The Way of Kings (Page 191)

She bowed her head before the prayer. It was only a single character, but a complex one. Thath. Justice.

Men watched quietly, as if afraid of spoiling her solemn wish. A cold breeze began blowing, whipping at pennants and cloaks. The prayer went out, but that was fine. It wasn’t meant to burn long.

“Brightlord Sadeas!” an anxious voice called.

Navani looked up. Soldiers parted, making way for a runner in green. He hurried up to Sadeas, beginning to speak, but the highprince grabbed the man by the shoulder in a Shardplate grip and pointed, gesturing for his guards to make a perimeter. He pulled the messenger beneath the canopy.

Navani continued to kneel beside her prayer. The flames left a black scar in the shape of the glyph on the ground. Someone stepped up beside her— Renarin. He went to one knee, resting a hand on her shoulder. “Thank you, Mashala.”

She nodded, standing, her freehand sprinkled with drops of red pigment. Her cheeks were still wet with tears, but she narrowed her eyes, looking through the press of soldiers toward Sadeas. His expression was thunderous, face growing red, eyes wide with anger.

She turned and pushed her way through the press of soldiers, scrambling up to the rim of the staging field. Renarin and some of Sadeas’s officers joined her in staring out over the Shattered Plains.

And there they saw a creeping line of men limping back toward the warcamps, led by a mounted man in slate-grey armor.

Dalinar rode Gallant at the head of two thousand six hundred and fifty-three men. That was all that remained of his assault force of eight thousand.

The long trek back across the plateaus had given him time to think. His insides were still a tempest of emotions. He flexed his left hand as he rode; it was now encased by a blue-painted Shardplate gauntlet borrowed from Adolin. It would take days to regrow Dalinar’s own gauntlet. Longer, if the Parshendi tried to grow a full suit from the one he had left. They would fail, so long as Dalinar’s armorers fed Stormlight to his suit. The abandoned gauntlet would degrade and crumble to dust, a new one growing for Dalinar.

For now, he wore Adolin’s. They had collected all of the infused gemstones among his twenty-six hundred men and used that Stormlight to recharge and reinforce his armor. It was still scarred with cracks. Healing as much damage as it had sustained would take days, but the Plate was in fighting shape again, if it came to that.

He needed to make certain it didn’t. He intended to confront Sadeas, and he wanted to be armored when he did. In fact, he wanted to storm up the incline to Sadeas’s warcamp and declare formal war on his “old friend.” Perhaps summon his Blade and see Sadeas dead.

But he wouldn’t. His soldiers were too weak, his position too tenuous. Formal war would destroy him and the kingdom. He had to do something else. Something that protected the kingdom. Revenge would come. Eventually. Alethkar came first.

He lowered his blue-gauntleted fist, gripping Gallant’s reins. Adolin rode a short distance away. They’d repaired his armor as well, though he now lacked a gauntlet. Dalinar had refused the gift of his son’s gauntlet at first, but had given in to Adolin’s logic. If one of them was going to go without, it should be the younger man. Inside Shardplate, their differences in age didn’t matter—but outside of it, Adolin was a young man in his twenties and Dalinar an aging man in his fifties.

He still didn’t know what to think of the visions, and their apparent failure in telling him to trust Sadeas. He’d confront that later. One step at a time.

“Elthal,” Dalinar called. The highest-ranked officer who had survived the disaster, Elthal was a limber man with a distinguished face and a thin mustache. His arm was in a sling. He’d been one of those to hold the gap alongside Dalinar during the last part of the fight.

“Yes, Brightlord?” Elthal asked, jogging over to Dalinar. All of the horses save the two Ryshadium were carrying wounded.

“Take the wounded to my warcamp,” Dalinar said. “Then tell Teleb to bring the entire camp to alert. Mobilize the remaining companies.”

“Yes, Brightlord,” the man said, saluting. “Brightlord, what should I tell them to prepare for?”

“Anything. But hopefully nothing.”

“I understand, Brightlord,” Elthal said, leaving to follow the orders.

Dalinar turned Gallant to march over to the group of bridgemen, still following their somber leader, a man named Kaladin. They’d left their bridge as soon as they’d reached the permanent bridges; Sadeas could send for it eventually.

The bridgemen stopped as he approached, looking as tired as he felt, then arranged themselves in a subtly hostile formation. They clung to their spears, as if certain he’d try to take them away. They had saved him, yet they obviously didn’t trust him.

“I’m sending my wounded back to my camp,” Dalinar said. “You should go with them.”

“You’re confronting Sadeas?” Kaladin asked.

“I must.” I have to know why he did what he did. “I will buy your freedom when I do.”

“Then I’m staying with you,” Kaladin said.

“Me too,” said a hawk-faced man at the side. Soon all of the bridgemen were demanding to stay.

Kaladin turned to them. “I should send you back.”

“What?” asked an older bridgeman with a short grey beard. “You can risk yourself, but we can’t? We have men back in Sadeas’s camp. We need to get them out. At the very least, we need to stay together. See this through.”

