The Way of Kings

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.