Chapter 47

Irid adjudges this reasoning spurious, given the Skybreaker air of exactitude, that dissention is inevitable, as they turn finer points of argument against one another.

—From Words of Radiance, chapter 40, page 2

A dolin smashed a singer Regal out of the way while wielding an incredible Shardhammer—a weapon built as if for a god. It wasn’t as refined as Maya’s Blade, but it got the job done, crunching carapace and sending the enemy to the ground screaming.

He knew he was killing good people who were fighting for a world where humans could never enslave them again. Fortunately, Adolin hated this part already. So he did his job, holding steady with Neziham—the Azish Shardbearer—at the center of the human lines.

This was the eleventh wave of enemies since the initial fight the day before. The singer strategy now was to leverage their superior numbers to wear down the defenders. Like the previous assaults, this one involved enemies flooding out of the central building, advancing through volleys of arrows, and engaging the pikes.

Their battle-by-battle tactics varied. This time they’d sent the entire flood at one section of defenders. That let them concentrate their forces—but it let the humans do the same, positioning both Shardbearers right at the crux of the defense. Adolin felt tiredness deep in his bones, but he kept fighting, counteracting fatigue with determination. He kicked a table into some singers, who finally began withdrawing toward their bunker.

Adolin held up a fist, and a horn sounded in response: Kushkam agree ing to an advance. So far, the human forces had stood their ground, maintaining that massive ring of pikes and shields, rotating men in and out. In response, the enemy had started building. Using pieces of wood from disassembled ships, they’d started to expand their presence in the dome, erecting a kind of roofed fort—maybe a hundred feet in diameter—around the central control structure.

Plainly, giving the enemy a larger staging area in the dome was no longer a good idea. It was time to advance, destroy the fort, and force the singers back through the portal to reset. Supported by two full companies of soldiers, Adolin pressed forward. Though the ground was now strewn with debris per his suggestion, the latest singer advance had pushed a great deal of it out of the way, clearing a path for a counterassault.

Singers retreated in front of Adolin, and arrows rained down on them from above. Seeing the two Shardbearers giving chase made the enemy even more unnerved, and some broke. Running, their backs exposed, making life here for the singers like Damnation itself. At least during their advances they had shield cover to stop arrows.

Adolin and Neziham surged forward, crossing the fifty or so yards with troops marching behind. The enemy crowded into their newly made fortress—which was less like a palisade and more like a little dome of its own. Once close enough, though, Adolin gave the order and the human advance halted. Azish hurlers came forward and tossed bags of oil an impressive distance to hit the fortification.

Setting the entire inside of this place on fire was a bad idea—but Adolin wasn’t opposed to a little tactical arson. The enemy wanted to build a fortress in here? Well, flaming arrows would have something to say about that. The oil caught in a burst, and they watched as it burned. Then faltered. Then sputtered out.

What?

“Storms,” Neziham said from within his helm. “Adolin, I don’t think that’s wood—not anymore.”

Joined by shockspren, Adolin realized he was right. Some sections of the fortress had burned away, but much of it … well, what they’d mistaken at a distance for wood was instead a dark brown, unpolished bronze. The enemy had put their stolen Soulcaster to use. Likely setting up sections of wood, sealing them with something malleable—as sickening as it sounded, probably feces—then Soulcasting it to solidify the entire structure. Adolin gave an order to charge forward, hoping maybe his hammer and Neziham’s Blade could destroy the fortification.

However, as soon as they drew close, sections of the fortification slid open—and stormforms began sending out waves of lightning to electrocute troops. Singer archers shot in tandem, and as the human advance faltered, reservist rank-and-file singers rushed out to reset their position.

Adolin’s soldiers had to slow, then hunker down, and then Adolin couldn’t press forward lest he get surrounded. He waited, blocking with his own body what he could, but he soon realized this was futile. He couldn’t press inward. Their protection of this city depended on them being the defenders, inflicting large casualties on the enemy. He’d lose far too many troops rushing a fortification.

