If anything I have said makes a glimmer of sense to you, I trust that you’ll call them off. Or maybe you could astound me and ask them to do something productive for once.
Kaladin pushed his way into the apothecary’s shop, the door banging shut behind him. As before, the aged man pretended to be feeble, feeling his way with a cane until he recognized Kaladin. Then he stood up straighter. “Oh.
It’s you.”
It had been two more long days. Daytime spent working and training— Teft and Rock now practiced with him—evenings spent at the first chasm, retrieving the reeds from their hiding place in a crevice and then milking for hours. Gaz had seen them go down last night, and the bridge sergeant was undoubtedly suspicious. There was no helping that.
Bridge Four had been called out on a bridge run today. Thankfully, they’d arrived before the Parshendi, and none of the bridge crews had lost any men. Things hadn’t gone so well for the regular Alethi troops. The Alethi line had eventually buckled before the Parshendi assault, and the bridge crews had been forced to lead a tired, angry, and defeated troop of soldiers back to the camp.
Kaladin was bleary-eyed with fatigue from staying up late working on the reeds. His stomach growled perpetually from being given a fraction of the food it needed, as he shared his meals with two wounded. That all ended today. The apothecary walked back behind his counter, and Kaladin stepped
up to it. Syl darted into the room, her small ribbon of light turning into a woman midtwist. She flipped like an acrobat, landing on the table in a smooth motion.
“What do you need?” the apothecary asked. “More bandages? Well, I might just—”
He cut off as Kaladin slapped a medium-sized liquor bottle down on the table. It had a cracked top, but would still hold a cork. He pulled this free, revealing the milky white knobweed sap inside. He’d used the first of what they’d harvested to treat Leyten, Dabbid, and Hobber.
“What’s this?” the elderly apothecary asked, adjusting his spectacles and leaning down. “Offering me a drink? I don’t take the stuff these days.
Unsettles the stomach, you know.”
“It’s not liquor. It’s knobweed sap. You said it was expensive. Well, how much will you give me for this?”
The apothecary blinked, then leaned in closer, giving the contents a whiff. “Where’d you get this?”
“I harvested it from the reeds growing outside of camp.”
The apothecary’s expression darkened. He shrugged. “Worthless, I’m
afraid.”
“What?”
“The wild weeds aren’t potent enough.” The apothecary replaced the cork. A strong wind buffeted the building, blowing under the door, stirring the scents of the many powders and tonics he sold. “This is practically useless. I’ll give you two clearmarks for it, which is being generous. I’ll have to distill it, and will be lucky to get a couple of spoonfuls.”
Two marks! Kaladin thought with despair. After three days of work, three of us pushing ourselves, getting only a few hours of sleep each night?
All for something worth only a couple days’ wage?
But no. The sap had worked on Leyten’s wound, making the rotspren flee and the infection retreat. Kaladin narrowed his eyes as the apothecary fished two marks out of his money pouch, setting them on the table. Like many spheres, these were flattened slightly on one side to keep them from rolling away.
“Actually,” the apothecary said, rubbing his chin. “I’ll give you three.”
He took out one more mark. “Hate to see all of your effort go to waste.”
“Kaladin,” Syl said, studying the apothecary. “He’s nervous about something. I think he’s lying!”
“I know,” Kaladin said.
“What’s that?” the apothecary said. “Well, if you knew it was worthless, why did you spend so much effort on it?” He reached for the bottle.
Kaladin caught his hand. “We got two or more drops from each reed,
you know.”
The apothecary frowned.
“Last time,” Kaladin said, “you told me I’d be lucky to get one drop per reed. You said that was why knobweed sap was so expensive. You said nothing about ‘wild’ plants being weaker.”
“Well, I didn’t think you’d go and try gathering them, and…” He trailed off as Kaladin locked eyes with him.
“The army doesn’t know, do they?” Kaladin asked. “They aren’t aware how valuable those plants outside are. You harvest them, you sell the sap, and you make a killing, since the military needs a lot of antiseptic.”
The old apothecary cursed, pulling his hand back. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Kaladin took his jar. “And if I go to the healing tent and tell them where I got this?”
“They’d take it from you!” the man said urgently. “Don’t be a fool.
You’ve a slave brand, boy. They’ll think you stole it.”
Kaladin moved to walk away.
“I’ll give a skymark,” the apothecary said. “That’s half what I’d charge the military for this much.”
Kaladin turned. “You charge them two skymarks for something that only takes a couple of days to gather?”
“It’s not just me,” the apothecary said, scowling. “Each of the apothecaries charges the same. We got together, decided on a fair price.”
“How is that a fair price?”
“We have to make a living here, in this Almighty-forsaken land! It costs us money to set up shop, to maintain ourselves, to hire guards.”
He fished in his pouch, pulling out a sphere that glowed deep blue. A sapphire sphere was worth about twenty-five times a diamond one. As Kaladin made one diamond mark a day, a skymark was worth as much as Kaladin made in half a month. Of course, a common darkeyed soldier earned five clearmarks a day, which would make this a week’s wages to them.
Once, this wouldn’t have seemed like much money to Kaladin. Now it was a fortune. Still, he hesitated. “I should expose you. Men die because of
you.”
“No they don’t,” the apothecary said. “The highprinces have more than enough to pay this, considering what they make on the plateaus. We supply them with bottles of sap as often as they need them. All you’d do by exposing us is let monsters like Sadeas keep a few more spheres in their pockets!”
The apothecary was sweating. Kaladin was threatening to topple his entire business on the Shattered Plains. And so much money was being earned on the sap that this could grow very dangerous. Men killed to keep such secrets.
“Line my pocket or line the brightlords’,” Kaladin said. “I guess I can’t argue with that logic.” He set the bottle back on the counter. “I’ll take the deal, provided you throw in some more bandages.”
