The Way of Kings (133 page)

“A man can never have enough cousins,” Lopen said.

“Well, we need that rope,” Kaladin said, the plan beginning to sprout in his mind. “Do it, Lopen. I’ll make change from those spheres above to pay for it.”

“Light grows so distant. The storm never stops. I am broken, and all around me have died. I weep for the end of all things. He has won. Oh, he has beaten us.”

—Dated Palahakev, 1173, 16 seconds pre-death. Subject: a Thaylen sailor.

Dalinar fought, the Thrill pulsing within him, swinging his Shardblade from atop Gallant’s back. Around him, Parshendi fell with eyes burning black.

They came at him in pairs, each team trying to hit him from a different direction, keeping him busy and—they hoped—disoriented. If a pair could rush at him while he was distracted, they might be able to shove him off his mount. Those axes and maces—swung repeatedly—could crack his Plate. It was a very costly tactic; corpses lay scattered around Dalinar. But when fighting against a Shardbearer, every tactic was costly.

Dalinar kept Gallant moving, dancing from side to side, swinging his Blade in broad sweeps. He stayed just a little ahead of the line of his men. A Shardbearer needed space to fight; the Blades were so long that hurting one’s companions was a very real danger. His honor guard would approach only if he fell or encountered trouble.

The Thrill excited him, strengthened him. He hadn’t experienced the weakness again, the nausea he had on the battlefield that day weeks ago. Perhaps he’d been worried about nothing.

He turned Gallant just in time to confront two pairs of Parshendi coming at him from behind, singing softly. He directed Gallant with his knees, performing an expert sweeping side-swing, cutting through the necks of two Parshendi, then the arm of a third. Eyes burned out in the first two, and they collapsed. The third dropped his weapon from a hand that grew suddenly lifeless, flopping down, its nerves all severed.

The fourth member of that squad scrambled away, glaring at Dalinar. This was one of the Parshendi who didn’t wear a beard, and it seemed that there was something odd about his face. The cheek structure was just a little off….

Was that a woman?
Dalinar thought with amazement.
It couldn’t have been. Could it?

Behind him, his soldiers let out cheers as a large number of Parshendi scattered away to regroup. Dalinar lowered his Shardblade, the metal gleaming, gloryspren winking into the air around him. There was another reason for him to stay out ahead of his men. A Shardbearer wasn’t just a force of destruction; he was a force of morale and inspiration. The men fought more vigorously as they saw their brightlord felling foe after foe. Shardbearers changed battles.

Since the Parshendi were broken for the moment, Dalinar climbed free of Gallant and dropped to the rocks. Corpses lay unbloodied all around him, though once he approached the place where his men had been fighting, orange-red blood stained the rocks. Cremlings scuttled about on the ground, lapping up the liquid, and painspren wriggled between them. Wounded Parshendi lay staring up into the air, faces masks of pain, singing a quiet, haunting song to themselves. Often just as whispers. They never yelled as they died.

Dalinar felt the Thrill retreat as he joined his honor guard. “They’re getting too close to Gallant,” Dalinar said to Teleb, handing over the reins. The massive Ryshadium’s coat was flecked with frothy sweat. “I don’t want to risk him. Have a man run him to the back lines.”

Teleb nodded, waving a soldier to obey the order. Dalinar hefted his Shardblade, scanning the battlefield. The Parshendi force was regrouping. As always, the two-person teams were the focus of their strategy. Each pair would have different weapons, and often one was clean-shaven while the other had a beard woven with gemstones. His scholars had suggested this was some kind of primitive apprenticeship.

Dalinar inspected the clean-shaven ones for signs of any stubble. There was none, and more than a few had a faintly feminine shape to their faces. Could the ones without beards all be women? They didn’t appear to have much in the way of breasts, and their builds were like those of men, but the strange Parshendi armor could be masking things. The beardless ones
did
seem smaller by a few fingers, and the shapes of the faces…studying them, it seemed possible. Could the pairs be husbands and wives fighting together? That struck him as strangely fascinating. Was it possible that, despite six years of war, nobody had taken the time to investigate the genders of those they fought?

Yes. The contested plateaus were so far out, nobody ever brought back Parshendi bodies; they just set men to pulling the gemstones out of their beards or gathering their weapons. Since Gavilar’s death, very little effort had been given to studying the Parshendi. Everyone just wanted them dead, and if there was one thing the Alethi were good at, it was killing.

And
you’re
supposed to be killing them now,
Dalinar told himself,
not analyzing their culture.
But he did decide to have his soldiers collect a few bodies for the scholars.

He charged toward another section of the battlefield, Shardblade before him in two hands, making certain not to outpace his soldiers. To the south, he could see Adolin’s banner flying as he led his division against the Parshendi there. The lad had been uncharacteristically reserved lately. Being wrong about Sadeas seemed to have made him more contemplative.

On the west side, Sadeas’s own banner flew proudly, Sadeas’s forces keeping the Parshendi from the chrysalis. He’d arrived first, as before, engaging the Parshendi so Dalinar’s companies could arrive. Dalinar had considered cutting out the gemheart so the Alethi could retreat, but why end the battle that quickly? He and Sadeas both felt the real point of their alliance was to crush as many Parshendi as possible.

The more they killed, the faster this war would be through. And so far, Dalinar’s plan was working. The two armies complemented one another. Dalinar’s assaults had been too slow, and he’d allowed the Parshendi to position themselves too well. Sadeas was fast—more so now that he could leave men behind and concentrate fully on speed—and he was frighteningly effective at getting men onto the plateaus to fight, but his men weren’t trained as well as Dalinar’s. So if Sadeas could arrive first, then hold out long enough for Dalinar to get his men across, the superior training—and superior Shards—of his forces worked like a hammer against the Parshendi, smashing them against Sadeas’s anvil.

