Chapter 12

Conspiring to Take Note

Of course, this was easier said than done. And Gemiad quite rightly pointed that out. "They're not leaving many witnesses, Ron. They kill everybody they see. And I don't think we'll get one of them to just answer our questions if they're really Whitecloaks."

"True. But here's the thing, the Whitecloaks are a military organization. Or they think of themselves as one. And the military writes things down. Orders, reports, files on their own people and the ones they spy on," I said, ticking them off with my fingers.

But Gemiad shook her head. "They wouldn't be dumb enough to write this down."

I surveyed the map again. "Not in its entirety, but you can't send hundreds of armed men to another country without paperwork. Though I suppose those orders would not leave the Citadel of Light. The commander they sent will have gotten his instructions verbally."

Gemiad put her hands on her knees. "So, what? Are you suggesting we go to Amadicia?"

"Ah, no." I gave her a small smile. "Breaking into the headquarters of the Whitecloaks doesn't play to my strengths. But they still need to write reports. On how things are going, what's not working, their supply situation, casualties."

I'm working off of my imperfect understanding of modern militaries here, but even a pre-modern one isn't going to be working paperless. Judging by what I saw of the Andorans and the Shienarans they do plenty of bookkeeping.

"But that's going to be with them. Probably kept in their camp, so we would have to somehow sneak into a guarded camp and steal all that." Gemiad threw her hands up, then stilled as she looked down at our map again. "Wait, that's it. There has to be a camp, someplace they sleep and repair their things. They can't move that every day, there would be no time to destroy villages and kill people. The same would be true if they aren't Whitecloaks."

I nodded and studied the map as well. "Makes sense, but where?"

Our map wasn't great, it just had the coastline and a vague blob for Paerish Swar. Dots roughly where the towns we'd heard about were supposed to be, though it was almost certainly off in several ways. The problem was, good maps were hard to find. A lot of places, like Almoth Plain, just didn't have them because there was no government to organize the survey work.

But the Whitecloaks' commander would be working with that same problem. He would need local intelligence to update whatever old map he did have. What was his name anyway? Geof? Yeah, something like that. Geof Bornholm, no, Bornhald.

Who knew what Bornhald had learned, what hiding places he had found? Almoth Plain was more densely settled than Andor, but still not dense as medieval England or The Low Countries from the same era had been.

"They'd have to be around here," I mused, vaguely gesturing at the eastern part of Almoth Plain. "But that's still a lot of ground to cover."

"Why don't you just fly up and look?" I looked up from the map. "I remember the view of Andor when we flew to Baerlon. We could see everything." She fell silent at the memory. "If you flew, you could search most of Almoth in one day."

"I'd have to do that during the day, my eyesight isn't that much better than a human. They'd spot me and …"

But Gemiad was already shaking her head. "No, they won't. They'll be looking for men, not birds. Or you. And even if they saw you, you would be a mile up in the sky. What would they see? What could they do?"

I just about facepalmed. "Because they're not Borderlanders," I said, rubbing my forehead. "To them, a Draghkar is just a story." I had to be somewhat careful, though. The Seanchan weren't too far off and I'd eat my socks if they didn't have some doctrine to deal with hostile aerial reconnaissance.

"Right." Gemiad frowned.

"Good thinking," I said, lowering my hand. "And I don't actually need to fully turn into a dragon. I can manifest the wings while staying in human form so all they'd see was a dot, probably a big bird. I would need to be well away from Rabaul before I lift off, though."

"We should head towards Telburs Hill. Nobody has a reason to head there." Gemiad grimaced. "Not anymore. We can find someplace to make camp once we're a couple of miles away from Rabaul."

"And I have an idea for when I find their camp," I said, standing up and walking over to my rucksack. "A way to get a closer look without having to actually get close."

"You do?"

"Yeah. Aha!" I retrieved a couple of wooden dowels I'd packed just in case I needed crafting supplies. Or Artificing supplies. "I can observe the area around things I've made. So I just need to drop something a soldier would pick up," I said, holding up the dowels and twisting the material they are made from with a push of my mind.

All that glitters is silver

Gemiad's jaw nearly hit the floor. "Is that…?"

"Silver. Real silver." My hands went to work, working the newly transmuted silver as if it were clay even though I didn't put that much strength into it. "What soldier can resist picking up a coin some poor sap must have lost? Just have to make sure they're not Tar Valon Marks. If these are Whitecloaks, they might actually leave them in the dirt."

Gemiad shook her head, then leaned forward with narrowed eyes. "Have you been paying us with that money?"

"What?" I looked up from my work and shook my head. "No. Of course not, that would counterfeiting." I returned my attention to my work. "I just turned stone into precious metals and gems with this power and sold that for money. There's no law against transmutation!"

