It was just too close to the Parshendi; they could always get there first and form up, using the slope to give them excellent high ground. But if we could corner them there, he thought, with a large enough force of our own… It could mean trapping and killing a huge number of Parshendi troops. Maybe enough of them to break their ability to wage war on the Plains.
It was something to consider. Before that could happen, however, Dalinar would need alliances. He ran his fingers westward. “Highprince Sadeas has been doing very well lately.” Dalinar tapped Sadeas’s warcamp. “He’s been buying plateaus from other highprinces, making it easier and easier for him to get to the battlefields first.”
“Yes,” Roion said, frowning. “One hardly needs to see a map to know that, Dalinar.”
“Look at the scope of it,” Dalinar said. “Six years of continuous fighting, and nobody has even seen the center of the Shattered Plains.”
“That’s never been the point. We hold them in, besiege them, starve them out, and force them to come to us. Wasn’t that your plan?”
“Yes, but I never imagined it would take this long. I’ve been thinking that it might be time to change tactics.”
“Why? This one works. Hardly a week goes by without a couple of clashes with the Parshendi. Though, might I point out that you have hardly been a model of inspiration in battle lately.” He nodded to Dalinar’s name on the smaller sheet.
There were a good number of scratches next to his name, noting gemhearts won. But very few of them were fresh.
“There are some who say the Blackthorn has lost his sting,” Roion said. He was careful not to insult Dalinar outright, but he went further than he once would have. News of Dalinar’s actions while trapped in the barrack had spread.
Dalinar forced himself to be calm. “Roion, we cannot continue to treat this war as a game.”
“All wars are games. The greatest kind, with the pieces lost real lives, the prizes captured making for real wealth! This is the life for which men exist. To fight, to kill, to win.” He was quoting the Sunmaker, the last Alethi king to unite the highprinces. Gavilar had once revered his name.
“Perhaps,” Dalinar said. “Yet what is the point? We fight to get Shardblades, then use those Shardblades to fight to get more Shardblades. It’s a circle, round and round we go, chasing our tails so we can be better at chasing our tails.”
“We fight to prepare ourselves to reclaim heaven and take back what is ours.”
“Men can train without going to war, and men can fight without it being meaningless. It wasn’t always this way. There were times when our wars meant something.”
Roion raised an eyebrow. “You’re almost making me believe the rumors, Dalinar. They say you’ve lost your taste for combat, that you no longer have the will to fight.” He eyed Dalinar again. “Some are saying that it is time to abdicate in favor of your son.”
“The rumors are wrong,” Dalinar snapped.
“That is—”
“They are wrong,” Dalinar said firmly, “if they claim that I no longer care.” He rested his fingers on the surface of the map again, running them across the smooth parchment. “I care, Roion. I care deeply. About this people. About my nephew. About the future of this war. And that is why I suggest we pursue an aggressive course from now on.”
“Well, that is good to hear, I suppose.”
Unite them….
“I want you to try a joint plateau assault with me,” Dalinar said.
“What?”
“I want the two of us to try coordinating our efforts and attack at the same time, working together.”
“Why would we want to do that?”
“We could increase our chances of winning gemhearts.”
“If more troops increased my chances of winning,” Roion said, “then I’d just bring more of my own. The plateaus are too small for fielding large armies, and mobility is more important than sheer numbers.”
It was a valid point; on the Plains, more didn’t necessarily mean better. Close confines and a requisite forced march to the battlefield changed warfare significantly. The exact number of troops used depended on the size of the plateau and the highprince’s personal martial philosophy.
“Working together wouldn’t just be about fielding more troops,” Dalinar said. “Each highprince’s army has different strengths. I’m known for my heavy infantry; you have the best archers. Sadeas’s bridges are the fastest. Working together, we could try new tactics. We expend too much effort getting to the plateau in haste. If we weren’t so rushed, competing against one another, maybe we could surround the plateau. We could try letting the Parshendi arrive first, then assault them on our terms, not theirs.”
Roion hesitated. Dalinar had spent days deliberating with his generals about the possibility of a joint assault. It seemed that there would be distinct advantages, but they wouldn’t know for certain until someone tried it with him.
He actually seemed to be considering. “Who would get the gemheart?”
“We split the wealth equally,” Dalinar said.
“And if we capture a Shardblade?”
“The man who won it would get it, obviously.”
“And that’s most likely to be you,” Roion said, frowning. “As you and your son already have Shards.”
It was the great problem of Shardblades and Shardplate—winning either was highly unlikely unless you already had Shards yourself. In fact, having only one or the other often wasn’t enough. Sadeas had faced Parshendi Shardbearers on the field, and had always been forced to retreat, lest he be slain himself.
