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

Soldiers had bunched up around the back of the bridge, archers forming at the sides and firing into the Parshendi lines as the heavy cavalry charge—led by Highprince Sadeas himself, virtually indestructible in his Shardplate—tried to push the enemy back.

Kaladin wavered, dizzy, dismayed at the sight of so many men running, shouting, firing arrows and throwing spears. Five bridgemen, probably dead, lost in all of that—

He spotted a figure huddled just beside the chasm lip with arrows flying back and forth over his head. It was Dabbid, one of the bridgemen. He curled up, arm twisted at an awkward angle.

Kaladin charged in. He threw himself to the ground and crawled beneath the zipping arrows, hoping that the Parshendi would ignore a couple of unarmed bridgemen. Dabbid didn’t even notice when Kaladin reached him. He was in shock, lips moving soundlessly, eyes dazed. Kaladin grabbed him awkwardly, afraid to stand up too high lest an arrow hit him.

He dragged Dabbid away from the edge in a clumsy half crawl. He kept slipping on blood, falling, abrading his arms on the rock, hitting his face against the stone. He persisted, towing the younger man out from underneath the flying arrows. Finally, he got far enough away that he risked standing. He tried to pick up Dabbid. But his muscles were so weak. He strained and slipped, exhausted, falling to the stones.

He lay there, gasping, the pain of his side finally washing over him. So tired.…

He stood up shakily, then tried again to grab Dabbid. He blinked away tears of frustration, too weak to even pull the man.

“Airsick lowlander,” a voice growled.

Kaladin turned as Rock arrived. The massive Horneater grabbed Dabbid under the arms, pulling him. “Crazy,” he grumbled to Kaladin, but easily lifted the wounded bridgeman and carried him back to the hollow.

Kaladin followed. He collapsed in the hollow, his back to the rock. The surviving bridgemen huddled around him, eyes haunted. Rock set Dabbid down.

“Four more,” Kaladin said between gasps. “We have to find them.…”

“Murk and Leyten,” Teft said. The older bridgeman had been near the back this run, and hadn’t taken any wounds. “And Adis and Corl. They were in the front.”

That’s right, Kaladin thought, exhausted. How could I forget.… “Murk is dead,” he said. “The others might live.” He tried to stumble to his feet.

“Idiot,” Rock said. “Stay here. Is all right. I will do this thing.” He hesitated. “Guess I’m an idiot too.” He scowled, but went back out onto the battlefield. Teft hesitated, then chased after him.

Kaladin breathed in and out, holding his side. He couldn’t decide if the pain of the arrow impact hurt more than the cut.

Save lives.…

He crawled over to the three wounded. Hobber—with an arrow through the leg—would wait, and Dabbid had only a broken arm. Gadol was the worst off, with that hole in his side. Kaladin stared at the wound. He didn’t have an operating table; he didn’t even have antiseptic. How was he supposed to do anything?

He shoved despair aside. “One of you go fetch me a knife,” he told the bridgemen. “Take it off the body of a soldier who has fallen. Someone else build a fire!”

The bridgemen looked at each other.

“Dunny, you get the knife,” Kaladin said as he held his hand to Gadol’s wound, trying to stanch the blood. “Narm, can you make a fire?”

“With what?” the man asked.

Kaladin pulled off his vest and shirt, then handed the shirt to Narm. “Use this as tinder and gather some fallen arrows for wood. Does anyone have flint and steel?”

Moash did, fortunately. You carried anything valuable you had with you on a bridge run; other bridgemen might steal it if you left it behind.

“Move quickly!” Kaladin said. “Someone else, go rip open a rockbud and get me the watergourd inside.”

They stood for a few moments. Then, blessedly, they did as he demanded. Perhaps they were too stunned to object. Kaladin tore open Gadol’s shirt, exposing the wound. It was bad, terribly bad. If it had cut the intestines or some of the other organs …

He ordered one of the bridgemen to hold a bandage to Gadol’s forehead to stanch the smaller blood flow there—anything would help—and inspected the wounded side with the speed his father had taught him. Dunny returned quickly with a knife. Narm was having trouble with the fire, though. The man cursed, trying his flint and steel again.

Gadol was spasming. Kaladin pressed bandages to the wound, feeling helpless. There wasn’t a place he could make a tourniquet for a wound like this. There wasn’t anything he could do but—

Gadol spit up blood, coughing. “They break the land itself!” he hissed, eyes wild. “They want it, but in their rage they will destroy it. Like the jealous man burns his rich things rather than let them be taken by his enemies! They come!”

He gasped. And then he fell still, his dead eyes staring upward, bloody spittle running in a trail down his cheek. His final, haunting words hung over them. Not far away, soldiers fought and screamed, but the bridgemen were silent.

Kaladin sat back, stunned—as always—by the pain of losing someone. His father had always said that time would dull his sensitivity.

In this, Lirin had been wrong.

He felt so tired. Rock and Teft were hurrying back toward the cleft in the rock, bearing a body between them.

They wouldn’t have brought anyone unless he was still alive, Kaladin told himself. Think of the ones you can help. “Keep that fire going!” he said, pointing at Narm. “Don’t let it die! Someone heat the blade in it.”

Narm jumped, noticing as if for the first time that he’d actually managed to get a small flame started. Kaladin turned away from the dead Gadol and made room for Rock and Teft. They deposited a very bloody Leyten on the ground. He was breathing shallowly and had two arrows sticking from him, one from the shoulder, the other from the opposite arm. Another had grazed his stomach, and the cut there had been widened by movement. It looked like his left leg had been trampled by a horse; it was broken, and he had a large gash where the skin had split.

“The other three are dead,” Teft said. “He nearly is too. Nothing much we can do. But you said to bring him, so—”

Kaladin knelt down immediately, working with careful, efficient speed. He pressed a bandage against the side, holding it in place with his knee, then tied a quick bandage on the leg, ordering one of the soldiers to hold it firm and elevate the limb. “Where’s that knife!” Kaladin yelled, hurriedly tying a loose tourniquet around the arm. He needed to stop the blood right now; he’d worry about saving the arm later.

Youthful Dunny rushed over with the heated blade. Kaladin lifted the side bandage and quickly cauterized the wound there. Leyten was unconscious, his breathing growing more shallow.