Chapter 12: The Rift – Dalinar’s Brutal Assault on Rathalas

Spoiler Notice: This page discusses events from Oathbringer and contains major spoilers for Dalinar Kholin’s flashback sequences. Reading beyond this point will reveal key moments from the Thirty-Three Years Ago timeline.

Summary

Thirty-three years ago, Dalinar Kholin revels in his newly won Shardplate. Together with Gavilar and Sadeas, also clad in Plate, he leads a direct assault on Rathalas, a chasm city called the Rift. Catapults and ballistas rain fire, but the three Shardbearers breach the wall overwhelmingly. Dalinar destroys siege engines, then discovers a trap: the observation platform is rigged to collapse, sending him plummeting into the city. His Plate shatters along his left arm, his men die, and he suffers broken fingers, yet the Thrill drives him to hunt Highlord Tanalan.

Dalinar fights a chaotic duel through gardens and bridges, eventually collapsing a wooden platform. He tracks the wounded Tanalan to a hidden crem-covered door and a small chamber. There he finds Tanalan dying, a weeping woman, and a young boy struggling to lift his father’s Shardblade. In the aftermath, Dalinar claims that same Blade—named Oathbringer, the sword of Sadees the Sunmaker—while Gavilar contemplates the grim future of ruling conquered peoples. The chapter closes with Dalinar haunted by the sound of a brave boy crying.

Key Events

  • Dalinar experiences his own Shardplate for the first time in battle and feels the Thrill surge.
  • Gavilar ignores Sadeas’s careful plan and charges the wall, drawing Dalinar into an impetuous assault.
  • Dalinar smashes catapults, then falls into the Rift when Tanalan’s trap collapses the viewing platform.
  • He pursues Tanalan through burning, splintered walkways, buoyed by the Thrill and aided by Teleb’s arrow shots.
  • After a frantic duel, Tanalan’s soldiers flee with his body; Dalinar tracks them to a hidden shelter.
  • Dalinar kills Tanalan and confronts the highlord’s young son, who tries to brandish the Shardblade.
  • Gavilar names the captured weapon Oathbringer, revealing its history as Sunmaker’s sword.
  • Dalinar remembers the child’s cries, the Thrill now replaced by shame.

Character Development

  • Dalinar’s intoxication with power: The chapter showcases his addictive relationship with the Thrill. Plate grants godlike strength, but he feels hollow without the emotion. His reckless drop into the Rift and the tunnel slaughter reveal how far he is from the sober man he will become.
  • Gavilar’s emerging kingship: Gavilar, now a father, begins to think beyond individual battles—worried about feeding darkeyes, bureaucracy, and what a united kingdom would require. His question, “How do we make a kingdom of this place?” hints at the political transformation that will define the Kholin dynasty.
  • Sadeas’s pragmatism: Sadeas urges caution, political marriages, and a reputation for brutality. His role as the strategic foil to the Kholin brothers is firmly established.
  • The boy and the heir: The dying child’s faith—“we fight monsters”—serves as an unflinching moral mirror. Dalinar’s shame afterward plants the seed for later oaths.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs

  • The Thrill: Described as a heady, lust-like emotional surge that annihilates pain and doubt. It turns war into a euphoric dance, masking atrocity.
  • Shardplate vs. skill: Dalinar muses that the Plate’s power makes his own martial ability irrelevant—a “toothless gaffer” could do the same. This tension between earned worth and gifted might recurs throughout the series.
  • Oathbringer’s bloody birth: The sword is literally torn from a murdered highlord and implicitly baptized in the death of an innocent boy. Its name (Sunmaker’s legacy) contrasts the darkness of its acquisition.
  • Civilization vs. brutality: Tanalan’s accusation—“You don’t have to pull sorrow behind you like a sledge”—and Gavilar’s talk of order underscore the book’s central concern: can warriors become rulers without being monsters?

Why This Chapter Matters

This flashback is the genesis of Dalinar’s trauma. While earlier chapters present a bold young general, here we see the atrocity that will later be burned out of the Rift entire. The personal cost—a child’s defiance, a father’s murder—shapes the man who will one day swear to unite instead of destroy. It also lays the foundation for Gavilar’s shifting vision, Sadeas’s eventual betrayal, and the sword Oathbringer’s symbolic weight throughout the series.

Study Questions and Answers

  1. Why does Dalinar feel dissatisfaction even as he slaughters dozens of soldiers with his Shardplate?
    He realizes the Plate does the work, not his own skill; the ease of killing strips conquest of personal glory, leaving only a hollow victory.

  2. How does the chapter contrast Tanalan’s view of war with Dalinar and Gavilar’s?
    Tanalan calls Dalinar an uncivilized brute, claiming war need not crush everyone in its path. Dalinar argues war cannot be prettified, while Gavilar starts pondering what comes after conquest—infrastructure and law—hinting at a shift in Kholin aims.

  3. What is ironic about Oathbringer’s name, given the way Dalinar obtains it?
    The sword belonged to the Sunmaker, the legendary unifier; Dalinar gains it through the brutal slaying of a highlord and the implied death of a child. The blade becomes a symbol of unjust conquest rather than noble unification.