The Way of Kings (60 page)

“Wait,” Teft said. “You put
chull dung
in Highprince Sadeas’s soup?”

“Er, yes,” Rock said. “Actually, I put this thing in his bread too. And used it as a garnish on the pork steak. And made a chutney out of it for the buttered garams. Chull dung, it has many uses, I found.”

Teft laughed, his voice echoing. He fell on his side, so amused that Kaladin was afraid he’d roll right into the chasm. “Horneater,” Teft finally said, “I owe you a drink.”

Rock smiled. Kaladin shook his head to himself, amazed. It suddenly made sense.

“What?” Rock said, apparently noticing his expression.

“This is what we need,” Kaladin said. “
This!
It’s the thing I’ve been missing.”

Rock hesitated. “Chull dung? This is the thing you need?”

Teft burst into another round of laugher.

“No,” Kaladin said. “It’s…well, I’ll show you. But first we need this knobweed sap.” They’d barely made their way through one of the bundles, and already his fingers were aching from the milking.

“What of you, Kaladin?” Rock asked. “I have been telling you my story. You will tell me yours? How did you come to those marks on your forehead?”

“Yeah,” Teft said, wiping his eyes. “Whose food did
you
trat in?”

“I thought you said it was taboo to ask about a bridgeman’s past,” Kaladin said.

“You made Rock share, son,” Teft said. “It’s only fair.”

“So if I tell my story, that means you’ll tell yours?”

Teft scowled immediately. “Now look, I ain’t going to—”

“I killed a man,” Kaladin said.

That quieted Teft. Rock perked up. Syl, Kaladin noticed, was still watching with interest. That was odd for her; normally, her attention wavered quickly.

“You killed a man?” Rock said. “And after this thing, they made you a slave? Is not the punishment for murder usually death?”

“It wasn’t murder,” Kaladin said softly, thinking of the scraggly bearded man in the slave wagon who had asked him these same questions. “In fact, I was thanked for it by someone very important.”

He fell silent.

“And?” Teft finally asked.

“And…” Kaladin said, looking down at a reed. Nomon was setting in the west, and the small green disk of Mishim—the final moon—was rising in the east. “And it turns out that lighteyes don’t react very well when you turn down their gifts.”

The others waited for more, but Kaladin fell silent, working on his reeds. It shocked him, how painful it still was to remember those events back in Amaram’s army.

Either the others sensed his mood, or they felt what he’d said was enough, for they each turned back to their work and prodded no further.

Neither point makes the things I have written to you here untrue.

The king’s Gallery of Maps balanced beauty and function. The expansive domed structure of Soulcast stone had smooth sides that melded seamlessly with the rocky ground. It was shaped like a long loaf of Thaylen bread, and had large skylights in the ceiling, allowing the sun to shine down on handsome formations of shalebark.

Dalinar passed one of these, pinks and vibrant greens and blues growing in a gnarled pattern as high as his shoulders. The crusty, hard plants had no true stalks or leaves, just waving tendrils like colorful hair. Except for those, shalebark seemed more rock than vegetation. And yet, scholars said it must be a plant for the way it grew and reached toward the light.

Men did that too,
he thought.
Once
.

Highprince Roion stood in front of one of the maps, hands clasped behind his back, his numerous attendants clogging the other side of the gallery. Roion was a tall, light-skinned man with a dark, well-trimmed beard. He was thinning on top. Like most of the others, he wore a short, open-fronted jacket, exposing the shirt underneath. Its red fabric poked out above the jacket’s collar.

So sloppy,
Dalinar thought, though it was very fashionable. Dalinar just wished that current fashion weren’t so, well, sloppy.

“Brightlord Dalinar,” Roion said. “I have difficulty seeing the point of this meeting.”

“Walk with me, Brightlord Roion,” Dalinar said, nodding to the side.

The other man sighed, but joined Dalinar and walked the pathway between the clusters of plants and the wall of maps. Roion’s attendants followed; they included both a cupbearer and a shieldbearer.

Each map was illuminated by diamonds, their enclosures made of mirror-polished steel. The maps were inked, in detail, onto unnaturally large, seamless sheets of parchment. Such parchment was obviously Soulcast. Near the center of the chamber they came to the Prime Map, an enormous, detailed map fixed in a frame on the wall. It showed the entirety of the Shattered Plains that had been explored. Permanent bridges were drawn in red, and plateaus close to the Alethi side had blue glyphpairs on them, indicating which highprince controlled them. The eastern section of the map grew less detailed until the lines vanished.

In the middle was the contested area, the section of plateaus where the chasmfiends most often came to make their chrysalises. Few came to the near side, where the permanent bridges were. If they did come, it was to hunt, not to pupate.

Controlling the nearby plateaus was still important, as a highprince—by agreement—could not cross a plateau maintained by one of the others unless he had permission. That determined who had the best pathways to the central plateaus, and it also determined who had to maintain the watch-posts and permanent bridges on that plateau. Those plateaus were bought and sold among the highprinces.

A second sheet of parchment to the side of the Prime Map listed each highprince and the number of gemhearts he had won. It was a very Alethi thing to do—maintain motivation by making it very clear who was winning and who lagged behind.

Roion’s eyes immediately went to his own name on the list. Of all the highprinces, Roion had won the fewest gemhearts.

