Chapter Text
The town was smaller than Hearthstone but densely packed. The buildings huddled on the leeward side of the tallest hill in the valley, with each roof descending gradually in height. The buildings carved into the base of the hill were the largest, and they shrank towards the outskirts of town. Two conical pillars marked the western gate. The glyph for 'Wind' was carved on one, and the glyph for 'Break' was carved on the other, but in Kaladin's opinion, they were in the wrong order.
Kaladin and Yeshal drew a pack of onlookers as they entered the town. Evidently, its citizens had heard of what had transpired the previous day, but they wanted to see with their own eyes. Kaladin attempted to clear a path by carefully waving his shardblade ahead of him, but most didn't seem to appreciate the danger of the blade. Some children even reached up to touch it before Kaladin lifted it beyond their reach. These people had only ever heard of shardblades; a darkeyed soldier winning shards not ten miles out of town was more than enough to excite them.
"Brightlord! Brightlord!" one boy screamed, "Conscript me! Conscript me! I can fight, but Father won't let me volunteer!" He couldn't have been more than fourteen, short, skinny, and pimple-faced. Kaladin pushed him back with one hand. The boy stumbled back into the crowd. His hurt expression stung, but Kaladin hoped that hurt kept him out of the army for a few more years at least.
Kaladin scanned the street for a building that might host a gathering of lighteyes but only found the squat dwellings of farmers. The people in the crowd reminded him of his neighbors back in Hearthstone, all dressed simply in dirty overalls and threadbare skirts. All except one. A young man in a long green coat stood near the back of the throng staring at Kaladin. He tried to hide his face behind an upturned collar, but Kaladin recognized him. It was the young battalionlord from the previous day, recognizable by the gilt scabbard he failed to conceal under his coat.
"Captain," Kaladin said, "do you recognize that man back there?"
"Zem Melys," Yeshal said. "If he's here, his father is certainly nearby."
At the sound of his own name, the youth nearly jumped out of his boots. With a shocked expression, he dove into an alleyway. Kaladin shoved his way through the crowd and dived into the alleyway with Yeshal on his heels. The alley turned twice before emptying into the town square, where a market was being held. Sifting through the throng of shoppers, Zem struggled forward, stooping to hide among the crowd. If there was any doubt as to his identity, he occasionally glanced backwards towards the alley, blue eyes clearly visible in the daylight.
"Does he think he's hiding like that?" Kaladin wondered aloud.
"Zem's not the brightest," Yeshal admitted. "His father arranged his appointment as Battalionlord. Amaram did it as a favor to the old man but demanded he balance out his son's inexperience with his own service. Melys is a veteran of the Unification Wars. Mean bastard, but sometimes that's what you want."
Zem slipped into a large stormshelter adjacent to the town hall. Guards posted at the door let him pass without question. Kaladin breathed deeply and debated his options. The battalionlords had called this meeting without notifying him and took deliberate steps to hide their location. That meant that this wasn't a trap for him; there weren't a dozen men inside waiting to jump him, but he wasn't welcome either. Not all the battalionlords viewed him as an enemy. Pereshal had been grateful the day before, and Restees had at least been cordial.
"Did you talk to your Battalionlord last night?" Kaladin asked.
"Redelin asked me about you, of course," Yeshal said with a smirk.
"And?"
"And I told him the truth. You saved us. You led us. You won those shards fairly."
"And what did he think of that?"
"He sighed and waved me off like he was bored. That's usually a good sign, though. It means he can't find anything specific to complain about."
That at least seemed more promising than his relationship with Battalionlord Ordinal. He had outright resented Kaladin for rescuing the right flank and led his men in pursuit of the enemy in an attempt to salvage his fragile pride.
Altogether, Ordinal could be counted as hostile and Pershal as friendly, while Restees, Redelin, and the two Melys's were more or less undecided. Each of them had their own schemes in the works and viewed Kaladin as an unreliable variable at best. By inserting himself, Kaladin could worsen his position among them, pushing one or more of them into open hostility. But Kaladin needed to insert himself. If even two joined together against him, he would be in serious danger.
"I'm going in, Captain. Tell my squad where I am."
"Are you sure?" Yeshal's concern was not feigned. "Maybe I should bring my men here."
