The Way of Kings Prime Page 3

  “My lord?” a hopeful man said. Dalenar turned, regarding a scruffy-bearded spearman with a broad smile and the rank glyph of a fifth footman.

  “What is it?” Dalenar asked.

  “Well, my lord, I’m captain of the squad who killed the Shardbearer, you see,” the man said eagerly.

  Dalenar regarded the fallen Shardbearer again. Traditionally, the armor and weapon would go to the fortunate spearman who had made the kill—instantly propelling them to lordship and Shardbearer status. However, practical experience had long since proven that group efforts were common in defeating a Shardbearer. When it could not be determined who had actually struck the killing blow, the Blade was usually bestowed on the commander of the squad who had performed the deed.

  Dalenar shot a look at the king, who was speaking with messengers from the royal tower in a quiet voice, his face growing increasingly angry. At least a tenset footmen stood a short distance away—each one bearing a bloody spear, their eyes eager. No doubt their captain had promised to reward them for their support, once he had the Shardblade.

  These were the men who, just moments ago, couldn’t get out of the way quickly enough. They scattered and left the king to his fate. Now they want to claim the reward for themselves.

  “Your majesty,” Dalenar said loudly, drawing the king’s attention from his attendants.

  “What?” the king snapped.

  “What should we do with this man’s Plate and Blade?”

  Elhokar waved a hand uncaringly. “Give them to the captain of the spearmen.”

  The captain puffed up at the comment, smiling broadly.

  Dalenar frowned. “Your majesty, might I suggest we give the spoils to the man who saved you, the one who pulled the nameless lord from his saddle?”

  Elhokar’s face darkened slightly at the words ‘saved you.’ However, he waved his consent, turning back to his messengers, sending several of them off in various directions.

  “Well?” Dalenar demanded, turning to the shocked spear captain. “Where is he?”

  “Merin took a blow to the head when he fell from the saddle,” a soldier called. Dalenar pushed his way forward, joining a group of spearman who knelt around an unconscious form. The king’s savior was surprisingly young—sixteen, perhaps seventeen.

  “See that he’s taken to the healer’s tents,” Dalenar said. “Tell them he’s a nobleman now.”

  Several soldiers nodded and Dalenar turned, looking upward. The sky seemed to boil with darkness, clouds spawning from one another, creeping forward. A moment later, the highstorm hit.

  Dalenar pulled his cloak tight, leaning against the inside of the royal tower. The wood groaned behind him, buffeted by the highstorm winds outside. Fortunately, it was only a spring storm. Back at the camp, raincatchers would be gathering the precious water, without which the army would have difficulty surviving on the stormlands. On the battlefield, however, the rain was only an annoyance—one that Dalenar, sitting inside the wooden tower, did not have to deal with. Nobility did have its privileges.

  The Prallans should not have committed their towers. The winds, while not as powerful as those of a summer storm, were strong nonetheless. More importantly, the Prallan towers were not well-constructed. The royal Aleth towers had been designed by the finest architects of Roshar; their tops could be collapsed to make them more squat, and their sides bore ropes to be tied down or held by unlucky footmen. They could survive all but the most furious of storms.

  The Prallans were not so fortunate. Their towers had been thrown together hastily to defend against the Aleth advance. They were weak and flimsy. Messengers periodically arrived at the tower door, dripping wet from the storm, telling them of events outside. Over half of the Traitor’s towers—no longer protected behind hills as they should have been—had been toppled before the storm’s might. Lady Jasnah’s planning had proven itself once again. Though the battle had looked uncertain for a moment, the time of worry was over—without their towers, the Prallans had little hope of winning the day, despite Renarin’s maneuver.

  The fighting had stopped for the moment. Spring highstorms were generally about an hour in length, and they were windy enough—and dark enough—to make fighting inefficient. Those men important enough to stay dry sought refuge inside of towers. The rest were forced to seek what shelter they could in the curves of the land.