Dalinar reached his hand up to the Prime Map, brushing the parchment. The middle plateaus were named or numbered for ease of reference. Foremost of them was a large plateau that stood defiantly near the Parshendi side. The Tower, it was called. An unusually massive and oddly shaped plateau that the chasmfiends seemed particularly fond of using as a spot for pupating.

Looking at it gave him pause. The size of a contested plateau determined the number of troops you could field on it. The Parshendi usually brought a large force to the Tower, and they had rebuffed the Alethi assaults there twenty-seven times now. No Alethi had ever won a skirmish upon it. Dalinar had been turned back there twice himself.

It was just too close to the Parshendi; they could always get there first and form up, using the slope to give them excellent high ground.
But if we could corner them there,
he thought,
with a large enough force of our own…
It could mean trapping and killing a huge number of Parshendi troops. Maybe enough of them to break their ability to wage war on the Plains.

It was something to consider. Before that could happen, however, Dalinar would need alliances. He ran his fingers westward. “Highprince Sadeas has been doing very well lately.” Dalinar tapped Sadeas’s warcamp. “He’s been buying plateaus from other highprinces, making it easier and easier for him to get to the battlefields first.”

“Yes,” Roion said, frowning. “One hardly needs to see a map to know that, Dalinar.”

“Look at the scope of it,” Dalinar said. “Six years of continuous fighting, and nobody has even
seen
the center of the Shattered Plains.”

“That’s never been the point. We hold them in, besiege them, starve them out, and force them to come to us. Wasn’t that
your
plan?”

“Yes, but I never imagined it would take this long. I’ve been thinking that it might be time to change tactics.”

“Why? This one works. Hardly a week goes by without a couple of clashes with the Parshendi. Though, might I point out that
you
have hardly been a model of inspiration in battle lately.” He nodded to Dalinar’s name on the smaller sheet.

There were a good number of scratches next to his name, noting gemhearts won. But very few of them were fresh.

“There are some who say the Blackthorn has lost his sting,” Roion said. He was careful not to insult Dalinar outright, but he went further than he once would have. News of Dalinar’s actions while trapped in the barrack had spread.

Dalinar forced himself to be calm. “Roion, we cannot continue to treat this war as a game.”

“All wars are games. The greatest kind, with the pieces lost real lives, the prizes captured making for real wealth! This is the life for which men exist. To fight, to kill, to win.” He was quoting the Sunmaker, the last Alethi king to unite the highprinces. Gavilar had once revered his name.

“Perhaps,” Dalinar said. “Yet what is the point? We fight to get Shardblades, then use those Shardblades to fight to get more Shardblades. It’s a circle, round and round we go, chasing our tails so we can be better at chasing our tails.”

“We fight to prepare ourselves to reclaim heaven and take back what is ours.”

“Men can train without going to war, and men can fight without it being meaningless. It wasn’t always this way. There were times when our wars
meant
something.”

Roion raised an eyebrow. “You’re almost making me believe the rumors, Dalinar. They say you’ve lost your taste for combat, that you no longer have the will to fight.” He eyed Dalinar again. “Some are saying that it is time to abdicate in favor of your son.”

“The rumors are wrong,” Dalinar snapped.

“That is—”

“They are
wrong
,” Dalinar said firmly, “if they claim that I no longer care.” He rested his fingers on the surface of the map again, running them across the smooth parchment. “I care, Roion. I care deeply. About this people. About my nephew. About the future of this war. And that is why I suggest we pursue an aggressive course from now on.”

“Well, that is good to hear, I suppose.”

Unite them….

“I want you to try a joint plateau assault with me,” Dalinar said.

“What?”

“I want the two of us to try coordinating our efforts and attack at the same time, working together.”

“Why would we want to do that?”

“We could increase our chances of winning gemhearts.”

“If more troops increased my chances of winning,” Roion said, “then I’d just bring more of my own. The plateaus are too small for fielding large armies, and mobility is more important than sheer numbers.”

It was a valid point; on the Plains, more didn’t necessarily mean better. Close confines and a requisite forced march to the battlefield changed warfare significantly. The exact number of troops used depended on the size of the plateau and the highprince’s personal martial philosophy.

“Working together wouldn’t just be about fielding more troops,” Dalinar said. “Each highprince’s army has different strengths. I’m known for my heavy infantry; you have the best archers. Sadeas’s bridges are the fastest. Working together, we could try new tactics. We expend too much effort getting to the plateau in haste. If we weren’t so rushed, competing against one another, maybe we could surround the plateau. We could try letting the Parshendi arrive first, then assault them on
our
terms, not theirs.”

Roion hesitated. Dalinar had spent days deliberating with his generals about the possibility of a joint assault. It seemed that there would be distinct advantages, but they wouldn’t know for certain until someone tried it with him.

He actually seemed to be considering. “Who would get the gemheart?”

“We split the wealth equally,” Dalinar said.

“And if we capture a Shardblade?”

“The man who won it would get it, obviously.”

“And that’s most likely to be you,” Roion said, frowning. “As you and your son already have Shards.”

It was the great problem of Shardblades and Shardplate—winning either was highly unlikely unless you already had Shards yourself. In fact, having only one or the other often wasn’t enough. Sadeas had faced Parshendi Shardbearers on the field, and had always been forced to retreat, lest he be slain himself.