Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive 3)

Dalinar turned, expecting an advance attack from the enemy. But no, Kalanor’s army was still deploying. It wasn’t men that had attracted the scout’s attention, but horses. A small herd of them, eleven or twelve in number, galloping across the battlefield. Proud, majestic.

“Ryshadium,” Gavilar whispered. “It’s rare they roam this far east.”

Dalinar swallowed an order to round up the beasts. Ryshadium? Yes … he could see the spren trailing after them in the air. Musicspren, for some reason. Made no storming sense. Well, no use trying to capture the beasts. They couldn’t be held unless they chose a rider.

“I want you to do something for me today, Brother,” Gavilar said. “Highprince Kalanor himself needs to fall. As long as he lives, there will be resistance. If he dies, his line goes with him. His cousin, Loradar Vamah, can seize power.”

“Will Loradar swear to you?”

“I’m certain of it,” Gavilar said.

“Then I’ll find Kalanor,” Dalinar said, “and end this.”

“He won’t join the battle easily, knowing him. But he’s a Shardbearer. And so…”

“So we need to force him to engage.”

Gavilar smiled.

“What?” Dalinar said.

“I’m simply pleased to see you talking of tactics.”

“I’m not an idiot,” Dalinar growled. He always paid attention to the tactics of a battle; he simply wasn’t one for endless meetings and jaw wagging.

Though … even those seemed more tolerable these days. Perhaps it was familiarity. Or maybe it was Gavilar’s talk of forging a dynasty. It was the increasingly obvious truth that this campaign—now stretching over many years—was no quick bash and grab.

“Bring me Kalanor, Brother,” Gavilar said. “We need the Blackthorn today.”

“All you need do is unleash him.”

“Ha! As if anyone existed who could leash him in the first place.”

Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to do? Dalinar thought immediately. Marrying me off, talking about how we have to be “civilized” now? Highlighting everything I do wrong as the things we must expunge?

He bit his tongue, and they finished their ride down the lines. They parted with a nod, and Dalinar rode over to join his elites.

“Orders, sir?” asked Rien.

“Stay out of my way,” Dalinar said, lowering his faceplate. The Shardplate helm sealed closed, and a hush fell over the elites. Dalinar summoned Oathbringer, the sword of a fallen king, and waited. The enemy had come to stop Gavilar’s continued pillage of the countryside; they would have to make the first move.

These last few months spent attacking isolated, unprotected towns had made for unfulfilling battles—but had also put Kalanor in a terrible position. If he sat back in his strongholds, he allowed more of his vassals to be destroyed. Already those started to wonder why they paid Kalanor taxes. A handful had preemptively sent messengers to Gavilar saying they would not resist.

The region was on the brink of flipping to the Kholins. And so, Highprince Kalanor had been forced to leave his fortifications to engage here. Dalinar shifted on his horse, waiting, planning. The moment came soon enough; Kalanor’s forces started across the plain in a cautious wave, shields raised toward the sky.

Gavilar’s archers released flights of arrows. Kalanor’s men were well trained; they maintained their formations beneath the deadly hail. Eventually they met Kholin heavy infantry: a block of men so armored that it might as well have been solid stone. At the same time, mobile archer units sprang out to the sides. Lightly armored, they were fast. If the Kholins won this battle—and Dalinar was confident of victory—it would be because of the newer battlefield tactics they’d been exploring.

The enemy army found itself flanked—arrows pounding the sides of their assault blocks. Their lines stretched, the infantry trying to reach the archers, but that weakened the central block, which suffered a beating from the heavy infantry. Standard spearman blocks engaged enemy units as much to position them as to do them harm.

This all happened on the scale of the battlefield. Dalinar had to climb off his horse and send for a groom to walk the animal as he waited. Inside, Dalinar fought back the Thrill, which urged him to ride in immediately.

Eventually, he picked a section of Kholin troops who were faring poorly against the enemy block. Good enough. He remounted and kicked his horse into a gallop. This was the right moment. He could feel it. He needed to strike now, when the battle was pivoting between victory and loss, to draw out his enemy.

Grass wriggled and pulled back in a wave before him. Like subjects bowing. This might be the end, his final battle in the conquest of Alethkar. What happened to him after this? Endless feasts with politicians? A brother who refused to look elsewhere for battle?

Dalinar opened himself to the Thrill and drove away such worries. He struck the line of enemy troops like a highstorm hitting a stack of papers. Soldiers scattered before him, shouting. Dalinar laid about with his Shardblade, killing dozens on one side, then the other.

Eyes burned, arms fell limp. Dalinar breathed in the joy of the conquest, the narcotic beauty of destruction. None could stand before him; all were tinder and he the flame. The soldier block should have been able to band together and rush him, but they were too frightened.

And why shouldn’t they be? People spoke of common men bringing down a Shardbearer, but surely that was a fabrication. A conceit intended to make men fight back, to save Shardbearers from having to hunt them down.

He grinned as his horse stumbled trying to cross the bodies piling around it. Dalinar kicked the beast forward, and it leaped—but as it landed, something gave. The creature screamed and collapsed, dumping him.

He sighed, shoving aside the horse and standing. He’d broken its back; Shardplate was not meant for such common beasts.

One group of soldiers tried a counterattack. Brave, but stupid. Dalinar felled them with broad sweeps of his Shardblade. Next, a lighteyed officer organized his men to come press and try to trap Dalinar, if not with their skill, then their weight of bodies. He spun among them, Plate lending him energy, Blade granting him precision, and the Thrill … the Thrill giving him purpose.

In moments like this, he could see why he had been created. He was wasted listening to men blab. He was wasted doing anything but this: providing the ultimate test of men’s abilities, proving them, demanding their lives at the edge of a sword. He sent them to the Tranquiline Halls primed and ready to fight.

He was not a man. He was judgment.

Enthralled, he cut down foe after foe, sensing a strange rhythm to the fighting, as if the blows of his sword needed to fall to the dictates of some unseen beat. A redness grew at the edges of his vision, eventually covering the landscape like a veil. It seemed to shift and move like the coils of an eel, trembling to the beats of his sword.

He was furious when a calling voice distracted him from the fight.

“Dalinar!”

He ignored it.

“Brightlord Dalinar! Blackthorn!”

That voice was like a screeching cremling, playing its song inside his helm. He felled a pair of swordsmen. They’d been lighteyed, but their eyes had burned away, and you could no longer tell.

“Blackthorn!”

Bah! Dalinar spun toward the sound.