[OB] Momentum Flashback (Oathbringer Chapter 3)

[JoyBlu she/her]

I love this mini-foreshadowing in the flashback chapter.  Brandon Sanderson is creating an allusion with the horse and the man with the blue tattoo on his cheek (presumably Teleb).  He values Teleb's life more than a practically priceless horse. 

 

     "He focused his attention on the one man riding a horse"

     "Well this man certainly looked grand on that white mare, watching the battle from within his helm's visor, cape streaming around him."

     "Indeed, Jenin stepped up, unhooked the shortbow from his back, and -- as the brightlord shouted his surprise -- shot the horse in the chest."

     "Hate shooting horses, " Jenin grumbled as the beast reared in pain.  "Like throwing a thousand broams into the storming ocean, Brightlord."

     "I'll buy you two when we finish this, " Dalinar said as the brightlord tumbled off his horse."

 

And then later in the chapter . . .

     Dalinar lurched from the saddle, an arrow sprouting from each shoulder, as his men caught up. He seized the archer and hauled the fellow to his feet, noting the blue tattoo on his cheek. The archer gasped and stared at Dalinar. He expected he was quite a sight, covered in soot from the fires, his face a mask of blood from the nose and the cut scalp, stuck with not one but two arrows.

     “You waited until my helm was off,” Dalinar demanded. “You are an assassin. You were set here specifically to kill me.”

     The man winced, then nodded.

    “Amazing!” Dalinar said, letting go of the fellow. “Show me that shot again. How far is that, Thakka? I’m right, aren’t I? Over three hundred yards?”

    “Almost four,” Thakka said, pulling over his horse. “But with a height advantage.”

    “Still,” Dalinar said, stepping up to the lip of the ridge. He looked back at the befuddled archer. “Well? Grab your bow!”

    “My… bow?” the archer said.

    “Are you deaf, man?” Dalinar snapped. “Go get it!”

    The archer regarded the ten elites on horseback, grim-faced and dangerous, before wisely deciding to obey. He picked up an arrow, then his bow—which was made of a sleek black wood Dalinar didn’t recognize.

 

This really makes me wonder what the following paragraph is foreshadowing.  What will lose  Momentum in fighting Dalinar in the rest of Oathbringer?  And how will Teleb play into it?

      “Went right through my storming armor,” Dalinar muttered, feeling at the arrow that had hit him on the left. That one didn’t seem too bad—it had punctured the steel, but had lost most of its momentum in doing so. The one on his right, though, had cut through the chain and was sending blood down his arm.