He roared in his Plate and smashed a group of singers out of the way, then called the retreat. His forces made a controlled withdrawal, with him and Neziham at the rear to block as many enemy arrows as possible, until they eventually reached the human lines. Here he met Kushkam. The stout man’s armor was bloodied, though Azish generals didn’t often fight at the front. He eyed Adolin and Neziham, then nodded to the side, and the three of them stepped away from the others to confer in private.

“Bronze,” Adolin said, pulling off his helmet. “They’ve Soulcast the storming thing to bronze. ”

“This is my fault,” Kushkam said. “I let that Soulcaster be taken …”

“It was a difficult assault anyway, Commandant,” Neziham said, pulling off his own helm, revealing a shaved head and a mouth with several bronze teeth. “Even without the Soulcaster, the wood might not have caught fire—not if they know to wax it.” He looked across the expansive floor of the dome, now with a little fortress at the center. “We’re going to have to let them keep it until reinforcements arrive. We can’t expend the lives to take it.”

“By Yaezir himself,” Kushkam muttered. “Suggestions?”

Adolin tapped his finger against his helm in thought. “Do you have anything bigger than a bow or an ordinary crossbow? In Alethkar, we use enormous crossbows—small ballistas really—to try to bring down Shardbearers.”

“That works?” Kushkam asked with a grunt.

“Not usually,” Adolin admitted. “My father does like talking about how many he destroyed in his youth. But we might be able to use them to break that fortress.”

“We don’t have anything like that, Adolin,” Neziham said.

“Siege equipment?” Adolin asked. “Catapults?”

“No. The capital hasn’t been assaulted in centuries. Not since the Alethi invasions, in fact.”

At home, they’d have engineers who could build them, but certainly not fast enough to be relevant on this battlefield. Adolin considered, but storms, his mind was sluggish.

“Maybe try to get some rocks on the roof?” Adolin said. “Drop them through the skylights to see how structurally sound that inner building is?”

“An excellent suggestion,” Kushkam said, and walked away, calling out orders immediately.

Adolin grunted, then took a drink from a runner girl. Fourth day, he thought. Only two more until the army starts to arrive. So far, they’d lost one for every five of the enemy, but if their lines grew too thin …

We’ll hold, he thought to himself, and felt a wave of support from the now-distant Maya.

Adolin nodded to Neziham, then jogged to the way out. There, he moved through the short maze—really just three small hallways turning sharply—and emerged into the late afternoon light. Here …

Here Adolin sagged, sudden fatigue hitting him like a stormwall, exhaustionspren buzzing around him. This had been his third time in the dome—and the most grueling. Still, he forced his limbs to move, lugging what now seemed leaden Plate as he stomped over to his waiting attendants.

He stretched out his arms to let his armorers start removing his Plate. “Kaminah,” he said to his young aide-de-camp, “what does it mean to capture the city?”

“Sir?” the brown-haired young woman replied. “Um … I mean, you conquer it, I guess?”

“I’m speaking specifically,” he said, “of the terms of the contract that Father made. Odium gets the entirety of Azir if he captures this city … but what does capturing it mean, exactly?”

“I have no idea,” she said. “Do you want me to write asking for clarification from Urithiru?”

“Please do. It might not be relevant. If they break out of that dome, it will be pretty obvious when the place is conquered, but I’d rather not be surprised by some little-known legality.”

She bobbed her head eagerly.

His breastplate unlocked and his armorers hauled it free, abruptly burdened by its weight—which could be cumbersome when it wasn’t powered and active. He stepped free of his boots, and suddenly felt like a man whose saddle girth had been cut, dumping him to the ground. He stumbled, and needed Colot—who appeared from nowhere and helped him—to stay upright. Adolin thanked him and wiped his brow, regaining his balance.

“You need rest,” Colot said.

“Sure do. Ask around and see if any of our soldiers did carpentry work, and if they built siege equipment at any point. Also, don’t we have a scribe with some engineering knowledge? It might be worth seeing if we can get some catapults up.”