"No, that'd be too provocative." Kaladin imagined a bloody civil war in the camp and shuddered. The lighteyes in camp envied him; he had felt their looks as he left camp, but that didn't mean they deserved to die. "I have a task for you and your men when you get back to camp."
Yeshal raised an eyebrow. "What did you have in mind?"
Kaladin dismissed the guards at the door to the stormshelter with a wave. They gave little resistance, the shardblade offering a convincing argument in his favor. He entered the room with as much false bravado as he could summon, silencing the conversation underway.
All six battalionlords huddled at one end of a long marklewood table. The elder Melys sat at the head of the table with his son and Ordinal to his right, Restees, Redinal, and Pereshal to his left. Restees twitched his mustache, and young Melys averted his gaze; the others simply stared at him. Kaladin laid his shardblade flat on the table and took a seat at the far end looking straight towards Melys. He leaned back in the chair, affecting his ease, and gestured for the conversation to continue.
"What do you think you're doing, boy?" Melys said, hands balled into fists, brilliant blue eyes locked onto Kaladin's.
"Did your boy not tell you I was coming?" Kaladin said. Zem flinched. His father's glare flashed over to the young man a moment before returning to Kaladin.
"Was he invited to this meeting?" Ordinal whined in a high-pitched voice. "Which one of you did it?" He kept his head waxed and oiled such that as he looked between his fellow officers, the whole room was reflected on his scalp. Kaladin couldn't put an age to him, appearing either twenty-five or fifty depending on his expression.
"Your messengers must have missed me. I was up early meeting with Thybon and negotiating the new terms of my service."
"Thybon does not have the authority to negotiate on behalf of this army," Melys growled.
"I made use of his scribe and spanreed. Sadeas generously offered me lands and titles for my fealty. Seeing as I won my shards in his service, he wished for me to join his Princedom and serve as one of his shardbearers here or on the Shattered Plains." Kaladin hoped that Thybon hadn't been lying to him about that, but it didn't really matter. He could see on their faces that these men all believed it. "But I declined those terms."
"You fool!" Pereshal exclaimed, an injured look on his face.
"Would you really throw away your reputation on your first day as a lighteyes?" Redelin said, bemused.
"His eyes aren't light yet," growled Ordinal. He had his hand on a short dagger at his belt. Kaladin tapped one finger on his shardblade too.
"I made an oath to Amaram. Four years of service. That was three years, nine months, and five weeks ago. I have five weeks left in this army. I told Sadeas that I would serve out the rest of my contract no matter what. If he wanted to keep me in his service after that date, he would need to give me command of my own battalion, an honor guard fit for a Shardbearer composed of men of my choosing alone. Drawn from any unit in the army or recruited as I see fit."
The others at the table were stunned. His demands were cheap for a shardbearer but a direct challenge to their authority. Officers did not give up their soldiers easily; Kaladin had paid enough bribes in his career to know that. He could see a storm churning in each of their heads. With the power to choose any soldier in the army, he would be the only one of them with a full-strength battalion.
Good. He wasn't merely a jumped-up spearman to them anymore. He had acted with the instinctive grasping ambition expected of a lighteyed Alethi. But to turn down lands and titles for a military command? That might seem almost too Alethi to be believed. Whatever the lighteyes said about war being a man's highest calling, they sought wealth above all. Kaladin was ready to prove that he was different.
"Our army has been decimated and decapitated. But the enemy failed to destroy us. Whatever agreement Sadeas and I come to, you'll need me and my shards these next five weeks. If plans are laid immediately, we can strike Hallaw's forces before they've recovered. Once my shardplate is repaired, we can seize the initiative and finish this conflict once and for all." Kaladin saw the battalionlords exchange glances. All but Redelin seemed unamused.
"Is that not why this meeting has been called? Is it not up to us to make the army ready for battle?" Kaladin meant it as a rhetorical question, but he saw now that they truly weren't planning on making an attack at all. Just as he was about to insist on the necessity of action, Restees stood. Kaladin had only spoken to his former battalionlord on a handful of occasions: twice when he had been promoted and twice for disciplinary actions. The look on his face now resembled the later, not the former.
