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  Dalenar turned, then cursed quietly as he noticed three mounted figures rounding the back of the tower. All three bore glistening armor, and all three rode directly for the king. Dalenar hadn’t seen many Prallan Shardbearers during Elhokar’s three-year campaign—Pralir had been a poorer country even before sheltering the Traitor and inviting Alethkar’s invasion. Apparently, they had been saving some surprises.

  “The tower is a ruse,” Aredor said. “The men atop it bear the armor of footmen.”

  Dalenar nodded. Elhokar’s hatred for the Traitor was well-known. This wasn’t the first time Elhokar had left the safety of his lines to try and kill his enemy. The king had sworn an oath that no hand would take the head of the Traitor but his own.

  “I’ll help the king,” Dalenar said, turning Stormwind. “You move around to the side and try and take down that tower.”

  Aredor nodded, breaking off to the right to dodge another swarm of arrows. Dalenar galloped toward Elhokar, hoofbeats beating against the slick rock.

  A sudden, inhuman scream sounded ahead of him, and his shieldbearer’s mount toppled to the ground with an arrow in its chest, throwing Gelnin from his saddle. Dalenar barely ducked his own mount to the side to avoid the wreckage, continuing on without a backward glance.

  The king stood defiantly on the rocky ground, arrows hailing around him. His horse had fallen, and he was raising his weapon toward the approaching Shardbearers.

  An arrow snapped against Dalenar’s shoulder, marring the silver gilding but not even scratching the Shardplate beneath. Dalenar ground his teeth—they had already lost two horses, an incalculable price for Elhokar’s foolishness. If he lost Stormwind to an arrow as well . . .

  Fortunately, it didn’t appear as if that would happen. A last hail of arrows fell, several striking the ground around Dalenar, as Aredor reached the tower. The boy had summoned his Shardblade, and the weapon twinkled brightly as he swung it to the side. The Blade sheared through the side of the tower, cutting free an enormous chunk of wood—including the axle of the front side wheel. The tower lurched, the pullmen at the front scattering. Aredor’s weapon flashed again, and the tower tipped to the side, throwing free archers and spearmen alike as it crashed to the stones below.

  The cessation of the arrows felt like a weight lifting from Dalenar’s shoulders, and he took a deep breath. Ahead, the three Shardbearers had reached the king. Elhokar’s Shardblade was thinner than Dalenar’s, but far more intricate. In fact, it looked more like a piece of art than a weapon, inscribed with a tenset glyphs and a massive sunburst at its center.

  The lead Prallan Shardbearer—a man in dark charcoal Shardplate bearing a crest that Dalenar did not recognize—dismounted and leapt toward the king, a Shardblade glistening in his hands. The other two men pulled backward to wait for the results of the fight, as proscribed by Protocol.

  Dalenar charged the nearest of the two, a younger man with no crest on his armor—though he wore one on his cloak. The boy’s Shardplate, in fact, looked beaten and was scarred in several areas—he had probably inherited it recently, his brother or father dead in a duel, and it hadn’t had time to repair itself. The young man’s Blade was simple and nondescript, probably unbonded.

  Dalenar tried to ignore the boy’s apparent inexperience—hesitance, even in the name of mercy, brought death. He swung as he charged past the boy, his Shardblade slicing the air. The boy parried deftly, but the move still threw him off-balance; he obviously wasn’t accustomed to mounted dueling. Before Elhokar’s invasion, the lad probably hadn’t seen swordplay outside of courtside duels. A better man than Dalenar would have dismounted and allowed the boy to fight as he was accustomed.

  Dalenar spun Stormwind, using the momentum to smash Oathbringer into the boy’s weapon, knocking it aside. His backhand slice took the young man in the neck. There was a clang of metal, Blade biting Plate, cutting and bending the magical steel as only a Shardblade could. The boy’s Plate held, but it was badly scarred. His neckguard was twisted to the side, and the metal of the helm could no longer turn, forcing the boy to watch Dalenar sideways.

  Dalenar raised his blade. The boy raised his own, refusing to yield. With an inward sigh, Dalenar nudged Stormwind forward and finished the job. A second blow, placed at the exact angle of the first, broke the already-strained armor. Body and head slid from the horse separately, and the boy’s Shardblade dropped from limp fingers. The weapon hit the ground point-first and sank several feet into the hard stone.