The others nodded. Again, Dalinar was struck by their discipline. More and more, he was certain Sadeas had nothing to do with that. It was this man at their head. Though his eyes were dark brown, he held himself like a brightlord.

Well, if they wouldn’t go, Dalinar wouldn’t force them. He continued to ride, and soon close to a thousand of Dalinar’s soldiers broke off and marched south, toward his warcamp. The rest of them continued, toward Sadeas’s camp. As they drew closer, Dalinar noticed a small crowd gathering at the final chasm. Two figures in particular stood at their forefront. Renarin and Navani.

“What are they doing in Sadeas’s warcamp?” Adolin asked, smiling through his fatigue, edging Sureblood up beside Dalinar.

“I don’t know,” Dalinar said. “But the Stormfather bless them for coming.” Seeing their welcome faces, he began to feel it sink in—finally—that he had survived the day.

Gallant crossed the last bridge. Renarin was there waiting, and Dalinar rejoiced.

For once, the boy was displaying outright joy. Dalinar swung free from the saddle and embraced his son.

“Father,” Renarin said, “you live!”

Adolin laughed, swinging out of his own saddle, armor clanking. Renarin pulled out of the embrace and grabbed Adolin on the shoulder, pounding the Shardplate lightly with his other hand, grinning widely. Dalinar smiled as well, turning from the brothers to look at Navani. She stood with hands clasped before her, one eyebrow raised. Her face, oddly, bore a few small smears of red paint.

“You weren’t even worried, were you?” he said to her.

“Worried?” she asked. Her eyes met his, and for the first time, he noticed their redness. “I was terrified.”

And then Dalinar found himself grabbing her in an embrace. He had to be careful as he was in Shardplate, but the gauntlets let him feel the silk of her dress, and his missing helm let him smell the sweet floral scent of her perfumed soap. He held her as tightly as he dared, bowing his head and pressing his nose into her hair.

“Hmm,” she noted warmly, “it appears that I was missed. The others are watching. They’ll talk.”

“I don’t care.”

“Hmm… It appears I was very much missed.”

“On the battlefield,” he said gruffly, “I thought I would die. And I realized it was all right.”

She pulled her head back, looking confused.

“I have spent too much of my time worrying about what people think, Navani. When I thought my time had arrived, I realized that all my worrying had been wasted. In the end, I was pleased with how I had lived my life.” He looked down at her, then mentally unlatched his right gauntlet, letting it drop to the ground with a clank. He reached up with that callused hand, cupping her chin. “I had only two regrets. One for you, and one for Renarin.”

“So, you’re saying you can just die, and it would be all right?”

“No,” he said. “What I’m saying is that I faced eternity, and I saw peace there. That will change how I live.”

“Without all of the guilt?”

He hesitated. “Being me, I doubt I’ll banish it entirely. The end was peace, but living… that is a tempest. Still, I see things differently now. It is time to stop letting myself be shoved around by lying men.” He looked up, toward the ridge above, where more soldiers in green were gathering. “I keep thinking of one of the visions,” he said softly, “the latest one, where I met Nohadon. He rejected my suggestion that he write down his wisdom. There’s something there. Something I need to learn.”

“What?” Navani asked.

“I don’t know yet. But I’m close to figuring it out.” He held her close again, hand on the back of her head, feeling her hair. He wished for the Plate to be gone, to not be separated from her by the metal.

But the time for that had not yet come. Reluctantly, he released her, turning to the side, where Renarin and Adolin were watching them uncomfortably. His soldiers were looking up at Sadeas’s army, gathering on the ridge.

I can’t let this come to bloodshed, Dalinar thought, reaching down and putting his hand into the fallen gauntlet. The straps tightened, connecting to the rest of the armor. But I’m also not going to slink back to my camp without confronting him. He at least had to know the purpose of the betrayal. All had been going so well.

Besides, there was the matter of his promise to the bridgemen. Dalinar walked up the slope, bloodstained blue cloak flapping behind him. Adolin clanked up next to him on one side, Navani keeping pace on the other. Renarin followed, Dalinar’s remaining sixteen hundred troops marching up as well.

“Father…” Adolin said, looking at the hostile troops.

“Don’t summon your Blade. This will not come to blows.”

“Sadeas abandoned you, didn’t he?” Navani asked quietly, eyes alight with anger.

“He didn’t just abandon us,” Adolin spat. “He set us up, then betrayed us.”

“We survived,” Dalinar said firmly. The way ahead was becoming clearer. He knew what he needed to do. “He won’t attack us here, but he might try to provoke us. Keep your sword as mist, Adolin, and don’t let our troops make any mistakes.”

The soldiers in green parted reluctantly, holding spears. Hostile. To the side, Kaladin and his bridgemen walked near the front of Dalinar’s force.

Adolin didn’t summon his Blade, though he regarded Sadeas’s troops around them with contempt. Dalinar’s soldiers couldn’t have felt easy about being surrounded by enemies once again, but they followed him onto the staging field. Sadeas stood ahead. The treacherous highprince waited with arms folded, still wearing his Shardplate, curly black hair blowing in the breeze. Someone had burned an enormous thath glyph on the stones here, and Sadeas stood at its center.