(Untitled)

[taishar_malkier]

Hazily, distantly, he's aware of familiar sounds: screams, sobs, voices muttering and shouting and just plain exhausted. Familiar smells: blood and Shadowspawn ichor, smoke, filth, ozone and choking dust. And somewhere, very far off indeed, the awareness of a bond that would once have mattered; slightly nearer, the raw wound of the shattered bond

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[not_only_wisdom]

Nynaeve, too, is weary from battle. She lost her shawl at some point, and one of her shoes. Her braid is undone, and strands of tangled, unkempt hair insist on falling into her eyes when she's working.

When she's Healing.

It's almost rote by now, there are so many wounded. So, so very many. And neither she nor her sisters will be able to save them all. But she can try.

She will try, and Light grant that she will. Not. Fail.

There's a gasp to her left, but it blends into so many other sounds of men and women in pain and dying that it's next to meaningless.

At least it is until one of the Novices--almost too dirt-stained for the white of her dress to be anything other than a muddy brown--tugs on her arm. She should know the girl's name. She should, but--

"Nynaeve Sedai. We've--come quickly."

Nynaeve would protest such cavalier treatment, but today--

Today she goes where she's needed.

[taishar_malkier]

If this were Milliways, the light of an Aes Sedai embracing saidar would burst like a miniature sun, so blindingly bright that he might notice it even now. Or perhaps he wouldn't.

In any case, it's not. And all the sounds he hears are too far-off to seem quite important; like voices, filtered through water, muddled to irrelevance.

[not_only_wisdom]

There's a moment--just one moment, Nynaeve is hardly a Light-blinded little girl--where her grasp of saidar flickers.

"Lan."

Oh, Light, I knew you'd try to get yourself killed. I knew it.

And then the only thing she can think about is how his body fits together, and what must be done to keep it so. The burn in her veins, the ache behind her eyes, the sweat beading on her brow--none of that means anything.

Not next to this.

Her weaves flare, one after the other, red and blue and yellow overlaid and intertwined.

If he dies today, she will box his ears herself. Bloody--

[taishar_malkier]

There's a burning rush through his body, intruding closer and closer, and it too feels familiar somehow--

And then he's jerked back into half-memory and pain he can't quite muster the focus to block out, and for one muddled moment he tries to pull away, to sink back into the peaceful darkness of death.

Then the pain is gone too, washed away injury by injury with healing weaves, and this day's death gone beyond recall too, and with a choked half-gasp he jerks back to full awareness and the sight of his wife's desperate face.

[not_only_wisdom]

"Oh, you wool-headed fool, I should--"

She swallows hard, hands gripping his shoulders tight enough to bruise.

"You might have died."

[taishar_malkier]

There are plenty of things Lan could say, and doesn't.

He lifts his left hand to touch her cheek. A minute ago that arm was sliced deep in two places, covered in blood; now the blood is only on his sleeve and armor, and his muscles move smoothly.

(There are people all around. He doesn't care, and wouldn't even if they had the luxury of paying attention.)

Low: "Nynaeve."

There are people all around, but they're healing and bandaging, turning away from corpses, making sure of others. No sound of clashing weapons, except an occasional distant noise of a brief mopping-up skirmish.

The battle is -- over?

[not_only_wisdom]

"Lan," she repeats, and she is not crying. There'll be time enough for hysterics later, and if only this blasted headache would go away--

"Lan, where are your men? Has anyone seen to to them yet?"

Did many of them survive this long?

[taishar_malkier]

It makes no sense -- none at all -- that he's alive. That the Last Battle is over.

(The Last Battle is won. The Shadow has been defeated. If he could believe he's seeing it, he'd be filled with a fierce exultant joy; he can't quite, not yet.)

But emotional turmoil doesn't matter right now. Nynaeve is right, and calling him to duty he should have remembered with his first sentence.

(If he's alive -- if the battle's won -- if these are his men -- this, too, is something he's not thinking of yet.)

So in the instant of her question his blood-streaked face hardens slightly into its habitual harsh-planed impassivity, and he shoves himself up to a sitting position, automatically careful not to jostle her. I don't know, he doesn't say, because before he'd say it it's outdated; one glance around tells him, and "Here," he says, and pushes himself to his feet. Nynaeve grabs his arm, scrambling upright with him. It's automatic to keep his sword hand free and his senses scanning for threats to her; automatic to keep her close in this

[not_only_wisdom]

"Breathing. Fretting himself silly over every little thing unless someone's managed to get him to sleep."

