He took off running. Yes, this was Malden. There were Aiel in the streets. He’d lived this battle, though he was much calmer this time. Before, he’d been lost in the thrill of fighting and of seeking Faile. He stopped in the street. “This is wrong. I carried my hammer into Malden. I threw the axe away.”
A horn or a hoof, Young Bull, does it matter which one you use to hunt? Hopper was sitting in the sunlit street beside him.
“Yes. It matters. It does to me.”
And yet you use them the same way.
A pair of Shaido Aiel appeared around a corner. They were watching something to the left, something Perrin couldn’t see. He ran to attack them.
He sheared through the chin of one, then swung the spike on the axe into the chest of the other. It was a brutal, terrible attack, and all three of them ended on the ground. It took several stabs from the spike to kill the second Shaido.
Perrin stood up. He did remember killing those two Aiel, though he had done it with hammer and knife. He didn’t regret their deaths. Sometimes a man needed to fight, and that was that. Death was terrible, but that didn’t stop it from being necessary. In fact, it had been wonderful to clash with the Aiel. He’d felt like a wolf on the hunt.
When Perrin fought, he came close to becoming someone else. And that was dangerous.
He looked accusingly at Hopper, who lounged on a street corner. “Why are you making me dream this?”
Making you? Hopper asked. This is not my dream, Young Bull. Do you see my jaws on your neck, forcing you to think it?
Perrin’s axe streamed with blood. He knew what was coming next. He turned. From behind, Aram approached, murder in his eyes. Half of the former Tinker’s face was coated in blood, and it dripped from his chin, staining his red-striped coat.
Aram swung his sword for Perrin’s neck, the steel hissing in the air. Perrin stepped back. He refused to fight the boy again.
The shadowy version of himself split off, leaving the real Perrin in his blacksmith’s clothing. The shadow exchanged blows with Aram. The Prophet explained it to me…You’re really Shadowspawn…. I have to rescue the Lady Faile from you….
The shadowy Perrin changed, suddenly, into a wolf. It leaped, fur nearly as dark as that of a Shadowbrother, and ripped out Aram’s throat.
“No! It didn’t happen like that!”
It is a dream, Hopper sent.
“But I didn’t kill him,” Perrin protested. “Some Aiel shot him with arrows right before….”
Right before Aram would have killed Perrin.
The horn, the hoof, or the tooth, Hopper sent, turning and ambling toward a building. Its wall vanished, revealing Master Luhhan’s smithy inside. Does it matter? The dead are dead. Two-legs do not come here, not usually, once they die. I do not know where it is that they go.
Perrin looked down at Aram’s body. “I should have taken that fool sword from him the moment he picked it up. I should have sent him back to his family.”
Does not a cub deserve his fangs? Hopper asked, genuinely confused. Why would you pull them?
“It is a thing of men,” Perrin said.
Things of two-legs, of men. Always, it is a thing of men to you. What of things of wolves?
“I am not a wolf.”
Hopper entered the forge, and Perrin reluctantly followed. The barrel was still boiling. The wall returned, and Perrin was once again wearing his leather vest and apron, holding his tongs.
He stepped over and pulled out another figurine. This one was in the shape of Tod al’Caar. As it cooled, Perrin found that the face wasn’t distorted like Aram’s, though the lower half of the figurine was unformed, still a block of metal. The figurine continued to glow, faintly reddish, after Perrin set it down on the floor. He thrust his tongs back into the water and pulled free a figure of Jori Congar, then one of Azi al’Thone.
Perrin went to the bubbling barrel time and time again, pulling out figurine after figurine. After the way of dreams, fetching them all took both a brief second and what seemed like hours. When he finished, hundreds of figurines stood on the floor facing him. Watching. Each steel figure was lit with a tiny fire inside, as if waiting to feel the forger’s hammer.
But figurines like this wouldn’t be forged; they’d be cast. “What does it mean?” Perrin sat down on a stool.
Mean? Hopper opened his mouth in a wolf laugh. It means there are many little men on the floor, none of which you can eat. Your kind is too fond of rocks and what is inside of them.
The figurines seemed accusing. Around them lay the broken shards of Aram. Those pieces seemed to be growing larger. The shattered hands began working, clawing on the ground. The shards all became little hands, climbing toward Perrin, reaching for him.