The Way of Kings - By Brandon Sanderson Page 0,465

afraid of spoiling her solemn wish. A cold breeze began blowing, whipping at pennants and cloaks. The prayer went out, but that was fine. It wasn’t meant to burn long.

“Brightlord Sadeas!” an anxious voice called.

Navani looked up. Soldiers parted, making way for a runner in green. He hurried up to Sadeas, beginning to speak, but the highprince grabbed the man by the shoulder in a Shardplate grip and pointed, gesturing for his guards to make a perimeter. He pulled the messenger beneath the canopy.

Navani continued to kneel beside her prayer. The flames left a black scar in the shape of the glyph on the ground. Someone stepped up beside her— Renarin. He went to one knee, resting a hand on her shoulder. “Thank you, Mashala.”

She nodded, standing, her freehand sprinkled with drops of red pigment. Her cheeks were still wet with tears, but she narrowed her eyes, looking through the press of soldiers toward Sadeas. His expression was thunderous, face growing red, eyes wide with anger.

She turned and pushed her way through the press of soldiers, scrambling up to the rim of the staging field. Renarin and some of Sadeas’s officers joined her in staring out over the Shattered Plains.

And there they saw a creeping line of men limping back toward the warcamps, led by a mounted man in slate-grey armor.

Dalinar rode Gallant at the head of two thousand six hundred and fifty-three men. That was all that remained of his assault force of eight thousand.

The long trek back across the plateaus had given him time to think. His insides were still a tempest of emotions. He flexed his left hand as he rode; it was now encased by a blue-painted Shardplate gauntlet borrowed from Adolin. It would take days to regrow Dalinar’s own gauntlet. Longer, if the Parshendi tried to grow a full suit from the one he had left. They would fail, so long as Dalinar’s armorers fed Stormlight to his suit. The abandoned gauntlet would degrade and crumble to dust, a new one growing for Dalinar.

For now, he wore Adolin’s. They had collected all of the infused gemstones among his twenty-six hundred men and used that Stormlight to recharge and reinforce his armor. It was still scarred with cracks. Healing as much damage as it had sustained would take days, but the Plate was in fighting shape again, if it came to that.

He needed to make certain it didn’t. He intended to confront Sadeas, and he wanted to be armored when he did. In fact, he wanted to storm up the incline to Sadeas’s warcamp and declare formal war on his “old friend.” Perhaps summon his Blade and see Sadeas dead.

But he wouldn’t. His soldiers were too weak, his position too tenuous. Formal war would destroy him and the kingdom. He had to do something else. Something that protected the kingdom. Revenge would come. Eventually. Alethkar came first.

He lowered his blue-gauntleted fist, gripping Gallant’s reins. Adolin rode a short distance away. They’d repaired his armor as well, though he now lacked a gauntlet. Dalinar had refused the gift of his son’s gauntlet at first, but had given in to Adolin’s logic. If one of them was going to go without, it should be the younger man. Inside Shardplate, their differences in age didn’t matter—but outside of it, Adolin was a young man in his twenties and Dalinar an aging man in his fifties.

He still didn’t know what to think of the visions, and their apparent failure in telling him to trust Sadeas. He’d confront that later. One step at a time.

“Elthal,” Dalinar called. The highest-ranked officer who had survived the disaster, Elthal was a limber man with a distinguished face and a thin mustache. His arm was in a sling. He’d been one of those to hold the gap alongside Dalinar during the last part of the fight.

“Yes, Brightlord?” Elthal asked, jogging over to Dalinar. All of the horses save the two Ryshadium were carrying wounded.

“Take the wounded to my warcamp,” Dalinar said. “Then tell Teleb to bring the entire camp to alert. Mobilize the remaining companies.”

“Yes, Brightlord,” the man said, saluting. “Brightlord, what should I tell them to prepare for?”

“Anything. But hopefully nothing.”

“I understand, Brightlord,” Elthal said, leaving to follow the orders.

Dalinar turned Gallant to march over to the group of bridgemen, still following their somber leader, a man named Kaladin. They’d left their bridge as soon as they’d reached the permanent bridges; Sadeas could send for it eventually.

The bridgemen stopped as he approached, looking as