For everybody who is following this story, thanks! Between Electromagnetics and Analytical Mechanics, I've been short on time for writing. This chapter has followed me the whole semester. Hopefully after finals are done, I'll have a little more time to continue. As always, I own no part of the Wheel of Time and I give thanks to Robert Jordan for all his labor.

Weaving Luck

Chapter 4: Dog Pack

By viggen

Anger nearly blinded Tavis as he rode. He should have insisted Ghedlyn come. He should have dragged her by that long, lustrous black hair and tied her to the saddle. Facing anything alone, her innate stupidity would reign supreme. Her judgment could not keep her alive. That was his job; his duty and his oath, and not merely to her.

A soaked branch flicked past his face and he saw it in only enough time to strike it aside with a snarl. Farstrider extended dramatically beneath him, vaulting over a freshly revived stream. Low hanging clouds scurried along rolling hills filled with dying grasses and brush. Formerly parched trees clawed at the pair of horses struggling across the now treacherous ground.

Tavis knew he should have dragged Ghedlyn to Salidar when they were close to it days ago. Maybe he should have forced her to return to the White Tower. On the other hand, the news of the rift among the Aes Sedai profoundly disturbed him. What might they do to each other if Ghedlyn ended up in the mix? Any conflict involving his ward as anything but a bystander turned instantly more complex -even among her sisters. His central duty was to keep her alive and free to complete her work at all costs. He safeguarded her against friends and foe alike. Three days away from her took his breath from him.

In three days time... If he could wait three full days.

Farstrider juked over a low outcrop, spraying mud from a pool under his hooves. Tavis nearly lost his balance in the stirrups, surprised Ghedlyn's indisposition had bitten him so acutely. In another life -it seemed- one of his wards had died on him. The oblivion of that day clung to him and dragged at him, even years later. The prospect of facing it again left him wanting nothing but to race back to Ghedlyn's side. It was all he could do to keep Farstrider pointed the opposite direction. Three days.

Lorentz trundled along behind, dun shanks spattered with mud and the two female riders wide-eyed at the grueling pace set by the warder. Maray clutched Tavis' color-shifting cloak around her shoulders as she shivered. The blond sul'dam hung low behind the girl, her cheeks bleached white with fear. Maray darted quick glances at Tavis and sometimes behind them. He could see a quizzical intensity in the girl's bright green eyes.

A deep, thunderous boom resounded past them. The concussion echoed back on Tavis and the two women from all sides several times in refrain. By the disembodied presence lodged permanently in the corner of his mind, Tavis knew Ghedlyn had started playing some of her more devious tricks. He wished it had not come to this.

He stiffened.

The cold air leaped out too sharply.

"No!" Tavis bellowed when he felt the blow that felled his Aes Sedai. Farstrider reared with a squeal when he inadvertently dug in his heels. The primal fear that had been Ghedlyn receded down to a dull, insensate ache. He fought the urge to turn the horse around. He wanted to be instantly with her. He wanted to prevent that next blow that would wipe her from his life.

He wrenched Farstrider to a halt and turned the stallion's head. He would go back for her. Lorentz skidded in the mud to follow Tavis' frantic maneuvering.

She still lived. He knew it.

If he hurried.

The warder snarled like a feral animal caught between instinct and domestication. Sitting high in his saddle, he stared back in the direction from which they had come, then off toward where he knew he should be running. He had to remain free and alive for the next three days just so that Ghedlyn would stand a chance.

For some strange reason, while the warhorse pranced beneath him, he found himself thinking of Ghedlyn's smile. He saw it so rarely. The huge man with graying hair and world weary blue eyes remembered the small bronze-skinned Domani on her knees beside an anthill. Even with her ageless face, she stooped like a curious child. She had not quite laughed in delight, but she smiled as ants crawled over her hands. He knew she had not cared what kind of ants they were, only that they swarmed in some pattern that only she could see. He recalled that eternal searching bewilderment she wore from nearly the moment she awoke in the morning until the instant the needs of her body kicked in and forced her to sleep at night. He wished he could see reality from her perspective for just one moment, following that invisible thread of logic through a sea of nonsense. He wished he could understand.

