Merin’s stupefaction nearly cost him his life. He barely remembered to push against himself instead, moving his head away from the blow, counteracting some of the fist’s momentum. In a moment of lucidity, he dismissed his Blade so he wouldn’t lose it.
The metal fist took him in the side of the head.
The world flashed, then grew black, but fortunately returned as Merin crashed to the ground. Though his eyes refused to focus, he could feel a sword descending, and he used the wind to push himself to the side—bearing the bracelet-induced flash of pain.
Merin stumbled across the docks, dazed, seeing double, his Blade unsummoned.
Seeing double.
It came back to him, the answer to a question that he had been so close to discovering. Like a name spoken that had been forgotten, like a memory suddenly recalled, he realized why dismissing and summoning his Blade felt so familiar.
He hadn’t done it before—but he had done something just like it. The meditation exercise Vasher had taught him, the one where he made his finger vanish and reappear, felt exactly the same as summoning and dismissing a Blade.
Another attack came, and this time Merin didn’t bother to block. He jumped back, retreating across the dock, summoning his Blade and trying to gather his wits. Dockworkers and gawking nobility scattered as Merin backed away from his advancing opponents. They could sense his weakness, could see the growing sloppiness of his form.
Sweat trickled down his cheek. Why? What did it mean? Vasher’s exercise had to have a purpose—the coincidence was just too great.
Merin threw himself into an attack, trying to surprise the men. However, they smartly coordinated a three-pronged offense, and Merin’s attack turned into a frantic defense. He retreated again, weakened, puffing haggardly, before they could surround him.
The three men approached in a close line, their postures daring him to attack. Merin continued to back away, forcing his mind to work, struggling against pain and exhaustion.
There was a secret. Vasher had taught him too well—Merin could sense what the dueling form was supposed to do, even when it didn’t perform as expected. He had felt the truth on several occasions.
There were times when he knew he should have hit, but his attack was easily parried. It was almost as if . . .
He didn’t have much strength left. Gathering his concentration, his energy, and his determination, Merin gripped his Blade in two hands, gritted his teeth, then dashed forward and jumped.
The winds curled in and pushed him from behind. The flash of pain was expected, and in his moment of stubborn focus, Merin didn’t let it distract him. The winds carried him forward in an amazing leap, driving him toward the elder Shardbearer.
If the man was surprised by Merin’s supernatural jump, he didn’t display the emotion. Only anger showed in his eyes—anger and satisfaction. Merin’s attack was obvious. The trajectory of his jump, the angle of his raised arms, made the proper parry intuitive.
The Shardbearer raised his weapon with a curled lip.
As Merin fell, he dismissed his Blade. It instantly changed to smoke, as always, but Merin didn’t quite let it vanish. Just as it began to change to smoke, he grabbed ahold of it with his mind, holding it halfway into existence—like the finger he could not see, but only because he ignored that it was there.
His incorporeal Blade passed through the parrying Shardblade. Merin immediately called to his weapon, bringing it back from the edge upon which it teetered. Rather than taking ten heartbeats to summon, the weapon appeared immediately, growing firm in his hands again.
The Veden man’s eyes widen in shock right before the Blade sliced through his unprotected head. Merin’s wind-fueled jump carried him forward, past the dying man, with supernatural speed. The other two Shardbearers weren’t prepared as Merin landed before them, maintaining his fluid swing as he cut them both down in a single motion.
Merin stumbled to a halt, and three corpses dropped to the docks behind him. He gasped in anguish and exhaustion, dismissing his Blade and reaching over to rip the bracelet off with a claw-like grip. As he dropped the jade, the air returning to normal, the pain in his arm dampened slightly—but not enough. He fell to his knees, sweat staining the wood before him as great drops streamed from his brow.
Merin clutched his wrist with his uninjured arm, his entire body shaking. He struggled to remain conscious.
After a few moments of dealing with the pain, he finally became aware of the strange stillness. He forced himself to look up.
