Zarine decides to stay with the group, saying she wants to be part of history. Perrin doubts that’s true, but it becomes moot when he blabs about Rand, forcing her to stay with them. Moiraine reveals that Brend is a new Forsaken named Sammael, so score one for me. Though we don’t get anything else on him just yet.
The Darkhounds quickly catch up, and we get to see that they’re Made of Iron, with Perrin barely able to bring down one with his archery skills. Then Moiraine is driven to use balefire, risking Sammael detecting it, but it seems to work. And we get a quite amusing moment as she slips that Mat already blew the Horn, and completely ignores Zarine asking about that. Making her the Butt-Monkey is a nice way to offset the annoyingness; look what it did for Jool.
Mat is being a complete idiot as he cuts open one of the fireworks, and then throws the insides in their fire. Can we get some consistency on how dumb he is, please? Then a group of assassins find them, and another firework comes in handy, though the result is Mat getting upset with Thom for killing the woman of the group, who of course couldn’t be any threat without the men around her. I am side-eying you so hard.
The Darkhound battle is quite scary, with an effective buildup and Moiraine’s hail mary solution really getting across what a threat they are. Sadly, that goodwill is mostly lost when we go to Mat, as all his development seems to be undone and we close with a big piece of sexism, though it’s hard to tell if we’re supposed to agree with it. I want to say no, but given some things I’ve heard…
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