Her sudden glare promises severe retribution to anyone that has failed to take care of the Dragon Reborn.

"That bloody sheepherder has no idea how to delegate. None."

She's still resolutely not crying, free hand rubbing at her eyes.

"Now--now that you're up and about, shall we see to our Malkieri. I think--you. And you two--come with me. It won't be far."

There's wounded to see to, and--

"Myrelle lives, too?"

[taishar_malkier]

"Yes."

If she didn't, Lan's emotional state would be... very different.

Myrelle's tired to exhaustion, but uninjured now; she's fretting but focused; she's a hundred yards southwest of them, and was heading this way until the jolt of surprise from her when he was healed. This close, he knows all of that without thought. He couldn't not know; this is part of what a Warder's bond means.

Nynaeve is beside him, and Myrelle is a hundred yards away, and if there weren't brave men and women dying all around them -- but there are.

There's duty to be done, and that has always been the clearest truth of Lan Mandragoran's life. So he's already moving towards the wounded Malkieri, Nynaeve tucked close beside him, and the three Accepted trailing behind.

[not_only_wisdom]

Nynaeve musters the energy to glare up at him, even in the midst of--

Well, even in the midst of everything.

"We'll find her again later. Soon. She and I have business to take care of."

She tilts her chin up, almost daring Lan to object, even as her hands tighten on his arm.

There isn't much time, but she's hardly likely to let him get a head of steam about anything else at this point. The damn fool man is never concerned with what he should be.

Almost never.

[taishar_malkier]

Lan's face is still a craggy bedrock, streaked with blood and sweat and grime, but for a moment it almost -- almost -- softens. His arm shifts fractionally, just enough to press her hands against his side.

(Very gently, since there's armor covering both side and arm. It's the gesture that counts.)

"Honor to serve," is all he says, but Nynaeve knows how to read beneath words.

This feels like a dream: disconnected, surreal, impossible. But the difference between dreams and reality, Lan has always known, is duty. The mountain that must be carried no matter the weight. Later he'll think of the dead, and of the future, and prices paid and vows kept and broken. Now, the packed dirt is slick with blood of humans and Shadowspawn, and the tasks are clear.

[not_only_wisdom]

Her fingers tighten on his arm again, and for one moment Nynaeve closes her eyes.

Then she squares her shoulders, tilts her chin up, and--confident of Lan at her side--embraces saidar again and begins with the first of the Malkieri.

The Accepted fan out around her, obeying her commands as she barks them.

The headache can be ignored for now.

She has work to do.

[taishar_malkier]

She does. They both do. He guards her, the shadow at her side, keeping a close eye on her strained pallor.

And he speaks to the

(his)

men. Dai Shan, they call him, and Lord; he only corrects the ones who try to say al'Lan. He agreed to lead them to this battle, this once, to death fighting the Shadow. Tai'shar Malkier, he says to them, raising a fist in salute: true blood of Malkier, and they raise fists (if they can) with a fierce light in their eyes. Men (and occasional women) healed from the verge of death by Nynaeve and the Accepted, and others who will survive long enough that Healing can wait, lying in the dirt or propped against their fellows, bandaging each other or themselves, weak and bleeding and filthy and alive.

The Saldaeans have a saying: A general can take care of the living or weep for the dead, but he cannot do both. The corpses all around them will be buried later. For now, he mutters a prayer when he can, and carries on

[not_only_wisdom]

"No, she--"

Nynaeve pinches the bridge of her nose, leaning heavily against Lan's hand, just for a moment.

"I've not seen her. I've not even heard--"

She looks up, scowling deeply. It helps distract from the pain in her head, the ache in her muscles.

"Is she here?"

[taishar_malkier]

Once, he would have known instantly. Where she was, how she felt, if she was weak or injured: instantly, and always.

It's Myrelle Sedai whose presence is a constant in his head now.

"I don't know."

But where else would she be?

Their war was always the same. They have always understood each other. Moiraine is at Tarmon Gai'don, or in the mother's last embrace.