The Way of Kings, Part 1 (The Stormlight Archive #1.1)

Then bounced off and slammed back into the ground. He was so stunned that he cried out, and he felt the storm within dampen as breath escaped.

He lay on his back as Stormlight rose from him more quickly now that he was breathing. He lay there as the last of it burned away.

Syl landed on his chest. “Kaladin? What was that?”

“Me being an idiot,” he replied, sitting up and feeling an ache in his back and a sharp pain in his elbow where he’d hit the ground. “Teft said that the Radiants were able to walk on walls, and I felt so alive… .”

Syl walked on air, stepping as if down a set of stairs. “I don’t think you’re ready for that yet. Don’t be so risky. If you die, I go stupid again, you know.”

“I’ll try to keep that in mind,” Kaladin said, climbing to his feet. “Maybe I’ll remove dying from my list of tasks to do this week.”

She snorted, zipping into the air, becoming a ribbon again. “Come on, hurry up.” She shot off down the chasm. Kaladin collected the dun sphere, then dug into the pouch for another one to provide light. Had he drained them all? No. The others still glowed strongly. He selected a ruby mark, then hurried after Syl.

She led him to a narrow chasm that contained a small group of fresh Parshendi corpses. “This is morbid, Kaladin,” Syl noted, standing above the bodies.

“I know. Do you know where Lopen went?”

“I sent him scavenging nearby, fetching the things you asked him for.”

“Bring him, please.”

Syl sighed, but zipped away. She always got testy when he made her appear to someone other than him. Kaladin knelt down. Parshendi all looked so similar. That same square face, those blocky—almost rocklike—features. Some had the beards with bits of gemstone tied in them. Those glowed, but not brightly. Cut gemstones held Stormlight better. Why was that?

Rumors in camp claimed that the Parshendi took the wounded humans away and ate them. Rumors also said they left their dead, not caring for the fallen, never building them proper pyres. But that last part was false. They did care about their dead. They all seemed to have the same sensibility that Shen did; he threw a fit every time one of the bridgemen so much as touched a Parshendi corpse.

I’d better be right about this, Kaladin thought grimly, slipping a knife off one of the Parshendi bodies. It was beautifully ornamented and forged, the steel lined with glyphs Kaladin didn’t recognize. He began to cut at the strange breastplate armor that grew from the corpse’s chest.

Kaladin quickly determined that Parshendi physiology was very different from human physiology. Small blue ligaments held the breastplate to the skin underneath. It was attached all the way across. He continued working. There wasn’t much blood; it had pooled at the corpse’s back or leaked away. His knife wasn’t a surgeon’s tool, but it did the job just fine. By the time Syl returned with Lopen, Kaladin had gotten the breastplate free and had moved on to the carapace helm. It was harder to remove; it had grown into the skull in places, and he had to saw with the serrated section of the blade.

“Ho, gancho,” Lopen said, a sack slung over his shoulder. “You don’t like them at all, do you?”

Kaladin stood, wiping his hands on the Parshendi man’s skirt. “Did you find what I asked for?”

“Sure did,” Lopen said, letting down the sack and digging into it. He pulled out an armored leather vest and cap, the type that spearmen used. Then he took out some thin leather straps and a medium-sized wooden spearman’s shield. Finally came a series of deep red bones. Parshendi bones. At the very bottom of the sack was the rope, the one Lopen had bought and tossed into the chasm, then stashed down below.

“You haven’t lost your wits, have you?” Lopen asked, eyeing the bones. “Because if you have, I’ve got a cousin who makes this drink for people who’ve lost their wits, and it might make you better, sure.”

“If I’d lost my wits,” Kaladin said, walking over to a pool of still water to wash off the carapace helm, “would I say that I had?”

“I don’t know,” Lopen said, leaning back. “Maybe. Guess it doesn’t matter if you’re crazy or not.”

“You’d follow a crazy man into battle?”

“Sure,” Lopen said. “If you’re crazy, you’re a good type, and I like you. Not a killing-people-in-their-sleep type of crazy.” He smiled. “Besides. We all follow crazies all the time. Do it every day with lighteyes.”

Kaladin chuckled.

“So what’s this all for?”

Kaladin didn’t answer. He brought the breastplate over to the leather vest, then tied it onto the front with some of the leather straps. He did the same with the cap and the helm, though he eventually had to saw some grooves into the helm with his knife to make it stay.

Once done, Kaladin used the last straps to tie the bones together and attach them to the front of the round wooden shield. The bones rattled as he lifted the shield, but he decided it was good enough.

He took shield, cap, and breastplate and put them all into Lopen’s sack. They barely fit. “All right,” he said, standing up. “Syl, lead us to the short chasm.” They’d spent some time investigating, finding the best place to launch arrows into the bottom of permanent bridges. One bridge in particular was close to Sadeas’s warcamp—so they often traversed it on the way out on a bridge run—and spanned a particularly shallow chasm. Only about forty feet deep, rather than the usual hundred or more.

She nodded, then zipped away, leading them there. Kaladin and Lopen followed. Teft had orders to lead the others back and meet Kaladin at the base of the ladder, but Kaladin and Lopen should be far ahead of them. He spent the hike listening with half an ear as Lopen talked about his extended family.

The more Kaladin thought about what he was planning, the more brazen it seemed. Perhaps Lopen was right to question his sanity. But Kaladin had tried being rational. He’d tried being careful. That had failed; now there wasn’t any more time for logic or care. Hashal obviously intended Bridge Four to be exterminated.

When clever, careful plans failed, it was time to try something desperate.

Lopen cut off suddenly. Kaladin hesitated. The Herdazian man had grown pale-faced and frozen in place. What was …

Scraping. Kaladin froze as well, a panic rising in him. One of the side corridors echoed with a deep grinding sound. Kaladin turned slowly, just in time to catch sight of something large—no, something enormous—moving down the distant chasm. Shadows in the dim light, the sound of chitinous legs scratching on rock. Kaladin held his breath, sweating, but the beast didn’t come in their direction.

The scraping grew softer, then eventually faded. He and Lopen stood immobile for a long time after the last sound had vanished.

Finally, Lopen spoke. “Guess the nearby ones aren’t all dead, eh, gancho?”

“Yeah,” Kaladin said. He jumped suddenly as Syl zipped back to find them. He unconsciously sucked in Stormlight as he did so, and when she alighted in the air, she found him sheepishly glowing.

“What is going on?” she demanded, hands on hips.