A Memory of Light

Compulsion to penetrate.”
    “Bloody right,” Mat said. “Anyway, if the Forsaken are using Compulsion on people in our camps, they probably have a few spies in our meetings.”
    “I suppose so.”
    “So they know our plan. Our great plan, that we spent so long preparing. They know it.”
    Elayne hesitated.
    “Light!” Mat said, shaking his head. “The first and most important rule to winning a war is knowing what your enemy is going to do.”
    “I though the first rule was to know your terrain,” Elayne said, folding her arms.
    “That, too. Anyway, I realize that if the enemy knows what we're going to do, we have to change. Immediately. Bad battle plans are better than ones your enemy will anticipate.”
    “Why didn’t you guess this would happen?” Elayne demanded.
    He looked at her, expressionless. One side of his mouth twitched up, then he pulled his hat down, shading his eyepatch.
    “Light,” Elayne said. “You knew. You spent this whole week planning with us, and you knew the entire time you’d throw it out with the dishwater.”
    “That’s giving me too much bloody credit,” Mat said, looking back at his maps. “I think a part of me might have known all along, but I didn’t figure it out until just before the Sharans got here.”
    “So what is the new plan?”
    He didn’t reply.
    “You’re going to keep it in your head,” Elayne said, her legs feeling weak. “You’re going to lead the battle, and none of us are going to know what in the Light you’re planning, are we? Otherwise, someone might overhear, and the news would travel to the Shadow.”
    He nodded.
    “Creator shelter us,” she whispered.
    Mat scowled. “You know, that’s what Tuon said.”

    On the Heights, Uno held his ears as the nearby dragons belched fire at the Trollocs and Sharans west of them. The scent of something pungent burned in the air, and the blasts were so deafening, he couldn’t hear his own bloody cursing.
    Down below, Lan Mandragoran’s riders were sweeping the sides of the assault force, keeping them contained so that the dragons could do more damage. The Sharans had Trollocs with them. They’d have channelers with them, too, lots of them. Farther upriver, another large army of Trollocs, the ones that had done so much damage to Dai Shan’s forces, had come down from the northeast, and would soon reach the Field of Merrilor.
    The dragons stilled momentarily, the dragoners stuffing the maws again with whatever it was that made them work. Uno wasn’t going to step bloody close to them. Bad luck, those were. He was certain of it.
    The leader of the dragoners was a wiry Cairhienin, and Uno had never had much use for those folk. They bloody scowled at him whenever he talked. This one sat haughtily upon his horse, and didn’t flinch when the dragons fired again.
    The Amyrlin Seat had thrown her lot in with these men, and with the Seanchan, too. Uno wasn’t going to flaming complain. They needed every sword they could get, Cairhienin and bloody Seanchan included.
    “You like our dragons, Captain?” the leader—Talmanes—called to Uno. Captain. Uno had bloody been promoted. He now led a force of newly recruited Tower pikemen and light cavalry.
    He shouldn’t have been in charge of bloody anything; he had been happy as a regular soldier. But he had both training and battle experience, things that were in slim supply these days, or so Queen Elayne had said. So now he was a flaming officer, and leading cavalry and foot soldiers no less! Well, he knew his way around a pike, if he had to use one, though he usually preferred to fight on horseback.
    His men were ready to defend the rim of the Heights should the enemy make it up the slope. So far, the archers situated in front of the dragoners had prevented that, but soon enough, the archers would have to pull back, and then it would be bloody regular soldiers doing the bloody fighting. Below, the Sharans pulled aside to let the main Trolloc forces storm up onto the slope.
    The pikemen would advance, resisting the Trolloc attack, and pikes would work well here, as the Trollocs would be pushing uphill. Add in some flaming cavalry on their flanks, and some bloody archers shooting through those gateways made high up in the air, and they could probably sit here for days. Maybe weeks. When they were pushed off by superior numbers, they’d let go inch by inch, clinging to every speck of ground.
    Uno figured there was no way he was going to survive this