fifth, I give you.” Rand did not raise his voice, yet suddenly his words were driven nails. “But no part of that is to be food. We will live on what can be found wild or hunted or bought — if there is anyone with food to sell — until I can have the Tairens increase what they're bringing up from Tear. If any man takes a penny more than the fifth, or a loaf of bread without payment, if he burns so much as a hut because it belongs to a treekiller, or kills a man who is not trying to kill him, that man will I hang, whoever he is.”
“Dark to tell the clans this,” Dhearic said, almost as stony. “I came to follow He Who Comes With the Dawn, not to coddle oathbreakers.” Bael and Jheran opened their mouths as if to agree, but each saw the other and snapped his teeth shut again.
“Mark what I said, Dhearic,” Rand said. “I came to save this land, not ruin it further. What I say stands for every clan, including the Miagoma and any more who follow. Every clan. You mark me well.” This time no one spoke, and he swung back into Jeade'en's saddle, letting the stallion walk on among the chiefs. Those Aiel faces showed no expression.
Egwene drew breath. Those men were all old enough to be his father and more, leaders of their people as surely as kings for all they disclaimed it, hardened leaders in battle. It seemed only yesterday that he had been a boy in more than age, a youth who asked and hoped rather than commanded and expected to be obeyed. He was changing faster than she could keep up with now. A good thing, if he kept these men from doing to other cities what Couladin had done to Taien and Selean. She told herself that. She only wished he could do it without showing more arrogance every day. How soon before he expected her to obey him as Moiraine did? Or all Aes Sedai? She hoped it was only arrogance.
Wanting to talk, she kicked a foot free of its stirrup and held a hand down for Aviendha, but the Aiel woman shook her head. She really did not like to ride. And maybe all those Wise Ones striding in a pack made her reluctant, too. Some of them would not have ridden had both their legs been broken. With a sigh, Egwene climbed down, leading Mist by the reins, settling her skirts a little grumpily. The soft, kneehigh Aiel boots she wore looked comfortable and were, but not for walking very far on that hard, uneven pavement.
“He truly is in command,” she said.
Aviendha barely shifted her eyes from Rand's back. “I do not know him. I cannot know him. Look at the thing he carries.”
She meant the sword, of course. Rand did not precisely carry it; it hung at the pommel of his saddle, in a plain scabbard of brown boarhide, the long hilt covered in the same leather, rising as high as his waist. He had had hilt and scabbard made by a man from Taien, on the journey through the pass. Egwene wondered why, when he could channel a sword of fire, and do other things that made swords seem toys. “You did give it to him, Aviendha.”
Her friend scowled. “He tries to make me accept the hilt, too. He used it; it is his. Used it in front of me, as if to mock me with a sword in his hand.”
“You are not angry about the sword.” She did not think Aviendha was; she had not said a word about it, that night in Rand's tent. “You are still upset over how he spoke to you, and I do understand. I know he is sorry. He sometimes speaks without thinking, but if you would only let him apologize —”
“I do not want his apologies,” Aviendha muttered. “I do not want... I can bear this no more. I cannot sleep in his tent any longer.” Suddenly she took Egwene's arm, and if Egwene had not known better, she would have thought her on the brink of tears. “You must speak to them for me. To Amys and Bair and Melaine. They will listen to you. You are Aes Sedai. They must let me return to their tents. They must!”
“Who must do what?” Sorilea said, dropping back from the others to walk alongside them. The Wise One of Shende Hold had thin white hair and a face like leather drawn tight over her skull. And clear green eyes that could knock a horse down at ten paces. That was the way she normally looked at anyone. When Sorilea was angry, other Wise Ones sat quietly and clan chiefs made excuses to leave.
Melaine and another Wise One, a graying Black Water Nakai, started to join them too, until Sorilea turned those eyes on them. “If you were not so busy thinking of that new husband, Melaine, you would know Amys wants to talk with you. You, also, Aerin.” Melaine flushed bright red, and scurried back to the others, but the older woman got there first. Sorilea watched them go, then put her full attention on Aviendha. “Now we can have a quiet talk. So you do not want to do something. Something you were told to do, of course. And you think this child Aes Sedai can get you out of doing it.”
“Sorilea, I —” Aviendha got no further.
“In my day, girls jumped when a Wise One said jump, and continued jumping until they were told to stop. As I am still alive, it is still my day. Need I make myself clearer?”
Aviendha took a deep breath. “No, Sorilea,” she said meekly.
The old woman's eyes came to rest on Egwene. “And you? Do you think you are going to beg her off?”
“No, Sorilea.” Egwene felt as though she should curtsy.
“Good,” Sonlea said, not sounding satisfied, just as if it was what she had expected. It almost certainly was. “Now I can speak to you of what I really want to know. I hear the Car'a'carn has given you an interest gift like no other ever heard of, rubies and moonstones.”
Aviendha jumped as if a mouse had run up her leg. Well, she probably would not, but it was the way Egwene would have jumped in that circumstance. The Aiel explained about Laman's sword and the scabbard so hastily that her words tripped over one another.
Sorilea shifted her shawl, muttering about girls touching swords, even wrapped in blankets, and about having a sharp word with “young Bair.” “So he has not captured your eye. A pity. It would bind him to us; he sees too many people as his, now.” For a moment she eyed Aviendha up and down. “I will have Feran look at you. His greatfather is my sisterson. You have other duties to the people than learning to be a Wise One. Those hips were made for babes.”
Aviendha stumbled over an upraised paving stone and just caught herself short of falling. “I... I will think on him, when there is time,” she said breathlessly. “I have much to learn yet, of being a Wise One, and Feran is Seia Doon, and the Black Eyes have vowed not to sleep beneath roof or tent until Couladin is dead.” Couladin was Seia Doon.
The leatheryfaced Wise One nodded as though everything had been settled. “You, young Aes Sedai. You know the Car'a'carn well, it is said. Will he do as he has threatened? Hang even a clan chief?”
“I think... maybe... that he will.” More quickly, Egwene added, “But I am sure he can be brought to see reason.” She was not sure of any such thing, or even that it was reason — what he had said sounded only just — but justice would do him no good if he found the others turning against him as well as the Shaido.
Sorilea glanced at her in surprise, then turned a gaze on the chiefs around Rand's horse that should have knocked the lot of them flat. “You mistake me. He must show that mangy pack of wolves that he is the chief wolf. A chief must be harder than other men, young Aes Sedai, and the Car'a'carn harder than other chiefs. Every day a few more men, and even Maidens, are taken by the bleakness, but they are the soft outer bark of the ironwood: What remains is the hard inner core, and he must be hard to lead them.” Egwene noticed that she did not include herself or the other Wise Ones among those who would be led. Muttering to herself about “mangy wolves,” Sorilea strode ahead, and soon had all the Wise Ones listening as they walked. Whatever she was saying, it did not carry.
“Who is this Feran?” Egwene asked. “I've never heard you speak of him. What does he look like?”
Frowning at Sorilea's back, more than half hidden by the women clustered around her, Aviendha spoke absently. “He looks much like Rhuarc, only younger, taller and more handsome, with much redder hair. For over a year he has been trying to attract Enaila's interest, but I think she will teach him to sing before she gives up the spear.”