“Not sure we have the time,” Colot said.

“Try anyway,” Adolin said.

That staging fortress at the center of the dome was going to let the enemy keep a large number of troops in position. And with the Soulcaster, they could constantly reinforce it … maybe expand it …

One day in, and his defenders were already strained. “Colot,” he said, “bring in my first armor standby and tell him to be ready for battle.”

“Moore? He’s sleeping off the last attack, Adolin,” Colot said, with a chuckle. “We’re on your second standby. Reep.”

Adolin nodded. He knew Reep; a fine soldier, and well trained in Plate. He would take this shift, wearing Adolin’s armor for the next four hours and facing any enemy assaults. Strangely, though, Adolin thought he felt reluctance from the armor as it was carried away. Was that real?

“Hold,” he said to the armorers, and then reached out a hand to touch the breastplate.

Yeah, he was imagining things. He sensed nothing special or odd from the touch. Still, he’d spent his life talking to his sword, and eventually it had talked back.

“Go with them,” he whispered. “Serve those who bear you as you have me. Protect them.”

He gestured to the armorers, who—looking amused—carted it off. Well, anyone who had served with him long enough knew his ways. He talked to his horse too. And anyone who thought that was strange could stuff a chull up their backside; Gallant understood the conversation, and enjoyed it.

“Casualties?” Adolin asked.

Colot steeled himself. “Twenty-one of ours dead, plus three times as many wounded. I don’t have the Azish number.”

A costly failure for his assault. In that moment, the celebrations of a day ago felt far distant. “Get me the names. I’ll listen to them after I check on my horse.”

“Sir,” Kaminah said, stepping in front of him, her sleeved safehand across her ledgers, holding them tight against her chest. “Um …”

Colot nodded to her, and some understanding seemed to pass between them. Had they been conferring?

“You should go and rest,” she said to Adolin. “Um. Please?”

“No need to ask,” Colot told her. “You’re his aide-de-camp, promoted at his own word. You can just tell him.”

“Right, right,” she said. “Um … yeah. Go and sleep!”

Adolin sighed softly, then gave Colot what he hoped was a properly withering stare. “You’re making her do it?”

“What?” Colot said. “Are you really going to ignore Brightness Kaminah? On the first full day, you’re going to stop her from doing her job? The one you asked her to do?”

Adolin glanced at the young woman, who shrank down a little, but she pointed with her freehand at the exhaustionspren buzzing around him. “To bed. You fought all night, straight through the Everstorm as it passed. Brightlord Colot says I’m supposed to tell you that you have to sleep.”

“Or?” Colot asked.

“Or,” she squeaked, “the sergeant at arms will, um, find you and … well, they say he’ll tie you in place.”

“You know how excited Grubs gets when he has a chance to dig out his officer-tying rope,” Colot added.

Adolin sighed again.

“Her first day,” Colot reminded. “Surely you want to be a good example, so that in the future she’ll have the courage and experience to help your other officers get the rest they need. Even if, of course, you’re superhuman and could keep going for weeks.”

“You’re a bastard, Colot,” Adolin said, but smiled and raised his arm. Colot tapped it with his own, forearm to forearm. A promise made, and a promise accepted.

“I do my best, sir,” Colot said. “You know I’ll wake you if necessary.”

Adolin nodded, then paused. “When did you last sleep?”

“Um …” Colot said.

“Oh!” Kaminah said. “You too! Off to bed!”

“After his sleep shift,” Colot promised.

“Make sure he does it, Kaminah,” Adolin ordered. Then trudged off—secretly relieved they’d forced him into it.

After spending a day preparing strategy and organizing the Windrunners to fly the Mink to Herdaz, Sigzil finally stepped out of the Oathgate at the Shattered Plains. Here, he officially took command of the united coalition forces defending Narak.

With a plan in mind.

