A Memory of Light

the Trollocs, and had pushed across the dry riverbed to help fight at Elayne’s left flank, across from the bogs, to keep Trollocs from coming around that way.
    They stood their ground here, as immovable as oaks before a flood, hacking with axes as they sang. Trollocs lay in piles around them.
    “Loial!” Mat yelled, standing up in his stirrups. “Loial!”
    One of the Ogier stepped back from the fighting and turned. Mat was taken aback. His usually calm friend had ears laid low, teeth clenched in anger, and a blood-soaked axe in his fingers. Light, but that expression sent terror through Mat’s body. He would rather stare down ten men who thought he had been cheating than fight a single angry Ogier!
    Loial called something to the others, and then rejoined them in the fighting. They continued to lay into the Trollocs nearby, cutting them down. Trollocs and Ogier were near the same size, but the Ogier somehow seemed to tower over the Shadowspawn. They did not fight like soldiers, but like woodsmen felling trees. Chop one way, then the next, breaking Trollocs. But Mat knew that Ogier hated felling trees, while they seemed to relish felling Trollocs.
    The Ogier broke the Trolloc fist they’d been fighting, making them flee. Elayne’s soldiers moved in and blocked off the rest of the Trolloc army, and the several hundred Ogier pulled back to Mat. Among them, Mat noticed, were more than a few of the Seanchan Ogier—the Gardeners. He had not ordered that. The two groups fought together, but barely seemed to look at one another now.
    Every one of the Ogier, male and female, had numerous cuts on their arms and legs. They did not wear armor, but many of the cuts seemed trivial, as if their skin had the strength of bark.
    Loial walked up to Mat and the Deathwatch Guards, raising his axe to his shoulder. Loial’s trousers were dark up to the thighs, as if he had been wading in wine. “Mat,” Loial said, drawing a deep breath. “We have done as you asked, fighting here. No Trolloc got by us.”
    “You did well, Loial,” Mat said. “Thank you.”
    He waited for a reply. Something long-winded and eager, no doubt. Loial stood breathing in and out with lungs that could hold enough air to fill a room. No words. The others with him, though many were senior to Loial, offered no words either. Some lifted torches. The glow of the sun had vanished beneath the horizon. Night was fully upon them.
    Quiet Ogier. Now that was strange. Ogier at war, though ... it was not something Mat had ever seen. He did not have any memory of it in the memories that were not his.
    “I need you,” Mat said. “We have to turn this battle around or were finished. Come on.”
    “The Hornsounder commands!” Loial bellowed. “Up axes!”
    Mat winced. If he ever needed someone to yell a message from Caemlyn to Cairhien for him, he knew who to ask. Only they would probably hear it all the way up in the Blight, too.
    He heeled Pips into motion, the Ogier falling in around him and the Deathwatch Guards. The Ogier had no trouble keeping up.
    “Honored One,” Karede said, “I and mine are ordered to—”
    “To go die on the front lines. I’m bloody working on that, Karede. Keep your sword out of your own gut for the moment, kindly.”
    The man’s expression darkened, but he held his tongue.
    “She doesn’t really want you dead, you realize,” Mat said. He could not say more without revealing the plot to bring her back.
    “If my death serves the Empress, may she live forever, then I give it willingly.”
    “You’re bloody insane, Karede,” Mat said. “Unfortunately, so am I. You’re in good company. You there! Who leads this force?”
    They had reached the back ranks, where the reserves of the Dragonsworn were located, the wounded and those who were resting from their time at the front ranks.
    “My Lord?” one of the scouts said. “That would be Lady Tinna.”
    “Go fetch her,” Mat said. Those dice kept rattling in his head. He also felt a pull from the north, a tugging, as if some threads around his chest were yanking on him.
    Not now, Rand, he thought. I’m bloody busy.
    No colors formed, only blackness. Dark as a Myrddraal’s heart. The tugging grew stronger.
    Mat dismissed the vision. Not. Now.
    He had work to do here. He had a plan. Light, let it work.
    Tinna turned out to be a pretty girl, younger than he had expected, tall and strong of limb. She wore her long brown hair in a tail, though curls of it seemed to want to