Not his opening move. His opening move IMO is Caemlyn (I would even say their opening move - Demandred/Moridin), which will involve the "purge" at the BT, when I think the few lighsiders left who have not been turned will be killed, and all the families will either be taken hostages, or if Demandred wants to bait the Asha'man into attacking a force that will be ready for them, they will all be killed (and several wives are bonded).

I think the battle with Perrin merely included a little teaser/foreshadowing. It hinted at the use of a Portal Stone (which was a "sudden divine inspiration" type of plot hole - Perrin has no idea Shadowspawn can't use Gateways), kind of a "You thought the Ways were the only weakness and Rand had this covered...".


The fact Moridin/Demandred are about to launch the LB at Caemlyn makes me doubt a lot either would have left Graendal or Aran'gar handle that battle and risk attracting attention on the BT.

It's why it makes more sense to me that Moridin sent only Slayer against Perrin, and he had been provided with an army by Demandred ("delivered" by Demandred's soldiers, I mean), which hid to ambush Perrin when he reached the target location on the road. There was always this ambush planned, and this speaks a lot of a lack of mobility for the Shadow, meaning channelers were never to be involved except to deliver the Shadowspawn.

I think the details of that "ending" are extremely convoluted, by the way. Graendal orders an attack on a location on the road Perrin had not reached before he had left for Whitebridge the day before, and without the WC. That she tells Slayer to spring the trap "anyway" and thinks of Byar suggests Graendal knew Perrin had gone but expected his return, so the whole thing relied on her having divine inspiration that Perrin has had a Wolf Dream warning him that would make him come back to rescue the WC, a Wolf Dream he's had before she met Moridin. To make it worse, in the battle it's commented the Shadowspawn were surprised as they expected only WC and not Perrin.

My hunch (and for this one I have really little to go by) is that Jordan's outline for all this was very succint, and what he actually intended to happen was more something like Perrin destroyed the DS and forged his Hammer, the evacuation started but it would take many, many hours, tension still built between him and the WC, Perrin's channellers were getting tired, and then Shadow attacked as Perrin's forces were still evacuating. Perrin's armies surrounded his last non-combattants, intending to retreat... his channelers had a easier time with Shadowspawn. Then he saw what Galad was going through, now surrounded and without channelers and he hesitated, and he ordered his forces to stop the retreat and rushed to help Galad, and Byar tried to kill him.

That was in many ways a mirror variation of the last battle of Emond's Field, with Slayer leading a Shadowspawn army, the WC cowardly leaving in the middle of the battle, and suddenly unexpected help coming.

We can't really establish Jordan's timeline for this. My hunch is that Jordan's intent was for the battle with Slayer and the battle with Mesaana to all happen on the same night as Rand's epiphany. I think Brandon made Perrin come to DM twice because with the book split the timelines became desynchronized but Perrin watching Rand on DM was a note from Jordan and Brandon didn't want to lose that, so he contrived it to happen in another way.


In Brandon's version, it happens some weeks after NB, which Brandon could contrive only by creating a delay of a full month between Rand's visit to Egwene and Merrilor, a delay which main purpose was to let him put Egwene and Rand in TOM.


If my hunch was right, that'd be confirmation Jordan never intended to use Graendal in Perrin's storyline - it was way too soon after NB. But it doesn't make sense anyway that Jordan would have built Perrin's storyline (a great deal of it happen pre-NB) without any threat while Rand's story was centered on Graendal/Aran'gar, and all of a sudden Graendal switched to become Perrin's foe without any build up.

The thing is, Brandon changed some of the things RJ had set up in KOD. The Asha'man needed just a few days of rest after the battle, because while they had started to tie-up their gateways at the end of the hunt for Faile, they had not done so before and had accumulated fatigue - plus the battle itself, and the problem delaying Perrin was that he had sent ahead many of his people to the Jehannah road, so he had to wait for the Asha'man to have rested to move the refugees from Malden and his army to where the vanguard with Gill and co. was, and to regroup all this huge snake of people and organize for them to Travel and where etc. Bumping into Galad when he did would have delayed the departure a bit more, but then the Dreamspike had to come into play. In Brandon's version, the dreamspike comes into play fairly late, which stretched Perrin's storyline by about two weeks (IRRC). He had to do that because of the Mesaana battle, with he pushed back by two weeks to create Egwene a mini-storyline in TOM.

Had he not stretched Perrin's storyline, he couldn't have come up with the notion of using Aran'gar or Graendal in the storyline as the Dreamspike would have been put in place before NB.