VVVV

Birds whistled in the oak trees around us as I gave the camp we'd set up one more inspection. There were some scrubs and rocks to hide it from the road winding its way through a gully down below. A closer look at the rocks showed hints of faces, but time and the weather had worn those nearly away.

A lean-to would protect Gemiad and our stuff from the rain, not that the fluffy white clouds I could see drifting slowly east appeared to hold any rain.

"I think that's everything," Gemiad said before I could. She looked at me with her fists on her hips. "You best get on your way. It's near noon and I don't think you'll find your way back here once night falls. So you really only have a few hours to do your search."

"Don't worry." I pulled out a small set of brass binoculars I'd crafted. "With these, I can see farther. That will hopefully speed things up." I took a deep breath. "Right then. I'm off." With a roll of my shoulders my wings emerged from my back.

Gemiad took a step back, and another as I stretched them out. "That looks strange. How did you do that without taking your coat or your shirt off first?"

"The Aiel hold that we are living in a dream and that when we die, what really happens is that we simply wake up."

"I don't follow?"

I shrug and my wings snap back. "I'm not saying they're right, I don't know. But I do know that reality is not always as solid as it might appear. When I manifested my wings, they are more real than my clothes so they just slide along without interacting as such." At least, that's kind of the sense I'm getting. I won't lie, if I think about it then it feels as strange to me as it does to Gemiad.

"Stay safe, don't light a campfire until I'm back, and keep that piece of string on you whatever happens. I can find you with that, should something happen."

"I'll be fine," Gemiad said, grabbing her walking stick. "I'm not defenseless and if another group of soldiers comes by like before, they'll not give this place more than a glance. So don't worry about me, just find these people so we can do something about this."

"Right. Guess I'm off then." Flexing my legs I leaped onto the tallest rock, then up about ten meters before my wings snapped open and beat against the air. I wanted to get altitude as fast I could, because the less time spent close to the ground the smaller the opportunity was for someone to catch sight of me.

The wind whistled past my ears and tugged at my coat while everything below got smaller and smaller. A tapestry of forests, fields, and roads revealed itself and still I climbed higher. The air got chilly, then cold, before the world suddenly turned white as I entered a cloud.

Arresting my ascent, I angled myself down and dove back out of the cloud at a shallow angle. No use going any higher if I couldn't see a thing.

Skimming the base of the cloud I cast my eyes around to acquaint myself with the lay of the land. Spotting Rabaul was easy, just had to trace the dirt track we'd taken back west. The rectangular fields surrounding it helped to make it stand out from its surroundings as did the wisps of grey smoke drifting up from some of the chimneys.

Looking for more of those I found them easily. Telbur Hill was to my right, from this altitude it almost looked like nothing was wrong. Almost, that is, if not for the blackened patch of ground like a necrotic wound on one side of the dead village.

To the north I saw another village, too far to tell if anything was amiss there. I couldn't quite place it when comparing the lay of the land with that on my make-shift map. Could be Sarres. We hadn't heard about anything happening there. Not yet.

From up here, it was easy to see how even a large group of horsemen could move unseen through the landscape. While there were plenty of villages around, they were all separated by kilometers of hilly forests and small streams that had cut gullies through the earth. Some of the tracks I saw were so wide and straight that I suspected they'd once been true thoroughfares for one of the kingdoms that claimed this land centuries ago.

Movement along one of those backroads caught my attention, my head snapped to the left, only to be disappointed when it was a small herd of deer running and leaping. But they looked like they were running from something and scanning down the road I saw them, a group of soldiers walking their horses.

Their cloaks weren't white and I saw no banners, but every now and then the breastplates they wore peeked out from underneath them and caught the sun. They were all armored then and moved two abreast in military precision. I'd bet they weren't bandits.

I wheeled to the right in a lazy turn as I counted the men, twenty, twenty-six, thirty-two, thirty-eight. That's half of what we saw two weeks ago. Either they split up or this was another group. So were they Whitecloaks in disguise or someone else?

They weren't Seanchans in any case. I always had some trouble picturing what their armor looked like, but I'd seen plenty of examples the last couple of months of what the people below wore to recognize it as normal armor for this continent.

Were they heading back to their friends or to their next target?

The deer had left the track and fled into a thicket. Looking past them, I didn't immediately see the group's target. At least they weren't heading for Rabaul. As they weren't moving all that fast I decided to range ahead and see if I couldn't find anything.

Gaining some more altitude I did notice a dust cloud moving slowly north, but its cause was past the horizon, somewhere close to the coast if I had to guess. That could be an army on the move, but they weren't hiding. Might be a Tarabon army. Or I was wrong and that was the rest of the Whitecloaks?

Glancing back at the small snail that was the group I'd spotted first, I decided not to risk it. But from this higher altitude, I did spot another group, twice the size, about 10 kilometers to the northeast and heading in a totally different direction.