He immediately launched into the sky, hovering above the Shattered Plains to see what the maps had depicted. “Narak” was the name given to the central plateaus, the heart of where the listeners had once made their home in exile. The military, ever pragmatic, had named the largest of those plateaus—one shaped a little like a half-moon, open side to the west—Narak Prime. The smaller satellite plateaus around it were named Narak Two, Narak Three, and so forth. Of those, Narak Two—the plateau he’d just left—was of vital importance, as it held the Oathgate.

“Thoughts?” he asked, hanging there.

“It’s as you feared,” Vienta said, appearing to him as a small woman shrouded in moving, flowing cloth, nothing but her eyes visible. “I see troop placements on only the two central plateaus.”

“Not a bad move,” he said. “Supporting our most important locations.”

“Yes, but you’ve persuaded me. There is a better defense to be had.”

Sigzil nodded to himself, feeling confident for the first time in months. Kaladin trusted him. Dalinar trusted him.

He, in turn, would trust that they were right to put him in command. “Time until the Everstorm arrives?” he asked, gazing to the west—where a darkness was looming.

Vienta watched for a moment. “At current speed,” she said, “I estimate three hours.”

She didn’t like letting others know how good she was with things like calculations. It embarrassed her; apparently other honorspren had teased her for her numerical mind. Sigzil instead found it brilliant. She could run mathematical problems in her mind faster than a scribe with an abacus, and could judge things like distance and momentum with a glance.

“Thank you,” he said. “Let’s grab the others and get a little closer to the storm, see if we can make out Fused. I’d love for you to do whatever counts you can of them with that exceptional mind of yours.”

She fuzzed, blurring—something she did when she was pleased. “I love that you appreciate what I can do,” she whispered, “even if it isn’t … strictly honorsprenlike.”

“What I’m about to propose isn’t strictly soldierlike,” he said. “We’ll make it work.”

“We … really will, won’t we?” she asked. “We can do this.”

“We can,” he said. He’d protect Narak—and he intended to do so as himself: a scientist.

He swooped down, along with his Windrunner command staff: Ka, head scribe, and Leyten, the stout head quartermaster—who was to be Sigzil’s second for this operation. They were joined by Peet, Ka’s husband, another original member of Bridge Four.

Sigzil led them westward to get a better look at the Everstorm. This close, he felt dominated by it. The enemy had moved the storm across the entire continent last night at speed, bringing it here, then slowing it to a crawl. The defense of Narak would happen in darkness, regardless of the time of day.

“Sigzil,” Vienta said in his ear, “I count more lightning strikes per minute than normal. It seems angry, determined.”

He slowed the others so they could study it, still at a distance—but close enough to find it overwhelming. It appeared to be gathering strength, overflowing with crackling red lightning and ominous thunder.

“Storms,” Leyten said. “I mean … storm, I guess. One storm. The worst one.”

“Heavenly Ones,” Peet said, pointing.

Ka took the spyglass from him, both her spren and his sitting on her shoulder cross-legged. Though Peet wore a standard Bridge Four uniform, Ka preferred a slit-sided havah and leggings. Sigzil had never seen her summon her Shardblade as a sword outside of practice—but she used it as a pen regularly.

“Not just Heavenly Ones,” she said, handing the spyglass to Sigzil.

He peered through it to search the looming storm, where he picked out distinctive glowing dots soaring in the air among the dark ones that trailed long trains of cloth. Skybreakers. It looked like their entire force, numbering in the hundreds. They’d arrived with the storm.

“That’s a lot of Skybreakers,” Ka said. “I can see how they managed to move so many Fused.”

The defenders would face as many as eight or nine hundred Fused, flown in by the Heavenly Ones and Skybreakers with the storm—leaving behind their conventional troops, who marched too slowly.

“Information from the Heralds,” Vienta whispered, with Sigzil telling the others, “says there are perhaps four thousand total Fused in existence—but best our spies can guess, large numbers of those are too worn or mentally overwhelmed to be used in combat. The latest spy reports from Kholinar indicate the enemy has around two thousand who are functional, awake, and battle capable. So …”

“We’re facing almost half their entire force here,” Ka said. “Incredible.”