  Dalenar lowered his weapon, and a second later Stormwind screamed in pain, throwing Dalenar free as a Prallan spearman rammed his weapon through the beast’s neck.

  Dalenar crashed to the ground. He lay dazed for a moment, the sounds of battle distant. Even before his hearing returned, he locked on the sight of a spear descending toward his face.

  He raised a desperate hand to block the blow. His hand was empty—he had dropped his Blade. So, instead, he kicked the spearman’s knee with the full power of Shardplate’s Awakened strength. There was a crack and a scream, and Dalenar rolled, sighting Oathbringer beside him, grabbing the weapon as he climbed to his feet.

  He came up facing a nervous group of five spearmen. They wore mismatched armor of wood and leather, bearing steel only in their caps and their spearheads. Their faces were desperate—they had been pushed across the Prallan Highlands for the better part of nine months, Elhokar’s armies defeating them at every conflict. They knew that this would be their last battle.

  Dalenar stepped backward, eyeing his opponents. The men should have attacked more quickly, while he had been prone. If not then, they should have rushed him at once, while he was still dazed, grabbing for his sword arm or striking at his face. They might have taken him. Their fear, however, held them back, and by the time they rushed forward—a mass of hysterical faces and quivering spears—Dalenar was ready.

  He spun, holding Oathbringer in two hands. The first pass sliced the ends off their spears. The second cut down all five in one sweep. Steel, flesh, or wood, it mattered not to the Shardblade.

  Dalenar shook the blood from his Blade, pausing to throw a glance at the king. Elhokar still fought—his opponent was far more skilled than Dalenar’s had been. Dalenar turned, searching for the final Shardbearer, and found him battling against Aredor a short distance away. Both men were still mounted, and they fought unmolested by outside combatants. The spearmen knew better than to break Protocol by attacking Aredor while he was engaged in a duel.

  Dalenar stood for a moment, watching his son. Then he tore his eyes away. Aredor would be all right—the lad was nearly as fine a swordsman as his brother had been, and this wouldn’t be his first battlefield duel. Instead, Dalenar kept a wary eye on the Prallan soldiers. Their line was fracturing in several broad sections, and he was pleased to see a group of blue-uniformed soldiers peek through a short distance away.

  Within a few moments, the Prallan spearmen had retreated toward the thick of the battle. Above them, in the distance, the approaching highstorm dominated the sky, its darkness rolling forward like approaching night. It would hit soon. Dalenar turned, his section of the battlefield suddenly quiet as men moved to fight in other directions, leaving the dueling Shardbearers beside the corpse of the fallen tower.

  Dalenar caught motion out of the edge of his vision, and glanced toward Aredor’s battle. His son swung, striking his opponent in the chest with a powerful blow, sending the man backward off his horse to crash to the ground, Shardblade dropping from his fingers. Aredor lowered his Blade, and the Prallan raised his hands in a sign of yielding. He would lose his armor and Blade, but would keep his life.

  Elhokar, however, wasn’t faring as well. He fought with the smooth sweeping blows of Airform—a dueling stance that had never quite suited him. Elhokar was a man of quick temper and firm strikes, but he had always resisted Dalenar’s suggestions that he study Fireform or Quartzform. Airform was the form of kings, Elhokar had always claimed.

  His opponent fought with the
careful, misdirecting attacks of Smokeform. The man in brown armor was an obvious master of the style. He struck carefully—never with much force, but each blow weakening Elhokar’s Shardplate. The king’s own blows missed far more often than not.

  Dalenar stepped forward quietly, joining his son and the defeated enemy Shardbearer in watching the royal duel. After everything that had happened—the years of accusations, the squabbles on the borders, and the final daring invasion across the thin-necked sea of Chomar—it could all end with a simple stroke of the sword. Elhokar should have known to stay on his tower, to remain where he could not be challenged.

  Yet, Dalenar felt it difficult to stoke his frustration. Elhokar’s father had known better, but that was because he had learned better. Nolhonarin had nearly lost his life in a half-tenset foolish duels before learning temperance.