“Very well,” the apothecary said, relaxing. “But stay away from those reeds. I’m surprised you found any nearby that hadn’t already been harvested.
My workers are having an increasingly difficult time.”
They don’t have a windspren guiding them, Kaladin thought. “Then why would you want to discourage me? I could get more of this for you.”
“Well, yes,” the apothecary said. “But—”
“It’s cheaper if you do it yourself,” Kaladin said, leaning down. “But this way you have a clean trail. I provide the sap, charging one skymark. If the lighteyes ever discover what the apothecaries have been doing, you can claim ignorance—all you know is that some bridgeman was selling you sap, and you resold it to the army at a reasonable markup.”
That seemed to appeal to the old man. “Well, perhaps I won’t ask too many questions about how you harvested this. Your business, young man.
Your business indeed….” He shuffled to the back of his store, returning with a box of bandages. Kaladin accepted it and left the shop without a word.
“Aren’t you worried?” Syl said, floating up beside his head as he entered the afternoon sunlight. “If Gaz discovers what you’re doing, you could get into trouble.”
“What more could they do to me?” Kaladin asked. “I doubt they’d consider this a crime worth stringing me up for.”
Syl looked backward, forming into little more than a cloud with the faint suggestion of a female form. “I can’t decide if it’s dishonest or not.”
“It’s not dishonest; it’s business.” He grimaced. “Lavis grain is sold the same way. Grown by the farmers and sold at a pittance to merchants, who carry it to the cities and sell it to other merchants, who sell it to people for
four or five times what it was originally bought for.”
“So why did it bother you?” Syl asked, frowning as they avoided a troop of soldiers, one of whom tossed the pit of a palafruit at Kaladin’s head. The soldiers laughed.
Kaladin rubbed his temple. “I’ve still got some strange scruples about charging for medical care because of my father.”
“He sounds like he’s a very generous man.”
“For all the good it did him.”
Of course, in a way, Kaladin was just as bad. During his early days as a slave, he’d have done almost anything for a chance to walk around unsupervised like this. The army perimeter was guarded, but if he could sneak the knobweed in, he could probably find a way to sneak himself out.
With that sapphire mark, he even had money to aid him. Yes, he had the slave brand, but some quick if painful work with a knife could turn that into a “battle scar” instead. He could talk and fight like a soldier, so it would be plausible. He’d be taken for a deserter, but he could live with that.
That had been his plan for most of the later months of his enslavement, but he’d never had the means. It took money to travel, to get far enough away from the area where his description would be in circulation. Money to buy lodging in a seedy section of town, a place where nobody asked questions, while he healed from his self-inflicted wound.
In addition, there had always been the others. So he’d stayed, trying to get as many out as he could. Failing every time. And he was doing it again.
“Kaladin?” Syl asked from his shoulder. “You look very serious. What are you thinking?”
“I’m wondering if I should run. Escape this storm-cursed camp and find myself a new life.”
Syl fell silent. “Life is hard here,” she finally said. “I don’t know if anyone would blame you.”
Rock would, he thought. And Teft. They’d worked for that knobweed sap. They didn’t know what it was worth; they thought it was only for healing the sick. If he ran, he’d be betraying them. He’d be abandoning the bridgemen.
Shove over, you fool, Kaladin thought to himself. You won’t save these bridgemen. Just like you didn’t save Tien. You should run.
“And then what?” he whispered.
Syl turned to him. “What?”
If he ran, what good would it do? A life working for chips in the underbelly of some rotting city? No.
He couldn’t leave them. Just like he’d never been able to leave anyone who he’d thought needed him. He had to protect them. He had to.
For Tien. And for his own sanity.
“Chasm duty,” Gaz said, spitting to the side. The spittle was colored black from the yamma plant he chewed.
“What?” Kaladin had returned from selling the knobweed to discover that Gaz had changed Bridge Four’s work detail. They weren’t scheduled to be on duty for any bridge runs—their run the day before exempted them.
Instead, they were supposed to be assigned to Sadeas’s smithy to help lift ingots and other supplies.
That sounded like difficult work, but it was actually among the easiest jobs bridgemen got. The blacksmiths felt they didn’t need the extra hands.
That, or they presumed that clumsy bridgemen would just get in the way. On smithy duty, you usually only worked a few hours of the shift and could spend the rest lounging.
Gaz stood with Kaladin in the early afternoon sunlight. “You see,” Gaz said, “you got me thinking the other day. Nobody cares if Bridge Four is given unfair work details. Everyone hates chasm duty. I figured you wouldn’t care.”
“How much did they pay you?” Kaladin asked, stepping forward.
“Storm off,” Gaz said, spitting again. “The others resent you. It’ll do your crew good to be seen paying for what you did.”
“Surviving?”
Gaz shrugged. “Everyone knows you broke the rules in bringing back those men. If the others do what you did, we’d have each barrack filled with the dying before the leeward side of a month was over!”
“They’re people, Gaz. If we don’t ‘fill the barracks’ with wounded, it’s because we’re leaving them out there to die.”
“They’ll die here anyway.”
“We’ll see.”
Gaz watched him, eyes narrow. It seemed like he suspected that Kaladin had somehow tricked him in taking the stone-gathering duty. Earlier, Gaz had apparently gone down to the chasm, probably trying to figure out what Kaladin and the other two had been doing.
Damnation, Kaladin thought. He’d thought he had Gaz cowed enough to stay in line. “We’ll go,” Kaladin snapped, turning away. “But I’m not taking the blame among my men for this one. They’ll know you did it.”
“Fine,” Gaz called after him. Then, to himself, he continued, “Maybe I’ll get lucky and a chasmfiend will eat the lot of you.”
Chasm duty. Most bridgemen would rather spend all day hauling stones than get assigned to the chasms.