It was still by no means easy. The Parshendi fought like chasmfiends.

Dalinar crashed against them, swinging out with his blade, slaying Parshendi on all sides. He couldn’t help but feel a grudging respect for the Parshendi. Few men dared assault a Shardbearer directly—at least not without the entire weight of their army forcing them forward, almost against their will.

These Parshendi attacked with bravery. Dalinar spun, laying about him, the Thrill surging within. With an ordinary sword, a fighter focused on controlling his blows, striking and expecting recoil. You wanted quick, rapid strikes with small arcs. A Shardblade was different. The Blade was enormous, yet remarkably light. There was never recoil; landing a blow felt nearly like passing the blade through the air itself. The trick was to control momentum and keep the blade moving.

Four Parshendi threw themselves at him; they seemed to know that working into close quarters was one of the best ways to drop him. If they got too close, the length of his Blade’s hilt and the nature of his armor would make fighting more difficult for him. Dalinar spun in a long, waist-high attack, and noted the deaths of Parshendi by the slight tug on the Blade as it passed through their chests. He got all four of them, and felt a surge of satisfaction.

It was followed immediately by nausea.

Damnation!
he thought.
Not again!
He turned toward another group of Parshendi as the eyes of the dead burned out and smoked.

He threw himself into another attack—raising Blade in a twisting swing over his head, then bringing it down parallel to the ground. Six Parshendi died. He felt a spike of regret along with displeasure at the Thrill. Surely these Parshendi—these soldiers—deserved respect, not glee, as they were slaughtered.

He remembered the times when the Thrill had been the strongest. Subduing the highprinces with Gavilar during their youths, forcing back the Vedens, fighting the Herdazians and destroying the Akak Reshi. Once, the thirst for battle had nearly led him to attack Gavilar himself. Dalinar could remember the jealousy on that day some ten years ago, when the itch to attack Gavilar—the only worthy opponent he could see, the man who had won Navani’s hand—had nearly consumed him.

His honor guard cheered as his foes dropped. He felt hollow, but he seized the Thrill and got a tight grip on his feelings and emotions. He let the Thrill pulse through him. Blessedly, the sickness went away, which was good, for another group of Parshendi charged him from the side. He executed a Windstance turn, shifting his feet, lowering his shoulder, and throwing his weight behind his Blade as he swung.

He got three in the sweep, but the fourth and final Parshendi shoved past his wounded comrades, getting inside Dalinar’s reach, swinging his hammer. His eyes were wide with anger and determination, though he did not yell or bellow. He just continued his song.

His blow cracked into Dalinar’s helm. It pushed his head to the side but the Plate absorbed most of the hit, a few tiny weblike lines cracking along its length. Dalinar could see them glowing faintly, releasing Stormlight at the edges of his vision.

The Parshendi was in too close. Dalinar dropped his Blade. The weapon puffed away to mist as Dalinar raised an armored arm and blocked the next hammer blow. Then he swung with his other arm, smashing his fist into the Parshendi’s shoulder. The blow tossed the man to the ground. The Parshendi’s song cut off. Gritting his teeth, Dalinar stepped up and kicked the man in the chest, throwing the body a good twenty feet through the air. He’d learned to be wary of Parshendi who weren’t fully incapacitated.

Dalinar lowered his hands and began to resummon his Shardblade. He felt strong again, passion for battle returning to him.
I shouldn’t feel bad for killing the Parshendi,
he thought.
This is right.

He paused, noticing something. What was that on the next plateau over? It looked like…

Like a second Parshendi army.

Several groups of his scouts were dashing toward the main battle lines, but Dalinar could guess the news they brought. “Stormfather!” he cursed, pointing with his Shardblade. “Pass the warning! A second army approaches!”

Several men scattered in accordance to his command.
We should have expected this,
Dalinar thought.
We started bringing two armies to a plateau, so they have done the same.

But that implied that they had limited themselves before. Did they do it because they realized that the battlefields left little room for maneuvering? Or was it for speed? But that didn’t make sense—the Alethi had to worry about bridges as choke points, slowing them more and more if they brought more troops. But the Parshendi could jump the chasms. So why commit fewer troops than their all?

Curse it all,
he thought with frustration.
We know so little about them!

He shoved his Shardblade into the rock beside him, placing it intentionally so that it didn’t vanish. He began calling out orders. His honor guard formed around him, ushering in scouts and sending out runners. For a short time, he became a tactical general rather than an advance warrior.

It took time to change their battlefield strategy. An army was like a massive chull at times, lumbering along, slow to react. Before his orders could be executed, the new Parshendi force began crossing over onto the north side. That was where Sadeas was fighting. Dalinar couldn’t get a good view, and scout reports were taking too long.

He glanced to the side; there was a tall rock formation nearby. It had uneven sides, making it look a little like a pile of boards stacked one atop another. He grabbed his Shardblade in the middle of a report and ran across the stony ground, smashing a few Rockbuds beneath his plated boots. The Cobalt Guard and the messengers followed quickly.

At the rock formation, Dalinar tossed his Blade aside, letting it dissolve to smoke. He threw himself up and grabbed the rock, scaling the formation. Seconds later, he heaved himself up onto its flat top.

The battlefield stretched out below him. The main Parshendi army was a mass of red and black at the center of the plateau, now pressed on two sides by the Alethi. Sadeas’ bridge crews waited on a western plateau, ignored, while the new force of Parshendi crossed from the north onto the battlefield.

Stormfather, but they can jump,
Dalinar thought, watching the Parshendi span the gap in powerful leaps. Six years of fighting had shown Dalinar that human soldiers—particularly if lightly armored—could outrun Parshendi troops if they had to go more than a few dozen yards. But those thick, powerful Parshendi legs could send them far when they leaped.