Chapter 11: Sente
The Rahad was different than Rand remembered. Different and yet the same. The milieu of buildings and mortar were subject to change. People's nature changed more slowly. The Rahad was formerly a dangerous slum, rickety, overgrown tenements jettying out to overhang narrow streets. Streets frequented by cutpurses and killers, fervid fingers caressing the hilts of long curved knives uncomfortably reminiscent of Padan Fain's cursed Shadar Logoth blade.
The former slum was a good deal more affluent, now. The slouching youth on the corner might have been tending a barrow of exotic fruit instead of being a posted lookout for one of the many feral gangs that formerly ran these streets before the Seanchan came, but he still spat through the gap in his teeth and scowled at Rand with ingrained suspicion. Many of the properties were new – constructions of cheap red brick – but better-built than the ramshackle timber-framed buildings they had replaced.
The Rahad bustled, thronging crowds jostling. The ground floor of every building was a shop – weaver, tanner, grocer, glassmaker, tinsmith, farrier. Skilled labour for the most part, and folk with coin in their pockets to pay for it.
There wasn't a high Seanchan presence on the streets – one of the reasons Rand had chanced cutting through the Rahad – but he was regretting the choice just the same. This still wasn't a place where foreigners came often, and the Ebou Dari sizing him up saw a dark-haired foreigner with a pedlar's pack and travel-stained clothing. A stranger with a light purse. He wasn't welcome here, and his presence was drawing too many unwanted stares. He would be remembered.
What's done is done, Rand told himself. His pace quickened appreciably. He was nearly at his destination now. He crossed a broad well-maintained bridge of white stone that arched over the murky, turgid waters of one of Ebou Dar's numerous canals. This waterway seemed to be an unofficial demarcation separating the Rahad from the district surrounding the Tarasin Palace and the Travelling Grounds – the hub of the great city of Ebou Dar.
A left turn set him upon a broad highway – a principal artery running through the city – and evidently newly constructed. Along its way, tall pylons of wood reached into the sky like the masts of ships, high above the roofline at regular intervals a few hundred yards apart, their tops crowned with boxy stork-nests of wood. Rand could only guess at their purpose. Sentry towers of some sort? But if that was the case, why were there so many of them?
Rand surmised from the loaded goods wagons rattling to and fro that this road bore traffic to and from the Travelling Grounds and the Imperial Customs. It was a location Rand was keen to avoid. He had no business in Seanchan and wanted to avoid the scrutiny of Seanchan bureaucracy if possible – he didn't know whether he required documentation to be in Ebou Dar and he wasn't keen to find out.
The pavements flanking the highway on either side were broad, and Rand made swift, unimpeded progress on them into the heart of the city, before a hand-painted wooden street-sign indicated he needed to leave the route. His business was in the Tarasin Palace. Specifically, the wing designated for imperial sul'dam and damane where the Forsaken, Moghedien was recused.
At first, the increase in activity almost passed unnoticed by Rand. Traffic heading into the city was being halted at impromptu checkpoints, and turned back. Merchants inclined to argue soon changed their mind when confronted by implacable Seanchan heavy infantry, their antennae crests nodding above the crowd, imbued with a singular purpose.
Rand's eyes narrowed. Suddenly there were a lot of troops on the street, moving assuredly in a coordinated manner to block all routes into the Inner City. And these weren't levy troops with their white chevrons. This was line infantry, hostile behind full-faced insectile helms.
This was clearly no peacekeeping force, and the crowd sensed it, confronted with those awful, implacable masks, shying away from the Seanchan. Instead of the tacit welcome of a human countenance, face to face, those prognathous mandibles yawned agape – only too happy to bite down hard, given the least excuse.
Something was clearly badly awry.
Rand tried to skirt the main streets, to work his way inwards towards his destination, hoping that he could make it before the Seanchan had established a perimeter. He slipped through a side-alley, which afforded him a tantalising glimpse of the Palace itself – and almost ran slap-bang into a Seanchan patrol of four men.
They were all of a type, Rand noted. Short, stocky, wiry. Hard men, who moved like athletes, not soldiers, and yet with a fluid awarewness of one another that was second nature. Cropped and fierce, like mastiffs, their equipment pared down to bare essentials. Men of life and death.