With an unlit oil-soaked torch tied to his back, Kaladin climbed down the precarious rope ladder. The chasm was shallow here, only about fifty feet down, but that was enough to take him into a different world. A world where the only natural light came from the rift high in the sky. A world that stayed damp on even the hottest days, a drowned landscape of moss, fungus, and hardy plants that survived in even dim light.
The chasms were wider at the bottom, perhaps a result of highstorms.
They caused enormous floods to crash through the chasms; to be caught in a chasm during a highstorm was death. A sediment of hardened crem smoothed the pathway on the floor of the chasms, though it rose and fell with the varying erosion of the underlying rock. In some few places, the distance from the chasm floor to the edge of the plateau above was only about forty feet. In most places, however, it was closer to a hundred or more.
Kaladin jumped off the ladder, falling a few feet and landing with a splash in a puddle of rainwater. After lighting the torch, he held it high, peering along the caliginous rift. The sides were slick with a dark green moss, and several thin vines he didn’t recognize trailed down from intermediate ledges above. Bits of bone, wood, and torn cloth lay strewn about or wedged into clefts.
Someone splashed to the ground beside him. Teft cursed, looking down at his soaked legs and trousers as he stepped out of the large puddle. “Storms take that cremling Gaz,” the aging bridgeman muttered. “Sending us down here when it isn’t our turn. I’ll have his beans for this.”
“I am certain that he is very scared of you,” Rock said, stepping down off the ladder onto a dry spot. “Is probably back in camp crying in fear.”
“Storm off,” Teft said, shaking the water from his left leg. The two of them carried unlit torches. Kaladin lit his with a flint and steel, but the others did not. They needed to ration the torches.
The other men of Bridge Four began to gather near the bottom of the ladder, staying in a clump. Every fourth man lit his torch, but the light didn’t do much to dispel the gloom; it just allowed Kaladin to see more of the unnatural landscape. Strange, tube-shaped fungi grew in cracks. They were a wan yellow, like the skin of a child with jaundice. Scuttling cremlings moved away from the light. The tiny crustaceans were a translucent reddish color; as one scrambled past on the wall, he realized that he could see its internal organs through its shell.
The light also revealed a twisted, broken figure at the base of the chasm wall a short distance away. Kaladin raised his torch and stepped up to it. It was beginning to stink already. He raised a hand, unconsciously covering his nose and mouth as he knelt down.
It was a bridgeman, or had been, from one of the other crews. He was fresh. If he’d been here longer than a few days, the highstorm would have washed him away to some distant place. Bridge Four gathered behind Kaladin, looking silently at the one who had chosen to throw himself into the chasm.
“May you someday find a place of honor in the Tranquiline Halls, fallen brother,” Kaladin said, his voice echoing. “And may we find a better end than you.” He stood, holding his torch high, and led the way past the dead sentry.
His crew followed nervously.
Kaladin had quickly understood the basic tactics of fighting on the Shattered Plains. You wanted to advance forcefully, pressing your enemy to the plateau’s edge. That was why the battles often turned bloody for the Alethi, who usually arrived after the Parshendi.
The Alethi had bridges, while these odd Eastern parshmen could leap most chasms, given a running start. But both had trouble when squeezed toward the cliffs, and that generally resulted in soldiers losing their footing
and tumbling into the void. The numbers were significant enough for the Alethi to want to recover lost equipment. And so bridgemen were sent on chasm duty. It was like barrow robbing, only without the barrows.
They carried sacks, and would spend hours walking around, looking for the corpses of the fallen, searching for anything of value. Spheres, breastplates, caps, weapons. Some days, when a plateau run was recent, they could try to make their way all the way out to where it had happened and scavenge from those bodies. But highstorms generally made that futile. Wait even a few days, and the bodies would be washed someplace else.
Beyond that, the chasms were a bewildering maze, and getting to a specific contested plateau and then returning in a reasonable time was near impossible. General wisdom was to wait for a highstorm to push the bodies toward the Alethi side of the Plains—highstorms always came east to west, after all—and then send bridgemen down to search them out.
That meant a lot of random wandering. But over the years, enough bodies had fallen that it wasn’t too difficult to find places to harvest. The crew was required to bring up a specific amount of salvage or face docked pay for the week, but the quota wasn’t onerous. Enough to keep the bridgemen working, but not enough to force them to fully exert themselves.
Like most bridgeman work, this was meant to keep them occupied as much as anything else.
As they walked down the first chasm, some of his men got out their sacks and picked up pieces of salvage they passed. A helmet here, a shield there. They kept a keen watch for spheres. Finding a valuable fallen sphere would result in a small reward for the whole crew. They weren’t allowed to bring their own spheres or possessions into the chasm, of course. And on their way out, they were searched thoroughly. The humiliation of that search —which included any place a sphere might be hidden—was part of the reason chasm duty was so loathed.
But only a part. As they walked, the chasm floor widened to about fifteen feet. Here, marks scarred the walls, gashes where the moss had been scraped away, the stone itself scored. The bridgemen tried not to look at those marks. Occasionally, chasmfiends stalked these pathways, searching for either carrion or a suitable plateau to pupate upon. Encountering one of them was uncommon, but possible.
“Kelek, but I hate this place,” Teft said, walking beside Kaladin. “I heard that once an entire bridge crew got eaten by a chasmfiend, one at a
time, after it backed them into a dead end. It just sat there, picking them off as they tried to run past.”
Rock chuckled. “If they were all eaten, then who was returning to tell this story?”
Teft rubbed his chin. “I dunno. Maybe they just never returned.”
“Then perhaps they fled. Deserting.”
“No,” Teft said. “You can’t get out of these chasms without a ladder.”
He glanced upward, toward the narrow rift of blue seventy feet above, following the curve of the plateau.
Kaladin glanced up as well. That blue sky seemed so distant.
Unreachable. Like the light of the Halls themselves. And even if you could climb out at one of the shallower areas, you’d either be trapped on the Plains without a way to cross chasms, or you’d be close enough to the Alethi side that the scouts would spot you crossing the permanent bridges. You could try going eastward, toward where the plateaus were worn away to the point that they were just spires. But that would take weeks of walking, and would require surviving multiple highstorms.
