Largest Darkfriend Army?

[algspkr]

I have been thinking about the last fight Mat had in KoD.  He engeneered the fight so that his attackers would think that he had Tuon, and yet when they arrived and saw that she was missing they did not ease up on their attack. 

 

At the beginning of KoD we saw Suroth order the attack at Semiherage's urging so it is an attack from the shadow.

 

Later we see Moridin issue orders that Mat and Perrin are to be killed on site. We then saw an attack on each of them. 

 

My thinking is that the army Mat fought was made up mostly if not entirely of darkfriends who received orders to kill Mat on site, which would supersede their Tuon killing orders.

 

If this is the case then it paints a startling picture of the shadows strength, as it represents an army on ten thousand Darkfriends who dislike being known even by their associates being raised with very short notice.

 

The light may be a tad worse off than it has seemed so far.

[Majsju]

Uhm, the Seanchan army never saw that Tuon was not there. What they did see was the dark green armour of the Deathwatch, which strongly indicated her presence. But since they never managed to get past the defences, there are no way they could have seen whether or not Tuon was actually there, unless there are some fraky Seanchan tradition that she is to bephysically presengt among the soldiers, which I kinda doubt.

 

That the army would be mostly DF...Can't see that happening. Even IF there were enough DFs among the Seanchan soldiers to make an army that size, they would be spread out all over the place. The common soldier does not really have a say in where he goes. And the only known high-ranking DF is Suroth, who can not start meddling with ordering soldiers around to create a mostly-DF army for a specific mission without raising quite a few questions.

 

And there is also the lack of any serious attempts to attack Mat. Ok, he took a few arrows, but he had placed himself in a way that made it clear he was in a position of command, which makes him a logical target. But had the army had a common goal of taking out him rather than Tuon, they would have pushed much harder to get him. Unlike Tuon, they could actually see, and aim at Mat.

 

Meh, too early in the morning to make this very coherrent.

[algspkr]

It has been a while since my last reread, but I thought we had a line from Mat that stated something like they should be able to see the lack of Tuon by now.

[aevogt]

But by then their bolld as up.  He did the same thing to Couladin.

 

Remember "Protect the Lord Dragon!"

 

Mat's the king of the sucker play.