The Way of Kings (153 page)

The Parshendi numbers were as large as anticipated. There were at least ten thousand of them lining up. This would be a full-scale battle, the kind Dalinar had been hoping for, the kind that would let them pit a huge number of Alethi against a large Parshendi force.

This
could
be it. The turning point in the war. Win this day, and everything would change.

Dalinar shaded his eyes as well, helm under his arm. He noted with satisfaction that Sadeas’s scouting crews were crossing to adjacent plateaus where they could watch for Parshendi reinforcements. Just because the Parshendi had brought so many at first didn’t mean that there were no other Parshendi forces waiting to flank them. Dalinar and Sadeas wouldn’t be taken by surprise again.

“Come with me,” Sadeas said. “Let us assault them together! A single grand wave of attack, across forty bridges!”

Dalinar looked down at the bridge crews; many of their members were lying exhausted on the plateau. Awaiting—likely dreading—their next task. Very few of them wore the armor Sadeas had spoken of. Hundreds of them would be slaughtered in the assault if they attacked together. But was that any different from what Dalinar did, asking his men to charge into battle to seize the plateau? Weren’t they all part of the same army?

The cracks. He couldn’t let them get wider. If he was going to be with Navani, he had to prove to himself he could remain firm in the other areas. “No,” he said. “I will attack, but only after you’ve made a landing point for my bridge crews. Even that is more than I should allow. Never force your men to do as you yourself would not.”

“You do charge the Parshendi!”

“I’d never do it carrying one of those bridges,” Dalinar said. “I’m sorry, old friend. It’s not a judgment of you. It is what I must do.”

Sadeas shook his head, pulling on his helmet. “Well, it will have to do. We still planning on dining together tonight to discuss strategy?”

“I assume so. Unless Elhokar has a fit for both of us missing his feast.”

Sadeas snorted. “He’s going to have to grow accustomed to it. Six years of feasting every night is growing tedious. Besides, I doubt he’ll feel anything but elation after we win this day and leave the Parshendi down a full third of their soldiers. See you on the battlefield.”

Dalinar nodded and Sadeas jumped off the rock formation, dropping down to the surface below and joining his officers. Dalinar lingered, looking over at the Tower. It was not only larger than most plateaus, it was rougher, covered with lumpish rock formations of hardened crem. The patterns were rolling and smooth, yet very uneven—like a field full of short walls covered by a blanket of snow.

The southeastern tip of the plateau rose to a point overlooking the Plains. The two plateaus they’d use were on the middle of the west side; Sadeas would take the northern one and Dalinar would assault from one just below it, once Sadeas had cleared a landing for him.

We need to push the Parshendi to the southeast,
Dalinar thought, rubbing his chin,
corner them there.
Everything hinged on that. The chrysalis was up near the top, so the Parshendi were already situated in a good position for Dalinar and Sadeas to push them back against the cliff edge. The Parshendi would probably allow this, as it would give them the high ground.

If a second Parshendi army came, it would be separated from the others. The Alethi could focus on the Parshendi trapped atop the Tower while holding a defensive formation against the new arrivals. It
would
work.

He felt himself growing excited. He hopped down to a shorter outcropping, then walked down a few steplike clefts to reach the plateau floor, where his officers waited. He then rounded the rock formation, investigating Adolin’s progress. The young man stood in his Shardplate, directing the companies as they crossed Sadeas’s mobile bridges onto the southern staging plateau. In the near distance, Sadeas’s men were forming up for the assault.

That group of armored bridgemen stood out, preparing at the front center of the formation of bridge crews. Why
were
they allowed armor? Why not the others as well? It looked like Parshendi carapace. Dalinar shook his head. The assault began, bridge crews running out ahead of Sadeas’s army, approaching the Tower first.

“Where would you like to make our assault, Father?” Adolin asked, summoning his Shardblade and resting it on his pauldron, sharp side up.

“There,” Dalinar said, pointing to a spot on their staging plateau. “Get the men ready.”

Adolin nodded, shouting the orders.

In the distance, bridgemen began to die.
Heralds guide your paths, you poor men,
Dalinar thought.
As well as my own.

Kaladin danced with the wind.

Arrows streamed around him, passing close, nearly kissing him with their painted scragglebark fletching. He had to let them get close, had to make the Parshendi feel they were near to killing him.

Despite four other bridgemen drawing their attention, despite the other men of Bridge Four behind armored with the skeletons of fallen Parshendi, most of the archers focused on Kaladin. He was a symbol. A living banner to destroy.

Kaladin spun between arrows, slapping them away with his shield. A storm raged inside him, as if his blood had been sucked away and replaced with stormwinds. It made his fingertips tingle with energy. Ahead, the Parshendi sang their angry, chanting song. The song for one who blasphemed against their dead.

Kaladin stayed at the front of the decoys, letting the arrows fall close. Daring them. Taunting them. Demanding they kill him until the arrows stopped falling and the wind stilled.

Kaladin came to rest, breath held to contain the storm within. The Parshendi reluctantly fell back before Sadeas’s force. An enormous force, as far as plateau assaults went. Thousands of men and thirty-two bridges. Despite Kaladin’s distraction, five bridges had been dropped, the men carrying them slaughtered.

None of the soldiers rushing across the chasm had made any specific eff ort to attack the archers firing on Kaladin, but the weight of numbers had forced them away. A few gave Kaladin loathing gazes, making an odd gesture by cupping a hand to the right ear and pointing at him before finally retreating.

Kaladin released his breath, Stormlight pulsing away from him. He had to walk a very fine line, drawing in enough Stormlight to stay alive, but not so much that it was visible to the watching soldiers.