"This meeting was called," Restees said, a hard edge rising in his voice, "to prepare recommendations to Highprince Sedeas on the topic of promotions and recruitment. Only a Highprince can name a man to the fifth Dahn or above. As you so eloquently put it, the army has been decimated and decapitated; two generals, four battalionlords, and thirteen companylords are dead or captured. We still haven't tallied the number of lesser officers lost or injured in yesterday's engagement, but the number could easily be over two hundred. At least a thousand of our soldiers still lie out on that plain, rotting, and twice that number are wounded in camp." Restees paused his account of the dead, leaving the stormshelter in silence. Kaladin's bravado withered under his verbal assault.
"This army is not going to make any kind of offensive movement for at least the next week. Shardbearer or no. We are as bloodied and bleeding as Hallaw, and so far as we know, he isn't dead. Our last General has not regained consciousness, and the surgeon cannot tell whether he will live or die. Neither you nor I nor all of us in combination have been given the authority to lead this army into battle. So until Seti recovers or one of us is promoted by order of our Highprince, no one is going anywhere."
"You are free to celebrate your rise in station on your own, Stormblessed, but we here are gathered to grapple with our common disaster. Burn the dead, tend the wounded, and advise our Highprince. As a man raised by the laws of Alethkar to the fourth Dahn, you have a right to attend councils of war among men of the same rank in the same army. But until Sadeas confirms your position in the army, you have no authority in it. You sit in council at our pleasure. If you insist on interrupting these proceedings with your irrelevant personal agenda, I will have you escorted out. Is that storming clear?"
Kaladin could not find his words. He nodded in involuntary meekness. He had been reprimanded before, but never like that. Kaladin thought that only darkeyes got chewed out. This was evidently the lighteyed version: a thorough and frank dressing down.
Early in his career, Sergeant Tukks used to accost him with every curse in the Alethi language and more than a few that he'd invented. Those episodes had been scary at first but always humorous on recollection. Even though Kaladin couldn't care less about what Restees thought of him, his words actually stung.
In all his career as a soldier, Kaladin had never been accused of being callous or coldhearted. Every night he felt the weight of the men he'd lost, the lives he had taken. You have to learn when to care...and when to let go... His father's words. Tukks had said the opposite. Care about winning. Care about those you defend. You have to care about something.
As he slumped back in his chair, the battalionlords went back to discussing the state of the army. Ordinal grinned nastily at Kaladin before rejoining the discussion.
Redelin's smirk was less malicious but not any more sympathetic. The attention refocused around Restees rather than Melys, much to the older man's annoyance.
Kaladin half listened, half thought on what Restees had said. Somewhere in the act of being a lighteyes this morning, he had lost sight of what he really cared about. His men came first, and after that, the entire army. His position, his relation to these men, to Sadeas, it was only a means to an end. Now more than ever, he had to remember who he was: a darkeyed spearman from Hearthstone. A surgeon's son. Even if his eyes changed, he would always be that man.
Once the battalionlords finished their accounting of casualties and decided on a plan for recruiting men to replace the fallen, they moved to another subject. "Promotions," Restees said, "We should consolidate the lighteyed companies, salvage their officers for darkeyed units, and promote the most veteran among the rank and file."
"Obviously," grumbled Ordinal, "but which ones?"
"The cavalry first," said Restees. "So few of them left. They're not going to be useful. The rest of Amaram's honor guard as well. They should all be incorporated with the depleted heavy infantry companies."
Pereshal stroked his chin thoughtfully. "They won't like that. Cavalry never like being turned into foot soldiers; it's a demotion to them."
"They abandoned the High Marshal," old Melys sneered. "I saw it with my own eyes. As soon as the Shardbearer fell upon them, they scattered. Drove the whole army into a route. Cowards!"
"Not everyone can be as ornery as a feral boar," muttered Redelin.
"Courage," Melys continued, "is a dead art among this filth. In my day, men lined up and begged to serve their Highprince in his guard. Sadeas, Gavilar, the Blackthorne. When you held up their banner, you swore to die before you let it touch the ground. And when a shardbearer took the field, you ran towards him, not away."
"Not all the honor guard ran away," Kaladin said without thinking. The other turned to him in surprise, Melys most of all. "Sergeant Haber and his men joined me in the attack. Out of twenty men, more than half are dead. Only three have all their limbs intact." It was four counting Kavel, but he wasn't part of the honor guard.
