The sounds of a plateau run were familiar to Dalinar.

Once, he had craved these

sounds. He’d been impatient between runs, longing for the chance to strike down

Parshendi with his Blade, to win wealth and recognition.

That Dalinar had been seeking to cover up his shame—the shame of lying slumped in

a drunken stupor while his brother fought an assassin.

The setting of a plateau run was uniform: bare, jagged rocks, mostly the same dull color as

the stone surface they sat on, broken only by the occasional cluster of closed rockbuds. Even

those, as their name implied, could be mistaken for more rocks. There was nothing but more of

the same from here where you stood, all the way out to the far horizon; and everything you’d

brought with you, everything human, was dwarfed by the vastness of these endless, fractured

plains and deadly chasms.

Over the years, this activity had become rote. Marching beneath that white sun like

molten steel. Crossing gap after gap. Eventually, plateau runs had become less something

to anticipate and more a dogged obligation. For Gavilar and glory, yes, but mainly because

they—and the enemy—were here. This was what you did.

 The scents of a plateau run were the scents of a great stillness: baked stone, dried

crem, long-traveled winds.

Most recently, Dalinar was coming to detest plateau runs. They were a frivolity, a waste