The Way of Kings (Stormlight Archive, The)

by Brandon Sanderson

  Gallant galloped through them, and Parshendi threw themselves out of the massive stallion’s way, cursing in their melodic language. Hooves beat a thunder upon the rocks; Dalinar urged Gallant on with his knees. They had to keep momentum. Some Parshendi fighting on the front against Sadeas’s force turned and ran at him. They saw the opportunity. If Dalinar fell, he’d land alone, surrounded by thousands of enemies.

  Dalinar’s heart thumped as he held his Blade out, trying to swipe at Parshendi who came too close. Within minutes, he approached the northwestern Parshendi line. There, his enemies formed up, raising spears and setting them against the ground.

  Blast! Dalinar thought. Parshendi had never set spears like that against heavy cavalry before. They were starting to learn.

  Dalinar charged the formation, then wheeled Gallant at the last moment, turning parallel to the Parshendi spear wall. He swung his Shardblade out to the side, shearing the tips from their weapons and hitting a few arms. A patch of Parshendi just ahead wavered, and Dalinar took a deep breath, urging Gallant directly into them, shearing off a few spear tips. Another one bounced off his shoulder armor, and Gallant took a long gash on the left flank.

  Their momentum carried them forward, trampling over the Parshendi, and with a whinny, Gallant burst free of the Parshendi line just to the side of where Sadeas’s main force was engaging the enemy.

  Dalinar’s heart pumped. He passed Sadeas’s force in a blur, galloping toward the back lines, where a churning, disorganized chaos of men tried to react to the new Parshendi force. Men screamed and died, a mess of forest green Alethi and Parshendi in black and red.

  There! Dalinar saw Sadeas’s banner flap for a moment before falling. He threw himself from Gallant’s saddle and hit the stones. The horse turned away, understanding. His wound was bad, and Dalinar would not risk him any further.

  It was time for the slaughter to begin again.

  He tore into the Parshendi force from the side, and some turned, looks of surprise in their usually stoic black eyes. At times the Parshendi seemed alien, but their emotions were so human. The Thrill rose and Dalinar did not force it down. He needed it too much. An ally was in danger.

  It was time to let the Blackthorn loose.

  Dalinar punched through the Parshendi ranks. He felled Parshendi like a man sweeping crumbs from the table after a meal. There was no controlled precision here, no careful engagement of a few squads with his honor guard at the back. This was a full-out attack, with all the power and deadly force of a life-long killer enhanced by Shards. He was like a tempest, slashing through legs, torsos, arms, necks, killing, killing, killing. He was a maelstrom of death and steel. Weapons bounced off his armor, leaving tiny cracks. He killed dozens, always moving, forcing his way toward where Sadeas’s banner had fallen.

  Eyes burned, swords flashed in the sky, and Parshendi sang. The close press of their own troops—bunching up as they hit Sadeas’s line—inhibited them. But not Dalinar. He didn’t have to worry about striking friends, nor did he have to worry about his weapon getting caught in flesh or stuck in armor. And if corpses got in his way, he sheared through them—dead flesh would cut like steel and wood.

  Soon, Parshendi blood splashed in the air as he killed, then hacked, then shoved his way through the press. Blade from shoulder to side, back and forth, occasionally turning to sweep at those trying to kill him from behind.

  He stumbled on a swath of green cloth. Sadeas’s banner. Dalinar spun, searching. Behind him, he’d left a line of corpses that was quickly yet carefully being stepped past by more Parshendi focused on him. Except just to his left. None of the Parshendi there turned toward him.

  Sadeas! Dalinar thought, leaping forward, cutting down Parshendi from behind. That revealed a group of them bunched in a circle, beating on something below them. Something leaking Stormlight.

  Just to the side lay a large Shardbearer’s hammer, fallen where Sadeas had apparently dropped it. Dalinar leaped forward, dropping his Blade and grabbing the hammer. He roared as he slammed it into the group, tossing a dozen Parshendi away from him, then turned and swung again on the other side. Bodies sprayed into the air, hurled backward.

  The hammer worked better in such close quarters; the Blade would simply have killed the men, dropping their corpses to the ground, leaving him still pressed and pinned. The hammer, however, flung the bodies away. He leaped into the middle of the area he’d just cleared, positioning himself with one foot on either side of the fallen Sadeas. He began the process of summoning his Blade again and laid about him with the hammer, scattering his enemies.