“I’m certain we could arrange something more equitable,” Dalinar finally said. If he won Shards, he’d been hoping to be able to give them to Renarin.
“I’m sure,” Roion said skeptically.
Dalinar drew in a breath. He needed to be bolder. “What if I offer them to you?”
“Excuse me?”
“We try a joint attack. If I win a Shardblade or Plate, you get the first set. But I keep the second.”
Roion’s eyes narrowed. “You’d do that?”
“On my honor, Roion.”
“Well, nobody would doubt that. But can you blame a man for being wary?”
“Of what?”
“I am a highprince, Dalinar,” Roion said. “My princedom is the smallest, true, but I am my own man. I would not see myself subordinated to someone greater.”
You’ve already become part of something greater, Dalinar thought with frustration. That happened the moment you swore fealty to Gavilar. Roion and the others refused to make good on their promises. “Our kingdom can be so much more than it is, Roion.”
“Perhaps. But perhaps I’m satisfied with what I have. Either way, you make an interesting proposal. I shall have to think on it further.”
“Very well,” Dalinar said, but his instinct said that Roion would decline the offer. The man was too suspicious. The highprinces barely trusted one another enough to work together when there weren’t Shardblades and gems at stake.
“Will I be seeing you at the feast this evening?” Roion asked.
“Why wouldn’t you?” Dalinar asked with a sigh.
“Well, the stormwardens have been saying that there could be a highstorm tonight, you see—”
“I will be there,” Dalinar said flatly.
“Yes, of course,” Roion said, chuckling. “No reason why you wouldn’t be.” He smiled at Dalinar and withdrew, his attendants following.
Dalinar sighed, turning to study the Prime Map, thinking through the meeting and what it meant. He stood there for a long time. Looking down on the Plains, as if a god far above. The plateaus looked like close islands, or perhaps jagged pieces set in a massive stained-glass window. Not for the first time, he felt as if he should be able to make out a pattern to the plateaus. If he could see more of them, perhaps. What would it mean if there was an order to the chasms?
Everyone else was so concerned with looking strong, with proving themselves. Was he really the only one who saw how frivolous that was? Strength for strength’s sake? What good was strength unless you did something with it?
Alethkar was a light, once, he thought. That’s what Gavilar’s book claims, that’s what the visions are showing me. Nohadon was king of Alethkar, so long ago. In the time before the Heralds left.
Dalinar felt as if he could almost see it. The secret. The thing that had made Gavilar so excited in the months before his death. If Dalinar could just stretch a little farther, he’d make it out. See the pattern in the lives of men. And finally know.
But that was what he’d been doing for the last six years. Grasping, stretching, reaching just a little farther. The farther he reached, the more distant those answers seemed to become.
Adolin stepped into the Gallery of Maps. His father was still there, standing alone. Two members of the Cobalt Guard watched over him from a distance. Roion was nowhere to be seen.
Adolin approached slowly. His father had that look in his eyes, the absent one he got so often lately. Even when he wasn’t having an episode, he wasn’t entirely here. Not in the way he once had been.
“Father?” Adolin said, stepping up to him.
“Hello, Adolin.”
“How was the meeting with Roion?” Adolin asked, trying to sound cheerful.
“Disappointing. I’m proving far worse at diplomacy than I once was at war-making.”
“There’s no profit in peace.”
“That’s what everyone says. But we had peace once, and seemed to do just fine. Better, even.”
“There hasn’t been peace since the Tranquiline Halls,” Adolin said immediately. “‘Man’s life on Roshar is conflict.’” It was a quotation from The Arguments.
Dalinar turned to Adolin, looking amused. “Quoting scripture at me? You?”
Adolin shrugged, feeling foolish. “Well, you see, Malasha is rather religious, and so earlier today I was listening to—”
“Wait,” Dalinar said. “Malasha? Who’s that?”
“Daughter of Brightlord Seveks.”
“And that other girl, Janala?”
Adolin grimaced, thinking back to the disastrous walk they’d gone on the other day. Several nice gifts had yet to repair that. She didn’t seem half as excited about him now that he wasn’t courting someone else. “Things are rocky. Malasha seems like a better prospect.” He moved on quickly. “I take it that Roion won’t soon be going on any plateau assault with us.”
Dalinar shook his head. “He’s too afraid that I’m trying to maneuver him into a position where I can seize his lands. Perhaps it was wrong to approach the weakest highprince first. He’d rather hunker down and try to weather what comes at him, holding what he has, as opposed to making a risky play for something greater.”
Dalinar stared at the map, looking distant again. “Gavilar dreamed of unifying Alethkar. Once I thought he’d achieved it, despite what he claimed. The longer I work with these men, the more I realize that Gavilar was right. We failed. We defeated these men, but we never unified them.”