He felt weary to the bone. He started back across the battlefield, passing heaps of the dead. The crows and the ravens had come; they blanketed the landscape behind him. An undulating, quivering blackness that coated the ground like mold. From a distance, it seemed as if the ground had been burned, there were so many carrion birds.
Occasionally, Galad passed men like himself who sifted through the corpses for friends. There were surprisingly few looters—you had to watch for those on a battlefield. Elayne had caught a few trying to sneak out of Cairhien. She’d threatened to hang them.
She’s grown harder, Galad thought, trudging back toward camp. His boots felt like lead on his feet. That is good. As a child, she had often made decisions with her heart. She was a queen now, and acted it. Now, if only he could right her moral compass. She wasn’t a bad person, but Galad wished that she—like other monarchs—could see as clearly as he did.
He was beginning to accept that they didn’t. He was beginning to accept that it was all right, so long as they tried their best. Whatever he had inside of him that allowed him to see the right of things was obviously a gift of the Light, and holding others to scorn because they had not been born with it was wrong. Just as it would be wrong to hold a man to scorn because he had been born with only one hand, and was therefore an inferior swordsman.
Many of the living he passed sat on the ground in the rare spots where there were no corpses and no blood. These men did not look like the victors of a battle, though the arrival of the Asha’man had saved this day. The trick with the lava had given Elayne’s army the breather it needed to regroup and attack.
That battle had been swift, but brutal. Trollocs did not surrender, and they couldn’t be allowed to break and flee. So Galad and the others had fought, bled and died long past when it was obvious they would be victorious.
The Trollocs were dead now. The remaining men sat and stared out at the blanket of corpses, as if numbed by the prospect of searching out the few living among the many thousands dead.
The setting sun and choking clouds made the light red, and gave faces a bloody cast.
Galad eventually reached the long hill that had marked the division between the two battlefields. He climbed it, slowly, forcing down thoughts of how good a bed would feel. Or a pallet on the floor. Or some flat rock in an out-of-the-way place, where he could roll up in his cloak.
The fresher air atop the hill shocked him. He’d been smelling blood and death for so long that now it was the clean air that smelled wrong. He shook his head, walking past tired Borderlanders who were trudging through gateways. The Asha’man had gone to hold off the Trollocs to the north so Lord Mandragoran’s armies could escape.
From what Galad heard, the Borderlander armies were a fraction of what they had been. The betrayal of the great captains had been felt most deeply by Lord Mandragoran and his men. It sickened Galad, for this battle had not gone easily for him or anyone else with Elayne. It had been horrible—and as bad as it had been, the fight had gone more poorly for the Borderlanders.
Galad kept his stomach settled with difficulty as his view from atop the hill let him see just how many carrion birds had come to feast. The Dark Ones minions fell, and the Dark One’s minions glutted themselves.
Galad eventually found Elayne. Her passionate words, being spoken to Tam al’Thor and Arganda, took him by surprise.
"Mat is right", she said. "The Field of Merrilor is a good battlefield. Light! I wish we could give the people more time to rest. We’ll have only a few days, a week at most, before the Trollocs reach Merrilor behind us". She shook her head. "We should have seen those Sharans coming. When the deck starts to look like it’s stacked against the Dark One, of course he will just add a few new cards to the game".
Galad’s pride demanded that he remain standing as he listened to Elayne talk to the other commanders. For once, however, his pride lost out, and he settled down on a stool and slumped forward.
"Galad", Elayne said, "you really should allow one of the Asha’man to wash away your fatigue. Your insistence upon treating them like outcasts is foolish".
Galad straightened up. "It has nothing to do with the Asha’man", he snapped. Too argumentative. He was tired. "This fatigue reminds me of what we lost today. It is an exhaustion my men must endure, and so I will, lest I forget just how tired they are and push them too far".
Elayne frowned at him. He had stopped worrying that his words offended her long ago. It seemed he couldn’t claim that a day was pleasant or his tea warm without her taking offense somehow.
It would have been nice if Aybara hadn’t run off. That man was a leader—one of the few that Galad had ever met—that one could actually talk to without worrying that he’d take offense. Perhaps the Two Rivers would be a good place for the Whitecloaks to settle.
Of course, there was something of a history of bad blood between them. He could work on that . . .
I called them Whitecloaks, he thought to himself a moment later. Inside my head, that’s how I thought of the Children just now. It had been a long time since he’d done that by accident.
"Your Majesty", Arganda said. He stood beside Logain, the leader of the Asha’man, and Havien Nurelle, the new commander of the Winged Guard. Talmanes of the Band of the Red Hand trudged up with a few commanders from the Saldaeans and the Legion of the Dragon. Elder Haman of the Ogier sat on the ground a short distance away; he stared off, toward the sunset, seeming dazed.
"Your Majesty", Arganda continued, "I realize you consider this a great victory—"
"It is a great victory", Elayne said. "We must persuade the men to see it that way. Not eight hours ago, I assumed that our entire army would be slaughtered. We won".
"At a cost of half of our troops", Arganda said softly.
"I will count that a victory", Elayne insisted. "We were expecting complete destruction".
"The only victor today is the butcher", Nurelle said softly. He looked haunted.
"No", Tam al’Thor said, "she’s right. The troops have to understand what their losses earned. We must treat this as a victory. It must be recorded that way in the histories, and the soldiers must be convinced to see it so".
"That is a lie", Galad found himself saying.
"It is not", al’Thor said. "We lost many friends today. Light, but we all did. Focusing on death, however, is what the Dark One wants us to do. I dare you to tell me I’m wrong. We must look and see Light, not Shadow, or we’ll a