  At the ninth beat of his heart, he threw the hammer into the face of a Parshendi, then let Oathbringer reform in his hands. He fell immediately into Windstance, glancing downward. Sadeas’s armor leaked Stormlight from a dozen different breaks and rifts. The breastplate had been shattered completely; broken, jagged bits of metal jutted out, revealing the uniform underneath. Wisps of radiant smoke trailed from the holes.

  There was no time to check if he still lived. The Parshendi now saw not one, but two Shardbearers within their grasp, and they threw themselves at Dalinar. Warrior after warrior fell as Dalinar slaughtered them in sweeps, protecting the space just around him.

  He couldn’t stop them all. His armor took hits, mostly on the arms and back. The armor cracked, like a crystal under too much stress.

  He roared, striking down four Parshendi as two more hit him from behind, making his armor vibrate. He spun and killed one, the other barely dancing out of range. Dalinar began to pant, and when he moved quickly, he left trails of blue Stormlight in the air. He felt like a bloodied prey beast trying to fend off a thousand different snapping predators at once.

  But he was no chull, whose only protection was to hide. He killed, and the Thrill rose to a crescendo within him. He sensed real danger, a chance of falling, and that made the Thrill surge. He nearly choked on it, the joy, the pleasure, the desire. The danger. More and more blows got through; more and more Parshendi were able to duck or dodge out of the way of his Blade.

  He felt a breeze through the back of his breastplate. Cooling, terrible, frightening. The cracks were widening. If the breastplate burst…

  He screamed, slamming his blade down through a Parshendi, burning out his eyes, dropping the man without a mark on his skin. Dalinar brought his Blade up, spinning, cutting through the legs of another foe. His insides were a tempest of emotions, and his brow beneath the helm streamed with sweat. What would happen to the Alethi army if both he and Sadeas fell here? Two highprinces dead in the same battle, two sets of Plate and one Blade lost?

  It couldn’t happen. He wouldn’t fall here. He didn’t yet know if he was mad or not. He couldn’t die until he knew!

  Suddenly, a wave of Parshendi died that he hadn’t attacked. A figure in brilliant blue Shardplate burst through them. Adolin held his massive Shardblade in a single hand, the metal gleaming.

  Adolin swung again, and the Cobalt Guard rushed forward, pouring into the gap Adolin created. The Parshendi song changed tempo, becoming frantic, and they fell back as more and more troops punched through, some in green, others in blue.

  Dalinar knelt down, exhausted, letting his Blade vanish. His guard surrounded him, and Adolin’s army washed over them all, overrunning the Parshendi, forcing them back. In a few minutes, the area was secure.

  The danger was past.

  “Father,” Adolin said, kneeling beside him, pulling his helm off. The youth’s blond and black hair was disheveled and sweat-slick. “Storms! You gave me a fright! Are you well?”

  Dalinar pulled his own helm free, sweet cooling air washing across his damp face. He took a deep breath, then nodded. “Your timing is…quite good, son.”

  Adolin helped Dalinar back to his feet. “I had to punch through the entire Parshendi army. No disrespect, Father, but what in the storms made you pull a stunt like that?”

  “The knowledge that you could handle the army if I fell,” Dalinar said, clapping his s
on on the arm, their Plate clinking.

  Adolin caught sight of the back of Dalinar’s Shardplate, and his eyes opened wide.

  “Bad?” Dalinar asked.

  “Looks like it’s held together with spit and twine,” Adolin said. “You’re leaking Light like a wineskin used for archery practice.”

  Dalinar nodded, sighing. Already his Plate was feeling sluggish. He’d probably have to remove it before they returned to the camp, lest it freeze on him.

  To the side, several soldiers were pulling Sadeas free of his Plate. It was so far gone that the Light had stopped save for a few tiny wisps. It could be fixed, but it would be expensive—regenerating Shardplate generally shattered the gemstones it drew Light from.

  The soldiers pulled Sadeas’s helm off, and Dalinar was relieved to see his former friend blinking, looking disoriented but largely uninjured. He had a cut on his thigh where one of the Parshendi had gotten him with a sword, and a few scrapes on his chest.

