The Way of Kings (68 page)

“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.