The Mistborn Trilogy (213 page)

Elend could still hear the screams in his head—the koloss, full of bloodlust and frothing to fight, yet unable to attack their enemies, which were high atop the plateau. The falling rocks had done a lot of damage. And then the creatures had slipped away from him. Their frustration had been too powerful, and for a time, he hadn’t been able to keep them from turning on each other. Most of the deaths had come as the koloss attacked each other. Roughly one of every two had died as they had paired off and killed each other.

I lost control of them,
he thought. It had only been for a short while, and it had only happened because they hadn’t been able to get at their enemies. However, it set a dangerous precedent.

Vin, frustrated, kicked a large chunk of burned wood, sending it tumbling down the side of the plateau.

“This was a
very
well-planned attack, El,” Ham said, speaking in a soft voice. “Yomen must have seen us sending out extra patrols in the mornings, and correctly guessed that we were expecting an attack during those hours. So, he gave us one—then hit us where we should have been the strongest.”

“It cost him a lot, though,” Elend said. “He had to burn his own siege equipment to keep it away from us, and he has to have lost hundreds of soldiers—plus their mounts—in the attack on our camp.”

“True,” Ham said. “But would you trade a couple dozen siege weapons and five
hundred men for ten thousand koloss? Plus, Yomen has to be worried about keeping that cavalry mobile—the Survivor only knows where he got enough grain to feed those horses as long as he did. Better for him to strike now and lose them in battle than to have them starve.”

Elend nodded slowly.
This makes things more difficult. With ten thousand fewer koloss . . .
Suddenly, the forces were much more evenly matched. Elend could maintain his siege, but storming the city would be far more risky.

He sighed. “We shouldn’t have left the koloss so far outside of the main camp. We’ll have to move them in.”

Ham didn’t seem to like that.

“They’re not dangerous,” Elend said. “Vin and I can control them.”
Mostly.

Ham shrugged. He moved back through the smoking wreckage, preparing to send messengers. Elend walked forward, approaching Vin, who stood at the very edge of the cliff. Being up so high still made him a bit uncomfortable. Yet, she barely even noticed the sheer drop in front of her.

“I should have been able to help you regain control of them,” she said quietly, staring out into the distance. “Yomen distracted me.”

“He distracted us all,” Elend said. “I felt the koloss in my head, but even so, I couldn’t figure out what was going on. I’d regained control of them by the time you got back, but by then, a lot of them were dead.”

“Yomen has a Mistborn,” Vin said.

“You’re sure?”

Vin nodded.

One more thing,
he thought. He contained his frustration, however. His men needed to see him confident. “I’m giving a thousand of the koloss to you,” he said. “We should have split them up earlier.”

“You’re stronger,” Vin said.

“Not strong enough, apparently.”

Vin sighed, then nodded. “Let me go down below.” They’d found that proximity helped with taking control of koloss.

“I’ll pull off a section of a thousand or so, then let go. Be ready to grab them as soon as I do.”

Vin nodded, then stepped off the side of the plateau.

I should have realized that I was getting caught up in the excitement of the fighting,
Vin thought as she fell through the air. It seemed so obvious to her now. And, unfortunately, the results of the attack left her feeling even more pent-up and anxious than she had before.

She tossed a coin and landed. Even a drop of several hundred feet didn’t bother her anymore. It was odd to think about. She remembered timidly standing atop the Luthadel city wall, afraid to use her Allomancy to jump off, despite Kelsier’s coaxing. Now she could step off a cliff and muse thoughtfully to herself on the way down.

She walked across the powdery ground. The ash came up to the top of her
calves and would have been difficult to walk in without pewter to give her strength. The ashfalls were growing increasingly dense.

Human approached her almost immediately. She couldn’t tell if the koloss was simply reacting to their bond, or if he was actually aware and interested enough to pick her out. He had a new wound on his arm, a result of the fighting. He fell into step beside her as she moved up to the other koloss, his massive form obviously having no trouble with the deep ash.

As usual, there was very little emotion to the koloss camp. Just a short time before, they had been screaming in bloodlust, attacking each other as stones crashed down from above. Now they simply sat in the ash, gathered in small groups, ignoring their wounds. They would have had fires going if there had been wood available. Some few dug, finding handfuls of dirt to chew on.

“Don’t your people care, Human?” Vin asked.

The massive koloss looked down at her, ripped face bleeding slightly. “Care?”

“That so many of you died,” Vin said. She could see corpses lying about, forgotten in the ash save for the ritual flaying that was the koloss form of burial. Several koloss still worked, moving between bodies, ripping off the skin.

“We take care of them,” Human said.

“Yes,” Vin said. “You pull their skin off. Why do you do that, anyway?”

“They are dead,” Human said, as if that were enough of an explanation.

To the side, a large group of koloss stood up, commanded by Elend’s silent orders. They separated themselves from the main camp, trudging out into the ash. A moment later, they began to look around, no longer moving as one.

Vin reacted quickly. She turned off her metals, burned duralumin, then flared zinc in a massive Pull, Rioting the koloss emotions. As expected, they snapped under her control, just as Human was.

Controlling this many was more difficult, but still well within her abilities. Vin ordered them to be calm, and to not kill, then let them return to the camp. From now on, they would remain in the back of her mind, no longer requiring Allomancy to manipulate. They were easy to ignore unless their passions grew strong.

