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Eighteen and a half years before the present, Dalinar trudges back into camp at the close of a battle so tired he suspects his Shardplate is the only thing keeping him upright. The Herdazian campaign — four glorious years long now, longer than he had planned — broke the Herdazians hard enough to send them home into civil war, secured northern Alethkar, and claimed the small island of Akak. With that done, Gavilar has turned him south, into the Veden borderlands, where they have just routed their first raiding group.

In the armorers' tent, attendants pry his Plate off piece by piece while exhaustionspren kick up around his bare feet. He commandeers the place as his audience tent and lies down on the travel cushions in his gambeson. The blessed quiet lasts about five minutes. Kadash — a captain now, middle-aged, fresh spear-scar across his face — comes in with the final count: two thousand Veden dead, barely two hundred of theirs. *We could have gotten more if we'd boxed them in.* Dalinar gives him the lesson: never box in a defeated enemy. A rout cows a province; a slaughter forces it to fight to the last man. The Veden king is shrewd; this is not war, just a probe to see whether some long-contested border had quietly fallen to nobody.

Kadash leaves, calling Dalinar a tempest, and sleep refuses to come. The report rolls his mind into logistics he no longer has Gavilar beside him to handle — one Soulcaster, wide expansive country, better Veden generals than Herdazian ones, supply trains he must plan himself. He misses the rowdier early days; he does not miss the work. What he does still have, banked deep like the warmth of a rock by a dead fire, is the Thrill. He is glad the conflict will run on. He is glad the other highprinces have stayed out, content to watch him do this alone.

Then a voice outside the tent yanks him bolt upright. Evi. He throws the flap open and gapes — Vorin havah, sturdy walking boots underneath, blonde hair — and immediately resents her for being there at all. The warcamp is the one place his domestic life is not supposed to reach him. She gives back a small wilted explanation: other Alethi wives go to war with their husbands, Navani said it was shameful that he had let so long pass between visits, Adolin has gone over a year without seeing him, and little Renarin has never met his father at all. *Renarin?* he asks, trying to assemble the name. She has built it from her own language: *Re*, a sound that marks a name with no meaning of its own; *Nar*, "like unto"; *In*, "to be born unto". *One born like unto himself,* he translates ruefully, after Adolin's "born unto light". He suspects Navani and Ialai cheerfully encouraged the construction.

He pulls her into the tent before the guards hear any more and tries not to let his frayed patience finish the conversation for him. She had not even left the children at the rear command post; they are here, at the front. He tells her she should not have come; it is dangerous, and the boys are heirs to the princedom that Gavilar is building from the Crownlands up to a throne of his own. She rubs his shoulders under the gambeson and his anger melts. He admits gently that she would have hated today: he killed hundreds. *Could you not let them surrender?* she asks. He cannot explain to her that the Vedens are not here to be surrendered to, and after a few attempts he gives up trying.

He drags himself across the camp to find the boys. Little Adolin, whom he had last seen still stumbling through his words, is perched on a chull in homemade "armor" of strings and broken rockbud shell, swinging a wooden sword for an appreciative ring of guards and narrating the deaths of his enemies (apparently evil flying chulls). The boy climbs down and, after his mother's hint, salutes his father gravely. Dalinar squats; the boy shies back to Evi's skirts but does not hide. *Don't you remember me?* The boy does. *We talk about you every night when we burn prayers, so you will be safe, fighting bad men.* *I'd prefer to be safe from the good ones, too.*

The nurse sets Renarin down on the grass — already nearly toddling, where Dalinar had been bracing for an infant — and the silent boy concentrates very hard on trying to catch blades of grass between his fingers. Dalinar waits for the rush he had felt meeting Adolin for the first time, and feels nothing but how tired he is. Adolin asks to see his sword; Dalinar summons Oathbringer point-down into the earth, edge turned away. *Mommy says I can't have my Plate yet.* Teleb needs it; the boy can have it when he comes of age. *Good. I'll need it to win a Blade.* Dalinar smiles and offers to win him one in war. The boy lifts his chin: *No. I want to win my own. Like you did.* A worthy goal — though a soldier needs to accept help, Dalinar adds, pride does not win battles. The child taps his own skull, baffled: *Your head isn't hard?*

Dalinar kneels by his Blade with a hand on his son's shoulder and dismisses Oathbringer at last. The final embers of the Thrill die with it. He tells Evi he has to rest. She walks him to a bed in one of her stormwagons, and there, at last, he is allowed to sleep.