He wanted to be back at her side protecting her, but he also wanted to bow to her wishes. She had conceived this plan, following that same fiber of logic, hoping to finally make that profound intuitive leap she had sought for decades. She had been the one who wanted to wait for the Seanchan, despite the nature of the a'dam.

He tried to remind himself that he had been expecting this. She still lived, and so would want to continue her work. Three days. He could not wait three days!

The warder gave a wordless cry of frustration. Maray and the sul'dam both stared at him in uncertainty.

A howl rose behind them in eerie counterpoint to the still-dying thunder from Ghedlyn's struggle. More than one howl. He could hear them searching, calling their positions to one another with yelps and barks. He could sense the size of the pack and feel the mechanics of their hunt.

"Wonderful," he sighed under his breath. Tavis knew the cousins of the wolf, and deeply respected them, no matter how domestic. No other friend so loyal could be such a merciless killer. Every army worth its weight employed dogs in some capacity or another.

"We have to keep on..." he managed gruffly, his baritone voice deeper than usual. "We have to find safety."

Snapping her reins, Maray turned Lorentz away and heeled the mare hard. "Hiya!" Lorentz sprang into action.

"Wait!" Tavis called after her, "we have to head this direction. The dogs will catch us if we ride that way."

The grime encrusted girl wearing the color shifting cloak did not respond. The sul'dam held on behind her, eyelids squeezed tightly closed.

Tavis had no choice but to follow. He kicked Farstrider after them and forced every ounce of strength out of his faithful steed. "Wait! We cannot go that way!"

He could see Maray crouched low in the saddle, but she did not deign to glance at him or acknowledge his calls. Tavis raced Farstrider after the two women through sleeting rain, intending fully to draw up alongside and confiscate the reins from the panicked girl. Tangles of brush snapped and flew in the wake of the two galloping horses. Tavis crouched low on the black horse's back and urged more speed. He could hear Lorentz' labored breathing ahead. He slowly managed to close the lead Maray had opened with her abrupt flight. Since the dun carried not one passenger, but two, Tavis shook his head in amazement that Lorentz persevered so vigorously.

He could hear barking off to their left through the drizzle of rain. Opportunities for a clean escape rapidly dwindled.

Maray had pulled the cloak more completely around her body and lifted the cowl to cover her head. The sul'dam wrapped her arms around the girl as much to hold fast as to gain warmth in the cutting wet. Tavis gradually whittled away the gap. He caught glimpses of loping, gray-furred bodies on four legs between trees, flanking the two thundering horses.

"Slow down and listen to me!" he shouted after Maray and the sul'dam again. If he could buy that one moment when they cut speed to close the distance, maybe he could keep the three of them from being mauled.

Maray answered by pressing herself down against the horse's mane and urging greater speed still. All he could actually see of the girl in the wild gallop were her arms sticking out from under the warder cloak.

A gray body darted across Farstrider's path and forced the horse to dodge aside. Two lithe, gray-furred dogs with cropped tails paralleled the horse, their flowing legs easily matching the speed of Tavis' mount. They nimbly ducked in close to nip at the horse's fetlocks. The distance to Lorentz opened again as the dun mare jerked and pranced through intervening brush.

"Blood and ashes!" Tavis spat as Farstrider ducked narrowly past the trunk of a tree and whinnied at the harassment from the two dogs. He wished faintly for a sword more substantial than the long-knife he wore. Dogs made a good reason to carry bows and swords. When she was around, he generally yielded to Ghedlyn facing this sort of threat. The warder steered Farstrider back onto the path of Lorentz and freed one of his feet from a stirrup to kick at the biting dog. It growled and came around from the other side. They had substantial teeth. He did not know the breed.

