“Father!” Adolin said, his eyes focusing.
Dalinar stood up. Adolin lurched over onto all fours and tried to get to his feet, but the assassin had broken one of Adolin’s greaves, which made it almost impossible to rise. The boy slipped back into the pooling water.
“You’ve been taught well, Adolin,” Dalinar said, eyes on that assassin. “You’re a better man than I am. I was always a tyrant who had to learn to be something else. But you, you’ve been a good man from the start. Lead them, Adolin. Unite them.”
“Father!”
Dalinar walked away from Adolin. Nearby, scribes and attendants, captains and enlisted men all shouted and scrambled, trying to find order in the chaos of the storm. They followed Dalinar’s order to evacuate, and most had yet to notice the figure in white.
The assassin stopped ten paces from Dalinar. Roion, pale-faced and stammering, backed away from the two of them and began shouting. “Assassin! Assassin!”
The rainfall was actually letting up a little. That didn’t bring Dalinar much hope; not with that red lightning on the horizon. Was that… a stormwall building at the front of the new storm? His efforts to disrupt the Parshendi had fallen short.
The Shin man didn’t strike. He stood opposite Dalinar, motionless, expressionless, water dripping down his face. Unnaturally calm.
Dalinar was far taller and broader. This small man in white, with his pale skin, seemed almost a youth, a stripling by comparison.
Behind him, Roion’s cries were lost in the confusion. However, Bridge Four did run up to surround Dalinar, spears in hand. Dalinar waved them back. “There’s nothing you can do here, lads,” Dalinar said. “Let me face him.”
Ten heartbeats.
“Why?” Dalinar asked the assassin, who still stood there in the rain. “Why kill my brother? Did they explain the reasoning behind your orders?”
“I am Szeth-son-son-Vallano,” the man said. Harshly. “Truthless of Shinovar. I do as my masters demand, and I do not ask for explanations.”
Dalinar revised his assessment. This man was not calm. He seemed that way, but when he spoke, he did it through clenched teeth, his eyes open too wide.
He’s mad, Dalinar thought. Storms.
“You don’t have to do this,” Dalinar said. “If it’s about pay…”
“What I am owed,” the assassin shouted, rainwater spraying from his face and Stormlight rising from his lips, “will come to me eventually! Every bit of it. I will drown in it, stonewalker!”
Szeth put his hand to the side, Shardblade appearing. Then, with a curt, deprecatory motion—like he was merely trimming a bit of gristle from his meat—he strode forward and swung at Dalinar.
Dalinar caught the Blade with his own, which appeared in his hand as he raised it.
The assassin spared a glance for Dalinar’s weapon, then smiled, lips drawn thin, showing only a hint of teeth. That eager smile matched with haunted eyes was one of the most evil things Dalinar had ever seen.
“Thank you,” the assassin said, “for extending my agony by not dying easily.” He stepped back and burst afire with white light.
He came at Dalinar again, inhumanly quick.
* * *
Adolin cursed, shaking out of his daze. Storms, his head hurt. He’d smacked it something good when the assassin tossed him to the ground.
Father was fighting Szeth. Bless the man for listening to reason and bonding that madman’s Blade. Adolin gritted his teeth and struggled to get to his feet, something that was difficult with a broken greave. Though the rain was letting up, the sky remained dark. To the west, lightning plunged downward like red waterfalls, almost constant.
At the same time, wind gusted from the east. Something was building out there too, from the Origin. This was very bad.
Those things Father said to me…
Adolin stumbled, almost falling to the ground, but hands appeared to assist him. He glanced to the side to find those two bridgemen from before, Skar and Drehy, helping him to his feet.
“You two,” Adolin said, “are getting a storming raise. Help me get this armor off.” He frantically began removing sections of armor. The entire suit was so battered it was nearly useless.
Metal clanged nearby as Dalinar fought. If he could hold a little longer, Adolin would be able to help. He would not let that creature get the better of him again. Not again!
He spared a glance for what Dalinar was doing, and froze, hands on the straps for his breastplate.
His father… his father moved beautifully.
* * *
Dalinar did not fight for his life. His life hadn’t been his own for years.
He fought for Gavilar. He fought as he wished he had all those years ago, for the chance he had missed. In that moment between storms—when the rain stilled and the winds drew in their breaths to blow—he danced with the slayer of kings, and somehow held his own.
The assassin moved like a shadow. His step seemed too quick to be human. When he jumped, he soared into the air. He swung his Shardblade like flashes of lightning, and would occasionally stretch forward with his other hand, as if to grab Dalinar.
Recalling their previous encounter, Dalinar recognized that as the more dangerous of Szeth’s weapons. Each time, Dalinar managed to bring his Blade around and force the assassin away. The man attacked from different directions, but Dalinar didn’t think. Thoughts could get jumbled, the mind disoriented.
His instincts knew what to do.
Duck when Szeth leaped over Dalinar’s head. Step backward, avoiding a strike that should have severed his spine. Lash out, forcing the assassin away. Three quick steps backward, sword up wardingly, strike for the assassin’s palm as it tried to touch him.
It worked. For this brief time, he fought this creature. Bridge Four remained back, as he’d commanded. They’d only have interfered.
He survived.
But he did not win.
Finally, Dalinar twisted away from a strike but was unable to move quickly enough. The assassin rounded on him and thrust a fist into his side.
Dalinar’s ribs cracked. He grunted, stumbling, almost falling. He swung his Blade toward Szeth, warding the man back, but it didn’t matter. The damage was done. He sank to his knees, barely able to remain upright for the pain.
In that instant he knew a truth he should always have known.
If I’d been there, on that night, awake instead of drunk and asleep… Gavilar would still have died.
I couldn’t have beaten this creature. I can’t do it now, and I couldn’t have done it then.
I couldn’t have saved him.
It brought peace, and Dalinar finally set down that boulder, the one he’d been carrying for over six years.
The assassin stalked toward him, glowing with terrible Stormlight, but a figure lunged for him from behind.
Dalinar expected it to be Adolin, perhaps one of the bridgemen.
Instead, it was Roion.
* * *
Adolin tossed aside the last bit of armor and went running for his father. He wasn’t too late. Dalinar knelt before the assassin, defeated, but not dead.
Adolin shouted, drawing close, and an unexpected figure leapt out of the wreckage of a tent. Highprince Roion—incongruously holding a side sword and leading a small force of soldiers—rushed the assassin.
Rats had a better chance fighting a chasmfiend.