Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive 3)

You have Words to speak, Teft, she said in his mind.

“Storm you,” he muttered.

You have started on this path. When will you tell the others the oaths you have sworn?

“I didn’t—”

She turned away from him suddenly, becoming alert, looking down the corridor toward the Bridge Four barracks.

“What?” Teft stopped. “Something wrong?”

Something is very wrong. Run quickly, Teft!

He charged out in front of the men, causing them to shout after him. He scrambled to the door into their barracks and threw it open.

The scent of blood immediately assaulted him. The Bridge Four common room was in shambles, and blood stained the floor. Teft shouted, rushing through the room to find three corpses near the back. He dropped his spear and fell to his knees beside Rock, Bisig, and Eth.

Still breathing, Teft thought, feeling at Rock’s neck. Still breathing. Remember Kaladin’s training, you fool.

“Check the others!” he shouted as more bridgemen joined him. He pulled off his coat and used it on Rock’s wounds; the Horneater was sliced up good, a half dozen cuts that looked like they’d come from a knife.

“Bisig’s alive,” Peet called. “Though … storms, that’s a Shardblade wound!”

“Eth…” Lopen said, kneeling beside the third body. “Storms…”

Teft hesitated. Eth had been the one carrying the Honorblade today. Dead.

They came for the Blade, he realized.

Huio—who was better at field medicine than Teft—took over ministering to Rock. Blood on his hands, Teft stumbled back.

“We need Renarin,” Peet said. “It’s Rock’s best chance!”

“But where did he go?” Lyn said. “He was at the meeting, but left.” She looked toward Laran, one of the other former messengers—fastest among them. “Run for the guard post! They should have a spanreed to contact the Oathgate!”

Laran dashed out of the room. Nearby, Bisig groaned. His eyes fluttered open. His entire arm was grey, and his uniform had been sliced through.

“Bisig!” Peet asked. “Storms, what happened!”

“Thought … thought it was one of us,” Bisig muttered. “I didn’t really look—until he attacked.” He leaned back, groaning, closing his eyes. “He had on a bridgeman coat.”

“Stormfather!” Leyten said. “Did you see the face?”

Bisig nodded. “Nobody I recognize. A short man, Alethi. Bridge Four coat, lieutenant’s knots on the shoulder…”

Lopen, nearby, frowned, then glanced toward Teft.

A Bridge Four officer’s coat, worn as a disguise. Teft’s coat, which he’d sold weeks ago in the market. To get a few spheres.

He stumbled back as they hovered around Rock and Bisig, then fled through a falling patch of shamespren into the hallway outside.

FIVE AND A HALF YEARS AGO

Dalinar came to himself, gasping, in the cabin of a stormwagon. Heart pounding, he spun about, kicking aside empty bottles and lifting his fists. Outside, the riddens of a storm washed the walls with rain.

What in the Almighty’s tenth name had that been? One moment, he’d been lying in his bunk. The next, he had been … Well, he didn’t rightly remember. What was the drink doing to him now?

Someone rapped on his door.

“Yes?” Dalinar said, his voice hoarse.

“The caravan is preparing to leave, Brightlord.”

“Already? The rain hasn’t even stopped yet.”

“I think they’re, um, eager to be rid of us, sir.”

Dalinar pushed open the door. Felt stood outside, a lithe man with long, drooping mustaches and pale skin. Had to have some Shin blood in him, judging by those eyes.

Though Dalinar hadn’t expressly said what he intended to do out here in Hexi, his soldiers seemed to understand. Dalinar wasn’t sure whether he should be proud of their loyalty, or scandalized by how easily they accepted his intention to visit the Nightwatcher. Of course, one of them—Felt himself—had been this way before.

Outside, the caravan workers hitched up their chulls. They’d agreed to drop him off here, along their path, but refused to take him farther toward the Valley.

“Can you get us the rest of the way?” Dalinar asked.

“Sure,” Felt said. “We’re less than a day off.”

“Then tell the good caravan master that we will take our wagons and split from him here. Pay him what he asked, Felt, and then some on top.”

“If you say so, Brightlord. Seems that having a Shardbearer along with him should be payment enough.”

“Explain that, in part, we’re buying his silence.”

Dalinar waited until the rain had mostly stopped, then threw on his coat and stepped out to join Felt, walking at the front of the wagons. He didn’t feel like being cooped up any longer.

He’d expected this land to look like the Alethi plains. After all, the windswept flatlands of Hexi were not unlike those of his homeland. Yet strangely, there wasn’t a rockbud in sight. The ground was covered in wrinkles, like frozen ripples in a pond, perhaps two or three inches deep. They were crusty on the stormward side, covered with lichen. On the leeward side, grass spread on the ground, flattened.

The sparse trees here were scrawny, hunched-over things with thistle leaves. Their branches bent so far leeward, they almost touched the ground. It was like one of the Heralds had strolled through this place and bent everything sideways. The nearby mountainsides were bare, blasted and scoured raw.

“Not far now, sir,” Felt said. The short man barely came up to the middle of Dalinar’s chest.

“When you came before,” Dalinar said. “What … what did you see?”

“To be frank, sir, nothing. She didn’t come to me. Doesn’t visit everyone, you see.” He clapped his hands, then breathed on them. It had been winter, lately. “You’ll want to go in right after dark. Alone, sir. She avoids groups.”

“Any idea why she didn’t visit you?”

“Well, best I could figure, she doesn’t like foreigners.”

“I might have trouble too.”

“You’re a little less foreign, sir.”

Up ahead, a group of small dark creatures burst from behind a tree and shot into the air, clumped together. Dalinar gaped at their speed and agility. “Chickens?” he said. Little black ones, each the size of a man’s fist.

Felt chuckled. “Yes, wild chickens range this far east. Can’t see what they’d be doing on this side of the mountains though.”

The chickens eventually picked another bent-over tree and settled in its branches.

“Sir,” Felt said. “Forgive me for asking, but you sure you want to do this? You’ll be in her power, in there. And you don’t get to pick the cost.”

Dalinar said nothing, feet crunching on fans of weeds that trembled and rattled when he touched them. There was so much emptiness here in Hexi. In Alethkar, you couldn’t go more than a day or two without running into a farming village. They hiked for a good three hours, during which Dalinar felt both an anxiety to be finished and—at the same time—a reluctance to progress. He had enjoyed his recent sense of purpose. Simultaneously, his decision had given him excuses. If he was going to the Nightwatcher anyway, then why fight the drink?