Chapter 6: The Westwood

Rand fashions a litter from cart shafts and blankets and drags Tam east through the Westwood toward Emond's Field. The wound on Tam's ribs is shallow but the flesh around it burns, and the fever climbs steadily as Tam slips into delirium.

Rand keeps off the Quarry Road but parallels it through the trees. The hooded rider passes east with a column of twenty Trollocs at his back, then returns alone, his horse halting in silence as the cloaked head sweeps the woods. The hood turns toward Rand's hiding place. After a long pause the rider gallops west, back toward the farm.

Tam rambles in fever about a war beyond the Dragonwall—of Cairhien burning, of Laman's pride, of a tree called Avendoraldera. Then of a battle's aftermath on a mountain slope, a wounded woman dead in the snow, and the child he found beside her. He tells Kari they will take the boy to heart and name him Rand.

Rand stumbles to his knees, refusing to believe it. Fevers bring bad dreams, he tells himself, and he forces himself up to keep walking.