Other dogs surrounded Lorentz ahead, but the Seanchan woman shouted something at them that Tavis could not quite make out. Though they flanked Lorentz as eagerly as they did Farstrider, they seemed hesitant to attack.

One thick tree branch flickering past his head gave Tavis an idea. With a grunt, the warder snapped loose the first dead branch he passed within reach. The small fragment he came away with looked more like a toothpick than a bludgeon, so he threw it down hard at one of the dogs struggling to trip his mount. The gray hound yelped and dodged aside, its stubby tail tucked and its ears laid back.

He could see the sul'dam and the girl wearing the queasy-colored warder cloak, both still riding Lorentz, laboring steadily farther into the distance. Farstrider grunted and sailed for one breathless moment over a stump that loomed in their path. The warder held tight with his knees.

The next branch Tavis caught matched his need for weight. "Light forsaken mutt," he swung the branch with one hand and guided the reins of his horse with the other. His initial swing met air as the dog veered aside, then he managed to thump one soundly on its pointed snout when it lunged to bite the ankle of his boot in the stirrup. It cried and fell, but Tavis did not see whether it came back to its feet. Another gray body pressed in from the other side of the horse, joined by another and another.

Tavis wheeled in his saddle and swung the branch down on the beasts in wide arcs. He quickly bloodied the end of the makeshift club. Lorentz did not seem to get any farther away and he did not see any fewer dogs. "Blood and ashes! Bloody ashes."

Lorentz curved around a gully between two hills, the mare's light colored pelt washed out by drafts of fog. Tavis steered Farstrider to follow and was forced to adjust himself in the saddle when the horse skidded onto a flat of mud. Whacking aside yet another dog, he saw the other horse stumble violently in the mire and throw its riders. The blue dressed Seanchan woman and the warder's cloak sailed in a short arc before splashing down in the mud. Lorentz came up kicking and stomping in wild fright, beset from all sides by gray hounds that slinked out of the browned undergrowth between unhealthy trees.

"No!" Tavis bellowed as the dogs advanced. He drew back Farstrider and vaulted bodily off the tall stallion. His preference was to fight afoot and barehanded, but dogs rarely gave the choice. The warder's feet sank into the mud as he landed, though he kept his balance and crouched slightly to root himself. The heavy muscles in his legs made them as immobile as tree trunks. Slippery surfaces could be challenging to fight upon, but his training included that to its core. The knife he normally used to skin rabbits became his tooth against these furred opponents.

No quarter given or received. Without a rider, Farstrider became a well-honed, squealing weapon. A dog caught beneath the hooves of a full grown horse in a lathered rage was one dead dog. Lorentz and Farstrider both gave superb accounts of themselves.

The warder's normally kind face pinched with a shadow of seriousness. He could stare down a stone when the mood struck him and he could endure as long as any dog. This was his element. His wet gray hair matted against his skull, his blue eyes burned with a venomous light. The stains of dirt on his tunic rapidly flowed red. He hated the knife, but he knew full well how to use it. The glinting blade held reverse grip, he laid into anything that came close. Hounds of war gave no mercy, so they did not receive any.

In combat, Tavis settled into a trance-like rhythm. He could sense everything moving around him. A snout biting into his leg was a snout with his blade slashing across it. Strength became inconsequential and bodies could be tossed aside like toys. He did not exactly hold full awareness as he slipped below. With all the pent up frustration Ghedlyn had foisted upon him this day, with the anger still surging through his veins, he simply gave in to the primal allure of violence. The dogs seemed to move slowly in his orbit, silently. Each action to him was nature itself, as necessary and requisite as the slow, steady breaths he now took. He became death incarnate. He did not know how many times he struck and slashed.

