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This is a Wheel of time Fanfic.
The plot is that Mat gets a flashback to one of his "old" lives...

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Hawkwing is no Fool by: "MatOdin"

Nobody tells us how to be men. We just are.

---

Perrin Aybara

In wars, boy, fools kill other fools for foolish causes.

---

Thom Merrilin




Mat stood over the ragged battlefield. His crossbowmen had done their jobs. Soon the Seanchan would be doing against their will what he wanted them to be doing.

A memory flashed by.

Aldashar. Hawkwing's armies had encroached upon the territory of Aldeshar until it came down to this final confrontation, here on a battlefield that was known from the Trolloc Wars. A battlefield that had seen two hundred and seventeen thousand men against three hundred thousand Trollocs. It had been the bloodiest battle since the War of the Shadow. One hundred and fifty thousand men had died there. Mat had been a general there. A general for Manetheren.

Mat knew he was one of the great captains. He hadn't been known as Mat then, but that name was lost in time. The Wheel did turn.

The scouts arrived with ill news. Hawkwing's forces were easily a third larger than Mat's armies. He would have to try to use that. His men would be more maneuverable, he hoped.

The army approached. Their armor glinted in the early afternoon sun, shining like a beacon to Mat's eyes. The clouds had been red the previous night. Blood would be shed. Torrents of it. Hawkwing was no fool.

Eventually that line became a song.

Hawkwing is no fool

He fought the hundred duels

He stood upon the mountaintops

And he did only rule

And He did have a hand of iron

And a soul of steel

He did control the weaving Wheel

And made the Dark One kneel.

A foolish song, and one that would be guaranteed to get yourself killed in the Hundred-Years War soon to come. People did not want a remembrance of what had already passed. They did not want remembrances of the oaths they had betrayed, oaths that in a thousand years would bind them once more.

Hawkwing was near the front of his men. Fool. No general should do what a soldier could do. It seemed unlike Hawkwing. He had always been overly careful.

Mat gave the order to advance. His troops, well trained down to the last man smoothly marched. He and his cavalry stayed to the side, and guarded the flanks of the infantry.

The two armies met with almost disturbing silence. Then the air was filled with screams, with the clash of metal upon metal, and the whinnies of horses.

Men died in the dirt, but Mat's mounted forces were like a dagger into Hawkwing's forces. His Heron-marked blade cut into Hawkwing's throat, blood gushing out.

He hacked off the head, removing the helmet and tossing it to the side. It wasn't Hawkwing. Something was wrong. Out of the trees appeared a light mounted force. By the center of the cavalrymen was Hawkwing himself, without his helmet. Mat looked through his looking-glass. On Hawkwing's face was a harsh grin.

Hammer and the anvil. Mat swore angrily. The other force was just to distract Mat, so Hawkwing could sneak behind him. If they were going to survive, there was going to be a long bloody battle.

Hawkwing charged, smashing like the hammer the military formation was named for into Mat's troops.

For six hours Mat was steadily crushed between Hawkwing's troops. They had retreated, but there was nowhere to go. The dead were compressed, standing up, crushing live comrades. The stench of blood was ground deep into everyone's souls.

The final charge. Better to die honorably than to be a prisoner. Mat booted his horse into a gallop, hoping to take some of Hawkwing's men with him before he died. He didn't want to die. By the Light, he didn't. But rather to die standing up than to live on bent knees.

As he charged suicidally with the last of his cavalrymen Mat saw archers smoothly raise their bows. Some of them were from the area once known as Manetheren. Mat knew from experience what their bows could do to a man in armor.

One arrow hit him squarely in his core. Mat hurtled from his horse and was pinned to the ground by the arrow. Its point was jutting out just to the right of the small of his back, and had embedded itself in the ground.

Hours passed, and Hawkwing's men routed Mat's armies, and hunted down almost all of those who fled. They brought back the heads of Mat's officers, and stuck them on pikes around where Mat lay.

The bloody masks of faces Mat had knew stared accusatorially at him. It was his fault. He had led them to disaster. Mat had almost even pushed Hawkwing to where he could have fled, but he was too proud to escape.

Hawkwing himself came to gloat, now without armor, and clad in costly robes. His imperial crown was on his head, and he stood like an emperor as well. Mat had to admit he seemed suited to power. Suited to crushing resistance, and controlling everything.

Lying in the dirt, life's blood pouring out from his gut. Hawkwing stood over Mat, studying him with a sneer. The bastard. Mat could feel the arrow in him. It had hit his horse, and pinned him to the ground. Mat doubted that even a Aes Sedai could save him now.

Mat spat on Hawkwing's face. The saliva was tinged with red.

Hawkwing glared at Mat, and ordered his cronies to crush his legs. They complied, lifting their spear butts until Mat knew that they would be irreparable. Mat hoped word would get to his wife.

He just hoped she would escape. It was already too late for him.

Hawkwing left, without giving him the mercy required by the rules of war. Mat wished for death. It would be a release from his pain.

Mat lay there as night fell, and the last remnants of Mat's armies trickled onto the battlefield. There they found him, creeping slowly towards death.

"Kill me," Mat groaned to them. "Just do it,"

They took his sword and placed it by his heart. They shoved it in, and Mat died peacefully, and the freedom of Aldeshar died with him.

Mat hated remembering dying. The memory haunted him as he rode off, back to Tuon and the band.

To think that he was fated to marry a descendant of the man who had killed him.