Pulling out my binoculars I got a somewhat better look. No white cloaks either, no visible banners, but they kept in formation same as the first group. Scanning around a little more I spotted what might be a third group, and was that a fourth?

Lowering my binoculars again, I sighed. "This might take a while."

VVVV

The land was a dark, bumpy blanket underneath the starry dome. With twilight now gone even the last navigation markers were gone and I breathed hard, every beat of my wings made the muscles in my back twitch and prick.

My stomach rumbled and my tongue only vaguely remembered water. The waterskin I'd taken along had given up its last drop hours ago. I needed to land, I needed to eat, and I needed to sleep for twelve hours straight.

I just hadn't considered how much more of a strain constantly adjusting my speed or direction would take. Not to mention all the hovering.

I only had about a quarter of my Effort left, enough for two more miracles. I'd spent most of it just checking in on Gemiad in the course of the day, but her day seemed to have been uneventful. Now, I used the same miracled Gift to get an idea of where she was.

The Maker's Mark

The area around the string on her person unfolded in my mind. The smell of burning wood was the first thing I noticed, the flickering light of a fire cast dancing shadows on the stones surrounding the campsite and made them look more like statues once again.

There was a connection there and on instinct I banked right. A few more beats of my wings and I caught the light on the ground with my own eyes. I arrested my forward motion and then drew my wings in, allowing gravity to assert its hold on me.

I dropped like a stone, only to land lightly on the ground. "Hey-"

The round head of the walking stick slammed into my jaw, shock and force snapping my head to the side. There was a flash of pain that receded to a faint throb a blink of an eye later.

"Blood and ashes! Ron?" Gemiad squinted at me, still holding her weapon up high ready to pummel me.

"Were you expecting someone else?" I rubbed my jaw. It didn't hurt, not really. But I could still feel where she'd hit me.

"Oh no." She dropped her walking stick. "Are you hurt? Are you bleeding. I'm sorry for hitting you like that. When the sun set and you hadn't come back I was getting a little worried." Gemiad pulled away my hands, then pulled me closer to the fire so she could get a better look at my 'injury'.

"It's fine, Gemiad. I barely felt it anyway."

"Barely felt it? I hit you hard enough to break your jaw!" She frowned. "You are fine. How are you fine?"

"I'm a lot tougher than a human," I said. I gently pushed her hands down and took a step back.

"Right. Yes." She shook her head as if to dislodge some thought, then planted her left fist on her hip and pointed at me with her right. "Where were you? Why didn't you come back sooner? I was actually getting worried. But never mind that. Did you find them? Do you know who's doing this?"

I slumped. "I found too much." I gestured at everything. "I found seven groups I'm sure were these raiders, though they were careful not to display anything identifying. Couple of more that might have been them, or the retinue of some local lord. And there's an army of at least a couple thousand following the coast heading north. Those I know to be Taraboners, they weren't hiding."

Gemiad had pulled out her own notebook and had jotted something down. "Do you think they're looking for the same people we are?"

I shook my head, then my stomach rumbled. "I don't think so." I headed over to the fire, there was a small pot sitting next to it and a very appetizing smell drifted out of it when I got close enough. "The Tarabon army is sticking to the coast, but every group I was sure of is keeping to the interior of the plain. I think the Taraboners are responding to whatever's happening on Toman Head."

I wasn't sure this had happened in the books as well. Maybe a detail I'd forgotten, or just never mentioned. It did make sense that both Tarabon and Arad Doman would respond to an invasion of their nominal territory.

Filling a bowl to the rim with stew from the pot, I practically inhaled it. The fire had kept it only warm, not hot, but it tasted fine enough.

"Think they know something we don't?"

I considered that between spoonfuls. "Must be. All we have are rumors. I assume someone on Toman Head must have sent a rider straight to the king. Or some powerful noble. They'd have first-hand knowledge then." But not enough to realize that just sending a thousand men wasn't going to solve the problem. "But if Tarabon's eyes are on Toman's Head, Arad Doman's attention will follow."

"Which means, we might be all the help the people of Almoth Plain will get," Gemiad said. She pressed her lips together, then looked at me. "Did you get anything? Any clue on who these … murderers are?"

I shook my head. "They're hiding it, like I said. But the reason I came back so late was that I had to wait for them to set up their camps. I'd hoped they'd have some central camp, but no such luck. So instead, I had to sow my trick supplies over every camp I could find. But they only set those up late in the day."

I grimaced as the events of today came back.

"Did you get caught?"

"No. No, I didn't get caught." I hesitated, but what purpose did it serve to keep this a secret? "I had to follow them around and at least two visited a town."

Gemiad's eyes grew wide. "Did they? Did you have to?"

"They didn't murder the entire village. One group just roughed people up. Looked like they were interrogating them. The other, though … They rounded several people up and tried to hang them." I let my spoon drop into the bowl. There was still some left, but I'd lost my appetite.