Eight boats stood along this section of the docks, and men crowed atop them, looking down at him with an eerie silence. Merin turned to the side. The dockworkers and other onlookers stood with equally stunned postures.
I don’t blame them, Merin thought with a groan. I’m not sure what just happened myself.
Ahead, a group was walking down a gangplank, their richly-colored clothing identifying them to Merin’s fuzzy, sweat-blurred vision. The regents.
Merin climbed to his feet, then lurched across the docks, slowly gathering the Blades of the fallen men. He regained some of his strength as he worked, but the ache in his arm faded only a bit, and he found himself cradling it to his chest as he worked. When he was forced to move it to carry a pair of Blades, it felt stiff and awkward. Numb, yet painful at the same time.
The regents and collected nobility watched Merin’s work with a respectful silence. Finally Merin approached them, forcing himself to walk upright, with his tired head held high. The regents waited expectantly, but Merin ignored them.
Instead, he approached Renarin and rammed a Blade point-first into the wood before his friend. “It’s yours, if you want it,” he said.
Renarin paused, then smiled, reaching out to accept the Blade. “I suppose it would be a bit anti-climactic if I refused.”
Merin nodded, smiling weakly. He turned to the regents, and let his face grow more stern. “What of you?” he asked. “What of these fleets?”
“I think our soldiers have decided for us,” the head regent said, nodding to the side.
Merin heard the splashes even as he turned. White Veden cloaks flapped in the wind as the Lakhenran soldiers began to throw their officers over the sides of the boats. The silence burst, sailors and dockworkers breaking into exuberant cheers. They couldn’t have known about Merin’s goal, but somehow they sensed their freedom. The Lakhenran lords might have been quelled, but the once-kingdom’s citizens were more willing to fight.
This time, Merin’s smile bore no trace of weariness.
“These ships will not sail to the north,” the head regent said quietly, “though I know not whether our reward will be freedom or destruction. Either way, Vedenar will receive no support from us in this war.”
Merin turned back toward the three regents. “That’s not good enough anymore.” He raised two more Blades, ramming them into the wood before the two regents who had been most supportive—leaving the third, bitter man out.
“Not good enough?” the head regent asked as the third man sputtered at the slight.
“These ships will sail,” Merin said firmly. “But they will join with Alethkar, not our enemies. You want to be free of Jah Keved? Well, you will have to earn it.”
The chubby regent frowned. “Follow one master instead of another?” he asked. “What proof do we have that Alethkar won’t just occupy us like Vedenar once did?”
Merin sighed. “None, and I’m too tired to argue with you. Take the Blades; we’re sailing north.”
The two men glanced at each other, then reached forward to take the offered Shardblades.
“Yours is at the bottom of the ocean,” Merin said to the third regent. “You should send someone to fish it out for you. Renarin and I get a suit of Plate; I don’t care what you do with the third set.”
The man continued to sputter, but he immediately waved for a servant, snapping a few orders in Lakhenran. Merin ignored him, turning eyes on the collected soldiers. Some were yelling with the dockworke
rs and citizenry, but many of them were either staring at Merin or regarding the scattered corpses of the dead Shardbearers.
Merin found the face he was looking for. He strode forward, waving a few people out of the way, then stopped before a familiar soldier—the man who had been their guard, the one that Merin had given his Blade to before entering the palace to meet the regents.
“It takes a man of rare honor to give up a prize as fine as a Shardblade,” Merin said to the soldier. He rammed the final Blade into the ground before the man. “And rare honor deserves rare rewards.”
The man’s eyes widened, then he looked up, his eyes thick with gratitude and wonder. Then, surprisingly, he knelt. “A Shardbearer must have a Lord,” he said. “Will you accept my Oath, my lord?”
Merin paused. He wasn’t really certain if he was of the right rank to take such oaths. He opened his mouth to turn down the offer, but paused as he saw the soldiers around him. There was so much respect in their eyes—respect and determination. He would need both if he was going to help Lord Dalenar.
We’ll fix it later, he told himself. “Very well,” he said. “I accept your oath . . .”
