The Great Hunt (The Wheel of Time #2)

The other soldiers followed the woman onto the deck. Domon was relieved to see, when some of them removed their strange helmets, that they, at least, were men; men with black eyes, or brown, who could have gone unnoticed in Tanchico or Illian. He had begun to have visions of armies of blueeyed women with swords. Aes Sedai with swords, he thought, remembering the sea erupting.

The Seanchan woman surveyed the ship arrogantly, then picked Domon out as captain — it had to be him or Yarin, by their clothes; the way Yarin had his eyes closed and was muttering prayers under his breath pointed to Domon — and fixed him with a stare like a spike.

“Are there any women among your crew or passengers?” She spoke with a soft slurring that made her hard to understand, but there was a snap in her voice that said she was used to getting answers. “Speak up, man, if you are the captain. If not, wake that other fool and tell him to speak.”

“I do be captain, my Lady,” Domon said cautiously. He had no idea how to address her, and he did not want to put a foot wrong. “I have no passengers, and there be no women in my crew.” He thought of the girls and women who had been carried off, and, not for the first time, wondered what these folk wanted with them.

The two women dressed as women were coming up from the longboat, one drawing the other — Domon blinked — by a leash of silvery metal as she climbed aboard. The leash went from a bracelet worn by the first woman to a collar around the neck of the second. He could not tell whether it was woven or jointed — it seemed somehow to be both — but it was clearly of a piece with both bracelet and collar. The first woman gathered the leash in coils as the other came onto the deck. The collared woman wore plain dark gray and stood with her hands folded and her eyes on the planks under her feet. The other had red panels bearing forked, silver lightning bolts on the breast of her blue dress and on the sides of her skirts, which ended short of the ankles of her boots. Domon eyed the women uneasily.

“Speak slowly, man,” the blueeyed woman demanded in her slurred speech. She came across the deck to confront him, staring up at him and in some way seeming taller and larger than he. “You are even harder to understand than the rest in this Lightforsaken land. And I make no claim to be of the Blood. Not yet. After Corenne ... I am Captain Egeanin.”

Domon repeated himself, trying to speak slowly, and added, “I do be a peaceful trader, Captain. I mean no harm to you, and I have no part in your war.” He could not help eyeing the two women connected by the leash again.

“A peaceful trader?” Egeanin mused. “In that case, you will be free to go once you have sworn fealty again.” She noticed his glances and turned to smile at the women with the pride of ownership. “You admire my damane? She cost me dear, but she was worth every coin. Few but nobles own a damane, and most are property of the throne. She is strong, trader. She could have broken your ship to splinters, had I wished it so.”

Domon stared at the women and the silver leash. He had connected the one wearing the lightning with the fiery fountains in the sea, and assumed she was an Aes Sedai. Egeanin had just set his head whirling. No one could do that to ...

“She is Aes Sedai?” he said disbelievingly.

He never saw the casual backhand blow coming. He staggered as her steelbacked gauntlet split his lip.

“That name is never spoken,” Egeanin said with a dangerous softness. “There are only the damane, the Leashed Ones, and now they serve in truth as well as name.” Her eyes made ice seem warm.

Domon swallowed blood and kept his hand clenched at his sides. If he had had a sword to hand, he would not have led his crew to slaughter against a dozen armored soldiers, but it was an effort to make his voice humble. “I meant no disrespect, Captain. I know nothing of you or your ways. If I do offend, it is ignorance, no intention.”

She looked at him, then said, “You are all ignorant, Captain, but you will pay the debt of your forefathers. This land was ours, and it will be ours again. With the Return, it will be ours again.” Domon did not know what to say — Surely she can no mean that nattering about Artur Hawkwing be true? — so he kept his mouth shut. “You will sail your vessel to Falme” — he tried to protest, but her glare silenced him — “where you and your ship will be examined. If you are no more than a peaceful trader, as you claim, you will be allowed to go your way when you have sworn the oaths.”

“Oaths, Captain? What oaths?”

“To obey, to await, and to serve. Your ancestors should have remembered.”

She gathered her people — except for a single man in plain armor, which marked him of low rank as much as the depth of his bow to Captain Egeanin — and their longboat pulled away toward the larger ship. The remaining Seanchan gave no orders, only sat crosslegged on the deck and began sharpening his sword while the crew put sail on and got under way. He seemed to have no fear at being alone, and Domon would have personally thrown overboard any crewman who raised a hand to him, for as Spray made her way along the coast, the Seanchan ship followed, out in deeper water. There was a mile between the two vessels, but Domon knew there was no hope of escape, and he meant to deliver the man back to Captain Egeanin as safely as if he had been cradled in his mother's arms.

It was a long passage to Falme, and Domon finally persuaded the Seanchan to talk, a little. A darkeyed man in his middle years, with an old scar above his eyes and another nicking his chin, his name was Caban, and he had nothing but contempt for anyone this side of the Aryth Ocean. That gave Domon a moment's pause. Maybe they truly do be ... No, that do be madness. Caban's speech had the same slur as Egeanin's, but where hers was silk sliding across iron, his was leather rasping on rock, and mostly he wanted to talk about battles, drinking, and women he had known. Half the time, Domon was not certain if he were speaking of here and now, or of wherever he had come from. The man was certainly not forthcoming about anything Domon wanted to know.

Once Domon asked about the damane. Caban reached up from where he sat in front of the helmsman and put the point of his sword to Domon's throat. “Watch what your tongue touches, or you will lose it. That's the business of the Blood, not your kind. Or mine.” He grinned while he said it, and as soon as he was done, he went back to sliding a stone along his heavy, curved blade.

Domon touched the point of blood welling above his collar and resolved not to