“You ever been in a slot canyon when rains come, Rock?” Teft asked, perhaps thinking along the same lines.
“No,” Rock replied. “On the Peaks, we have not these things. They only exist where foolish men choose to live.”
“You live here, Rock,” Kaladin noted.
“And I am foolish,” the large Horneater said, chuckling. “Did you not notice this thing?” These last two days had changed him a great deal. He was more affable, returning in some measure to what Kaladin assumed was his normal personality.
“I was talking,” Teft said, “about slot canyons. You want to guess what will happen if we get trapped down here in a highstorm?”
“Lots of water, I guess,” Rock said.
“Lots of water, looking to go any place it can,” Teft said. “It gathers into enormous waves and goes crashing through these confined spaces with enough force to toss boulders. In fact, an ordinary rain will feel like a highstorm down here. A highstorm…well, this would probably be the worst place in Roshar to be when one hits.”
Rock frowned at that, glancing upward. “Best not to be caught in the
storm, then.”
“Yeah,” Teft said.
“Though, Teft,” Rock added, “it would give you bath, which you very much need.”
“Hey,” Teft grumbled. “Is that a comment on how I smell?”
“No,” Rock said. “Is comment on what I have to smell. Sometimes, I am thinking that a Parshendi arrow in the eye would be better than smelling entire bridge crew enclosed in barrack at night!”
Teft chuckled. “I’d take offense at that if it weren’t true.” He sniffed at the damp, moldy chasm air. “This place ain’t much better. It smells worse than a Horneater’s boots in winter down here.” He hesitated. “Er, no offense.
I mean personally.”
Kaladin smiled, then glanced back. The thirty or so other bridgemen followed like ghosts. A few seemed to be edging close to Kaladin’s group, as if trying to listen in without being obvious.
“Teft,” Kaladin said. “‘Smells worse than a Horneater’s boots’? How in the Halls isn’t he supposed to take offense at that phrase?”
“It’s just an expression,” Teft said, scowling. “It was out of my mouth before I realized what I was saying.”
“Alas,” Rock said, pulling a tuft of moss off the wall, inspecting it as they walked. “Your insult has offended me. If we were at the Peaks, we would have to duel in the traditional alil’tiki’i fashion.”
“Which is what?” Teft asked. “With spears?”
Rock laughed. “No, no. We upon the Peaks are not barbarians like you down here.”
“How then?” Kaladin asked, genuinely curious.
“Well,” Rock said, dropping the moss and dusting off his hands, “is
involving much mudbeer and singing.”
“How’s that a duel?”
“He who can still sing after the most drinks is winner. Plus, soon, everyone is so drunk that they probably forget what argument was about.”
Teft laughed. “Beats knives at dawn, I suppose.”
“I guess that depends,” Kaladin said.
“Upon what?” Teft asked.
“On whether or not you’re a knife merchant. Eh, Dunny?”
The other two glanced to the side, where Dunny had moved up close to listen. The spindly youth jumped and blushed. “Er—I—”
Rock chuckled at Kaladin’s words. “Dunny,” he said to the youth. “Is odd name. What is meaning of it?”
“Meaning?” Dunny asked. “I don’t know. Names don’t always have a meaning.”
Rock shook his head, displeased. “Lowlanders. How are you to know who you are if your name has no meaning?”
“So your name means something?” Teft asked. “Nu…ma…nu…”
“Numuhukumakiaki’aialunamor,” Rock said, the native Horneater sounds flowing easily from his lips. “Of course. Is description of very special rock my father discovered the day before my birth.”
“So your name is a whole sentence?” Dunny asked, uncertain—as if he wasn’t sure he belonged.
“Is poem,” Rock said. “On the Peaks, everyone’s name is poem.”
“Is that so?” Teft said, scratching at his beard. “Must make calling the family at mealtime a bit of a chore.”
Rock laughed. “True, true. Is also making for some interesting arguments. Usually, the best insults on the Peaks are in the form of a poem, one which is similar in composition and rhyme to the person’s name.”
“Kelek,” Teft muttered. “Sounds like a lot of work.”
“Is why most arguments end in drinking, perhaps,” Rock said.
Dunny smiled hesitantly. “Hey you big buffoon, you smell like a wet hog, so go out by the moon, and jump yourself in the bog.”
Rock laughed riotously, his booming voice echoing down the chasm. “Is good, is good,” he said, wiping his eyes. “Simple, but good.”
“That almost had the sound of a song to it, Dunny,” Kaladin said.
“Well, it was the first thing that came to mind. I put it to the tune of ‘Mari’s Two Lovers’ to get the beat right.”
“You can sing?” Rock asked. “I must be hearing.”
“But—” Dunny said.
“Sing!” Rock commanded, pointing.
Dunny yelped, but obeyed, breaking into a song that wasn’t familiar to Kaladin. It was an amusing tale involving a woman and twin brothers who she thought were the same person. Dunny’s voice was a pure tenor, and he seemed to have more confidence when he sang than when he spoke.
He was good. Once he moved to the second verse, Rock began humming in a deep voice, providing a harmony. The Horneater was obviously very practiced at song. Kaladin glanced back at the other bridgemen, hoping to pull some more into the conversation or the song. He smiled at Skar, but got only a scowl in return. Moash and Sigzil—the dark-
skinned Azish man—wouldn’t even look at him. Peet looked only at his feet.
When the song was finished, Teft clapped appreciatively. “That’s a better performance than I’ve heard at many an inn.”
“Is good to meet a lowlander who can sing,” Rock said, stooping down to pick up a helm and stuff it in his bag. This particular chasm didn’t seem to have much in the way of salvage this time. “I had begun thinking you were all as tone deaf as my father’s old axehound. Ha!”