“Kalden, my lord,” the man reminded in lightly-accented Aleth.
“Lord Kalden,” Merin replied. “Your first duty is to spread the word that I want these ships ready to leave as soon as possible. We sail to Alethkar, where we will do to the Veden armies what I did to their Shardbearers today.”
Merin thought that a fitting metaphor, but was completely unprepared for the shouts of exuberance and devotion the soldiers gave as Kalden translated his words.
chapter 68
Jasnah 15
During the next few days of travel, Jasnah waited in quiet tension, expecting to hear the inevitable truth: that the scouts had spotted the Veden army approaching from behind.
The report never came.
The Herald’s army moved like a wounded animal, fleeing desperately for safety, yet hampered by its own weight and broken limbs. Despite the anxiety of being chased, theirs was hardly an organized, disciplined group. People slept in. Food was distributed inefficiently. Men squabbled, and when they approached towns, she often found out too late that some of the men had broken orders and sought out a tavern. Desertions continued—but strangely, recruits continued to straggle in. Apparently, any large mass of people drew attention, bringing men wanting work or refugees seeking sanctuary. Jasnah turned away those she could, but many were persistent, and inside she knew that if an attack came, they would need every soldier—no matter how unpromising—they could get.
They traveled for four more days, entering Aneazer’s territory with little circumstance beyond the distant sighting of a few mounted men that might have been scouts. Though no one moved to challenge them, Jasnah was certain that this was only because of their size. Local or traveling squads would leave them alone, for now. An army of twelve hundred marching directly for Jorevan was obviously a matter to be handled by their lord himself. Aneazer would make a move, Jasnah was certain of that. Until he did, she would simply push onward, hoping that the uncertain enemy ahead would prove more agreeable than the known enemy behind.
Taln did not return. Jasnah found herself watching southward more and more, her tension growing. She told herself she was being foolish. Whatever Taln had done, it had obviously slowed the enemy army greatly—slowed it enough that even Meridas’s distant-roving scouts caught no sight of it. Such an impressive event would not be accomplished without price. The delay had cost his life. He would not be returning. It was foolish to sit and dote with worry.
And yet, Lhan’s raw assessment of her personality remained vivid in her memory. She had been called paranoid before, and had dismissed the allegations. Usually, the same people who referred to her in such a way ended up depending upon her foresight. For Lhan to describe her as a woman without belief, however . . . as a person frightened by hope . . . left her feeling sick. What would it mean if Taln did return? Did she always have to expect disappointment?
His continuing absence—along with that of the army he had gone to stop—bred rumors from rumors within the camp. As the days passed, and it became less and less likely he would return, some claimed the absence as an obvious sign that he had never been a Herald. Others claimed that the disappearance of the Veden army was instead proof of Taln’s obvious divinity. Still others supposed that he was testing them to see who would remain loyal and who would desert. The more rational part of the soldiers pointed out that it didn’t really matter where the supposed Herald was, as long as the Veden army went with him.
Some dared whisper that there never had been a Veden army, attributing Taln’s disappearance to his desire to flee the camp for some untold reason. Jasnah dismissed this supposition with ease. It was possible that Nachin had lied about the existence of a Veden army, but the scouts would not have. Besides, Taln and Kemnar would have quickly discovered the truth if there was no army. Their continued absence meant at least one thing—they had found someone to fight.
Someone to kill them, a piece of her whispered. And still, perhaps as a stubborn response to Lhan, she told herself to continue hoping. To keep looking southward. To expect the best, even if she had to force herself to do so. Taln would be her test.
Three days from the Holy City, a messenger appeared and demanded to be taken to the army’s leader. Without thought, the guards took him to Meridas—and Jasnah was not invited to their conference. Meridas assumed Taln dead, a fact that lent him new levels of arrogant presumption, and Jasnah’s place in the group had been regulated to that of the protected and coddled woman, fiancée of the general. Fortunately, Lhan was one of the few people in the army who could read, and as such he was allowed into the conference in case the messenger brought a letter. The monk later told her that the messenger had come in warning, giving Meridas an opportunity to withdraw from Lord Aneazer’s land, lest he face retribution. Apparently, Meridas’s response had been less than respectful.