"What happened with the Shardbearer?" said an unfamiliar voice. It was Zem Melys speaking for the first time in the entire meeting. "That's important too, right? How did you kill him?" Zem's father looked mildly displeased, but the others awaited the answer as well.
Kaladin sighed. He supposed the whole story had to be told at some point. He narrated the events of the previous day, from the appearance of the shardbearer to his defeat, as quickly as he could. He avoided uncomfortable details, like usurping Yeshal's command and giving false orders to the companylord, but he couldn't entirely omit his speech before the honor guard.
"The officers turned me down. One actually called me an impudent cremling," Kaladin said. "They left, but the Sergeant remained. His men too. And some others." The thought of those men's bravery almost brought a tear to Kaladin's eye. He remembered the selfish thought after the battle—that at least his own men hadn't fallen in the fight—and cursed himself.
"Impudent cremling, eh?" The elder Melys chuckled. "Sounds like Gylan, the prancing axehound."
Kaladin continued the story, speeding through the plan and final attack. He barely mentioned how he killed the shardbearer, the memory of it uncomfortable to recall. Now that he had used the blade in battle, the anger he felt towards the shardbearer seemed almost hypocritical.
"And then the Sergeant told me I had to pick up the sword. So I did." Kaladin leaned back in the chair and looked at the blade before him. Glyphs ran up its length so intricate Kaladin couldn't immediately translate them. The battalionlords seemed to catch his mood and took a pause as he ended the story.
"What do you mean he told you to take the shards?" Zem asked eventually.
"I promised I would," Kaladin said plainly. "I promised to rescue the army."
Ordinal scoffed at that, but Zem nodded, engrossed in the story.
"What he means, boy," interrupted the elder Melys, "is why did you hesitate? And why didn't any of the others take the blade if you didn't do it immediately?"
"I don't know," Kaladin answered to both questions.
"You said the man's hair was red..." Redelin said, contemplative. "A Veden on our battlefield killing for the enemy. That explains where he came from, but not how or why."
"It doesn't explain where the shards came from at all," Pereshal said. He stood and leaned over to look at the shardblade. "My tutor made me learn the name of every shardblade held in the five Vorin kingdoms, and I can promise you, this one doesn't match any of the prints I studied."
Melys slammed the table. "Bringing foreign shards into a battle between Alethi—It's a disgrace!"
"I wonder if Highprince Vamah arranged it," Redelin mused, "or if Hallaw acted on his own. I'd bet there's a bit of extra tension on the Shattered Plains, whatever the case." The entire table concurred, tacitly accepting the assumption that the shardbearer was a hired mercenary. Kaladin wanted to say that the shardbearer had probably been an assassin, but he held himself back. The female ardent he spoke to yesterday already possessed that information and was in direct communication with Sadeas. Rumor of an assassin wielding shards would summon images of the assassin in white who killed King Gavilar. A story like that might complicate the situation substantially. With all ten highprinces already committed to the war on the shattered plains, who knew what such a rumor might trigger for Alethkar?
"Promotions," Restees said firmly, bringing the room back on topic. "We need two more Battalionlords, at least. Stormblessed will be one and-"
"We need more than two Battalionlords," Melys grumbled under his breath. "One or more of us will be promoted. Seti may recover, Almighty willing, but his leg is shattered. He cannot lead in the field." There was no question in Kaladin's mind who Melys meant by 'one of us'. The man seemed ambitious to a fault.
"It is not our place to suggest promotions to the third Dahn," Restees said. "We will make our need known, and the Highprince will decide."
"You mean the Brightlady will decide," scoffed Melys. "Trust me, Sadeas doesn't pay us any mind. He's too busy scheming in the warcamps and hunting chasmfiends. We must make our will known."
"Could you be any more obvious, Melys?" Redelin snorted. "The Highprince is never going to name you Highmarshal, not after what you did. Let that dream die already, so one of us can enjoy our day in the sun."
The old man looked like he might kill Redelin then and there. Despite his dandyish affect, Redelin seemed ready for a fight as well. Restees held them both back as angerspren bubbled up around their feet.
"Restees is the better choice," Pereshal said. "He's fought under Amaram the longest."
"I would never presume either to suggest this to the Highprince or to put myself before Melys." Restees's voice hardened again, just as it had with Kaladin. He pushed Melys and Redelin back into their seats. "But I can see the point in nominating more potential Battalionlords, if only for the sake of recruitment."