Dunny blushed, but seemed to walk more confidently.
They continued, occasionally passing turns or rifts in the stone where the waters had deposited large clusters of salvage. Here, the work turned more gruesome, and they’d often have to pull out corpses or piles of bones to get what they wanted, gagging at the scent. Kaladin told them to leave the more sickening or rotted bodies for now. Rotspren tended to cluster around the dead. If they didn’t find enough salvage later, they could get those on the way back.
At every intersection or branch, Kaladin made a white mark on the wall with a piece of chalk. That was the bridgeleader’s duty, and he took it seriously. He wouldn’t have his crew getting lost out in these rifts.
As they walked and worked, Kaladin kept the conversation going. He laughed—forced himself to laugh—with them. If that laugher felt hollow to him, the others didn’t seem to notice. Perhaps they felt as he did, that even forced laughter was preferable to going back to the self-absorbed, mournful silence that cloaked most bridgemen.
Before long, Dunny was laughing and talking with Teft and Rock, his shyness faded. A few others hovered just behind—Yake, Maps, a couple of others—like wild creatures drawn to the light and warmth of a fire. Kaladin tried to draw them into the conversation, but it didn’t work, so eventually he just let them be.
Eventually, they reached a place with a significant number of fresh corpses. Kaladin wasn’t sure what combination of waterflow had made this section of chasm a good place for that—it looked the same as other stretches.
A little narrower perhaps. Sometimes they could go to the same nooks and find good salvage there; other times, those were empty, but other places would have dozens of corpses.
These bodies looked like they’d floated in the wash of the highstorm flood, then been deposited as the water slowly receded. There were no Parshendi among them, and they were broken and torn from either their fall
or the crush of the flood. Many were missing limbs.
The stink of blood and viscera hung in the humid air. Kaladin held his torch aloft as his companions fell silent. The dank chill kept the bodies from rotting too quickly, though the dampness counteracted some of that. The cremlings had begun chewing the skin off hands and gnawing out the eyes.
Soon the stomachs would bloat with gas. Some rotspren—tiny, red, translucent—scrambled across the corpses.
Syl floated down and landed on his shoulder, making disgusted noises.
As usual, she offered no explanation for her absence.
The men knew what to do. Even with the rotspren, this was too rich a place to pass up. They went to work, pulling the corpses into a line so they could be inspected. Kaladin waved for Rock and Teft to join him as he picked up some stray bits of salvage that lay on the ground around the corpses.
Dunny tagged along.
“Those bodies wear the highprince’s colors,” Rock noted as Kaladin picked up a dented steel cap.
“I’ll bet they’re from that run a few days back,” Kaladin said. “It went badly for Sadeas’s forces.”
“Brightlord Sadeas,” Dunny said. Then he ducked his head in embarrassment. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to correct you. I used to forget to say the title. My master beat me when I did.”
“Master?” Teft asked, picking up a fallen spear and pulling some moss off its shaft.
“I was an apprentice. I mean, before…” Dunny trailed off, then looked away.
Teft had been right; bridgemen didn’t like talking about their pasts.
Anyway, Dunny was probably right to correct him. Kaladin would be punished if he were heard omitting a lighteyes’s honorific.
Kaladin put the cap in his sack, then rammed his torch into a gap between two moss-covered boulders and started helping the others get the bodies into a line. He didn’t prod the men toward conversation. The fallen deserved some reverence—if that was possible while robbing them.
Next, the bridgemen stripped the fallen of their armor. Leather vests from the archers, steel breastplates from the foot soldiers. This group included a lighteyes in fine clothing beneath even finer armor. Sometimes the bodies of fallen lighteyes would be recovered from the chasms by special teams so the corpse could be Soulcast into a statue. Darkeyes, unless they
were very wealthy, were burned. And most soldiers who fell into the chasms were ignored; the men in camp spoke of the chasms being hallowed resting places, but the truth was that the effort to get the bodies out wasn’t worth the cost or the danger.
Regardless, to find a lighteyes here meant that his family hadn’t been wealthy enough, or concerned enough, to send men out to recover him. His face was crushed beyond recognition, but his rank insignia identified him as seventh dahn. Landless, attached to a more powerful officer’s retinue.
Once they had his armor, they pulled daggers and boots off everyone in line—boots were always in demand. They left the fallen their clothing, though they took off the belts and cut free many shirt buttons. As they worked, Kaladin sent Teft and Rock around the bend to see if there were any other bodies nearby.
Once the armor, weapons, and boots had been separated, the most grisly task began: searching pockets and pouches for spheres and jewelry. This pile was the smallest of the lot, but valuable. They didn’t find any broams, which meant no pitiful reward for the bridgemen.
As the men performed their morbid task, Kaladin noticed the end of a spear poking out of a nearby pool. It had gone unnoticed in their initial sweep.
Lost in thought, he fetched it, shaking off the water, carrying it over to the weapons pile. He hesitated there, holding the spear over the pile with one hand, cold water dripping from it. He rubbed his finger along the smooth wood. He could tell from the heft, balance, and sanding that it was a good weapon. Sturdy, well made, well kept.
He closed his eyes, remembering days as a boy holding a quarterstaff.
Words spoken by Tukks years ago returned to him, words spoken on that bright summer day when he’d first held a weapon in Amaram’s army.
The first step is to care, Tukks’s voice seemed to whisper. Some talk about being emotionless in battle. Well, I suppose it’s important to keep your head.
But I hate that feeling of killing while calm and cold. I’ve seen that those who care fight harder, longer, and better than those who don’t. It’s the difference between mercenaries and real soldiers. It’s the difference between fighting to defend your homeland and fighting on foreign soil.
It’s good to care when you fight, so long as you don’t let it consume you.
Don’t try to stop yourself from feeling. You’ll hate who you become.
The spear quivered in Kaladin’s fingers, as if begging him to swing it,
spin it, dance with it.
