Words of Radiance

Perfect. The rain and chanting had covered the noise of the hole opening. He hacked open another hole as men spilled out from the first one, bearing lights. He began to open a third exit, but heard a shout. One of the Parshendi had finally noticed him. She was female—with this new form of theirs, that was more obvious than it had been before.

He charged the short distance to the Parshendi and launched himself into their ranks, sweeping lethally with his Blade. Bodies fell dead with burned eyes. Five, then ten. His soldiers joined him, thrusting spears into the Parshendi, cutting off their awful song.

It was shockingly easy. These Parshendi abandoned their song reluctantly, coming out of their trance disoriented and confused. Those who fought did so without coordination, and Adolin’s swift attack didn’t allow time for them to summon their strange sparking energy.

It was like killing sleeping men. Adolin had done dirty work with his Shards before. Damnation, any time you took the field with Plate and Blade against ordinary men, you did dirty work—slaughtering those who might as well have been children with sticks. This was worse though. Often they’d come to just before he killed them—blinking to consciousness, shaking themselves awake, only to find themselves face-to-face with a full Shardbearer in the rain, murdering their friends. Those looks of horror haunted Adolin as he sent corpse after corpse to the ground.

Where was the Thrill that usually propelled him through this kind of butchery? He needed it. Instead, he felt only nausea. Standing amid a field of the newly dead—the acrid smoke of burned-out eyes curling up through the rain—he trembled and dropped his Blade in disgust. It vanished to mist.

Something crashed into him from behind.

He lurched over a corpse—stumbling but keeping his feet—and spun about. A Shardblade smashed against his chest, spreading a glowing web of cracks across his breastplate. He deflected the next blow with his forearm and stepped back, taking a battle stance.

She stood before him, rain streaming from her armor. What had she named herself? Eshonai.

Inside his helm, Adolin grinned at the Shardbearer. This he could do. An honest fight. He raised his hands, the Shardblade forming from mist as he swung upward and deflected her attack in a sweeping parry.

Thank you, he thought.

* * *

Dalinar rode Gallant back across the bridge from Roion’s plateau, nursing a bloody wound at his side. Stupid. He should have seen that spear. He’d been too focused on that red lightning and the quickly shifting Parshendi fighting pairs.

The truth, Dalinar thought, sliding from his horse so a surgeon could inspect the wound, is that you’re an old man now. Perhaps not by the measuring of lifespans, as he was only in his fifties, but by the yardstick of soldiers he was certainly old. Without Shardplate to assist, he was getting slow, getting weak. Killing was a young man’s game, if only because the old men fell first.

That cursed rain kept coming, so he escaped it under one of Navani’s pavilions. The archers kept the Parshendi from following across the chasm to harry Roion’s beleaguered retreat. With the help of the bowmen, Dalinar had successfully saved the highprince’s army, half of it at least—but they’d lost the entire northern plateau. Roion rode across to safety, followed by an exhausted Captain Khal on foot—General Khal’s son wore his own Plate and bore Teleb’s Blade, which he’d blessedly recovered from the corpse after the other man had fallen.

They’d been forced to leave the body, and the Plate. Just as bad, the Parshendi singing continued unabated. Despite the soldiers saved, this was a terrible defeat.

Dalinar undid his breastplate and sat down with a grunt as the surgeon ordered him a stool. He suffered the woman’s ministration, though he knew the wound was not terrible. It was bad—any wound was bad on the battlefield, particularly if it impaired the sword arm—but it wouldn’t kill him.

“Storms,” the surgeon said. “Highprince, you’re all scars under here. How many times have you been wounded in the shoulder?”

“Can’t remember.”

“How can you still use your arm?”

“Training and practice.”

“That’s not how it works…” she whispered, eyes wide. “I mean… storms…”

“Just sew the thing up,” he said. “Yes, I’ll stay off the battlefield today. No, I won’t stress it. Yes, I’ve heard all the lectures before.”

He shouldn’t have been out there in the first place. He’d told himself he wouldn’t ride into battle anymore. He was supposed to be a politician now, not a warlord.

But once in a while, the Blackthorn needed to come out. The men needed it. Storms, he needed it. The—

Navani thundered into the tent.