The Tower rose ahead of him, a slab of stone that dipped toward the west. The chasm was so wide that he’d worried the men would drop the bridge into the chasm as they tried to place it. On the other side, Sadeas had arrayed his forces in a cupping shape, pushing the Parshendi back away, trying to give Dalinar an opening.

Perhaps attacking this way served to protect Dalinar’s pristine image. He wouldn’t make bridgemen die. Not directly, at least. Never mind that he stood on the backs of the men who had fallen to get Sadeas across. Their corpses were his true bridge.

“Kaladin!” a voice called from behind.

Kaladin spun. One of his men was wounded.
Storm it!
he thought, dashing up to Bridge Four. There was enough Stormlight still pulsing in his veins to stave off exhaustion. He’d grown complacent. Six bridge runs without a casualty. He should have realized it couldn’t last. He pushed through the collected bridgemen to find Skar on the ground, holding his foot, red blood seeping between his fingers.

“Arrow in the foot,” Skar said through gritted teeth. “In the storming foot! Who gets hit in the foot?”

“Kaladin!” Moash’s voice said, urgent. The bridgemen split as Moash brought Teft in, an arrow sprouting from his shoulder between carapace breastplate and arm.

“Storm it!” Kaladin said, helping Moash set Teft down. The older bridgeman looked dazed. The arrow had dug deep into the muscle. “Somebody get pressure on Skar’s foot and wrap it until I can look at it. Teft, can you hear me?”

“I’m sorry, lad,” Teft mumbled, eyes glassy. “I’m…”

“You’re all right,” Kaladin said, hurriedly taking some bandages from Lopen, then nodding grimly. Lopen would heat a knife for cauterizing. “Who else?”

“Everyone else is accounted for,” Drehy said. “Teft was trying to hide his wound. He must have taken it when we were shoving the bridge across.”

Kaladin pressed gauze against the wound, then gestured for Lopen to hurry with the heated knife. “I want our scouts watching. Make sure the Parshendi don’t try a stunt like they did a few weeks back! If they jump across that plateau to get at Bridge Four, we’re dead.”

“Is all right,” Rock said, shading his eyes. “Sadeas is keeping his men in this area. No Parshendi will get through.”

The knife came, and Kaladin held it hesitantly, a curl of smoke rising from its length. Teft had lost too much blood; there was no risking a sewing. But with the twist of the knife, Kaladin risked some bad scarring. That could leave the aging bridgeman with a stiff ness that would hurt his ability to wield a spear.

Reluctantly, Kaladin pressed the knife into the wound, the flesh hissing and blood drying to black crisps. Painspren wiggled out of the ground, sinewy and orange. In a surgery, you could sew. But on the field, this was often the only way.

“I’m sorry, Teft.” He shook his head as he continued to work.

Men began to scream. Arrows hit wood and flesh, sounding like distant woodsmen swinging axes.

Dalinar waited beside his men, watching Sadeas’s soldiers fight.
He had better give us an opening,
he thought.
I’m starting to hunger for this plateau.

Fortunately, Sadeas quickly gained his footing on the Tower and sent a flanking force over to carve out a section of land for Dalinar. They didn’t get entirely into place before Dalinar started moving.

“One of you bridges, come with me!” he bellowed, barreling to the forefront. He was followed by one of the eight bridge teams Sadeas had lent him.

Dalinar needed to get onto that plateau. The Parshendi had noticed what was happening and had begun to put pressure on the small company in green and white that Sadeas had sent to defend his entry area. “Bridge crew, there!” Dalinar said, pointing.

The bridgemen hustled into place, looking relieved that they wouldn’t be asked to place their bridge under fire of arrows. As soon as they got it into position, Dalinar charged across, the Cobalt Guard following. Just ahead, Sadeas’s men broke.

Dalinar bellowed, closing his gauntleted hands around Oathbringer’s hilt as the sword formed from mist. He crashed into the surging Parshendi line with a wide, two-handed sweep that dropped four men. The Parshendi began to chant in their strange language, singing their war song. Dalinar kicked a corpse aside and began to attack in earnest, frantically defending the foothold Sadeas’s men had gained him. Within minutes, his soldiers surged around him.

With the Cobalt Guard watching his back, Dalinar waded into the battle, breaking enemy ranks as only a Shardbearer could. He tore pockets through the Parshendi front lines, like a fish leaping from a stream, cutting back and forth, keeping his enemies disorganized. Corpses with burned eyes and slashed clothing made a trail behind him. More and more Alethi troops filled in the holes. Adolin crashed through a group of Parshendi nearby, his own squad of Cobalt Guardsmen a safe distance behind. He brought his whole army across—he needed to ascend quickly, pinning the Parshendi back so they couldn’t escape. Sadeas was to watch the northern and western edges of the Tower.

The rhythm of the battle sang to Dalinar. The Parshendi chanting, the soldiers grunting and yelling, the Shardblade in his hands and the surging power of the Plate. The Thrill rose within him. Since the nausea didn’t strike him, he carefully let the Blackthorn free, and felt the joy of dominating a battlefield and the disappointment at lacking a worthy foe.

Where were the Parshendi Shardbearers? He had seen that one in battle weeks ago. Why had he not reappeared? Would they commit so many men to the Tower without sending a Shardbearer?

Something heavy hit his armor, banging off it, causing a small puff of Stormlight to escape between the joints along his upper arm. Dalinar cursed, raising an arm to protect his face while scanning the near distance.
There,
he thought, picking out a nearby rock formation where a group of Parshendi stood swinging enormous rock slings with two hands. The head-size stones crashed into Parshendi and Alethi alike, though Dalinar was obviously the target.