Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive 3)

“We’ll put it to good use, sir,” Teft promised.

“Good.” The clock fabrial on his forearm dinged, and Dalinar stifled a sigh. She’d learned to make it ding? “If you’ll all excuse me, I have to prepare for an appointment with an emperor a thousand miles away.”

* * *

A short time later, Dalinar stood on his balcony. Hands clasped behind his back, he stared out toward the Oathgate transport platforms.

“I did a great deal of business with the Azish when I was younger,” Fen said from behind him. “This might not work, but it is a much better plan than traditional Alethi strutting.”

“I don’t like him going alone,” Navani replied.

“By all reports,” Fen said dryly, “he got stabbed through the chest, lifted a stone roughly the weight of ten men, then started putting my city back together one rock at a time. I think he’ll be fine.”

“No amount of Stormlight will help if they simply imprison him,” Navani said. “We could be sending him to become a hostage.”

They were arguing for his benefit. He had to understand the risks. And he did. He walked over to give Navani a light kiss. He smiled at her, then turned and extended his hand toward Fen, who gave him a paper packet, like a large envelope.

“This is it, then?” he asked. “All three are in here?”

“They’re marked with appropriate glyphs,” Navani said. “And the spanreed is inside too. They’ve promised to speak in Alethi during the meeting—you won’t have an interpreter from our side, as you insist on going alone.”

“I do,” Dalinar said, starting toward the door. “I want to try Fen’s suggestion.”

Navani quickly rose and took his arm with her freehand.

“I assure you,” he said. “I will be safe.”

“No you won’t. But this is no different from a hundred other times you’ve ridden off to battle. Here.” She handed him a small box sheathed in cloth.

“Fabrial?”

“Lunch,” she said. “There’s no telling when those people will feed you.”

She’d wrapped it in a glyphward. Dalinar cocked his eyebrow at it, and she shrugged. Can’t hurt, right? that seemed to say. She took him in an embrace, held on an extra moment—more than another Alethi might—then stepped back. “We’ll be watching the spanreed. One hour with no communication, and we’re coming for you.”

He nodded. He couldn’t write to them of course, but he could flip the reed on and off to send signals, an old general’s trick for when you lacked a scribe.

A short time later, he strode out onto Urithiru’s western plateau. Crossing it on his way to the Oathgate, he passed men marching in formations, sergeants shouting orders, runners carrying messages. Two of his Shardbearers—Rust and Serugiadis, men who had the Plate only—practiced with massive Shardbows, launching thick arrows hundreds of yards toward a large straw target that Kaladin had placed for them on a nearby mountainside.

A significant number of the common soldiers sat around holding spheres, staring at them intently. Word had spread that Bridge Four was recruiting. He’d lately noticed numerous men in the hallways holding a sphere “for luck.” Dalinar even passed a group out here who were talking about swallowing spheres.

The Stormfather rumbled with displeasure. They go about this backward. Foolish men. They can’t draw in Light and become Radiant; they first must be approaching Radiance, and look for Light to fulfill the promise.

Dalinar barked at the men to get back to training, and to not swallow any spheres. They obeyed with a scrambling rush, shocked to find the Blackthorn looming over them. He shook his head, then continued. His path, unfortunately, took him through a mock battle. Two blocks of spearmen pressed against each other on the plateau, straining and grunting, training to hold their formations under stress. Though they carried blunt practice spears, this was mostly shield work.

Dalinar saw the warning signs of things going too far. Men were shouting with real acrimony, and angerspren were boiling at their feet. One of the lines wavered, and instead of pulling back, their opponents rammed their shields against them repeatedly.

Green and white on one side, black and maroon on the other. Sadeas and Aladar. Dalinar cursed and approached the men, shouting for them to pull back. Soon, his call was taken up by captains and commanders. The rear ranks of the two practice blocks pulled away—leaving the contestants at the center to devolve into a brawl.

Dalinar shouted, and Stormlight shimmered along the stones before him. Those who hadn’t gotten caught up in the fighting jumped back. The rest got stuck in the Stormlight, which glued them to the ground. This caused all but the most furious to stop their fighting.

He pulled the last few apart and pushed them down, sticking them by their seats to the stone next to their angerspren. The men thrashed, then saw him and froze, looking appropriately chagrined.

I remember being that wrapped up in battle, Dalinar thought. Is it the Thrill? He couldn’t remember feeling it for … for a long time. He would have the men questioned to determine whether any could feel it.

Dalinar let the Stormlight evaporate away like luminescent steam. Aladar’s officers withdrew their group in an orderly fashion, shouting for the men to start calisthenics. The soldiers from Sadeas’s army, however, spat at the ground and heaved themselves to their feet, retreating in sullen bunches, cursing and muttering.

They’re getting worse, Dalinar thought. Under Torol Sadeas, they’d been slovenly and sadistic, but still soldiers. Yes, they tended to brawl, but they’d been quick to obey in battle. So they’d been effective, just not exemplary.

The new Sadeas banner flew above these men. Meridas Sadeas—Amaram—had changed the glyphpair’s design, as was traditional: Sadeas’s squat tower had elongated, and the hammer had changed to an axe.

Despite his reputation for running a crisp army, it was obvious he was having trouble controlling these men. He’d never commanded a force this large—and perhaps the murder of their highprince had upset the men to the point that there was nothing Amaram could do.

Aladar hadn’t been able to provide anything of substance about Torol’s murder. The investigation was supposed to be ongoing … but there were no leads. The spren hadn’t done it, but they had no idea who had.

I’ll need to take action about those soldiers, Dalinar thought. They need something to tire them out, keep them from getting into fights.…

Perhaps he had just the thing. He considered that as he finally made his way up the ramp to the proper Oathgate platform, then crossed the empty field to the control building. Jasnah waited within, reading a book and making notes. “What took you?” she asked.

“Almost had a riot out on the parade ground,” he said. “Two training formations got interlocked and started bashing one another.”

“Sadeas?”

Dalinar nodded.

“We’ll have to do something about them.”

“I’ve been thinking. Maybe some hard labor—strictly supervised—in a ruined city might be just the thing.”

Jasnah smiled. “How convenient that we’re currently providing exactly such assistance to Queen Fen. Work Sadeas’s troops to exhaustion, assuming we can keep them under control there.”