Elyas has a Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming as Perrin is beating himself up over being willing to kill Egwene, saying his bad feelings about his ax show he’s still a good person. And as usual by now, they’re interrupted and have to run. This time it’s by the Whitecloaks, and the wolves take down several while Perrin and Egwene hide in the hand of Artur’s statue. That may or may not be symbolism for later.
The Whitecloaks make the mistake of killing Hopper, which sends Perrin into Unstoppable Rage, and after vaguely seeing himself taking down a bunch of them, he wakes up in a tent. He and Egwene are captives of Geofram Bornhald, father of Dain Bornhald from Baerlon. And he’s much more Affably Evil, maybe even to a Worthy Opponent or Anti-Villain level, especially since he’s contrasted with his nasty subordinate Byar. Unfortunately, wolves are one of the many thousand things that the Whitecloaks think are bad, so that’s added to all the other evidence against them, including Perrin and Egwene’s game attempt at a cover story. They’re heading to a city called Amador by way of Caemlyn, and this time I’m sure there’s something goofy about that. Caemlyn is to the east, and Amador is to the southwest, and judging from the map it’s not even like they’re keeping to any kind of main road. It seems like a contrivance to keep these two in the same area as the rest, who’ll undoubtedly break them out.
Despite that clunky bit of direction finding, there’s plenty of good stuff here, with the elder Bornhald being easily the most engaging villain we’ve had so far. He actually has a motivation beyond being a jerk (even his son seems to be using the Whitecloak thing mostly as a pretense to hurt people) and is even sympathetic to a degree. I can definitely see him doing a Heel–Face Turn if he lasts long enough. Also, Elyas is simply missing for now, so of course there’s no way he’s dead despite that attempt to trick us with Perrin not being able to reach out to the wolves.
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