  It happened in a flash. Elhokar, off-guard. The man in brown striking. The blow took Elhokar in the head, bending his helm, twisting it to block his vision and throwing him to the ground with its force. Dalenar inhaled quickly, thinking of his own duel just moments before.

  And then Elhokar attacked. His blade guided by instinct, his eyes blocked by steel, Elhokar drove his blade upward as he knelt on the stone. It slid smoothly through the small space beneath his opponent’s breastplate, driving up to the heart. The enemy Shardbearer jerked, then dropped his Blade and toppled backward. The weapon clanged to the ground before Elhokar.

  “Your majesty,” Dalenar said with relief, stepping forward as Elhokar stood and pulled off his helmet. “That was too close a duel.”

  The king tossed the mangled helm to the side with an off-handed gesture. “I was always in control, Uncle.”

  “Even when you couldn’t see what you were doing?” Dalenar said with a snort.

  Elhokar turned toward him, eyes unyielding. “You’re the one who taught me that a true duelist strikes with his soul, not with his eyes. My opponent was a fool.” He turned, obviously considering the topic to be at an end, and regarded the fallen tower. “The Traitor was not here.”

  “No, your majesty,” Dalenar said, nodding for his son to go and gather the Shardblades of the fallen men. As the spoils of battlefield duels won by men who already had Blades themselves, the weapons would become the property of the king, to be distributed as he wished.

  Elhokar frowned, turning toward the battlefield and studying the movements of troops. It was difficult to make much sense from the mass of brown and blue without the tower’s vantage. Thousands of men, hundreds of squads, fought on the field. They had to get the king back to the safety of their lines before the Traitor’s generals decided to try for his life again.

  “What is that?” Elhokar said, pointing with a gauntleted fist. At first, Dalenar worried he had seen another tower. The king, however, was pointing toward a stony hillside at the back of the battlefield, behind the Aleth line.

  Dalenar squinted, trying to make out what had drawn the King’s attention. The darkening sky was making it difficult to see.

  “The western flank,” Aredor said, stepping up beside his father, the three Shardblades held carefully before him. “Our line is withdrawing.”

  Elhokar cursed. “That move exposes our entire central line! Who is in charge back there?”

  “My son,” Dalenar said.

  “Renarin? The boy couldn’t duel a blind woman.”

  “He’s well-practiced at tactics,” Dalenar said stiffly. “If you’d wanted to appoint someone else, you should have done it before you went dashing off to try and get yourself killed.”

  Elhokar turned, his eyes dark at the lack of respect.

  Be careful, Dalenar warned himself. This is not your brother. Elhokar is a different man. “We should return, your majesty,” Dalenar said, wrestling down his anger. “It is not safe.”

  Elhokar waved his hand dismissively at the word ‘safe.’ His honor guard had finally managed to catch up, pushing through a widening gap that was dividing the Prallan army into two separate forces. In the distance, several more Prallan towers were rolling forward into the fray—a final, desperate attempt to turn the battle. However, with the Aleth central line threatened, they could actually make a difference.

  Dalenar felt a sudden stab of worry. The battle had nearly been theirs. However, if the Prallans pressed the west, and if those towers held . . .

  Renarin, what in the name of the Thoughtgiver are you doing?

  The honor guard approached, accompanied by a large group of spearmen and one mounted man. Meridas regarded the corpses and fallen tower with his usual indifference. Dalenar, however, was impressed to see the man approach. Meridas was no Shardbearer—his armor was a simple breastplate of normal steel, and he wore a regular sword at his side. Venturing away from the relative safety of the tower was a brave feat, even if he was accompanied by several hundred soldiers.

  “Meridas,” the king said as the councilor bowed deferentially. “Good. I need your horse.”

  “Your majesty?” the merchant asked with concern as Elhokar dismissed his Blade—the weapon disappearing back into smoke—and clinked forward, waving for the tall merchant to dismount.

  “Elhokar . . .” Dalenar said warningly.

  The king, however, simply raise a forestalling hand. “I’m just going back to the tower, Uncle. I need to find out how much of a mess your son has made of our battle.”

  “The scouts discovered an army of Prallans far to the west,” Meridas explained as he dismounted. “I told him to send a messenger for you, but he withdrew the line instead, fearing that we would be flanked.”

