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*Nine years ago. Szeth, the last bearer of Truth, killed.* He soars across the battlefield in red and orange, sword out at his side, the Stoneward Honorblade cutting twenty soldiers from a single block before they can react. The line shatters. He hovers a moment, watching his own troops move in, and is displeased. They are sloppy, timid. Stabbing a real man, he sees, is nothing like stabbing a pig carcass on a training pole. Years of abstract drill cannot replace the experience.

He gives them just enough rope to flounder. He has only ever commanded soldiers once, briefly, on the raid-ship mission of his youth, and now realises how much that crew had carried him with their hardened experience against the stonewalkers. As his line stalls, men staring in shock at the deaths their own hands have made, he drops, infuses one of the holy boulders just outside the town, and sends it crashing into the enemy reserve. The militia throws down its weapons and runs back into the town. *You will have to do better,* he snaps at his men, and watches them sag. Good. *Come. We must secure the town and begin persuading them to join our cause.*

Their first battle. It hadn't come as a triumphant march of glorious armies — just a few hundred acolytes killing for the first time. In the town he is given lip service. Bowed to. Called *honor-nimi.* Soldiers are billeted on him; he is allowed to recruit. He does not have their hearts. He feels it most clearly with the town butcher, when he goes himself to secure supplies. The spindly man bows again and again, frightened, but cannot be *liberated* no matter what Szeth says. *The Return has begun. The Voidbringers attack our land.* *Yes, of course, honor-nimi.* The man hands him better cuts of meat.

*He doesn't believe,* Szeth says, turning to his officers. *It took me time to believe, honor-nimi,* Thal-son-Geord offers with a shrug. *Maybe we should go and get a Voidbringer,* Visk-daughter-Brador suggests, *show off one of their corpses.* Szeth tells her they will not be caught so easily; they have hidden well for too long. He turns back to the butcher and asks, plaintive, why the man cannot see what is plain. The butcher offers him more meat. Szeth sighs and moves on.

The town's end of the boardwalk gives onto green spring grass, freshly planted fields, a sky too watercolour-blue to be real. He had imagined thousands flocking to him. A banner of Truth raised high, an army gathered to root out the sickness on the land. Instead the people want him gone — to drift on like a strange smell. Visk tells him plainly: *it's going to be like this everywhere.* That, she says, was why Tuko never actually decided to rebel. One Honorbearer against the others would always look like a civil war, a power struggle. Szeth thinks of his father Neturo, held by the enemy as Sivi and Pozen's conversation had confirmed. Eventually that piece will be played; he will be asked to surrender or watch his father executed. He has no answer yet. He dismisses his officers and stands alone. *How,* he whispers. *How do I do this? Please.*

*The Honorbearers are weak,* the Voice answers in his head. *They hide, hoping you will lose your nerve.* *You,* Szeth hisses. *I thought I was done with you.* *Oh, Szeth. You'll never be done with me.* *Out! Out of my head!* It chuckles. *You've committed a cardinal sin. You've killed others of your kind, raised a rebellion, however small. The fight you've wanted is building. You just need to push it over the tipping point and draw out the other Honorbearers so you can kill them.* He forces himself calm. Better the familiar voice than nothing. And in its taunting it has given something away: the others will keep ignoring him only so long as he stays small.

He turns south along the mountains and finds Visk at the camp. *Give the orders. Break the camp. We march.* *Where?* *Along the mountains. Toward my home village — and the Stoneward monastery. Where a real army has been training for decades against raiders from outside.* An army that had once been organised by a genius — his father — and which contains soldiers who knew him as a boy and respected his strength. *Let the Honorbearers ignore me once those troops are beneath my banner.*