Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive 2)

The camp outside felt too quiet. After showering him with praise and enthusiasm, the men of Bridge Four had gone to join the army for its expedition, along with all of the other bridge crews, who would be carrying bridges for the army. Only a small force from Bridge Four would remain behind to guard the king.

Kaladin reached out in the darkness, feeling beside the wall until he found his spear. He took hold, then propped himself up and stood. The leg flared with immediate pain, and he gritted his teeth, but it wasn’t so bad. He’d taken fathom bark for the pain, and it was working. He’d refused the firemoss the surgeons had tried to give him. His father had hated using the addictive stuff.

Kaladin forced his way to the door of his small room, then shoved it open and stepped into the sunlight. He shaded his eyes and scanned the sky. No clouds yet. The Weeping, the worst part of the year, would roll in sometime tomorrow. Four weeks of ceaseless rain and gloom. It was a Light Year, so not even a highstorm in the middle. Misery.

Kaladin longed for the storm within. That would have awakened his mind, made him feel like moving.

“Hey, gancho?” Lopen said, popping up from where he sat beside the firepit. “You need something?”

“Let’s go watch the army leave.”

“You’re not supposed to be walking, I think…”

“I’ll be fine,” Kaladin said, hobbling with difficulty.

Lopen rushed over to help him, getting up under Kaladin’s arm, lifting weight off the bad leg. “Why don’t you glow a bit, gon?” Lopen asked softly. “Heal that problem?”

He’d prepared a lie: something about not wanting to alert the surgeons by healing too quickly. He couldn’t force it out. Not to a member of Bridge Four.

“I’ve lost the ability, Lopen,” he said softly. “Syl has left me.”

The lean Herdazian fell unusually silent. “Well,” he finally said, “maybe you should buy her something nice.”

“Buy something nice? For a spren?”

“Yeah. Like… I don’t know. A nice plant, maybe, or a new hat. Yes, a hat. Might be cheap. She’s small. If a tailor tries to charge you full price for a hat that small, you thump him real good.”

“That’s the most ridiculous piece of advice I’ve ever been given.”

“You should rub yourself with curry and go prancing through the camp singing Horneater lullabies.”

Kaladin looked at Lopen, incredulous. “What?”

“See? Now the bit about the hat is only the second most ridiculous piece of advice you’ve ever been given, so you should try it. Women like hats. I have this cousin who makes them. I can ask her. You might not even need the actual hat. Just the spren of the hat. That’ll make it even cheaper.”

“You’re a very special kind of weird, Lopen.”

“Of course I am, gon. There’s only one of me.”

They continued through the empty camp. Storms, the place seemed hollow. They passed empty barrack after empty barrack. Kaladin walked with care, glad for Lopen’s help, but even this was draining. He shouldn’t be moving on the leg. Father’s words, the words of a surgeon, floated up from the depths of his mind.

Torn muscles. Bind the leg, ward against infection, and keep the subject from putting weight on it. Further tearing could lead to a permanent limp, or worse.

“You want to get a palanquin?” Lopen asked.

“Those are for women.”

“Ain’t nothing wrong with being a woman, gancho,” Lopen said. “Some of my relatives are women.”

“Of course they…” He trailed off at Lopen’s grin. Storming Herdazian. How much of what he said was to deliberately sound obtuse? Well, Kaladin had heard men telling jokes about how stupid Herdazians were, but Lopen could talk rings around those men. Of course, half of Lopen’s own jokes were about Herdazians. He seemed to find those extra funny.

As they approached the plateaus, the dead silence gave way to the low roar of thousands of people assembled in a limited area. Kaladin and Lopen finally broke free of the barrack rows, emerging onto the natural terrace just above the parade grounds that debouched onto the Shattered Plains. Thousands of soldiers were gathered there. Spearmen in huge blocks, lighteyed archers in thinner ranks, officers prancing on horseback in gleaming armor.

Kaladin gasped softly.

“What?” Lopen asked.

“It’s what I always thought I’d find.”

“What? Today?”

“As a young man in Alethkar,” Kaladin said, unexpectedly emotional. “When I dreamed of the glory of war, this is what I imagined.” He hadn’t pictured the greenvines and barely capable soldiers that Amaram had trained in Alethkar. Neither had he pictured the crude, if effective, brutes of Sadeas’s army—or even the quick strike teams of Dalinar’s plateau runs.

He’d imagined this. A full army, arrayed for a grand march. Spears held high, banners fluttering, drummers and trumpeters, messengers in livery, scribes on horses, even the king’s Soulcasters in their own sectioned-off square, hidden from sight by walls of cloth carried on poles.

Kaladin knew the truth of battle now. Fighting was not about glory, but about men lying on the ground screaming and thrashing, tangled in their own viscera. It was about bridgemen thrown against a wall of arrows, or of Parshendi cut down while they sang.

Yet in this moment, Kaladin let himself dream again. He gave his youthful self—still there deep inside him—the spectacle he’d always imagined. He pretended that these soldiers were about something wonderful, instead of just another pointless slaughter.

“Hey, someone else is actually coming,” Lopen said, pointing. “Look at that.”

By the banners, Dalinar had been joined by only a single highprince: Roion. However, as Lopen pointed out, another force—not quite as large or as well organized—was flowing northward up the wide, open pathway along the eastern rim of the warcamps. At least one other highprince had responded to Dalinar’s call.

“Let’s find Bridge Four,” Kaladin said. “I want to see the men off.”

* * *

“Sebarial?” Dalinar asked. “Sebarial’s troops are joining us?”

Roion grunted, wringing his hands—as if wishing to wash them—as he sat in the saddle. “I guess we should be glad for any support at all.”

“Sebarial,” Dalinar said, dumbfounded. “He wouldn’t even send troops on close plateau runs, where there was no risk of Parshendi. Why would he send men now?”

Roion shook his head and shrugged.

Dalinar turned Gallant and trotted the horse toward the oncoming group, as did Roion. They passed Adolin, who rode just behind with Shallan, side by side, her guards and his following. Renarin was over with the bridgemen, of course.

Shallan was riding one of Adolin’s own horses, a petite gelding over which Sureblood towered. Shallan wore a traveling dress of the kind messenger women preferred, with the front and back slit all the way to the waist. She wore leggings—basically silk trousers, but women preferred other names—underneath.

Behind them rode a large group of Navani’s scholars and cartographers, including Isasik, the ardent who was the royal cartographer. These passed around the map Shallan had drawn, Isasik riding to the side, chin raised, as if pointedly ignoring the praise the women were giving Shallan’s map. Dalinar needed all these scholars, though he wished he didn’t. Each scribe he brought was another life he risked. That was made worse by Navani herself coming. He couldn’t dismiss her argument. If you think it’s safe enough for you to bring the girl, then it’s safe enough for me.