Free Lord of Chaos by Robert Jordan

back by folded kerchiefs. They wore so many bracelets and long necklaces of gold and silver and ivory that the glitter should have given them away at a mile.
    Straight-backed and proud-faced, the three women strode past the swordsmen with hardly a glance and started up the hill. Their leader was a golden-haired woman, her loose blouse unlaced to show considerable tanned cleavage. The other two were gray, with leathery faces; she had to be less than half their age.
    “I wouldn’t mind asking that one to dance,” one of the Younglings said admiringly when the women had gone past. He was a good ten years younger than the golden-haired woman.
    “I wouldn’t if I were you, Arwin,” Gawyn said dryly. “It might be misunderstood.” He had read that Aiel called battle “the dance.” “Besides, she’d have your liver for dinner.” He had caught a glimpse of her pale green eyes, and he had never seen harder.
    He watched the Wise Ones until they had climbed the hill to where half a dozen Aes Sedai waited with their Warders. Those who had Warders; two were Red Ajah, and Reds did not. When the women disappeared into one of the tall white tents, and the five Warders had taken up guard around it, he went on with his circuit of the hill.
    The Younglings were alert since word of the Aiel’s arrival had spread, which did not please him. They should have been this alert before. Even most who did not wear the silver tower had seen fighting around Tar Valon. Eamon Valda, the Whitecloak Lord Captain in command, had pulled nearly all his men out to the west more than a month ago, but the handful he left behind tried to keep together the brigands and bullyboys Valda had gathered. The Younglings had dispersed those, at least. Gawyn wished he could think they had driven Valda off, too—the Tower had certainly kept its own soldiers far from the skirmishing, for all that the Whitecloaks’ only reason for being there had been to see what harm they could do the Tower—but he suspected that Valda had his own reasons. Likely orders from Pedron Niall, and Gawyn would have given much to know what they were. Light, but he hated not knowing. It was like fumbling your way in the dark.
    The truth was, he admitted, that he was irritated. Not only about the Aiel, about not being told of this meeting until this morning. He had not been told where they were going, either, until he was taken aside by Coiren Sedai, the Gray sister who led the Aes Sedai. Elaida had been closemouthed and imperious when she was his mother’s advisor in Caemlyn; since being raised to the Amyrlin Seat she made the old Elaida seem open and warm. No doubt she had pressured him to form this escort as much to get him away from Tar Valon as for any other reason.
    The Younglings had sided with her in the fighting—the old Amyrlin was stripped of Staff and Stole by the Hall, the attempt to free her rebellion against the law, clear and simple—but Gawyn had had his doubts about all Aes Sedai long before he heard the charges against Siuan Sanche read. That they pulled strings and made thrones dance was a thing said so often that he had hardly paid it any mind, but then he saw the strings being pulled. The effects at least, and his sister Elayne was the one who danced, danced right out of his sight, out of existence for all he knew. Her, and another. He had fought to keep Siuan imprisoned, then turned around and let her escape. If Elaida ever discovered that, his mother’s crown would not keep him alive.
    Even with that, Gawyn had chosen to stay, because his mother had always supported the Tower, because his sister wanted to be Aes Sedai. And because another woman wanted to. Egwene al’Vere. He had no right to even think of her, but abandoning the Tower would be abandoning her. For such flimsy reasons did a man choose his fate. Knowing they were flimsy did not change them, though.
    He glared at the sere, windswept grasslands as he strode from one position to the next. So here he