"If I hadn't caught it in time … They'd be dead."

"You saved them? Without getting noticed?"

I nodded. "Yeah. It was too far away for me to fly over in time, but I could make the ropes fail and give them the … luck they needed to escape." It had only cost me two miracles.

"Well, you have dropped your fake coins and they've had enough time to eat. Probably will be drinking around the fire by now. Perfect time to eavesdrop and find out who these people really are," Gemiad said.

I grimaced. "I can only do a little of that. There's only so much I can do it in a day and I'm nearly tapped from rescuing those people and finding my way back."

Gemiad bit her lip. "How about just the largest group you found? More chances of someone saying something useful, right?"

"That, I can do." Considering it, I held out my hand. "Here, two sets of eyes and ears will notice more than one."

"But … I'm not a channeler. Or a d-dragon," she said, looking at me.

"That's alright, I'm doing the connecting. Bringing you along, it's really no different from carrying you when I'm flying. Unless you don't want to?"

Gemiad hesitated, staring at my hand. Then she took a deep breath and grabbed it with her right. "What's the next step?"

"Now, we keep in mind the first rule for traveling into the unknown." I gave her a small smile. "Don't panic." And I worked another miracle.

The Maker's Marked

The world flowed and reshaped itself, the fire slid to the right and grew brighter while the smell of a wood fire now mixed with the stench of unwashed men and horses. We stood outside a circle of seated soldiers, one of several groups I could see around us.

The camp was laid out much as I remembered, with tents spaced out in a rigid order. I didn't think either Tarabon or Arad Doman had any forces that followed a particular layout for their camp, but I wasn't sure.

"You can let go now, just don't move too far away from me."

"I can?" Gemiad let go and looked around at the men still drinking, talking, or tending to their gear. "This is strange. As if I'm a ghost."

"That's a good way to think about this. Our bodies are still back at our camp, it's only our minds that are elsewhere," I said, moving through one man to stand before another. He had a trimmed beard that only partially covered the pockmarks. "He has one of my coins. And I can sense a brush over by the horses." I'd branched out from just coins lest someone would get suspicious about all of the loose change that just happened to be on their path.

"There's a third coin there." I pointed at a dark patch of dirt in between two tents. "Nobody's picked it up yet. Hopefully they will tomorrow when they pack up their tents."

"Hmm." Gemiad tried to lift up one man's cloak, only to have her hand go right through. "Right. Like ghosts." She walked around the group sharing the fire, then reconsidered and walked right through them only to turn back and shake her head. "It's still strange," she said, before turning to me. "How long can we stay here?"

"About a quarter of an hour. This power falters after that."

"Right. That means we don't have much time to find something. And we can't move anything so even if there are documents in one of those tents, we can't look at them unless they're out in the open."

"True, but we might get lucky. Let's see if we can't find the leader of this lot."

The tents were laid out in double rows along a central broad path with the picket line for the horses set up on either side beyond the tents. Not a setup that lent itself to defense, but it should make it easier to dispatch a group to chase someone down. Or to flee themselves.

"He'll be in that big tent in the middle." Gemiad pointed out.

"The brush might be close enough we can hear at least." Stepping closer to her, I moved us both to its 'viewpoint'. She had been right, this tent was big, taking up space on both rows.

"There's no need for that, we could have just walked over here. It wasn't far."

"No, we couldn't. Remember, strictly speaking, none of this is real. Brushes, coins, those don't have eyes or ears. What we are experiencing is a representation of their surrounding. It is accurate, but if you tried to walk in a direction outside their vicinity, the world would start looking very strange to you as we are borrowing the item's perspective."

Gemiad blinked rapidly before frowning in thought. "I … right. I think that makes sense? You're saying that this is a dream, but it's not really my dream, or yours. It's that coin's, or this brush's," she said, indicating the man brushing a dappled mare. "That's going to make finding evidence a lot harder."

"Yes, I might need to sow more items. But let's see what we can find tonight." I walked over to the tent and tried sticking my head through. It worked in that nothing stopped me, but all I saw was a perfect darkness. I did hear someone, though. Two voices, one I couldn't make out, other other muffled.

"I agree, those Darkfriends had the Dark One's own luck. You are sure the ropes weren't cut?"

The response wasn't clear.

"Reprimand Child Pelon. We are here to cleanse Almoth Plain of Darkfriends, not steal from farmers. If he'd used the rope we've been issued this wouldn't have happened."

"They are Whitecloaks." Gemiad spat out the words.

I nodded, but kept quiet because what had to be the commander of this lot spoke again.

"Enough, new orders have come in from the Questioners. We are to head northeast, deeper into the plain. There's a nest of Darkfriends in Rhun's Hill. Tell the men we'll head out at first light."