"A Warder?" Mat said, tucking the stones into his saddlebags. He could find more anywhere, but he liked the colors. He had an eagle feather in there, too, and a piece of weathered snow-white stone that might have been carved with scrolls once. There had been a boulder that looked as if it had been the head of a statue, too, but the thing would have needed a wagon. "Never. They’re all fools and dupes, letting Aes Sedai lead them around by the nose. What put a notion like that in your head?"

Nalesean shrugged. He fairly oozed sweat, but he still wore his coat – red striped with blue today – buttoned to the neck. Mat’s hung open, and he still thought he was broiling. "I suppose it’s all the Aes Sedai," the Tairen said. "Burn my soul, it can’t but make you think, can it? I mean, burn my soul, what are they up to?" He meant the Aes Sedai on the other side of the Erinin, reportedly scurrying upriver or down a sight quicker than the wanderers that were over there as well.

"Best not to think about them is what I say." Mat touched the silver foxhead through his shirt; even with that, he was glad the Aes Sedai were across the river. A handful of his soldiers traveled on each of the river craft, and few as villages were, they put a boat ashore on his orders at every one they passed on the far side, to see what they could learn. So far the news had been unrevealing and often unpleasant. Aes Sedai swarming was the least of it.

"And how are we not to think of them?" Talmanes asked. "Do you think the Tower really did pull Logain’s strings?" That was one of the newer bits, just two days old.

Mat pulled off his hat long enough to mop his forehead before answering. Nightfall would be a little cooler. But no wine, no ale, no women, and no gambling. Who would be a soldier for choice? "There’s not much I’d say was beyond Aes Sedai." Sliding a finger behind the scarf around his neck, he eased it. One thing about Warders, by what he knew from observing Lan anyway, they never seemed to sweat. "But that? Talmanes, I’d believe you were Aes Sedai first. You aren’t, are you?"

Daerid doubled over the pommel of his saddle laughing, and Nalesean nearly fell off his horse. Talmanes stiffened at first, but finally he grinned. He almost chuckled. The man did not have much sense of humor, but he did have some.

His seriousness reasserted itself quickly, though. "What about the Dragonsworn? If it is true, Mat, it means trouble." The others’ laughter might as well have been chopped with an axe.

Mat grimaced. That was the newest news or rumor – call it what you would – picked up yesterday, a village burned somewhere in Murandy. Worse, supposedly they had killed everybody who would not swear to the Dragon Reborn, and their families with them. "Rand will settle for them. If it’s true. Aes Sedai, Dragonsworn, all that is his business, and we’re well out of it. We have our own to tend."

That made nobody’s face less grim, of course. They had seen too many burned villages, and thought they would see more soon after reaching Tear. Who would be a soldier?

A horseman appeared over the next rise ahead, galloping toward them, leaping his mount over brush rather than swerve around even on the downslope. Mat signed for a halt, adding, "No trumpets." Word rippled behind him in a fading murmur, but he kept his eyes on the rider.

Dripping sweat, Chel Vanin reined his dun gelding in before Mat. In a rough gray coat that fit his balding bulk like a sack, he sat his saddle like a sack, too. Vanin was fat, and no getting around it. Yet improbable as it seemed, he could ride anything ever born, and he was very good at what he did.

Long before they reached Maerone, Mat had surprised Nalesean, Daerid and Talmanes by asking for the names of the best poachers and horse thieves among their men, the ones they knew were guilty but could not prove anything against. The two nobles in particular had not wanted to admit having any such men in their commands, but after a little prodding they came up with the names of three Cairhienin, two Tairens and, surprisingly, two Andorans. Mat had not thought any of the Andorans had been with the Band long enough to make themselves known like that, but apparently word got about.

Those seven men he took aside and told that he needed scouts, and that a good scout used much the same skills as a poacher or horse thief. Ignoring fervent denials that they had ever committed any crime whatsoever – more from each than from Talmanes and Nalesean combined, and just as eloquent if far coarser – he offered pardons for any thefts done before that day, triple pay and no work details as long as they reported the truth. And a hanging for the first lie; a lot of men could die from a scout’s lie. Even with the threat they leaped at it, probably more for less work than for the extra silver.

But seven was not enough, so he asked them to suggest others, and to keep in mind what he said about the needed skills, as well as the fact that whether they lived to collect their triple pay would depend in large part on the abilities of those they named. That caused a lot of chin-scratching and edgy looks, but between them they produced eleven more names, emphasizing all the while that they were not implying anything about those fellows. Eleven men, good enough poachers and horse thieves that neither Daerid nor Talmanes nor Nalesean had suspected them but not good enough to avoid the notice of the first seven. Mat made those the same offer, and asked for names again. By the time he reached a point where no more names were to be found, he had forty-seven scouts. Hard times had put a lot of men to soldiering instead of the craft they would rather have followed.

The last, named by all three just before him, had been Chel Vanin, an Andoran who had lived in Maerone but ranged wide on both sides of the Erinin. Vanin could steal a hen pheasant’s eggs without disturbing her on the nest, though it was unlikely he would fail to put her in the sack too. Vanin could steal a horse out from under a nobleman without the nobleman knowing it for two days. Or so his recommenders claimed in tones of awe. With a gap-toothed smile and a look of utter innocence on his round face, Vanin had protested he was a stableman and sometime farrier, when he could find work. But he would take the job for four times the Band’s normal pay. So far, he had been more than worth it.

Sitting his dun in front of Mat on that hilltop, Vanin looked disturbed. He approved of Mat not wanting to be called "my Lord," since he did much like bowing to anyone, but he managed to knuckle his forehead casually in a rough sort of salute. "I think you got to see this. I don’t know what to make of it myself. You got to look for yourself."

"Wait here," Mat told the others, and to Vanin, "Show me."

It was not a long ride, just over the next two hills and up a winding stream with wide borders of dried mud. The smell announced what Vanin wanted him to see before the first vultures waddled into the air. The others just flapped a few paces before settling again, darting featherless heads and squawking challenges. Worst were those that never looked up from their dinners, milling piles of stained black feathers.

An overturned wagon like a little house on wheels, virulently painted in green and blue and yellow, identified the scene as a Tinker caravan, but few of the wagons had escaped burning. Bodies lay everywhere in bright clothes torn and darkened with dried blood, men and women and children. A part of Mat analyzed it coldly; the rest of him wanted to vomit, or run, anything but sit there on Pips. The attackers had come from the west first. Most of the men and older boys lay there, mingled with what was left of a number of large dogs, as if they had tried to form a line, to hold back killers with their bodies while the women and children ran. A futile flight. Heaped corpses showed where they had run headlong into the second attack. Only the vultures moved now.