“What are you planning to do, lordling?” a voice called. “Going to ram that spear into your own gut?”
Kaladin glanced up at the speaker. Moash—still one of Kaladin’s biggest detractors—stood near the line of corpses. How had he known to call Kaladin “lordling”? Had he been talking to Gaz?
“He claims he’s a deserter,” Moash said to Narm, the man working next to him. “Says he was some important soldier, a squadleader or the like. But Gaz says that’s all stupid boasting. They wouldn’t send a man to the bridges
if he actually knew how to fight.”
Kaladin lowered the spear.
Moash smirked, turning back to his work. Others, however, had now noticed Kaladin. “Look at him,” Sigzil said. “Ho, bridgeleader! You think that you’re grand? That you are better than us? You think pretending that we’re your own personal troop of soldiers will change anything?”
“Leave him alone,” Drehy said. He shoved Sigzil as he passed. “At least he tries.”
Earless Jacks snorted, pulling a boot free from a dead foot. “He cares about looking important. Even if he was in the army, I’ll bet he spent his days cleaning out latrines.”
It appeared that there was something that would pull the bridgemen out of their silent stupors: loathing for Kaladin. Others began talking, calling
gibes.
“…his fault we’re down here…”
“…wants to run us ragged during our only free time, just so he can feel important…”
“…sent us to carry rocks to show us he could shove us around…”
“…bet he’s never held a spear in his life.”
Kaladin closed his eyes, listening to their scorn, rubbing his fingers on the wood.
Never held a spear in his life. Maybe if he’d never picked up that first spear, none of this would have happened.
He felt the smooth wood, slick with rainwater, memories jumbling in his head. Training to forget, training to get vengeance, training to learn and make sense of what had happened.
Without thinking about it, he snapped the spear up under his arm into a guard position, point down. Water droplets from its length sprayed across his
back.
Moash cut off in the middle of another gibe. The bridgemen sputtered to
a stop. The chasm became quiet.
And Kaladin was in another place.
He was listening to Tukks chide him.
He was listening to Tien laugh.
He was hearing his mother tease him in her clever, witty way.
He was on the battlefield, surrounded by enemies but ringed by friends.
He was listening to his father tell him with a sneer in his voice that spears were only for killing. You could not kill to protect.
He was alone in a chasm deep beneath the earth, holding the spear of a fallen man, fingers gripping the wet wood, a faint dripping coming from somewhere distant.
Strength surged through him as he spun the spear up into an advanced kata. His body moved of its own accord, going through the forms he’d trained in so frequently. The spear danced in his fingers, comfortable, an extension of himself. He spun with it, swinging it around and around, across his neck, over his arm, in and out of jabs and swings. Though it had been months since he’d even held a weapon, his muscles knew what to do. It was as if the spear itself knew what to do.
Tension melted away, frustration melted away, and his body sighed in contentment even as he worked it furiously. This was familiar. This was welcome. This was what it had been created to do.
Men had always told Kaladin that he fought like nobody else. He’d felt it on the first day he’d picked up a quarterstaff, though Tukks’s advice had helped him refine and channel what he could do. Kaladin had cared when he fought. He’d never fought empty or cold. He fought to keep his men alive.
Of all the recruits in his cohort, he had learned the quickest. How to hold the spear, how to stand to spar. He’d done it almost without instruction. That had shocked Tukks. But why should it have? You were not shocked when a child knew how to breathe. You were not shocked when a skyeel took flight for the first time. You should not be shocked when you hand Kaladin Stormblessed a spear and he knows how to use it.
Kaladin spun through the last motions of the kata, chasm forgotten, bridgemen forgotten, fatigue forgotten. For a moment, it was just him. Him and the wind. He fought with her, and she laughed.
He snapped the spear back into place, holding the haft at the one-quarter
position, spearhead down, bottom of the haft tucked underneath his arm, end rising back behind his head. He breathed in deeply, shivering.
Oh, how I’ve missed that.
He opened his eyes. Sputtering torchlight revealed a group of stunned bridgemen standing in a damp corridor of stone, the walls wet and reflecting the light. Moash dropped a handful of spheres in stunned silence, staring at Kaladin with mouth agape. Those spheres plopped into the puddle at his feet, causing it to glow, but none of the bridgemen noticed. They just stared at Kaladin, who was still in a battle stance, half crouched, trails of sweat running down the sides of his face.
He blinked, realizing what he’d done. If word got back to Gaz that he was playing around with spears…Kaladin stood up straight and dropped the spear into the pile of weapons. “Sorry,” he whispered to it, though he didn’t know why. Then, louder, he said, “Back to work! I don’t want to be caught down here when night falls.”
The bridgemen jumped into motion. Down the chasm corridor, he saw Rock and Teft. Had they seen the entire kata? Flushing, Kaladin hurried up to them. Syl landed on his shoulder, silent.
“Kaladin, lad,” Teft said reverently. “That was—”
“It was meaningless,” Kaladin said. “Just a kata. Meant to work the muscles and make you practice the basic jabs, thrusts, and sweeps. It’s a lot
showier than it is useful.”
“But—”
“No, really,” Kaladin said. “Can you imagine a man swinging a spear around his neck like that in combat? He’d be gutted in a second.”
“Lad,” Teft said. “I’ve seen katas before. But never one like that. The way you moved…The speed, the grace…And there was some sort of spren zipping around you, between your sweeps, glowing with a pale light. It was
beautiful.”
Rock started. “You could see that?”
“Sure,” Teft said. “Never seen a spren like that. Ask the other men—I saw a few of them pointing.”
Kaladin glanced at his shoulder, frowning at Syl. She sat primly, legs crossed and hands folded atop her knee, pointedly not looking at him.
“It was nothing,” Kaladin repeated.
“No,” Rock said. “That it certainly was not. Perhaps you should challenge Shardbearer. You could become brightlord!”
