“Is Rlain one of them?”
Yunfah stood up on his cloud, his long beard whipping in the wind—though he had no real substance. Kaladin could read anger in his posture before Syl gave him the reply. She was acting as intermediary since the sound of the rushing wind was fairly loud, even at a single Lashing.
No, Syl said. He is angry at your repeated suggestion he bond one of the enemies.
“He won’t find a potential Windrunner more capable or earnest.”
He’s acting mad, Syl said. But I do think he’ll agree if you push him. He respects you, and honorspren like hierarchy. The ones who have joined us did so against the will of the general body of their peers; they’ll be looking for someone to be in charge.
All right then. “As your highmarshal and superior officer,” Kaladin said, “I forbid you to bond anyone else unless you try to work with Rlain first.”
The elderly spren shook his fist at Kaladin.
“You have two choices, Yunfah,” Kaladin said, not waiting for Syl. “Obey me, or throw away all the work you’ve done to adapt to this realm. You need a bond or your mind will fade. I’m tired of waiting on your indecisiveness.”
The spren glared at him.
“Will you follow orders?”
The spren spoke.
He asks how long you’ll give him, Syl explained.
“Ten days,” Kaladin said. “And that is generous.”
Yunfah said something, then sped away, becoming a ribbon of light. Syl pulled up alongside Kaladin’s head.
He said “fine” before leaving, she said. I have little doubt he’ll at least consider Rlain now. Yunfah doesn’t want to go back to Shadesmar; he likes this realm too much.
Kaladin nodded, and felt uplifted by the result. If this worked out, Rlain would be thrilled.
Followed by the others, Kaladin swooped down toward Narak, their outpost at the center of the Shattered Plains. Navani’s engineers were turning the entire plateau from ruins into a fortified base. A wall to the east—easily six feet wide at its foot—was being built, low and squat, against the storms. A thinner wall wrapped the rest of the plateau, and lightning rods helped protect from the Everstorm.
Kaladin alighted on top of the wall and surveyed the fort. The engineers had scraped away most of the old Parshendi buildings, preserving only the most ancient of the ruins for study. Supply dumps, barracks, and storm cisterns rose around them now. With the wall going right up to the chasm, and with collapsible bridges outside, this isolated plateau was quickly becoming impregnable from ordinary ground assault.
“Imagine if the Parshendi had known modern fortification techniques,” Kaladin said to Syl as she blew past in the shape of tumbling leaves. “A few strategic forts set up like this across the Plains, and we’d never have broken them out.”
“As I recall,” she replied, “we didn’t so much break them out as purposely fall into their trap and hope it wouldn’t hurt too much.”
Nearby, the other Windrunners lowered Dalinar, some of the Edgedancers, and Navani’s wooden travel vehicle. That had been a good idea, although it was a little harder to keep the larger object in the air. The thing had four fins on it, like an arrow. They’d started with two wings—which Navani had thought would make the vehicle fly better, but which had made it pull upward uncontrollably once a Windrunner Lashed it.
He hopped down from his perch. Syl whirled in a long arc around the old pillar at this edge of the plateau. Tall, with steps along the outside, it had become a perfect scout nest. Rlain said it had been used in Parshendi ceremonies, but he hadn’t known its original purpose. Much of these ruins—the remnants of a once-grand city that had stood during the shadowdays—baffled them.
Perhaps the two Heralds could explain the pillar. Had they walked here? Unfortunately—considering that one of them was full-on delusional and the other dabbled in it now and then—he wasn’t certain they’d be useful in this.
He wanted to get to Urithiru as quickly as possible. Before people had a chance to start talking to him again, trying—with forced laughs—to cheer him up. He walked over to Dalinar, who was taking a report from the battalionlord who commanded Narak. Oddly, Navani hadn’t emerged from her vehicle yet. Perhaps she was lost in her research.
“Permission to take the first group back, sir,” Kaladin said. “I want to go clean up.”
“A moment, Highmarshal,” Dalinar said to Kaladin, scanning the written report. The battalionlord, a gruff fellow with an Oldblood tattoo, looked away pointedly.
Though Dalinar had never said he’d moved to written reports specifically to make his officers confront the idea of a man reading, Kaladin could see the showmanship in the way he held up the sheet and nodded to himself as he read.
“What happened to Brightness Ialai is regrettable,” Dalinar said. “See that her decision to take her own life is published. I authorize a full occupation of the warcamps. See it done.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” the battalionlord said. Dalinar was a king now, officially recognized by the coalition of monarchs as ruler of Urithiru—a station separate from Jasnah’s queenship over Alethkar. In acknowledgment of this, Dalinar had officially renounced any idea of being a “highking” over any other monarch.
Dalinar handed the sheet to the battalionlord, then nodded to Kaladin. They walked off from the others, then a little further, to a section of the base between two Soulcast grain shelters. The king didn’t speak at first, but Kaladin knew this trick. It was an old disciplinary tactic—you left silence hanging in the air. That made your man begin explaining himself first. Well, Kaladin didn’t bite.
Dalinar studied him, taking note of his burned and bloodied uniform. Finally, he spoke. “I have multiple reports of you and your soldiers letting enemy Fused go once you’ve wounded them.”
Kaladin relaxed immediately. That was what Dalinar wanted to talk about?
“I think we’re starting to reach a kind of understanding with them, sir,” Kaladin said. “The Heavenly Ones fight with honor. I let one of them go today. In turn, their leader—Leshwi—released one of my men instead of killing him.”
“This isn’t a game, son,” Dalinar said. “This isn’t about who gets first blood. We’re literally fighting for the existence of our people.”
“I know,” Kaladin said quickly. “But this can serve us. You’ve noticed already how they’ll hold back and attack us one-on-one, so long as we play by their rules. Considering how many more Heavenly Ones there are than Windrunners, I think we want to encourage this kind of encounter. Killing them is barely an inconvenience, as they’ll be reborn. But each of ours they kill requires training an entirely new Windrunner. Getting back wounded for wounded favors us.”
“You never did want to fight the parshmen,” Dalinar said. “Even when you first joined my army, you didn’t want to be sent against the Parshendi.”
“I didn’t like the idea of killing people who showed us honor, sir.”
“Does it strike you as odd to find it among them?” Dalinar asked. “The Almighty—Honor himself—was our god. The one their god killed.”
“I used to think it odd. But sir, wasn’t Honor their god before he was ours?”