  Dalenar frowned, finally understanding Meridas’s willingness to enter the field. This wasn’t the loyal vassal braving the battle to seek his king, it was the petulant underling seeking an ear to tell his tale.

  “Your majesty,” Dalenar said, stepping forward. “Wait for Aredor to—”

  The king mounted Meridas’s horse, then kicked it into a gallop without a word. Dalenar tried to dampen his frustration, but it was growing increasingly difficult. He had sworn on his life to defend the son of the brother he had loved. Spears he could block, Shardbearers he could duel, but the boy’s own stubbornness made for an impossible battle.

  Behind him, several attendants stripped the Shardplate off of the young man Dalenar had killed. He had been no older than Renarin, a boy forced into the role of a man by circumstances and title. Once, hatred and fury had lent Dalenar their power. Now, pity was sapping his strength as steadily as age.

  He was so distracted by his unpleasant emotions that it took him a moment to register Aredor’s yell. Dalenar’s head snapped up, turning toward his son, who was leaping atop his horse and summoning his Shardblade.

  Dalenar followed his son’s gaze, looking past the frantic honor guard, past the confused Meridas. The king had been unhorsed somehow, and stood, looking dazed, his Shardblade still unsummoned. Above him a mounted figure raised its weapon to strike again. A fourth enemy Shardbearer. Where had he come from?

  They were too far away. Aredor couldn’t get to him, and the honor guard had been left behind. Blue-uniformed corpses lay scattered around the two figures—men cut down while Dalenar hadn’t been looking. Other spearmen were running away, or standing stunned. The king . . .

  One solitary spearman in blue suddenly dashed across the rocks and jumped at the unnamed Shardbearer. Only one man.

  But it was enough. The spearman jumped up with a heroic bound, tossing aside his spear and grabbing ahold of the enemy Shardbearer’s waist. The weight threw off the surprised Prallan’s strike, and he missed the king. Unbalanced, the Shardbearer reached desperately for his reins, but missed. He tumbled backward, the brave Aleth spearman hanging stubbornly to the man’s waist.

  The king recovered his wits, summoning his Shardblade and backing away. Tensets of footmen, realizing their opportunity, jumped for the fallen Shardbearer, spears raised.

  “Where did he come from?” Dalenar demanded, regarding the fallen Shardbearer. The
man’s armor was unnaturally nondescript. It bore no scars from battle, but it also bore no crests, silks, or ornamentations. Even the paint had been removed, leaving it a dull-grey color. The man’s face was a mess—the Aleth spearmen had made absolutely certain that he would not rise to get revenge.

  Most strange, however, was his Shardblade. It was not a Blank—it bore the intricacies of a weapon long-bonded. This man had been no recent-​inheritor. Dalenar had only seen the man alive briefly, but brief assessments were the soul of dueling. This had been a warrior comfortable with fighting on horseback, a man who knew precisely how to strike a standing foe. A man who had managed to unhorse, and nearly kill, Elhokar.

  “He came from behind our ranks, father,” Aredor said quietly. The young man stood beside Dalenar, looking down at the corpse. “I saw him too late—he came riding up the conduit our own forces made when they divided the Prallans. He moved quickly, masking his approach by staying to lower ground. He took down the king’s horse in one blow, then waited until his majesty rose to make his second strike.”

  “He was Prallan slime,” Elhokar spat with a loud voice. He stood a short distance away, still without a helm, waving away healers and attendants. “He ignored Protocol. He attacked me with my Shardblade unsummoned, and then tried to strike me down while I was unhorsed. Strip his armor from him and leave the body to rot with the common men—he wore no crest, so he will receive no lord’s burial.”

  Dalenar stood for a moment longer, regarding the dead lord’s gruesome visage, before shaking his head. Whoever he had been, it was probably better for his family—and his legacy—that his disgraceful attack on the king remained unlinked to his name.

  In the distance, the royal tower and its hulking chulls rolled toward them, though for the moment the barren hillside—the same place where the king had nearly been killed—had become an impromptu center of command. Elhokar’s order, supplemented by suggestions from Lady Jasnah back at the command tent, reorganized the Aleth lines and minimized the damage Renarin’s move had caused. As for the five thousand men Renarin had ordered out to attack the second army, they could do nothing—at least, not until the highstorm had passed.