“I don’t want to be a brightlord,” Kaladin snapped, perhaps more harshly than he should have. The other two jumped. “Besides,” he added, looking away from them. “I tried that once. Where’s Dunny?”
“Wait,” Teft said, “you—”
“Where is Dunny?” Kaladin said firmly, punctuating each word.
Stormfather. I need to keep my mouth shut.
Teft and Rock shared a glance, then Teft pointed. “We found some dead Parshendi around the bend. Thought you’d want to know.”
“Parshendi,” Kaladin said. “Let’s go look. Might have something valuable.” He’d never looted Parshendi bodies before; fewer of them fell into the chasms than Alethi.
“Is true,” Rock said, leading the way, carrying a lit torch. “Those weapons they have, yes, very nice. And gemstones in their beards.”
“Not to mention the armor,” Kaladin said.
Rock shook his head. “No armor.”
“Rock, I’ve seen their armor. They always wear it.”
“Well, yes, but we cannot use this thing.”
“I don’t understand,” Kaladin said.
“Come,” Rock said, gesturing. “Is easier than explaining.”
Kaladin shrugged, and they rounded the corner, Rock scratching at his red-bearded chin. “Stupid hairs,” he muttered. “Ah, to have it right again. A man is not proper man without proper beard.”
Kaladin rubbed his own beard. One of these days, he’d save up and buy a razor and be rid of the blasted thing. Or, well, probably not. His spheres would be needed elsewhere.
They rounded the corner and found Dunny pulling the Parshendi bodies into a line. There were four of them, and they looked like they’d been swept in from another direction. There were a few more Alethi bodies here too.
Kaladin strode forward, waving Rock to bring the light, and knelt to inspect one of the Parshendi dead. They were like parshmen, with skin in marbled patterns of black and crimson. Their only clothing was knee-length black skirts. Three wore beards, which was unusual for parshmen, and those were woven with uncut gemstones.
Just as Kaladin had expected, they wore armor of a pale red color.
Breastplates, helms on the heads, guards on the arms and legs. Extensive armor for regular foot soldiers. Some of it was cracked from the fall or the wash. It wasn’t metal, then. Painted wood?
“I thought you said they weren’t armored,” Kaladin said. “What are you trying to tell me? That you don’t dare take it off the dead?”
“Don’t dare?” Rock said. “Kaladin, Master Brightlord, brilliant bridgeleader, spinner of spear, perhaps you will get it off them.”
Kaladin shrugged. His father had instilled in him a familiarity with the dead and dying, and though it felt bad to rob the dead, he was not squeamish.
He prodded the first Parshendi, noting the man’s knife. He took it and looked for the strap that held the shoulder guard in place.
There was no strap. Kaladin frowned and peered underneath the guard, trying to pry it up. The skin lifted with it. “Stormfather!” he said. He inspected the helm. It was grown into the head. Or grown from the head.
“What is this?”
“Do not know,” Rock said, shrugging. “It is looking like they grow their own armor, eh?”
“That’s ridiculous,” Kaladin said. “They’re just people. People—even
parshmen—don’t grow armor.”
“Parshendi do,” Teft said.
Kaladin and the other two turned to him.
“Don’t look at me like that,” the older man said with a scowl. “I worked in the camp for a few years before I ended up as a bridgeman—no, I’m not going to tell you how, so storm off. Anyway, the soldiers talk about it. The Parshendi grow carapaces.”
“I’ve known parshmen,” Kaladin said. “There were a couple of them in my hometown, serving the citylord. None of them grew armor.”
“Well, these are a different kind of parshman,” Teft said with a scowl.
“Bigger, stronger. They can jump chasms, for Kelek’s sake. And they grow armor. That’s just how it is.”
There was no disputing it, so they just moved on to gathering what they could. Many Parshendi used heavy weapons—axes, hammers—and those hadn’t been carried along with the bodies like many of the spears and bows Alethi soldiers had. But they did find several knives and one ornate sword, still in a sheath at the Parshendi’s side.
The skirts didn’t have pockets, but the corpses did have pouches tied to their waists. These just carried flint and tinder, whetstones, or other basic supplies. So, they knelt to begin pulling the gemstones from the beards.
Those gemstones had holes drilled through them to facilitate weaving, and Stormlight infused them, though they didn’t glow as brightly as they would
have if they’d been properly cut.
As Rock pulled the gemstones out of the final Parshendi’s beard, Kaladin held one of the knives up near Dunny’s torch, inspecting the detailed carving. “Those look like glyphs,” he said, showing it to Teft.
“I can’t read glyphs, boy.”
Oh, right, Kaladin thought. Well, if they were glyphs, they weren’t ones he was familiar with. Of course, you could draw most glyphs in complex ways that made it hard to read them, unless you knew exactly what to look for. There was a figure at the center of the hilt, nicely carved. It was a man in fine armor. Shardplate, certainly. A symbol was etched behind him, surrounding him, spreading out from his back like wings.
Kaladin showed it to Rock, who had walked up to see what he found so fascinating. “The Parshendi out here are supposed to be barbarians,” Kaladin said. “Without culture. Where did they get knives like these? I’d swear this is a picture of one of the Heralds. Jezerezeh or Nalan.”
Rock shrugged. Kaladin sighed and returned the knife to its sheath, then dropped it into his sack. Then they rounded the curve back to the others. The crew had gathered up sacks full of armor, belts, boots, and spheres. Each took up a spear to carry back to the ladder, holding them like walking sticks.
They’d left one for Kaladin, but he tossed it to Rock. He didn’t trust himself to hold one of them again, worried he’d be tempted to fall into another kata.
The walk back was uneventful, though with the darkening sky, the men began jumping at every sound. Kaladin engaged Rock, Teft, and Dunny in conversation again. He was able to get Drehy and Torfin to talk a little as well.
They safely reached the first chasm, much to the relief of his men.