He stabbed his blade into the spine of one attacker and left it there. The teeth of a growling mouth seized into his gauntlet encased forearm and the furred body shook him nearly hard enough to throw him to the mud. Not that anything could uproot him. The warder stared coolly down into the fearless hound's brown eyes, then barred his other gauntleted forearm around the back of its head so that it could not disengage its bite. He then rolled his forearms around one another and folded the beast's head over backward with a crack. He let the gray pelt drop with a dull splash to the mud.

No more animals attacked. Gray bodies littered the muddy ground. A distant howl warned of more on the way.

He stood shadowed, soaked, his arms dangling at his sides. He did not know how long he had fought. He bled from rents in his clothing, from numerous bite marks more septic than the wounds given by a clean sword. Tavis came slowly back to himself. Tomorrow, he would hurt like an old man who had run a footrace without training. He did not know how many of these animals he had dropped. It made him sad. He rubbed an elbow and found more blood from wound hiding there.

Three days, she said. Three days. Tavis laughed softly.

Slowly, he retrieved his blade. He looked at the weapon, then at his ripped tunic. He held his arms out from his sides and chuckled again at the shear ridiculousness of it. Without any place to wipe the knife off, he settled for sheathing it bloody.

Had any dogs run away amid the violence? His eyes danced across the trees surrounding the small clearing, searching. They might still be lurking around, somewhere. The soldiers these dogs served were somewhere nearby as well. He could hear other dogs searching, baying to one another in stolid refusal to ever give up. Tavis shook his head wonderingly; he had never been with an army running such a significant dog pack, let alone with an apparently minor detachment. These Seanchan certainly knew how to make the best use of these animals as weapons.

Feeling tenderness in his left leg, Tavis hobbled to Farstrider and gathered the tall horse's reins. "Come on, we have to go," the warder stroked the nervous animal's mane in an effort to calm him. Farstrider's dark eyes continued to roll and he whickered fiercely, but he followed his master without hesitation.

Tavis scanned the trees again when he heard a spate of barking. More of those fur-coated devils were close.

Dun Lorentz had backed away across the mud flat and seemed ready to bolt into the trees, but the mare expressed her training as she waited for a rider.

"We have to be running for it," he announced loudly enough for both women. "There will be trouble yet if we stay here."

The sul'dam lay in the mud, audibly weeping. She made no move to stand. Rips in her stained, tattered blue dress suggested she had not completely avoided a mauling, though she did not seem bloodied. Beside the woman, the warder cloak danced and flowed, merging with the mire; Tavis' experienced eye was the only way he could pick out where it lay. Towing Farstrider behind, Tavis lumbered to where the girl lay. If she were hurt, he did not know what he could do. He had a remedial battlefield skill at healing, though not nearly at the quality of an Aes Sedai's channeling.

"What were you thinking? Running away like that. It could have gotten us all killed," Tavis said to Maray. He lifted the color shifting cloak out of the slog and found... nothing.

No girl!

The gray haired warder's head swung back and forth as he searched the clearing.

Gray furred bodies, but no girl. Not anywhere to be seen.

"Blood and ashes!" He threw the Warder cloak down into the mud.

Face drawn furiously taut, the warder grabbed the length of silver leash still locked around the sul'dam's neck and lifted the woman by it. She gagged and coughed, her fingers hooking between the collar and her neck to keep it strangling her. The powerful warder lifted the much smaller woman until she was forced to dance on her tip-toes like a puppet.

"My generosity has run short. You will answer my questions, or die," he breathed down into the sul'dam's face from where he towered over her. "Nod if you understand me."

She gasped and gurgled.

"NOD!" he ordered.

Her head jiggled up and down in mortal terror.

Tavis lowered her until she could stand flat footed. The blond woman swayed as if about to fall. With one hand, she clutched weakly at Tavis' raised arm for support.

"Where is the child?" he demanded levelly, his apparently lax expression made menacing by his stony gaze.

"Gone," the sul'dam managed. "Long gone."

"When?"

The woman shook her head, her blue eyes watering with fresh tears. She pointed in the direction from which they had come, "Back that way... after she turned the horse from you."