  Dalenar shivered. It was hard to believe that only a half hour before he had been sweating in his armor. He had been forced to stand in the storm for several minutes while the tower was prepared, and he had grown sodden in the first waves of rain. His armor seemed to draw in the chill of the storm, and was cold against his body. Fortunately, he didn’t have to worry about it rusting—Shardplate was as resistant to the elements as it was to weapons. Dalenar’s own suit had been in the Kholin family for four centuries, and before that it had belonged to a different royal family. In fact, there wasn’t a set that didn’t date back to the Ninth Epoch or before. Even the youngest suits of Plate were nearly a thousand years old—others had lasted for close to two millennia.

  They had been crafted by Awakeners to increase a man’s strength, stamina, and agility. Unfortunately, when the Epoch Kingdom craftsmen had made the armor, they hadn’t thought to add some kind of mystical heating power. Dalenar shivered again, grumbling to himself about Awakeners and their general lack of practical understanding.

  He leaned forward, trying to warm his hands against the lantern. Around him, generals and lords sat in quiet conference. Elhokar waited impatiently at the far end of the gloomy structure, resting against the side of the tower. He probably would have ridden out into the storm if he’d thought he could get away with it.

  Renarin sat with his brother, looking even more miserable than Dalenar felt. The boy had borne the brunt of a royal tirade for his problematic decision.

  Dalenar shook his head. Somehow, the Traitor had uncovered more troops. By all intelligence reports, the man had been forced to commit every soldier he had to the battlefield. Yet he had found more. By the time his secret flanking army had been discovered, most of the Aleth reserves had already been committed to the battlefield—basic strategy said that when you were defeating your opponents, you wanted to defeat them as soundly as possible. Once Elhokar’s forces had gained the upper hand, most of the reserves had been applied to increase pressure on the Prallans, forcing them to use their towers.

  Without reserves, Renarin had decided to withdraw the western line and send it out to face the advancing force. Unfortunately, he hadn’t waited for a complete scouting report before making his move. They didn’t know how many Prallans were out there—the highstorm had hit before the messengers could get an accurate count—yet Renarin had already played their hand. He should have sent more scouts, and sent warning to the king of the approaching force.

  Renarin’s maneuver hadn’t been a terrible one, but it had been hasty. It was not a choice Dalenar would have made, but he could see another commander giving those same orders. The king wasn’t as lenient as Dalenar—he was furious about not being informed. Unfortunately, Renarin’s lack of self-confidence only lent fire to Elhokar’s censure.

  On the other side of the tower, the king continued to fidget. Dalenar knew the young king well—he wasn’t really mad that Renarin had committed the reserves. Much would have been forgiven if it hadn’t been for a single fact—the scouts claimed that the Traitor himself rode with the flanking force. Dalenar could see Elhokar’s hands twitching, yearning to summon his Blade and attack the man who had killed his father.

  Dalenar shook his head. Elhokar needn’t have worried. The entire army knew that the king had sworn to severely punish any man who robbed him of the pleasure of killing the Traitor himself. Renarin’s force wouldn’t attack the traitor’s banner until the king arrived. Besides, they would have stopped for the highstorm like the rest of the army. Elhokar would have his chance soon enough. Once the storm passed, the king could regain command and ride out to see if the
scout’s reports were true.

  The tower creaked one last wooden groan, quivering beneath a final gust of wind, and then all was still. The highstorm had passed.

  “Gather my honor guard and find me another horse,” Elhokar said to an attendant, striding toward the door. He paused, looking back. “Move quickly, Uncle, unless you want to be left behind again.”

  Water could bring life even to the seemingly-barren stormlands. Rockbuds appeared to be simple stones until they sensed water on their shells; with the fall of the highstorm rains, the false rocks split, revealing the delicate petals and thirsty vines that hid inside. The plants opened only after storms, their petals uncurling to lap up a few moments of sun, their vines creeping down to soak in the puddles of rainwater. Tiny, crab-like crustaceans scurried from fissures and cracks, digging in the temporary muck and feeding on the exposed plants.

