I guess it's Mat's first chapter in ToM, because it's a typically rather slow beginning.

The description of Thom's sorrowful playing was a bit touching.

On the blood scent at the end: The gholam is pulled to Mat (and the Wondergirls) personally. Thus I don't really see why the gholam would got to Mat's tent, when he is away, and basically warn him by killing someone there. Besides that, the gholam usually drinks the blood. This indicates that - if it isn't just another crazy bubble of evil (e.g. turning some wash water in a bucket in the tent into blood) - the person in the tent was rather killed by a "normal" assassin, who thought Mat might be in the tent but instead found someone else there (I agree then with most others, probably Lopin). But I actually tend to believe that there isn't a corpse, but just blood, because Mat already steps into his tent and should see a dead boy (not just smell blood). This could already indicate that soon all drinks or water sources turn into blood, like the food is spoiled and Carridin saw in a vision in TGH, prologue