"What!" Tavis exclaimed in incredulous outrage.

"She made me hold that cloak you gave her," the sul'dam mumbled. "She slipped off the horse just before the dogs came. Her luck is... is still with her."

The huge man stared at the sul'dam. He could have sworn he had seen the girl still on Lorentz just before the dog attack.

A not too distant howl caused the warder and the subject of his interrogation both to stiffen.

"Blood and ashes!" Tavis glanced around the clearing again. He thought seriously about killing this woman and leaving her body for her fellow Seanchan to find. Still, even in anger, he could not rationalize the act. He had never quite considered himself a murderer. He released his grip on the a'dam and turned away. Lorentz needed tending and he needed to flee on the minute to have any hope of getting to Ghedlyn in three days. Dragging this woman any farther would only cost time he did not have.

The sul'dam followed the silver leash to the ground without the slightest effort to bear herself up. It was as if the weight of the collar simply dragged her with it. "Please help me," she begged in a breaking voice. "Please do not leave."

Tavis finished readjusting the saddle on Lorentz and gave the dun mare a pat. He glanced to the blond sul'dam cowering on the ground, "I am being generous one last time. You have every opportunity to run for it."

"I cannot lift the a'dam," the woman pleaded in her slurred accent.

"You stood just fine when we left Ghedlyn," the graying warder pointed out.

"Maray... Marayna lifted the bracelet," the woman said, "I cannot lift it myself."

Tavis realized that she was right. He had not thought about it at the time, but he remembered Maray moving suddenly to catch the a'dam when they were preparing to leave. It occurred to him now that the girl had deliberately masked this sul'dam's inability to travel on her own. "That collar really does make you a tame pet," he exclaimed under his breath to himself.

"Just take it off me," she begged from her knees in the mud.

Under the new slathering of grime, Tavis could see that she had been a proud woman. A lingering aura of regal bearing had not been entirely dissipated from what must have felt like a jarring debasement. The warder could see the signs and had guessed distantly at them before; this woman was used to holding the leash, not wearing it. Under the revelation that the a'dam restricted her from even moving on her own, his first impulse was that she probably deserved it. He had seen this woman trying to lock the very collar she now wore around the neck of a squirming child. His next thought reminded him that Ghedlyn probably now wore a leash such as this. When she awoke, she would not be able to lift herself without the permission of some glorified animal trainer. He fought a renewed impulse to snap this sul'dam's neck.

Lifting the muddy woman as he might cradle a child, Tavis reluctantly set her into Lorentz' saddle. She cried, swallowing her sobs in a silent terror that suggested she understood what passed through the warder's mind even at that very second. She sat on Lorentz shivering when Tavis draped the bracelet of the a'dam onto the horn of Farstrider's saddle.

The warder managed gingerly to mount himself on the black horse. He heeled Farstrider to a trot without a word. Lorentz whinnied and followed just as the silver a'dam leash drew taut between the horses. The sul'dam did not make a sound.

Though barking filtered through the trees every so often, they were left alone. The searching dogs apparently held no interest in the warder or his prisoner.

Aside from the slog of heavy hooves churning down into mud, the rain patter relented to baited drizzle. The air had grown steadily colder and they breathed gouts of fog. Snow might be not far distant. Tavis wondered at the sudden onset of winter after such a long blast of summer. This far south, rains would hold out for a time, but that could soon freeze.

"What is your name?" Tavis asked the sul'dam with a monotonous grunt.

"Dobiene," she answered between the wracked breaths of suppressed sobbing.

The gray haired warder chewed on that for a time. Finally he released a sigh, "What did you say to me when I locked that collar around your neck?"

Dobiene seemed stunned. Her blue eyes, reddened at the rims and bloodshot, stared back at him wordlessly when he glanced at her. "...what?" she croaked, a finger lifted to keep the collar from biting too deeply into her neck from the jostling of the horses.

"What did you say?" he repeated.

