Ingtar’s men pursue the Trollocs, while Rand’s friends keep their distance. Rand experiences a terrifying, time-looping moment in a village before Ingtar’s men find a dead Fade nailed to a door.
Mat and Perrin continue to avoid Rand like he has the Black Death. Ingtar pushes hard, and they are constantly changing direction to keep on the Trollocs’ trail, periodically finding abandoned camps or the bodies of victims. It’s almost too perfect, like the Trollocs are running them in circles while the Horn slips away somewhere else — which is exactly how I’d do it if I worked in Evil Logistics.
Honestly, for such a long chapter, there isn’t much to say. There’s an abandoned village, the river Erinin to cross, and a tree where a couple of guys from Fal Dara who were probably Darkfriends are found skinned and hanging from the branches of a tree. Our mystery watcher shows up at one point, vanishing in the next moment.
The most eventful part of the chapter comes when the trail leads to yet another abandoned village. Rand steps inside one of the houses and gets… stuck? He seems to be repeatedly reliving a moment in time when the shit hit the fan. A family is peacefully enjoying dinner when they are suddenly stricken by horror as their house is invaded by something frightening. Rand blinks, finding himself back in the room, unable to move. He blinks again and relives the exact same scene as before. Another blink, and he’s held immobile back in the present, only it’s colder and the flies on the food are more numerous. He relives the moment again and again in a hellish pastiche of Groundhog Day, with the room growing colder and the flies multiplying every time. Finally, he can’t take any more and he channels saidin to break himself free. Nobody else seems to have had any such trouble, so Rand wisely keeps his mouth shut and looks on the bright side: this day couldn’t possibly get any worse, right?
That’s when Ingtar’s men discover a dead Fade that has been nailed to a door in the center of town.