For the enemy who was holding huge swaths of Roshar to field fully half its Invested forces here … that was a huge commitment. And Sigzil had to resist it.

Vienta whispered to him counts she made of what she could see, and he told them to Ka to report. Then together they flew back to Narak to meet the battalionlord overseeing defenses: an Alethi general with light green eyes who wasn’t much older than Sigzil was. This man—Balivar—had been a lieutenant a year and a half ago.

“Our generals are gathered?” Sigzil asked, landing.

“Yes, sir!” Balivar said, saluting.

“Lead on,” Sigzil said, and they were led off of the perfectly circular Narak Two—the Oathgate—and onto the southwestern portion of Narak Prime. Like many here at the center, these two plateaus now had large, thick walls protecting them, built by Stonewards.

“Good thing the listeners didn’t have these walls,” Leyten said softly, rubbing at his chin. “We’d have never taken the place.” The quartermaster wore a curly light brown beard in defiance of tradition. He was one of the most easygoing original members of Bridge Four, and had been there that first day when Kaladin had pulled them out of bed.

“You just like how neat and orderly it looks with the walls,” Ka said, with a laugh. An Alethi woman, she kept her hair shorter than most.

“A well-apportioned military camp is a thing of beauty,” Leyten replied. “Everything in its place, packed tight like a good rucksack.”

They were led to a small building on Narak Prime, well-guarded, where the rest of Sigzil’s generals waited for orders. After speaking with the Mink at length, Sigzil had those orders—but he wasn’t certain what the others would think. Once in the room, which was filled with maps on tables and walls, he turned to regard the dozen or so generals and scribes who were preparing the defense.

He took a deep breath, stilling his nerves. Time to be a leader.

“I’m going to change the way you’re operating here,” Sigzil said, gesturing to the table map of the surrounding plateaus. “You’ve pulled all our forces onto two plateaus: Narak Prime and Narak Two. Is that correct?”

“Yes, sir,” Balivar said, frowning. “It’s what makes the most sense. Those are the two most important positions, and we have limited defenders. We shore them up the best that way.”

“I want instead,” Sigzil said, “to spread our defense across these four plateaus, all of which have walls.” He pointed at Narak Prime and Narak Two, but then at Three and Four as well.

“Sir?” another general, an older man, asked. He had a full head of silver hair—his name was Winn, Sigzil recalled from the briefings. “Is that really wise? Do we really have the troops to protect four plateaus?”

“No,” Sigzil said. “And that’s the point.”

They gaped at him, shocked.

“There is a principle in engineering,” Sigzil said, “where you build in failure points to a device. Say, a bridge. You make it so certain parts will break first.”

“Why build it so it will break, sir?” Balivar asked.

“Because …” one of the scribes answered, nodding her head. “Because if you know where a break will happen, then you can anticipate it.”

“Exactly,” Sigzil said. “If a bridge is going to fail, you want to know it’s under too much stress before it breaks, so you can fix it. In most cases, you build a point to break that isn’t vital, to protect the one that is.” He slammed a finger to the map. “We have to protect Narak Prime. If we lose it, then by the terms of the contract, we lose the entire region—warcamps, Unclaimed Hills, everything.

“We need that land. The enemy is placing a great number of troops here because they know it. Without the Shattered Plains, we can’t supply Urithiru. The enemy attacking here is an attempt to starve the tower because they know they can’t assault it directly now that it’s awakened.”

Sigzil stabbed the map again. “We cannot afford to lose Narak Two. The Oathgate is absolutely vital for resupplying us with gemstones, to provide medical attention for our troops back at Urithiru, and—in an emergency—to provide a safe retreat.”

“That’s why we’ve protected these two,” Balivar said.

“It’s why,” Sigzil said, “we’re going to protect all four of these plateaus—then lure the enemy to spend time hitting one we can lose, by leaving it slightly less protected. We’re going to build in failure points, like in engineering a bridge. This isn’t an ordinary siege—we don’t have to last months, even weeks. We need to last six days. The more we can trick the enemy into attacking sections of our defenses that don’t actually matter, the better.”

