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pulling their
    horse-bows from the cases fastened behind their saddles. Lanasiet, curse the man, was
    galloping his men forward.
    Turning his head for a moment, Ituralde spoke loudly enough for the men behind him to
    hear. “Be ready.” Saddle leather creaked as men gathered their reins. Then he murmured
    another prayer for the dead and whispered, “Now.”
    As one man the three hundred Taraboners in the long line, his Taraboners, raised their
    bows and loosed. He did not need the looking glass to see the sul’dam and damane and
    the officer suddenly sprout arrows. They were all but swept from their saddles by near a
    dozen striking each of them at once. Ordering that had given him a pang, but the women
    were the most dangerous people on that field. The rest of that volley cut down most of the
    archers and cleared saddles, and even as men struck the ground, a second volley lanced
    out, knocking down the last archers and emptying more saddles.
    Caught by surprise, the Seanchan-loyal Taraboners tried to fight. Among those still
    mounted, some wheeled about and lowered lances to charge their attackers. Others,
    perhaps seized by the irrationality that could take men in battle, dropped their lances and
    tried to uncase their own horse-bows. But a third volley lashed them, pile-headed arrows
    driving through breastplates at that range, and suddenly the survivors seemed to realize
    that they were survivors. Most of their fellows lay still on the ground or struggled to
    stand though pierced by two or three shafts. Those still mounted were now outnumbered
    by their opponents. A few men reined their horses around, and in a flash the lot of them
    were running south pursued by one final rain of bowshot that toppled more.
    “Hold,” Ituralde murmured. “Hold where you are.”
    A handful of the mounted archers fired again, but the rest wisely refrained. They could
    kill a few more before the enemy was beyond range, but this group was beaten, and
    before long they would be counting every arrow. Best of all, none of them went racing in
    pursuit.
    The same could not be said of Lanasiet. Cloaks streaming, he and his two hundred raced
    after the fleeing men. Ituralde imagined he could hear them yelping, hunters on the trail
    of running prey.
    “I think we’ve seen the last of Lanasiet, my Lord,” Jaalam said, reining his gray up
    beside Ituralde, who shrugged slightly.
    “Perhaps, my young friend. He may come to his senses. In any case, I never thought the
    Taraboners would return to Arad Doman with us. Did you?”
    “No, my Lord,” the taller man replied, “but I thought his honor would hold through the
    first fight.”
    Ituralde lifted his glass to look at Lanasiet, still galloping hard. The man was gone, and
    unlikely to come to senses he did not possess. A third of his force gone as surely as if that
    damane had killed them. He had counted on a few more days. He would need to change
    plans again, perhaps change his next target.
    Dismissing Lanasiet from his thoughts, he swung the glass to glance at where those
    people had been ridden down, and grunted in surprise. There were no trampled bodies.
    Friends and neighbors must have come out to carry them away, though with a battle on
    the edge of the village that seemed about as likely as them getting up and walking away
    after the horses passed.
    “It’s time to go burn all those lovely Seanchan stores,” he said. Shoving the looking glass
    into the leather case tied to his saddle, he donned his helmet and heeled Steady down the
    hill, followed by Jaalam and the others in a column of twos. Ruts from farm wagons and
    broken-down banks indicated a ford in the eastern stream. “And, Jaalam, tell a few men
    to warn the villagers to start moving what they want to save. Tell them to begin with the
    houses nearest the camp.” Where fire could spread one way, it could the other, too, and
    likely would.
    In truth, he had already set the important blaze. Breathed on the first embers,