Jasnah considered giving into Meridas’s demand that they not go to Jorevan, but turn and head to Alethkar. Even if she did allow herself a bit of forced hope regarding Taln, she did not doubt that going to the Holy City was going to be dangerous. Her men could not face a trained enemy on its own—she would have to fold it with more seasoned troops once they reached Elhokar’s main army. She still wasn’t certain how they were going to persuade a tyrant not to destroy them.
Several things kept her from turning the army around. First was the fact that Aneazer had sent them a messenger. A man more confident about his chances probably wouldn’t have bothered with a warning—that meant that Aneazer was at least a little worried. He couldn’t know how inexperienced Jasnah’s troops were; perhaps he saw only their numbers, and didn’t relish fighting them. Perhaps he would let them camp near his city and await Taln’s return.
However, even if Aneazer didn’t attack, her second reason for continuing would come into play. They couldn’t turn around—they didn’t have enough food to reach Kholinar. In fact, their supplies wouldn’t even last them to the Alethkar border. The small fortune she had requisitioned in Marcabe had been expended, the last few gems spent in a town two days back. Soon their resources would be gone.
And once that happened, Jasnah had no idea what she would do. They rode toward the fortified stronghold of a ruthless despot, they had lost their unifying leader and finest warrior, and they were almost out of food. In the face of such challenges, Jasnah found hope illusive indeed. Lhan could preach all he wished, but the facts were grim. At best, she would have to disband the army, giving each man a bit of food to last him on his own. She didn’t know how she herself was going to reach Kholinar.
Hopefully, the messengers we sent from Marcabe reached Elhokar, she thought one depressed evening. For I’m certainly not going to get to him in time to bring word.
“Talenel’Elin! He who is called Stonesinew! The Soldier, the Eternal Warrior! He appeared to you, to us, and gathered us!”
The speaker was an older man, clothed in a dusty red sencoat and a pair of trousers that might have once been white. He wore a beard, which was far more common in the wilds of Riemak than it was in Alethkar, and carried a spear that bore some traces of ornate trim. His wide nose was flared with passion, his eyes wild as he spoke before a crowd of soldiers in the evening darkness.
“I hear some of you whisper that he has abandoned us,” the old man called, “but this is an obvious falsehood. We know the Heralds are always with us, as the winds and the stones themselves. He traveled with us for a short time, for it is promised that the Heralds must Return on occasion. Indeed, you heard him warn of such things! He came to gather an army, which he did. We are His, to do His duty.”
“Who is he?” Jasnah asked quietly. She stood with Vinde at the periphery of the gathered crowd. The would-be prophet had drawn a fairly large group, at least a hundred people. He stood beside a bonfire of his own making, though Jasnah didn’t remember requisitioning him any of their precious wood supplies.
“He calls himself Janelken, my lady,” Vinde explained.
Jasnah raised an eyebrow. The name meant ‘Gift of the Heralds.’ She didn’t recognize him, but there were now many faces in the army that she didn’t know.
“He claims that before Talenel left, he granted Janelken his mantle of leadership,” Vinde explained quietly. “He claims to be able to hear the words of the Heralds on the winds, and says it is his duty to speak for them. He hasn’t gone so far as to claim that command of the army should be his, but . . .”
“He probably isn’t far away from it,” Jasnah said. “You were right to bring this to my attention.”
“You would have heard of him soon anyway,” Vinde said. “I didn’t realize that he had gathered such a following.”
Jasnah frowned. Kemnar would never have let the situation come so far—he would have dealt with this Janelken quickly, the moment the man even displayed a potential for treason. Vinde, however, was not Kemnar. At least the man had the presence of mind to recognize the danger. If this self-proclaimed prophet convinced enough of the Elinrah believers to support him, he could conceivably overthrow Meridas’s command regardless of title or Shardblade.
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