Brandon Sanderson - [Stormlight Archive 01] Read online

  tion. 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 ap-

  proach. 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 for-

  ward, waving for the tall merchant to dismount.

  “Elhokar . . .” Dalenar said warningly.

  The king, however, simply raise a forestalling hand. “I’m just going back

  THE WAY OF KINGS PRIME 13

  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 increas-

  ingly 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 kil ed. 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 mo-

  ment 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 Shard-

  bearer. 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.

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  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

  THE WAY OF KINGS PRIME 15

  had ordered out to attack the second army, they could do nothing—at least, not until the highstorm had passed.

  “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 pul ed 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

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  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

  THE WAY OF KINGS PRIME 17

  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 intel igence 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

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  commander giving those same orders. The king wasn’t as lenient as Dale-

  nar—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 com-

  mitted 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 kil ing 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