"Gylan is first in line," Ordinal said. He had remained quiet most of the meeting, but his attention peaked during Kaladin's story. He'd evidently identified another enemy of Kaladin's.
"What use is a craven Battalionlord?" Melys grumbled. "Ishamar would be better, though that man is near to craven. Sheler's practically useless as well, but Sadeas would approve."
The conversation broke down into an endless stream of names, most of which Kaladin didn't know. Restees called through a door in the back of the stormshelter and a stream of ardents filed in with records relating to all the soldiers in camp. Soon each man had an ardent at his shoulder reading while others shuffled behind them, setting down and taking away one text after another.
Ordinal and Redelin seemed to think ancestry factored into a candidate's qualifications as an officer, focusing on family histories and personal titles. Old Melys cared about an officer's service record above all else, while Pereshal concerned himself with informal social hierarchy in camp. Meanwhile, Restees silently sorted through hundreds of lighteyes of the seventh and eighth dahn, searching for candidates with the basic qualifications necessary for low-level officer positions.
Kaladin found himself fully excluded from the conversation now. Across the table, Zem Melys seemed to slump back in his chair while his father argued with Ordinal. The young man looked over at Kaladin, and they shared a silent shrug. It seemed that both of them were out of their depth.
A male ardent read to Kaladin from a massive catalog of lighteyed houses and their members in the Sedeas princedom. He flipped between pages seeking likely candidates for the honor guard, but Kaladin offered minimal feedback. Glyphpairs headed each page, and Kaladin copied them down on a spare parchment as he listened. His notes were disorganized, almost useless, but he used to study his father's anatomy manuals this way, drawing glyphs in soft crem as a mnemonic ritual. Even so, the names of a hundred privileged lighteyes entered and exited Kaladin' mind like a cistern overflowing in a highstorm. Just as the ardent was finishing off the last of the captainlords, Kaladin spied a glyph he had passed over.
"Melhak Ishi," Kaladin read. "Which house is that?" Beneath the glyph were two passages in the women's script, one extensive, the other only a few lines long.
"Brightlord Melys and his son," the ardent said, "would you like me to read?"
Kaladin looked over at the elder Melys. He was busy speaking to Restees, who had scribbled a few dozen lighteyed glyphpairs on a sheet of paper. "Go ahead, ardent," Kaladin said.
"Dakal Melys, born in Kholinar, began his career as a heavy infantryman in service to the Kholin Princedom prior to Gavilar Kholin's rise to prominence. Upon the ascension of Gavilar to the rank of Highprince, Melys joined his honor guard. At the commencement of the first of the Wars of Unification, he was appointed as a Captainlord under the young Dalinar Kholin. He continued in his service throughout the Unification, participating in eight campaigns and rising to the rank of General."
"A few years prior to the death of King Gavilar, he had a falling out with the Kholins. The cause or nature of this falling is not clear. He formally seceded from the Kholin Princedom in the year 1164, joining the Sadeas Princedom as a Highlord. Nonetheless, he attended King Gavilar's feast, celebrating the treaty with the Parshendi. He was among the first to swear to the Vengeance Pact following the King's assassination. He led a division on the Shattered Plains for two years under Highprince Sadeas before he suddenly resigned his position and returned to Alethkar."
"As punishment for abandoning the Vengeance Pact, he was demoted to the fourth Dahn. One year later, while seeking a position for his son, he offered his services to Absidier Highmarshal Meridas Amaram—"
"I know the rest," Kaladin interrupted, thoughts swirling in his head. "What Dahn was he born into, Ardent?"
"The tenth, Brightlord. In fact, he was born without a house name. He adopted the name Melys when he joined the Kholin honor guard."
The man was more mysterious now than before. Kaladin had never met a tenner. All lighteyes in the military were automatically promoted to the eighth dahn. Supposedly, tenners living in cities were scarcely above darkeyes, though Kaladin doubted it.
Melhak Ishi, Kaladin translated the glyphpair silently. Journey of Ishi'Elin? The Herald of Luck... Lucky Journey? No... Ishi also meant Ten. Journey of the Tenner. Melys had named himself after the tenth Dahn and his journey out of it.
