Sammael has Illian in his grip, so Perrin’s group flees the city. Darkhounds pursue, but Moiraine decimates them with balefire. Then she decimates Faile’s dream of finding the Horn of Valere. Meanwhile, Mat and Thom are attacked by Darkfriends on their way to Caemlyn.
MOIRAINE: Sammael is here. He’s posing as Lord Brend. We’re leaving.
PERRIN: Why are all the Forsaken after me?! Rand is the bloody Dragon Reborn.
FAILE: … [mouth hanging open]
Well, Faile, that does it. It’s like you’ve fallen in with the mob and just learned the location of their secret hideout. Now you have to go with them, or they’ll slit your throat. Nothing personal, sweetheart.
The group rides out of Illian. A few miles out of town, the baying of Darkhounds begins to catch up with them. Lan says they’re impossible to outrun, so they find a hill and stand to face the pack. Perrin manages to kill one of them with some arrows, and Moiraine destroys the rest with balefire.
MOIRAINE: Hopefully Sammael didn’t notice that.
LOIAL: Let’s hurry. There might be more.
MOIRAINE: I don’t think so. We weren’t his main target, or he would have come himself.
PERRIN: Were they after Rand?
MOIRAINE: Perhaps. Or maybe Mat — he blew the Horn of Valere, after all.
Well, that about wraps up your hunt for the Horn, doesn’t it, Faile? In the space of an hour, you’ve learned that one of Perrin’s friends blew the Horn of Valere, and the other is the fucking messiah. Onward to Tear!
Mat and Thom are camped for the night in the wilderness between towns. Mat pokes and prods one of the fireworks like a child who got his hands on his parents’ lighter. It’s making Thom nervous, but the matter is soon forgotten when a well-dressed woman and several men ride into their camp. She asks for directions to the nearest inn, but in the next breath orders the men to kill. This feels an awful lot like the woman who tried to kill Mat and Rand in the stables in The Eye of the World.
Mat tosses the firework into the fire, sowing confusion, then springs into action. He and Thom go to work. When it is only the woman left standing, Mat starts to talk to her. Dude. She’s a fucking Darkfriend, and you’re trying to scold her? Did the White Tower teach you nothing about how deadly women can be? Fortunately, cooler heads prevail, and Thom has a knife in her throat before Mat can finish speaking.
As you can probably tell by now, Mat is my favorite character in the series. But this chapter was such a profound indulgence in dumbfuckery that I have to admit he lost points. Don’t kill her because she’s a woman? I expected better from you, Matrim Cauthon. Although I’m not sure why. I knew you were dumb, but not quite in that way. And he’s still deluding himself that the letter is the reason people are trying to kill him. With shit like this for brains, he’s going to need that amazing luck if he’s going to live long enough to see the Last Battle.