A Memory of Light

I’d seen the extent of your foolishness.”
    Elayne held up her sword. Nearby, men began to cry out. “The Queen lives!” they yelled. “For Light and Andor! Stand with the Queen!”
    “How would you feel,” Elayne said softly, “if you saw your queen trying to kill a Trolloc with a sword as you ran away?”
    “I’d feel like I needed to bloody move to another country,” Birgitte snapped, loosing another arrow, “one where the monarchs don’t have pudding for brains.”
    Elayne sniffed. Birgitte could say what she wished, but the maneuver worked. Like a bit of yeast, the force of men she’d gathered grew, expanding to either side of her and building a battle line. She kept the sword raised high, shouting, and—after a moment of indecision—created a weave that made a majestic banner of Andor float in the air above her, the red lion to light the night.
    That would draw direct fire from Demandred and his channelers, but the men needed the beacon. She would fight off attacks as they came.
    They did not, as she rode down the battle lines, shouting words that gave hope to her men. “For Light and Andor! Your Queen lives! Stand and fight!”

    Mat thundered forward across the top of the Heights with the remains of a once-great army, pushing southwest. The Trollocs were massed ahead on his left side, the Sharan army ahead on the right. Facing the enemy were the heroes, Borderlanders, Karede and his men, Ogier, Two Rivers archers, Whitecloaks, Ghealdanin and Mayeners, mercenaries, Tinna and her Dragonsworn refugees. And the Band of the Red Hand. His own men.
    He remembered, within those memories that were not his, leading forces far grander. Armies that were not fragmented, half-trained, wounded and exhausted. But Light help him, he had never been so proud. Despite all that had happened, his men took up the shouts of attack and threw themselves into the battle with renewed vigor.
    Demandred's death gave Mat a chance. He felt the armies surging, and through them flowed that instinctive rhythm of the battle. This was the moment he had been seeking. It was the card upon which to bet everything he had. Ten to one odds, still, but the Sharan army, the Trollocs and Fades had no head. No general to guide them. Different contingents took conflicting actions as various Fades or Dreadlords tried to give orders.
    I’ll have to watch those Sharans, Mat thought. They’ll have generals who can reinstitute command.
    For now, he needed to hit hard, hit powerfully. Push the Trollocs and Sharans off the Heights. Down below, the Trollocs filled the corridor between the bogs and the Heights, pressing hard the defenders at the riverbed. Elaynes death had been a lie. Her troops had been in disarray—they had lost more than a third of their soldiers—but just as they were about to be routed by the Trollocs, she rode into their midst and rallied them. Now they were miraculously holding their lines, despite being pushed back well into Shienaran territory. They could not resist much longer, though, with or without Elayne: more and more pikes on the front lines were being mobbed, soldiers were falling all across the field, and her cavalries and the Aiel were working furiously, with increasing difficulty, to contain the enemy. Light, if I can push the Shadow off these bloody Heights into those beasts below, they’ll fall all over each other!
    “Lord Cauthon!” Tinna shouted nearby. She leveled a bloody spear from horseback, pointing to the south.
    Light shone distantly, toward the River Erinin. Mat wiped his brow. Was that . . .
    Gateways in the sky. Dozens of them, and through them poured to’raken in flight, carrying lanterns. A fiery flight of arrows launched at the Trollocs in the corridor; the to’raken , carrying archers, flew in formation over the ford and the corridor beyond.
    Over the battle, Mat heard sounds that must have made the enemy’s blood run cold: hundreds, maybe thousands of animal horns blared out in the night their call to war; a thunderstorm of drums began to beat out a unified cadence that became louder and louder; and a rumble of footfalls made by an advancing army, man and animal alike, slowly approaching Polov Heights in the dark. No one could see them in the pre-dawn blackness, but everyone on the battlefield knew who they were.
    Mat let out a whoop of joy. He could see the Seanchan movements playing out in his mind’s eye now. Half their army would march directly north from the Erinin, joining