Perhaps that explained his initial dislike of Kaladin. Melys had clawed his way nearly to the top of the lighteyed social order by strength and sweat alone, where Kaladin leapt to his rank in a single battle. Perhaps Melys had a right to question his qualifications, but Kaladin didn't take him at face value either. Just because the man had been a tenner didn't mean he deserved to rise so far. Lighteyes advanced in rank through deceit as often as valor, if not more.
Kaladin traced the glyph absently. He still wondered what would motivate a man who spent his entire life serving the Kholins to suddenly turn away from them. Then there was the question of what happened on the Shattered Plains. He swore vengeance and then reneged only two years later. For what? He clearly wasn't tired of soldiering. No doubt if he wished for retirement, he had an estate somewhere to grow old in, but he was here instead, overshadowing his son and barking at whoever defied him.
Out of the corner of his eye, Kaladin noticed the female ardent from the previous day walking into the stormshelter carrying a bundle of scrolls. She looked at him as well, surprised but not displeased at his presence. She deposited all but one of the scrolls and casually brought it over to Kaladin. With a look, she dismissed the male ardent who'd been reading to him and took his position herself.
"You seem to have done well for yourself," she said as she pushed the shardblade out of the way with one finger and unrolled the scroll.
"Well enough, Restees nearly bit my head off like a boiled cremling earlier," Kaladin said under his breath. "How did the, uh, Brightlady receive your letter?"
"Well enough," she tapped the parchment with her ungloved safehand. "How does a hundred square miles just outside of Tomat sound to you?" A detailed map of the Sadeas Princedom lay before them. She pointed to a small quarter to the west, near the border with Jah Keved. Illustrations of low wedge-shaped huts surrounded by vinebuds decorated the region.
"I already told Thybon, I'm not interested in land. What I want is a command. A battalion of my own choosing."
She looked befuddled. "Y'know, that's what he's trying to buy from you, right? Your service as a shardbearer. You can't owe him fealty if he doesn't grant you anything first."
"I haven't offered my fealty, but my service he can have until this war is over. What I want is protection for me and my men. Recognition of my station and achievements. Enough money to maintain the shardplate. People to..." Kaladin trailed off. He needed people who knew how to take care of the plate, but that meant ardents. Slaves, if only in name. Could he really own someone? He turned down the land for this exact reason. He wanted nothing less than to rule over a bunch of strangers.
The ardent touched him on the shoulder. "The Highprince needs a reason to believe he can trust you. If he gives you land, then you are invested in the Princedom, you'll have something to lose."
Kaladin wondered how much Melys lost when he broke with the Kholins. "I haven't earned any lands," he said. "And I haven't decided who to swear my blade to. But I want Hallaw defeated. I want to protect this army. Our interests align. Is that not enough?"
"Not nearly enough." The ardent seemed to see past Kaladin's eyes and frowned. "You know you'll have to accept this at some point, even if you swear yourself to another Princedom. No one will trust you if you go about untethered."
"I'll weather that storm when it comes," Kaladin grumbled. It seemed the bonds of feudalism were closing in on him. He needed to find an alternative—a believable cause for loyalty. Believable to a lighteyes at least. The idea popped into his head, fully formed.
Kaladin stood and turned towards the ardent, putting his back to the rest of the room. She tried to step backwards, but he stopped her with a hand on her arm. He paused for a moment, then leaned towards her. "You," Kaladin said. "Tell him I want you. On loan, same arrangement as Amaram."
She smirked. "Only that, huh?" Kaladin held her gaze, attempting to conceal any emotion on his face. The ardent studied him cautiously. Kaladin did not feel as good an actor as he needed to be.
"You think it's too much?" he asked.
"I think what you really want is this," she said, placing her safe hand on his chest, over his heart. The rings and gems of her soulcaster glittered over his dusty uniform. Kaladin had actually forgotten about the soulcaster and now felt the gravity of the situation he was in. Lighteyes soulcast their dead into stone; could she soulcast a living man into metal? She smiled at his change of expression. "Hmm. Perhaps that will be acceptable."
Kaladin leaned back to sit on the table. "I also want to make some suggestions," said under his breath, "for the army's sake, not mine."
The ardent scanned the battalionlords on the other side of the room. "What did you have in mind?"