The aching feet and burning shoulders from running a bridge had been nothing compared to the slaughter that had awaited his men at the end of a bridge run. Storms… even looking across the Plains made Kaladin flinch. He could hear the hiss of arrows in the air, the screams of terrified bridgemen, the song of the Parshendi.
I should have been able to save more of Bridge Four, Kaladin thought. If I’d been faster to accept my powers, could I have done so?
He breathed in Stormlight to reassure himself. Only it didn’t come. He stood, dumbfounded, while soldiers marched across one of Dalinar’s enormous mechanical bridges. He tried again. Nothing.
He fished a sphere from his pouch. The firemark glowed with its customary light, tinting his fingers red. Something was wrong. Kaladin couldn’t feel the Stormlight inside as he once had.
Syl flitted across the chasm high in the air with a group of windspren. Her giggling laughter rained down upon him, and he looked up. “Syl?” he asked quietly. Storms. He didn’t want to look like an idiot, but something deep within him was panicking like a rat caught by its tail. “Syl!”
Several marching soldiers glanced at Kaladin, then up toward the air. Kaladin ignored them as Syl zipped down in the form of a ribbon of light. She swirled around him, still giggling.
The Stormlight returned to him. He could feel it again, and he greedily sucked it from the sphere—though he did have the presence of mind to clutch the sphere in a fist and hold it to his chest to make the process less obvious. The Light of one mark wasn’t enough to expose him, but he felt far, far better with that Stormlight raging inside of him.
“What happened?” Kaladin whispered to Syl. “Is something wrong with our bond? Is it because I haven’t found the Words soon enough?”
She landed on his wrist and took the form of a young woman. She peered at his hand, cocking her head. “What’s inside?” she asked with a conspiratorial whisper.
“You know what this is, Syl,” Kaladin said, feeling chilled, as if he’d been hit by a wave of stormwater. “A sphere. Didn’t you see it just now?”
She looked at him, face innocent. “You are making bad choices. Naughty.” Her features mimicked his for a moment and she jumped forward, as if to startle him. She laughed and zipped away.
Bad choices. Naughty. So, this was because of his promise to Moash that he’d help assassinate the king. Kaladin sighed, continuing forward.
Syl couldn’t see why his decision was the right one. She was a spren, and had a stupid, simplistic morality. To be human was often to be forced to choose between distasteful options. Life wasn’t clean and neat like she wanted it to be. It was messy, coated with crem. No man walked through life without getting covered in it, not even Dalinar.
“You want too much of me,” he snapped at her as he reached the other side of the chasm. “I’m not some glorious knight of ancient days. I’m a broken man. Do you hear me, Syl? I’m broken.”
She zipped up to him and whispered, “That’s what they all were, silly.” She streaked away.
Kaladin watched as the soldiers filed across the bridge. They weren’t doing a plateau run, but Dalinar had brought plenty of soldiers anyway. Going out onto the Shattered Plains was entering a war zone, and the Parshendi were ever a threat.
Bridge Four tromped across the mechanical bridge, carrying their smaller one. Kaladin wasn’t about to leave the camps without that. These mechanisms Dalinar employed—the massive, chull-pulled bridges that could be ratcheted down into place—were amazing, but Kaladin didn’t trust them. Not nearly as much as he did a good bridge on his shoulders.
Syl flitted by again. Did she really expect him to live according to her perception of what was right and wrong? Was she going to yank his powers away every time he did something that risked offending her?
That would be like living with a noose around his neck.
Determined to not let his worries ruin the day, he went to check on Bridge Four. Look at the open sky, he told himself. Breathe the wind. Enjoy the freedom. After so much time in captivity, these things were wonders.
He found Bridge Four beside their bridge at parade rest. It was odd to see them with their old padded-shoulder leather vests on over their new uniforms. It transformed them into a weird mix of what they had been and what they were now. They saluted him together, and he saluted back.
“At ease,” he told them, and they broke formation, laughing and joking with one another as Lopen and his assistants distributed waterskins.
“Ha!” Rock said, settling down on the side of the bridge to drink. “This thing, it is not so hard as I remember it being.”
“It’s because we’re going slower,” Kaladin said, pointing at Dalinar’s mechanical bridge. “And because you’re remembering the early days of bridge carries, not the later ones when we were well-fed and well-trained. It got easier then.”
“No,” Rock said. “The bridge is light because we have defeated Sadeas. Is the proper way of things.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Ha! Perfect sense.” He took a drink. “Airsick lowlander.”
Kaladin shook his head, but let himself find a smile at Rock’s familiar voice. After slaking his own thirst, he jogged across the plateau toward where Dalinar had just finished crossing. Nearby, a tall rock formation surmounted the plateau, and atop it was a wooden structure like a small fort. Sunlight glinted off one of the spyglasses fitted there.
No permanent bridge led to this plateau, which was just outside the secure area closest to the warcamp. These scouts positioned here were vaulters, who leaped chasms at narrow points with the use of long poles. It seemed like a job that would require a special brand of craziness—and because of that, Kaladin had always felt respect for these men.
One of the vaulters was speaking with Dalinar. Kaladin would have expected the man to be tall and limber, but he was short and compact, with thick forearms. He wore a Kholin uniform with white stripes edging the coat.
“We did see something out here, Brightlord,” the vaulter said to Dalinar. “I saw it with my own two eyes, and recorded the date and time in glyphs on my ledger. It was a man, a glowing one, who flew around in the sky back and forth over the Plains.”
Dalinar grunted.
“I’m not crazy, sir,” the vaulter said, shuffling from one foot to the other. “The other lads saw it too, once I—”
“I believe you, soldier,” Dalinar said. “It was the Assassin in White. He looked like that when he came for the king.”
The man relaxed. “Brightlord, sir, that’s what I thought. Some of the men back at camp told me I was just seeing what I wanted.”
“Nobody wants to see that one,” Dalinar said. “But why would he spend his time out here? Why hasn’t he come back to attack, if he’s this close?”
Kaladin cleared his throat, uncomfortable, and pointed at the watchman’s post. “That fort up there, is it wood?”
“Yes,” the vaulter said, then noticed the knots on Kaladin’s shoulders. “Uh, sir.”
“That can’t possibly withstand a highstorm,” Kaladin said.
“We break it down, sir.”
“And carry it back to camp?” Kaladin asked, frowning. “Or do you leave it out here for the storm?”