  Sadeas looked up at Dalinar and Adolin. Dalinar stiffened, expecting recrimination—this had only happened because Dalinar had insisted on fighting with two armies on the same plateau. That had goaded the Parshendi into bringing another army. Dalinar should have set proper scouts to watch for that.

  Sadeas, however, smiled a wide grin. “Stormfather, but that was close! How goes the battle?”

  “The Parshendi are routed,” Adolin said. “The last force resisting was the one around you. Our men are cutting the gemheart free at this moment. The day is ours.”

  “We win again!” Sadeas said triumphantly. “Dalinar, once in a while, it appears that senile old brain of yours can come up with a good idea or two!”

  “We’re the same age, Sadeas.” Dalinar noted as messengers approached, bearing reports from the rest of the battlefield.

  “Spread the word,” Sadeas proclaimed. “Tonight, all my soldiers will feast as if they were lighteyes!” He smiled as his soldiers helped him to his feet, and Adolin moved over to take the scout reports. Sadeas waved away the help insisting he could stand despite his wound, and began calling for his officers.

  Dalinar turned to seek out Gallant and make sure the horse’s wound was cared for. As he did, however, Sadeas caught his arm.

  “I should be dead,” Sadeas said softly.

  “Perhaps.”

  “I didn’t see much. But I thought I saw you alone. Where was your honor guard?”

  “I had to leave it behind,” Dalinar said. “It was the only way to get to you in time.”

  Sadeas frowned. “That was a terrible risk, Dalinar. Why?”

  “You do not abandon your allies on the battlefield. Not unless there’s no recourse. It is one of the Codes.”

  Sadeas shook his head. “That honor of yours is going to get you killed, Dalinar.” He seemed bemused. “Not that I feel like offering a complaint about it this day!”

  “If I should die,” Dalinar said, “then I would do so having lived my life right. It is not the destination that matters, but how one arrives there.”

  “The Codes?”

  “No. The Way of Kings.”

  “That storming book.”

  “That storming book saved your life today, Sadeas,” Dalinar said. “I think I’m starting to understand what Gavilar saw in it.”

  Sadeas scowled at that, though he glanced at his armor, lying in pieces nearby. He shook his head. “Perhaps I shall let you tell me what you mean. I’d like to understand you again, old friend. I’m beginning to wonder if I ever really did.” He let go of Dalinar’s arm. “Someone bring me my storming horse! Where are my officers?”

  Dalinar left, and quickly found several members of his guard seeing to Gallant. As he joined them, he was struck by the sheer number of corpses on the ground. They ran in a line where he had punched through the Parshendi ranks to get to Sadeas, a trail of death.

  He looked back to where he’d made his stand. Dozens dead. Perhaps hundreds.

  Blood of my fathers, Dalinar thought. Did I do that? He hadn’t killed in such numbers since the early days of helping Gavilar unite Alethkar. And he hadn’t grown sick at the sight of death since his youth.

  Yet now he found himself revolted, barely able to keep his stomach under control. He would not retch on the battlefield. His men should not see that.

  He stumbled away, one hand to his head, the other carrying his helm. He should be exulting. But he couldn’t. He just…couldn’t.

  You will need luck trying to understand me, Sadeas, he thought. Because I’m having Damnation’s own trouble trying to do so myself.

  “I hold the suckling child in my hands, a knife at his throat, and know that all who live wish me to let the blade slip. Spill its blood upon the ground, over my hands, and with it gain us further breath to draw.”

  —Dated Shashanan, 1173, 23 seconds pre-death. Subject: a darkeyed youth of sixteen years. Sample is of particular note.

  “And all the world was shattered!” Maps yelled, back arching, eyes wide, flecks of red spittle on his cheeks. “The rocks trembled with their steps, and the stones reached toward the heavens. We die! We die!”

  He spasmed one last time, and the light faded from his eyes. Kaladin sat back, crimson blood slick on his hands, the dagger he’d been using as a surgical knife slipping from his fingers and clicking softly against the stone. The affable man lay dead on the stones of a plateau, arrow wound in his left breast open to the air, splitting the birthmark he’d claimed looked like Alethkar.