She closed her eyes, "I -I was stunned. It just slipped out."

"What exactly?" Tavis pressed.

"I asked... for your help... on the grace of the Light," Dobiene managed.

"In the middle of battle, of an enemy, why!" Tavis asked, "Nobody does that unless they have a dagger hidden up their sleeve."

Her mouth worked and new tears streamed across her face. "It has to be a mistake. It must not be true," she gasped. "It cannot be true."

"Why did you ask me?"

She shook her head in futile hope of casting the memories aside. "When the collar closed, I knew right away," she whispered, "I felt it. No Seanchan would ever take it off me again before my death."

"I will take that collar off," Tavis told her, "when there is no doubt that I can trust you."

The woman in the now tattered and messed blue panel dress jerked a twitching nod.

"In the mean time, you are going to help me keep my ward from the fate you are narrowly avoiding."

"I -I understand," she replied. He could not see whether or not she found any relief in the stay of execution, but he still did not trust her. She blinked her eyes a number of times. Her drawling accent came faintly slurred, "The best way will be to bargain with them. They were not after your woman at all."

"If they were hunting for a harmless child," Tavis assured her, "they can hardly pass up the opportunity to leash a fully trained Aes Sedai. Maray must be able to channel or else they would not want her, but surely a monster like Ghedlyn would present far better prospects."

Dobiene gave a dry snort, "A member of the Blood sent us after your 'harmless child' on pain of all our deaths. If you find Marayna before they do, they will bargain for her."

"What makes Maray so special?" he demanded, half in sarcasm. In his own mind, he could hardly reconcile how the girl could possibly hold such a significant value next to Ghedlyn. He hoped desperately that the Seanchan who now held her would not figure out the exact nature of Ghedlyn's gift.

"Her name is Marayna Binfadil," Dobiene told him, "and she is the most valuable marath'damane on this side of the Aryth ocean. Why else do you think she wanted to run from you just the way she ran from us? It surprised me that she even told you part of her real name -likely she was too exhausted to think of a fake."

"I am not certain I believe that. Why is she valuable?" Tavis asked.

"For the same reason she slipped off this horse without you noticing before the dogs attacked," Dobiene exclaimed, "the same reason she slipped through our grasp four times before we met you. Undoubtedly, the same reason we met you in the first place. Maybe even the reason why this a'dam is working on me when it should not."

"Blaming all that on one girl?" Tavis chuckled, half in malevolence, "you Seanchan are deluded."

"Hardly," Dobiene grumbled, "It's her luck."

The sul'dam, whose blue eyes now flashed, went on to tell Tavis a tale that caused his jaw to drop. He debated whether or not he believed her and ended up deciding that not believing would be far too dangerous.

When she finally fell silent, the gray haired warder stared down at the a'dam bracelet on his saddle horn. His skin crawled. He shook his head in disbelief, "Ghedlyn and I should have run the opposite direction at the first sign of danger. I should have forced her to go back to the Tower."

"They will trade for her," Dobiene assured him.

"By the Light of the creator, how could I have landed us in the middle of this? The situation is far worse than you think," Tavis declared unhappily. He flipped matted gray hair off his forehead, "They have the other one already and they are looking for Marayna."

"Of course," the swollen eyed sul'dam said, "I told you as much."

"What they do not realize is that they also have Ghedlyn, even though they might realize soon enough," Tavis said.

"How can she be important to them next to Marayna?" Dobiene asked carefully.

"You met Ghedlyn, however briefly," Tavis pointed out, "tell me she strikes you as typical."

Dobiene stared at him flatly, not understanding his implication.

"Maybe you were inattentive last night," he allowed. "Ghedlyn is not like any other channeling woman. If she becomes involved with this, it will become ten times worse just because of who she is. Adding Ghedlyn to this is like adding fuel oil to fire."

End Chapter 4

This story is copyright Greg Smith 2005

Please do not use any part of it without my permission.