He waited, his heart racing, for their objections. The obvious ones: That he had never been in command of a battlefield like this before. That his scientific thinking was something to be mocked—among soldiers, it made him so odd. He’d gone over this plan with the Mink and the others after dreaming it up, and they’d helped him refine it. But now … now he expected …

“That could work,” Winn, the aged general, said. “You’re right, Radiant Sigzil. If we’ve been approaching this like any other siege, the enemy might too—they might search for weak points and strike there first. So if we build those into our defenses intentionally … this could really work.”

“Huh,” Balivar said, looking at the new battle maps and troop positioning numbers that Ka handed out. “It’s odd. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a general think like this before …”

“It’s not as uncommon as you assume,” Winn said. “Think of how a smaller military will have fallback positions during a controlled retreat, making the enemy fight for an advance. It’s like that, just with … a dash of engineering.”

“I like it,” one of the scribes said. “This is a new world, with Fused—whose rushes can be so powerful they’re almost impossible to stop. The tides of battle can turn so quickly with these incredible forces at play. Planning for controlled losses is an excellent way to mitigate that.”

They started talking it over in detail, taking in the battle plans he’d brought—scribes reading out the details. For the next hour they hashed it out, asking the questions that Sigzil—with the Mink’s help—already had answers for. At the end of it, the orders were passed. Troops would file into Narak Three and Four, which had been barracks before. Arranged specifically to encourage an assault on Narak Four first.

Sigzil watched it happen, a little bemused, because not once did they question him. He … was a Radiant. They knew that Dalinar wouldn’t put him in command unless he could do the job. So, while they did question and poke holes in his strategy, they also accepted that he was the right one to present this plan.

At one point, they asked for some calculations on how long their rations would last—and Vienta rattled it off, and he answered them before the scribes could even get out pencils. That set the group of women to watching him with what actually seemed like respect. For a man who understood figures. True, it was Vienta who had done the calculation, but she preferred that people not know—so he simply accepted the respect of the others as he provided guidance.

At the end they broke, with Sigzil appointing Balivar to head up ground defenses. Sigzil would continue to oversee general strategy, but much of his moment-to-moment attention would be on making certain the enemy didn’t obtain air dominance.

“Storms,” he said, walking out of the small room to see troops in motion. “Leyten … that worked. ”

The affable man slapped him on the back. It felt like so long ago that Sigzil, at the bottom of these very chasms, had spent hours helping Leyten make armor for Bridge Four. Now here they were, in command of the place’s entire military structure.

“You did good in there, Sig,” Leyten said. “You wowed them.” He ran off to see that the camp had enough of things like arrows, while Ka remained conferring with the camp scribes. That left Sigzil to drift up into the air again, alone this time save for his spren.

“I worried I wasn’t ready,” he admitted to her.

She appeared to him in her normal shape, a woman shrouded in robes that drifted around her. Looking out with eyes that were so keen. “I worried too. But … I think they like how logically we approached this. When things are tense, it’s good to know someone has a plan.”

Beneath, his troops were arriving. He had around three hundred Radiants, mostly Windrunners and Edgedancers, but with a growing force of Stonewards. Plus some Truthwatchers and a handful of Lightweavers. No Elsecallers—the sole one the army had was Jasnah—and no Willshapers, as the Reachers refused human bonds. Skybreakers served the enemy, as did all the Dustbringers, but those had retreated to Jah Keved after Taravangian’s betrayal. That put his three hundred against nine—but with him having far greater conventional forces, and a dozen Shardbearers.

Not a fair fight, as the enemy had the advantage … but his strategy could account for that. Assuming it worked, assuming they could win within that terrible black storm with its crimson lightning.

The enemy’s forces were always bolstered by the storm.

“I believe in you,” Vienta whispered. “I … believe in us, Sigzil. We’re what they want, for once.”

“Live this truth,” he said, raising his fists to her.

She saluted him back, with the Bridge Four salute.

He was done questioning. Now he would lead.