Not much happens here today. Tam and Rand head back to their sad little farm somewhere in the outskirts of Emond’s Field and do a whole slew of horribly boring chores before preparing to eat their dinner.

Paranoid and nervous, Tam locks the front and back doors of the house, which is something Rand has never seen his dad do. Tam also pulls out a sword from a chest he keeps upstairs in his bedroom. It’s shiny and cool as shit, and much to Rand’s mother’s exasperation, Tam paid two coppers for the thing for reasons even he doesn’t know! They could’ve bought three more sheep with that, probably, Settlers of Catan-style. Instead, he bought something that he could accidentally poke his genitalia with if he’s not careful.

Robert Jordan makes a point to illustrate how cozy and humble the al’Thors’ little farmhouse is before the door bursts open, revealing a snarling human/demon hybrid of a creature ready to maim and kill the two of them. A skirmish ensues while a few more of the creatures show up. Tam tries to keep them at bay while Rand runs to the woods. Later, Tam meets up with him critically injured and already feverish. Rand learns that these creatures are Trollocs, supposedly fabled beings from ancient stories and here they were on their own farm trying to fuck them up! Crazy stuff happening in the world these days.

Rand intends to pick up some much-needed supplies from the house and cart Tam back over to Emond’s Field to get Nynaeve to heal the poor sucker, but he finds the house in shambles. Everything is either ruined or smeared in blood/feces! Four dead, smelly Trollocs lie on their floor…but one is pretending. He snarls in barely-intelligible tones, and he needs Rand to speak to Myrddraal, who is an even scarier being associated with the Dark One in all those wonderful stories that the gleeman is probably chock full of. Rand then kills the creature with Tam’s sword, collects what he needs, and heads back to Tam.

Tam’s gonna hella die. Rand wants to bring him back to Emond’s Field ASAP, but I don’t see how he’s going to do that very easily. Rand’s going to ruin Bel Tine with this nonsense. He would be wise to stay home and not be a bother.

Oh well. Off he goes anyway. Selfish.