Human watched them. “We are . . . fewer,” he finally said.

Vin started. “Yes,” she said. “You can tell that?”

“I . . .” Human trailed off, beady little eyes watching his camp. “We fought. We died. We need more. We have too many swords.” He pointed in the distance, to a large pile of metal. Wedge-shaped koloss swords that no longer had owners.

You can control a koloss population through the swords,
Elend had once told her.
They fight to get bigger swords as they grow. Extra swords go to the younger, smaller koloss.

But nobody knows where those come from.

“You need koloss to use those swords, Human,” Vin said.

Human nodded.

“Well,” she said. “You’ll need to have more children, then.”

“Children?”

“More,” Vin said. “More koloss.”

“You need to give us more,” Human said, looking at her.

“Me?”

“You fought,” he said, pointing at her shirt. There was blood there, not her own.

“Yes, I did,” Vin said.

“Give us more.”

“I don’t understand,” Vin said. “Please, just show me.”

“I can’t,” Human said, shaking his head as he spoke in his slow tone. “It’s not right.”

“Wait,” Vin said. “Not right?” It was the first real statement of values she’d gotten from a koloss.

Human looked at her, and she could see consternation on his face. So, Vin gave him an Allomantic nudge. She didn’t know exactly what to ask him to do, and that made her control of him weaker. Yet, she Pushed him to do as he was thinking, trusting—for some reason—that his mind was fighting with his instincts.

He screamed.

Vin backed away, shocked, but Human didn’t attack her. He ran into the koloss camp, a massive blue monster on two legs, kicking up ash. Others backed away from him—not out of fear, for they wore their characteristic impassive faces. They simply appeared to have enough sense to stay out of the way of an enraged koloss of Human’s size.

Vin followed carefully as Human approached one of the dead bodies of a koloss who still wore his skin. Human didn’t rip the skin off, however, but flung the corpse over his shoulder and took off running toward Elend’s camp.

Uh, oh,
Vin thought, dropping a coin and taking to the air. She bounded after Human, careful not to outpace him. She considered ordering him back, but did not. He was acting unusually, true, but that was a good thing. Koloss generally didn’t do
anything
unusual. They were predictable to a fault.

She landed at the camp’s guard post and waved the soldiers back. Human continued on, barreling into the camp, startling soldiers. Vin stayed with him, keeping the soldiers away.

Human paused in the middle of camp, a bit of his passion wearing off. Vin nudged him again. After looking about, Human took off toward the broken section of camp, where Yomen’s soldiers had attacked.

Vin followed, growing more and more curious. Human hadn’t taken out his sword. Indeed, he didn’t seem angry at all, just . . . intense. He arrived at a section where tents had fallen and men had died. The battle was still only a few hours old, and soldiers moved about, cleaning up. Triage tents had been set up just beside the battlefield. Human headed for those.

Vin rushed ahead, cutting him off just as he reached the tent with the wounded. “Human,” she said warily. “What are you doing?”

He ignored her, slamming the dead koloss down on the ground. Now, finally, Human ripped the skin off the corpse. It came off easily—this was one of the smaller koloss, whose skin hung in folds, far too large for its body.

Human pulled the skin free, causing several of the watching guards to groan in disgust. Vin watched closely despite the stomach-wrenching sight. She felt like she was on the verge of understanding something very important.

Human reached down, and pulled something out of the koloss corpse.

“Wait,” Vin said, stepping forward. “What was that?”

Human ignored her. He pulled out something else, and this time Vin caught a flash of bloodied metal. She followed his fingers as he moved, and this time saw the item before he pulled it free and hid it in his palm.

A spike. A small metal spike driven into the side of the dead koloss. There was a rip of blue skin beside the spikehead, as if . . .

As if the spikes were holding the skin in place,
Vin thought.
Like nails holding cloth to a wall.

Spikes. Spikes like . . .

Human retrieved a fourth spike, then stepped forward into the tent. Surgeons and soldiers moved back in fear, crying out for Vin to do something as Human approached the bed of a wounded soldier. Human looked from one unconscious man to another, then reached for one of them.

Stop!
Vin commanded in her mind.

Human froze in place. Only then did the complete horror of what was happening occur to her. “Lord Ruler,” she whispered. “You were going to turn them into koloss, weren’t you? That’s where you come from. That’s why there are no koloss children.”

“I am
human,
” the large beast said quietly.

Hemalurgy can be used to steal Allomantic or Feruchemical powers and give them to another person. However, a Hemalurgic spike can also be created by killing a normal person, one who is neither an Allomancer nor a Feruchemist. In that case, the spike instead steals the very power of Preservation existing within the soul of the people. (The power that, in fact, gives all people sentience.)

A Hemalurgic spike can extract this power, then transfer it to another, granting them residual abilities similar to those of Allomancy. After all, Preservation’s body—a tiny trace of which is carried by every human being—is the very same essence that fuels Allomancy.

And so, a kandra granted the Blessing of Potency is actually acquiring a bit of innate strength similar to that of burning pewter. The Blessing of Presence grants mental capacity in a similar way, while the Blessing of Awareness is the ability to sense with greater acuity and the rarely used Blessing of Stability grants emotional fortitude.