  Traipsing across the slick stone, seeing the rockbuds in bloom, made Dalenar think of his home—a land where the plants didn’t need to cower within rocky shells between highstorms. Kholinar, a land where stone walls were covered with blooming polyps, where the boulders were draped in vines and the air was cool with humidity. The highstorms were weak back in the Kholinar Lait—the lowland valley was surrounded with hills just steep enough to protect it from the fury of the winds, yet not sheer enough to bring danger of flash floods.

  Once, battle had made Dalenar thirsty for more of the same, but now it only seemed to make him long for the warmth of his hearth. If all went well, he could be back at Kholinar within the month.

  Elhokar rode defiantly ahead, crossing the rock on someone’s roan stallion. Around him strode seven thousand troops and a tenset Shardbearers, Dalenar and his two sons included. If the Traitor truly marched with this flanking force, then he would not escape a duel with Elhokar.

  Dalenar hustled, his armor clanking as he jogged up beside the king’s horse. His body protested the motion—he had taxed it much these last few weeks, and the remainder of the trip would be even worse. Elhokar rode on one of the last horses in the entire army—the beasts were extremely expensive to import from Shinavar, and even harder to care for in the harsh stormland climate. Even many noblemen had difficulty affording a mount—of the ten Dalenar had brought with him to Prallah, only two remained, and he didn’t plan to risk any more in battle.

  “Elhokar,” Dalenar said as he approached the king’s horse, “I don’t like this. We’ve had no word from the force my son sent, and we still don’t know the size of the enemy. We could be marching into an ambush.”

  Elhokar didn’t reply. He did, however, have his Blade in hand already. “I sent scouts, Uncle,” he replied. “We will not make your son’s same mistake.”

  Dalenar sighed. The stormlands expanded into the distance, endless hills of naked stone, broken only by the occasional formation of rock. Directly ahead of them, the stone rose into a moderate-sized butte, steep-sided and formed of dark brown stone. Their last report from the reserve forces placed them a short distance ahead, on the other side of the butte.

  Something seemed wrong to Dalenar. They were too far away to see anything, but his conclusions came from instinct rather than sight. His feeling of dread was confirmed by the sight of an approaching scout, running across the hills with an urgent step.

  “Halt the column,” Dalenar ordered.

  Elhokar eyed him, but did not contradict the order. The seven tensquads pulled to a halt, waiting for the solitary scout to approach.

  “What is up there?” Elhokar demanded as soon as the man arrived. “Is there fighting?”

  The scout shook his head, puffing for breath. “No, your majesty . . . or, at least, it isn’t going on any more . . .”

  “What?” Elhokar demanded. “What did you see?”

  The scout shook his head again, looking confused. “They’re . . . dead, your majesty. All of them.”

  The scout had not exaggerated. Dalenar stepped solemnly through the field of corpses, blue and brown uniforms intermixed, weapons clutched in dead fingers. The small valley was a scene of absolute carnage. Nothing stirred. Even the wind seemed silent, as if the Almighty Himself were hesitant to speak.

  The soldiers of their seven tensquads stood at the edge of the battlefield, looking in at the fallen, remaining where the king had ordered them. Only Shardbearers and a few important commanders picked their way across the field, examining the dead.

  Dalenar frowned, kneeling beside the body of a fallen soldier—a young spearman in blue. The boy wore the leather skirt and wooden plate armor of the standard Aleth footman. Yet he had not been killed by another spearman—the side of his head had been crushed in. Heavy infantry, then? Most heavy infantry carried hammers, maces, or axes instead of spears. Yet, heavy infantry made up a very small percentage of most armies, and that was especially true of the Prallans, who hadn’t the resources of the Aleth military.

  He stood, wandering across the field, examining the fallen—trying to see beyond the faces of the dead, trying to sense the flow of the battle that had claimed their lives. It was immediately obvious that the Prallan force had been larger—far larger. There were at least three brown-clothed corpses on the ground for every blue one.

  Over fifteen thousand . . . Dalenar thought with amazement. How in the name of the Lawbringer did our men stand against such odds?

  The valley was hedged on one side by the plateau, and bore a large crack in the ground directly opposite. It would have been possible for the Aleth soldiers to use the column-like valley to hold a strong line, keeping themselves from being surrounded. But that was a defensive maneuver—even if the Aleths had managed to successfully hold such a formation, they couldn’t have killed so many of the enemy.