Beyond dangerous, Rand deemed them. Oh, sheepherder, what have you stumbled into?
The sergeant in charge shook his head at Rand, gesturing back up the alley, even as he pushed back his staring helm to reveal a craggy face only a little less indurate. Eyes like awls sized Rand up. "You need to leave, waylander. We are securing this area. Go back the way you came." Despite the slurring delivery, the words conveyed an unmistakeable hardness.
Momentarily, Rand considered the idea of tackling the patrol, and immediately discarded it. He was unarmed apart from his belt knife. Whilst he thought he was capable of overpowering these men, maybe, he knew the near certainty was that even if he prevailed, one of them would surely have time to raise the alarm.
He thought once again of using his ta'veren ability – hitherto untested – to stop these men's hearts in their chests. He rejected the idea almost as soon as it formed. Light, no! These were just men doing their job, and they hadn't threatened him.
He decided to play for time as his mind raced. With the best grace he could muster, he tried a placatory smile. "Officer, I'd arranged to meet a girl in that square yonder. She isn't the kind of woman you'd want to stand up and run the risk of losing, if you catch my drift." Rand improvised. "Short chestnut hair, eyes to drown in … and the prettiest little bottom in Ebou Dar." Light, he was describing Min, Rand realised. He spread his hands imploringly. "Light, lads, have a heart!"
He could tell they weren't buying what he was selling. He supposed any expression looked forbidding on Moridin's lantern-jawed face. He considered his travelling garb, too. No, not the clothing of a man on an assignation. Maybe falling back upon his rustic charm had been a mistake. The sergeant just shook his head flatly.
That only left one option. "Look, officer, how about I give you a few Andoran silver marks for you and your lads to drink the Empress's health and look the other way. I promise that in your absence I won't invade anything bigger than a snug inn with a warming fire!" he added with a self-deprecatory smile.
If possible, the Seanchan's face grew harder. There was a snarl in his tone as he addressed Rand. "We are the fighting men of the Winged Hammer, Andorman. We don't compromise. We don't take bribes. Our loyalty is unconditional. If it weren't that you are a foreigner that does not know our ways, we would take you into custody. But I don't fancy spending my time writing a report. Just… go. Bugger off. Turn around and get lost, before I change my mind."
The Winged Hammer? It was not a regiment Rand had heard of. Which meant it was clearly a crack regiment out of Seanchan, and likely an aerial one, as the name suggested. He had the feeling he'd stumbled into something very dangerous indeed. It was time to leave. He nodded his head in assent and turned on his heel, heading back the way he'd came.
A clatter of beating wings high overhead made him look up. That was a flying wedge of raken inbound, imperiously sweeping into the city, roughly following the line of the main avenue he'd been on earlier. As he watched, a red flare kindled, tossed lazily from the saddle far above. It was answered by the sudden ignition of red flares from the tall mast-like towers he'd observed on both streets, and he understood in part. Fireworks, like those Aludra had made. Landing flares. What in the Light was going on?
Traffic scattered on the main street, the beasts of burden instinctively shying away in terror as a squad of immense grolm thundered up the street, careless of the crowds, who squalled and scattered, panicked. As Rand watched, horrified, a youth fell and was trampled under their chitinous cleft hooves as the bear-sized three-eyed beasts tore onwards at a breakneck pace.
In their wake, blowing hard, a turma of lopar struggled to keep pace, hulking shoulders and muscular thighs powering them forward on all fours. Ugly brutes, like shaved bears, whose leathery skin hung in loose wattles about their swart necks, like a pit-fighting dog, and for the same reason. These beasts were the shock troops of the Seanchan Empire, highly intelligent and ferocious animals, bred for war.
What manner of man would turn them loose within a city? Demandred. Sammael. But they were dead. Behind them, a hundred Seanchan light infantry, running for all they were worth to keep up. Wherever they had come from, it couldn't be far away. Somebody's opened a few extra Gateways outside the city, or just inside the walls, Rand guessed. There were a fair few squares suitable to the purpose other than the Mol Hara.
