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with any Taraboner in the foreseeable future.
    With well-trained men shock could last only so long, however. In the camp, soldiers
    began racing toward their horses, many still unsaddled, though grooms had started
    working as fast as they could. Eighty-odd Seanchan footmen, archers, formed into ranks
    and set off running through Serana. At that evidence that there truly was a threat, people
    began snatching up the smaller children and herding the older toward the hoped-for
    safety of the houses. In moments, the streets were empty save for the hurrying archers in
    their lacquered armor and peculiar helmets.
    Ituralde turned the glass toward Lanasiet and found the man galloping his line of
    horsemen forward. “Wait for it,” he growled. “Wait for it.”
    Again it seemed the Taraboner heard his command, finally raising a hand to halt his men.
    At least they were still a half-mile or more from the village. The hotheaded fool was
    supposed to be near a mile away, on the edge of the trees and still in seeming disorder
    and easily swept away, but half would have to suffice. He suppressed the urge to finger
    the ruby in his left ear. The battle had begun, now, and in battle you had to make those
    following you believe that you were utterly cool, completely unaffected. Not wanting to
    knock down a putative ally. Emotion seemed to leak from a commander into his men, and
    angry men behaved stupidly, getting themselves killed and losing battles.
    Touching the half-moon-shaped beauty patch on his cheek—a man should look his best
    on a day like today—he took slow measured breaths until certain that he was as cool
    inside as his outward display, then returned his attention to the camp. Most of the
    Taraboners there were mounted, now, but they waited for twenty or so Seanchan led by a
    tall fellow with a single thin plume on his curious helmet to gallop into the village before
    falling in behind, yesterday’s late-comers trailing at the rear.
    Ituralde studied the figure leading the column, viewing him through the gaps between
    houses. A single plume would mark a lieutenant or maybe an under-lieutenant. Which
    might mean a beardless boy on his first command or a grizzled veteran who could take
    your head if you made one mistake. Strangely, the damane, marked by the shining silvery
    leash that connected her to a woman on a another horse, galloped her animal as hard as
    anyone. Everything he had heard said damane were prisoners, yet she appeared as eager
    as the other woman, the sul’dam. Perhaps—
    Abruptly his breath caught in his throat and all thought of damane fled. There were
    people still in the street, seven or eight men and women, walking in a cluster and right
    ahead of the racing column that they seemed not to hear thundering up behind them.
    There was no time for the Seanchan to stop if they wanted to, and good reason not to try
    with an enemy ahead, but it looked as though the tall fellow’s hand never twitched on his
    reins as he and the rest rode the people down. A veteran, then. Murmuring a prayer for
    the dead, Ituralde lowered the glass. What came next was best seen without it.
    Two hundred paces beyond the village, the officer started forming his command where
    the archers had already stopped and were waiting with nocked arrows. Waving directions
    to the Taraboners behind, he turned to peer at Lanasiet through a looking glass. Sunlight
    glinted off the tube’s banding. The sun was rising, now. The Taraboners began dividing
    smoothly, lance heads glittering and all slanted at the same angle, disciplined men falling
    into ordered ranks to either side of the archers.
    The officer leaned over to converse with the sul’dam. If he turned her and the damane
    loose now, this could still turn into a disaster. Of course, it could if he did not, too. The
    last of the Taraboners, those who had arrived late, began stretching out in a line fifty
    paces behind the others, driving their lances point-down into the ground and