The Dragon Reborn Read Online Free PDF

winding its way through the trees in the distance, now seen, now hidden. A piebald horse, he thought.
And not before time!
He opened his mouth to announce her—it would be a woman; each rider before had been—when Masema suddenly muttered, “Raven!” like a curse.
    Perrin jerked his head up. A big black bird was quartering over the treetops no more than a hundred paces away. Its quarry might have been carrion dead in the snow or some small animal, yet Perrin could not take the chance. It did not seem to have seen them, but the oncoming rider would soon be in its sight. Even as he spotted the raven, his bow came up, and he drew—fletchings to cheek, to ear—and loosed, all in one smooth motion. He was dimly aware of the slap of bowstrings beside him, but his attention was all on the black bird.
    Of a sudden it cartwheeled in a shower of midnight feathers as his arrow found it, and tumbled from the sky as two more arrows streaked through the place where it had been. Bows half-drawn, the other Shienarans searched the sky to see if it had a companion.
    “Does it have to report,” Perrin asked softly, “or does . . .
he
. . . see what it sees?” He had not meant anyone to hear, but Ragan, the youngest of the Shienarans, less than ten years his elder, answered as he fitted another arrow to his short bow.
    “It has to report. To a Halfman, usually.” In the Borderlands there was a bounty on ravens; no one there ever dared assume any raven was just a bird. “Light, if Heartsbane saw what the ravens saw, we would all have been dead before we reached the mountains.” Ragan’s voice was easy; it was a matter of every day to a Shienaran soldier.
    Perrin shivered, not from the cold, and in the back of his head something snarled a challenge to the death. Heartsbane. Different names in different lands—Soulsbane and Heartfang, Lord of the Grave and Lord of the Twilight—and everywhere Father of Lies and the Dark One, all to avoid giving him his true name and drawing his attention. The Dark One often used ravens and crows, rats in the cities. Perrin drew another broadhead arrow from the quiver on his hip that balanced the axe on the other side.
    “That may be as big as a club,” Ragan said admiringly, with a glance at Perrin’s bow, “but it can shoot. I would hate to see what it could do to a man in armor.” The Shienarans wore only light mail, now, under their plain coats, but usually they fought in armor, man and horse alike.
    “Too long for horseback,” Masema sneered. The triangular scar on his dark cheek twisted his contemptuous grin even more. “A good breastplate will stop even a pile arrow except at close range, and if your first shot fails, the man you’re shooting at will carve your guts out.”
    “That is just it, Masema.” Ragan relaxed a bit as the sky remained empty. The raven must have been alone. “With this Two Rivers bow, I’ll wager you don’t have to be so close.” Masema opened his mouth.
    “You two stop flapping your bloody tongues!” Uno snapped. With a long scar down the left side of his face and that eye gone, his features were hard, even for a Shienaran. He had acquired a painted eyepatch on their way into the mountains during the autumn; a permanently frowning eye in a fiery red did nothing to make his stare easier to face. “If you can’t keep your bloody minds on the bloody task at hand, I’ll see if extra flaming guard duty tonight will bloody settle you.” Ragan and Masema subsided under his stare. He gave them a last scowl that faded as he turned to Perrin. “Do you see anything yet?” His tone was a little gruffer than he might have used with a commander put over him by the King of Shienar, or the Lord of Fal Dara, yet there was something in it of readiness to do whatever Perrin suggested.
    The Shienarans knew how far he could see, but they seemed to take it as a matter of course, that and the color of his eyes, as well. They did not know everything, not by half, but