The Dragon Reborn - By Robert Jordan Page 0,185

he decided; he could not decide if her nose fit her face, or dominated it. You are a fool, Perrin Aybara. Why care what she looks like?

The gap to the wharf was a good twenty paces, now; the sweeps dug in, cutting white furrows in black water. For a moment he considered tossing her over the side.

“Well,” she said after a moment, “I never expected my travels to take me back to Illian so soon as this.” Her voice was high, and she had a flat way of speaking, but it was not unpleasant. “You are going to Illian, are you not?” He tightened his mouth. “Don’t sulk,” she said. “You left quite a mess back there, you and that Aielman between you. The uproar was just beginning when I left.”

“You did not tell them?” he said in surprise.

“The townsfolk think the Aielman chewed through the chain, or broke it with his bare hands. They had not decided which when I left.” She made a sound suspiciously like a giggle. “Orban was quite loud in his disgust that his wounds would keep him from hunting down the Aielman personally.”

Perrin snorted. “If he ever sees an Aiel again, he’ll bloody soil himself.” He cleared his throat and muttered, “Sorry.”

“I do not know about that,” she said, as if his remark had been nothing out of the way. “I saw him in Jehannah during the winter. He fought four men together, killed two and made the other two yield. Of course, he started the fight, so that takes something away from it, but they knew what they were doing. He did not pick a fight with men who could not defend themselves. Still, he is a fool. He has these peculiar ideas about the Great Blackwood. What some call the Forest of Shadows. Have you ever heard of it?”

He eyed her sideways. She spoke of fighting and killing as calmly as another woman might speak of baking. He had never heard of any Great Blackwood, but the Forest of Shadows lay just south of the Two Rivers. “Are you following me? You were staring at me, back at the inn. Why? And why didn’t you tell them what you saw?”

“An Ogier,” she said, staring at the river, “is obviously an Ogier, and the others were not much more difficult to figure out. I managed a much better look inside Lady Alys’s hood than Orban did, and her face makes that stone-faced fellow a Warder. The Light burn me if I’d want that one angry with me. Does he always look like that, or did he eat a rock for his last meal? Anyway, that left only you. I do not like things I cannot account for.”

Once again he considered tossing her over the side. Seriously, this time. But Remen was now only a blotch of light well behind them in the darkness, and no telling how far it was to shore.

She seemed to take his silence as an urging to go on. “So there I have an”—she looked around, then dropped her voice, though the closest crewman was working a sweep ten feet away—“an Aes Sedai, a Warder, an Ogier—and you. A countryman, by first look at you.” Her tilted eyes rose to study his yellow ones intently—he refused to look away—and she smiled. “Only you free a caged Aielman, hold a long talk with him, then help him chop a dozen Whitecloaks into sausage. I assume you do this regularly; you certainly looked as if it were nothing out of the ordinary for you. I scent something strange in a party of travelers such as yours, and strange trails are what Hunters look for.”

He blinked; there was no mistaking that emphasis. “A Hunter? You? You cannot be a Hunter. You’re a girl.”

Her smile became so innocent that he almost walked away from her. She stepped back, made a flourish with each hand, and was holding two knives as neatly as old Thom Merrilin could have done it. One of the men at the sweeps made a choking sound, and two others stumbled; sweeps thrashed and tangled, and the Snow Goose lurched a little before the captain’s shouts set things right. By that time, the black-haired girl had made the knives disappear again.

“Nimble fingers and nimble wits will take you a good deal further than a sword and muscles. Sharp eyes help, as well, but fortunately, I have these things.”

“And modesty, as well,” Perrin murmured. She did not seem to notice.

“I took