of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time
** Mayener Winged Guards **
These Guards were clad in "... red breastplates and [red] helmets like rimmed pots that covered the nape of the neck, and their lances bore red streamers." <LoC: 54, 669, The Sending; see also TPoD: 9, 209, Tangles; CoT: 7, 205, Blacksmith's Puzzle; KoD: 4, 152, A Deal> Interestingly, elsewhere they appear as "... gray-coated Mayeners ... red cloaks and the long red streamers on their lances rippling ... <WH: 2, 99, Taken>: images that are different, but need not be mutually exclusive. Lances are described as long, slender, and steel-tipped, and helmets of ordinary Guards as plain, elsewhere <TPoD: 8, 175, A Simple Country Woman; 10, 240, Changes; KoD: 4, 152, A Deal>As helmet, Jordan likely envisions a kettle hat, with either a horizontal or down-sloping rim, as shown above right; a downsloping rim would better cover the nape of the neck. The related pikeman's pot, a straight-rimmed variant on the morion (as shown for the Tairen Defenders) is equally possible.
All officers of the Guards have "... the thin plumes and wings ... worked in the sides of [their] helmets." <TPoD: 10, 240, Changes; also CoT: Glossary, 699> The number of plumes denotes the rank. A commander of the Winged Guards, Havien Nurelle, has the same "... red-painted breastplate and helmet ..." though is distinguished from his troops by "... a crimson helmet with a single slender red plume." <LoC: 17, 283, The Wheel of a Life; 54,669, The Sending> Lord Captain Gallenne wears a "...red helmet embossed with wings and bearing three thin crimson plumes..." <CoT: 7, 205, Blacksmith's Puzzle>
Their banner is a golden hawk on a field of blue <KoD: 29, 637, The Last Knot>.
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