  It’s taking them, Kaladin thought. One by one. Open them up, bleed them out. We’re nothing more than pouches to carry blood. Then we die, rain it down on the stones like a highstorm’s floods.

  Until only I remain. I always remain.

  A layer of skin, a layer of fat, a layer of muscle, a layer of bone. That was what men were.

  The battle raged across the chasm. It might as well have been another kingdom, for all the attention anyone gave the bridgemen. Die die die, then get out of our way.

  The members of Bridge Four stood in a solemn ring around Kaladin. “What was that he said at the end?” Skar asked. “The rocks trembled?”

  “It was nothing,” said thick-armed Yake. “Just dying delirium. It happens to men, sometimes.”

  “More often lately, it seems,” Teft said. He held his hand to his arm, where he’d hastily wrapped a bandage around an arrow wound. He wouldn’t be carrying a bridge anytime soon. Maps’s death and Arik’s death left them with only twenty-six members now. It was barely enough to carry a bridge. The greater heaviness was very noticeable, and they had difficulty keeping up with the other bridge crews. A few more losses, and they’d be in serious trouble.

  I should have been faster, Kaladin thought, looking down at Maps splayed open, his insides exposed for the sun to dry. The arrowhead had pierced his lung and lodged in his spine. Could Lirin have saved him? If Kaladin had studied in Kharbranth as his father had wished, would he have learned enough—known enough—to prevent deaths like this?

  This happens sometimes, son….

  Kaladin raised shaking bloody hands to his face, gripping his head, as memory consumed him. A young girl, a cracked head, a broken leg, an angry father.

  Despair, hate, loss, frustration, horror. How could any man live this way? To be a surgeon, to live knowing that you would be too weak to save some? When other men failed, a field of crops got worms in them. When a surgeon failed, someone died.

  You have to learn when to care….

  As if he could choose. Banish it, like snuffing a lantern. Kaladin bowed beneath the weight. I should have saved him, I should have saved him, I should have saved him.

  Maps, Dunny, Amark, Goshel, Dallet, Nalma. Tien.

  “Kaladin.” Syl’s voice. “Be strong.”

  “If I were strong,” he hissed, “they would live.”

  “The other bridgemen still need you. You promised them, Kaladin. You gave your oath.”

  Kaladin looked up. The bridgemen seemed anxious and worried. Ther
e were only eight of them; Kaladin had sent the others to look for fallen bridgemen from other crews. They’d found three initially, minor wounds that Skar could care for. No runners had come for him. Either the bridge crews had no other wounded, or those wounded were beyond help.

  Maybe he should have gone to look, just in case. But—numb—he could not face yet another dying man he could not save. He stumbled to his feet and walked away from the corpse. He stepped up to the chasm and forced himself to fall into the old stance Tukks had taught him.

  Feet apart, hands behind his back, clasping forearms. Straight-backed, staring forward. The familiarity brought him strength.

  You were wrong, Father, he thought. You said I’d learn to deal with the deaths. And yet here I am. Years later. Same problem.

  The bridgemen fell in around him. Lopen approached with a waterskin. Kaladin hesitated, then accepted the skin, washing off his face and hands. The warm water splashed across his skin, then brought welcome coolness as it evaporated. He let out a deep breath, nodding thanks to the short Herdazian man.

  Lopen raised an eyebrow, then gestured to the pouch tied to his waist. He had recovered the newest pouch of spheres they’d stuck to the bridge with an arrow. This was the fourth time they’d done that, and had recovered them each without incident.

  “Did you have any trouble?” Kaladin asked.

  “No, gancho,” Lopen said, smiling widely. “Easy as tripping a Horneater.”

  “I heard that,” Rock said gruffly, standing in parade rest a short distance away.

  “And the rope?” Kaladin asked.

  “I dropped the whole coil right over the side,” Lopen said. “But I didn’t tie the end to anything. Just like you said.”

  “Good,” Kaladin said. A rope dangling from a bridge would have just been too obvious. If Hashal or Gaz caught scent of what Kaladin was planning…

  And where is Gaz? Kaladin thought. Why didn’t he come on the bridge run?

  Lopen gave Kaladin the pouch of spheres, as if eager to be rid of the responsibility. Kaladin accepted it, stuffing it into his trouser pocket.