It was clearly an invasion. He could even guess the outline of the plan that the invader was working to. It was like a Stones board. Moyo moyō to begin – a series of apparently arbitrary placement of stones. Gateways had changed everything. Leaving the defender trying to work out the attacker's objectives, intuit where the concentration of his forces would be unleashed. All of a sudden, the defender would realise that these initial casual placements had become the framework for annexing territory.
What next? Sente. Keep the momentum, the initiative, while turning potential territory staked out in the preceding phase into real gains. Sudden bursts of aggression to panic the defender, hoping to pick away at his holdings. Raken and to'raken to deploy Fists of Heaven and Bloodknives to wreak havoc behind enemy lines and destroy morale as well as assassinating key enemy personnel.
All the while shoring up, consolidating. Heavy infantry to invest key areas, backed up with damane and sul'dam. Flying columns of heavy cavalry, lancers and war-beasts to soften up the enemy. And in a protracted fight, the gunpowder weapons that Aludra had invented, and which the Band had brought to Seanchan. Dragons.
There was the rumble of distant thunder across the city, lightning falling from a clear sky, levin interleaving between bold gold domes and cupolas on the littoral skyline. Damane fighting. Rand felt a chill course his spine. Whoever the attacking general was, he was very, very good. His style reminded Rand of Mat Cauthon, except there was no way Mat would prosecute attacking a city full of innocent people in this fashion. The aggressor was relentless, cold-hearted and above all, bold. It was the slashing style of a young man, utterly confident in his own abilities.
Rand hurried now, almost running to keep abreast of the crowd escaping the bedlam on the high street by flooding the back alleys. It was a terrible thing to consider, but could he take advantage of this chaos to infiltrate the Tarasin Palace somehow? Rand made maybe a quarter-mile on his reconnaissance when he realised that things had definitely taken a turn for the worse.
Belatedly, Rand finally noticed the presence of the man tailing him. An old man, all gnarr and gristle by the look of him. His stalker had been canny enough to pass unobserved until now, when the contrast between the shoaling, panicked crowd and the single-minded intent of his pursuer had become readily apparent. Whoever he was, he didn't scare easy, and in this turmoil, that marked him as capable. Perhaps truly dangerous. Rand hurried, trying to shake his tail, squeezing into an alley and emerging into a small square, where he stopped in his tracks.
There were a pair of damane and a good dozen billmen confronting him across the cobbles. Their full attention was on him. Faces blanched white with terror amongst the soldiers, even the damane and their haughty sul'dam, but they were clearly determined, resolved. Those gleaming glaives, lowered in wary menace, looked well-honed and the men bearing them familiar with their use, but it was the channellers Rand was worried about.
Before he could even blink, the air encased him in manacles of stone, and somehow Rand knew that the nearest damane had hurled a shield at him with everything she had, trying to prevent him touching saidin, even trying to sever him from the Source. The bafflement he saw in her eyes attested to what she'd found – that there was nothing to sever.
It had been a desperate ambush – almost pitiful if he truly had been Moridin. He could have easily ripped apart a single shield in an instant, unless the damane had been as strong as Alivia, or Semirhage. Then they would all die. Sul'dam, damane and soldiers alike.
Briefly, Rand considered trying to slay the damane – or maybe the sul'dam – before setting aside the idea. The damane had no free will, and were as much hostages to the situation as he was. He knew intimately how that felt. Semirhage had forced him to wear the Domination Band. Had Compelled him to try and kill Min with his bare hands.
Rand understood that a failure to murder these women would likely result in his own death, as by their way of thinking, there was simply no way for them to safely take him into custody. But he couldn't bring himself do it. It was one thing to slay Semirhage, one of the most evil people ever to have lived, to save Min's life. Quite another to kill this pair of sul'dam. What they did was reprehensible, but perhaps they were redeemable.
The final realisation that tipped the balance was that he recognised the insignia of the grimly determined soldiers. The harlequin tabards draped over their breastplates – tricked out like playing-cards – were unfamiliar, but the badge upon them – an outstretched red hand – and the Old Tongue inscription below identified them as Shen en Calhar. The Band. Mat's men.
In the end, it didn't matter. The sul'dam decided for him. A mace of Air clubbed his unprotected head, rendering him senseless.