Kaladin sent the others up the ladder first, waiting to go up last. Rock waited with him, and as Dunny finally started up—leaving Rock and Kaladin alone —the tall Horneater put a hand on Kaladin’s shoulder, speaking in a soft voice.
“You do good work here,” Rock said. “I am thinking that in a few weeks, these men will be yours.”
Kaladin shook his head. “We’re bridgemen, Rock. We don’t have a few weeks. If I take that long winning them over, half of us will be dead.”
Rock frowned. “Is not a happy thought.”
“That’s why we have to win over the other men now.”
“But how?”
Kaladin looked up at the dangling ladder, shaking as the men climbed up. Only four could go at a time, lest they overload it. “Meet me after we’re searched. We’re going to the camp market.”
“Very well,” Rock said, swinging onto the ladder as Earless Jaks reached the top. “What will be our purpose in this thing?”
“We’re going to try out my secret weapon.”
Rock laughed as Kaladin held the ladder steady for him. “And what
weapon is this?”
Kaladin smiled. “Actually, it’s you.”
Two hours later, at Salas’s first violet light, Rock and Kaladin walked back into the lumberyard. It was just past sunset, and many of the bridgemen would soon be going to sleep.
Not much time, Kaladin thought, gesturing for Rock to carry his burden to a place near the front of Bridge Four’s barrack. The large Horneater set his burden down next to Teft and Dunny, who had done as Kaladin had ordered, building a small ring of stones and setting up some stumps of wood from the lumberyard scrap pile. That wood was free for anyone to take. Even bridgemen were allowed; some liked to take chunks to whittle.
Kaladin got out a sphere for light. The thing Rock had been carrying was an old iron cauldron. Even though it was secondhand, it had cost Kaladin a fair chunk of the knobweed sap money. The Horneater began to unpack supplies from inside the cauldron as Kaladin arranged some wood scraps inside the ring of stones.
“Dunny, water, if you please,” Kaladin said, getting out his flint. Dunny ran off to fetch a bucket from one of the rain barrels. Rock finished emptying the cauldron, laying out small packages that had cost another substantial portion of Kaladin’s spheres. He had only a handful of clearchips left.
As they worked, Hobber limped out of the barrack. He was mending quickly, though the other two wounded that Kaladin had treated were still in bad shape.
“What are you up to, Kaladin?” Hobber asked just as Kaladin got a
flame started.
Kaladin smiled, standing. “Have a seat.”
Hobber did just that. He hadn’t lost the near-devotion he’d shown Kaladin for saving his life. If anything, his loyalty had grown stronger.
Dunny returned with a bucket of water, which he poured into the cauldron. Then he and Teft ran off to get more. Kaladin built up the flames and Rock began to hum to himself as he diced tubers and unwrapped some seasonings. In under a half hour, they had a roaring flame and a simmering pot of stew.
Teft sat down on one of the stumps, warming his hands. “This is your secret weapon?”
Kaladin sat down next to the older man. “Have you known many
soldiers in your life, Teft?”
“A few.”
“You ever known any who could turn down a warm fire and some stew at the end of a hard day?”
“Well, no. But bridgemen ain’t soldiers.”
That was true. Kaladin turned to the barrack doorway. Rock and Dunny started up a song together and Teft began to clap along. Some of the men from other bridge crews were up late, and they gave Kaladin and the others nothing more than scowls.
Figures shifted inside the barrack, shadows moving. The door was open, and the scents of Rock’s stew grew strong. Inviting.
Come on, Kaladin thought. Remember why we live. Remember warmth, remember good food. Remember friends, and song, and evenings spent around the hearth.
You aren’t dead yet. Storm you! If you don’t come out… It all suddenly seemed so contrived to Kaladin. The singing was forced, the stew an act of desperation. It was all just an attempt to briefly distract from the pathetic life he had been forced into.
A figure moved in the doorway. Skar—short, square-bearded, and keen- eyed—stepped out into the firelight. Kaladin smiled at him. A forced smile.
Sometimes that was all one could offer. Let it be enough, he prayed, standing up, dipping a wooden bowl into Rock’s stew.
Kaladin held the bowl toward Skar. Steam curled from the surface of the brownish liquid. “Will you join us?” Kaladin asked. “Please.”
Skar looked at him, then back down at the stew. He laughed, taking the
stew. “I’d join the Nightwatcher herself around a fire if there was stew involved!”
“Be careful,” Teft said. “That’s Horneater stew. Might be snail shells or crab claws floating in it.”
“There is not!” Rock barked. “Is unfortunate that you have unrefined lowlander tastes, but I prepare the food such as I am ordered by our dear bridgeleader.”
Kaladin smiled, letting out a deep breath as Skar sat down. Others trailed out after him, taking bowls, sitting. Some stared into the fire, not saying much, but others began to laugh and sing. At one point, Gaz walked past, eyeing them with his single eye, as if trying to decide if they were breaking any camp regulations. They weren’t. Kaladin had checked.
Kaladin dipped out a bowl of stew and held it toward Gaz. The bridge sergeant snorted in derision and stalked away.
Can’t expect too many miracles in one night, Kaladin thought with a sigh, settling back down and trying the stew. It was quite good. He smiled, joining in the next verse of Dunny’s song.
The next morning, when Kaladin called for the bridgemen to rise, three- quarters of them piled out of the barrack—everyone but the loudest complainers: Moash, Sigzil, Narm, and a couple of others. The ones who came to his call looked surprisingly refreshed, despite the long evening spent singing and eating. When he ordered them to join him in practice carrying the bridge, almost all of those who had risen joined him.
Not everyone, but enough.
He had a feeling that Moash and the others would give in before too long. They’d eaten his stew. Nobody had turned that down. And now that he had so many, the others would feel foolish not joining in. Bridge Four was his.
Now he had to keep them alive long enough for that to mean something.