  Besides, the corpses told Dalenar a different story. They spoke of no defensive formation, but a haphazard offense—a scattered mixing of sides. Very few men on the entire field had been killed by spears—yet nearly all of them wielded them. Their wounds were washed of blood—as if they had fought and died during the rains of the highstorm.

  It didn’t make sense. Even assuming that there had been Prallan survivors, it seemed impossible that so many had been killed by the Aleth force—especially if the Prallan army had contained as much heavy infantry as the damage seemed to imply. It was wrong, all wrong.

  There is no way our force did this, Dalenar thought, scanning the battlefield. Even with three Shardbearers, they could not have done this much damage.

  Something very strange had happened on this battlefield. The dead whispered to him clues of their struggle, and only one thing made sense. A third force had attacked both of them. But how would such a force have gathered without Elhokar’s scouts locating them, and how had they escaped so cleanly?

  They would still be close. “Your majesty!” Dalenar said. “I want you out of here. Now.”

  The king ignored him, stepping over a body, accompanied by Meridas and—by Dalenar’s command—Renarin and Aredor for protection. Elhokar walked through the bodies with an indifference—or, rather, a preoccupation. He was not callous, just determined. His eyes sought one thing.

  Dalenar studied the landscape urgently, sensing danger. He saw none, however. The plateau was low, and he could see nothing at its top. He waved over a few scouts and sent them searching anyway. Then he made his way over to the chasm. It was not an irregular feature—the highstorm rains carved out many a gully and fissure in the stone. The sides were sheer, and the bottom contained only rubble. No men had attacked from within its reaches.

  “There!” the king cried suddenly. Dalenar looked up to see Elhokar jump over a body and break into a run. Dalenar cursed, forcing himself to follow after, jogging in his Shardplate and trying to be as respectful toward the dead as possible. He kept his eyes up, the sense of danger still keen. Yet no army appeared to attack—if, indeed, a third force had come upon these men in the rains, it had fled quickly to forestall retribution.

  Dalenar caught up to the king as Elhokar knelt down to tug at
a bloodied banner. It bore the glyph Jie. Beneath it lay a haunting face. He had once been known as Oshlen Reil, though his lord’s name had been stripped from him after his murder of King Nolhonarin. Since that day, Oshlen had simply been known as the Traitor.

  And he was very, very dead.

  “No . . .” Elhokar said, falling to his knees on the bloodied ground, bowing his head.

  Aredor nudged Dalenar, pointing to the side. “That one’s Talhmeshas,” he said, pointing at another corpse. Talhmeshas Pralir—king of the Prallan state of Pralir, the nation that had harbored the Traitor and invited Aleth invasion. Dalenar frowned, studying the bodies. Both had been stripped of their Plate and Blades.

  Elhokar knelt stunned beside the body of the man who had killed his father. Eventually, he picked up his Blade and rammed it into the stone beside the dead man’s face. “All these years,” Elhokar whispered, “fighting. Looking for him. Longing to feel his blood on my Blade . . .”

  Dalenar shook his head. At least the king had no one to blame for stealing his vengeance—the man who had killed the traitor undoubtedly lay dead on this field somewhere.

  The king looked up with a sudden motion, then stood, sliding his Blade free from its stone sheath. There was . . . danger in his eyes.

  Dalenar felt a chill. There was no one to blame, unless—

  Elhokar pointed at Renarin. “You took this from me,” he hissed.

  Dalenar gritted his teeth, placing his hand on Elhokar’s iron shoulder. “Your majesty—”

  Elhokar shook the hand free with a sharp movement. “Stay out of this, Uncle.” The king raised his blade, falling into Airform’s dueling stance, one foot placed forward, Blade held in two hands.

  Renarin took an uncertain step backward—his Blade wasn’t even summoned. Elhokar had been right about one thing; the boy was a terrible duelist. And, despite his shortcomings, Elhokar was one of the finest in Alethkar.