Rhythm of War (9781429952040)

by Brandon Sanderson

  The second step is to start dropping a weight. If a weight falls all the way, swap to the next one using the dial on the back of your wrist. You see it?

  “I do,” he said.

  Once you stop, you’ll remain hanging until you disengage the device. But so long as you have another weight that hasn’t run out, you can turn the dial to that one, then continue moving upward. Or if you’re bold enough, you can disengage the device and fall for a second while you point it another direction, then engage it again and set it to pull you that way instead.

  “That sounds dangerous,” Kaladin said. “If I’m up high in the air, and need to get over to a balcony or something, I have to drop into free fall for a bit to reset the direction of the device so it can pull me laterally instead of up and down?”

  Yes, unfortunately. The engineer who created this has grand and lofty ideas—but not much practical sense. But it’s better than nothing, Highmarshal. And it’s the best I can do for you right now.

  Kaladin took a deep breath. “Understood. I’m sorry if I sounded ungrateful, Brightness. It’s been a rough few days. I’m glad for the help. I’ll familiarize myself with it.”

  Excellent. You shouldn’t have to worry about the Voidlight in the gemstones running out through practice—conjoined rubies don’t use much energy to maintain their connection. But they will run out naturally, over time. We’ll have to figure out what to do about that when it happens.

  For now, I’m hoping the Sibling will soon trust me enough to tell me where to find the remaining nodes. Once I have that information, I can devise a plan to protect them, perhaps by distracting the enemy’s search toward a different region of the tower. It’s vital that you keep that shield in place as long as possible, to give me time to figure out what is wrong with the Light in the tower and its defenses.

  “Any movement there?” Kaladin asked.

  No, but I’m currently focused on filling holes in my understanding. Once I have the proper fundamentals on Stormlight and Voidlight, I hope I’ll make more rapid progress.

  “Understood,” Kaladin said. “I’ll contact you again in a few hours, if you can make time, to discuss my experience with this device.”

  Thank you.

  He stepped away from the wall. Syl stood in the air beside him, inspecting the fabrial.

  “So?” Kaladin asked her. “What do you think?”

  “I think you’re going to look extremely silly using it. I can’t wait.”

  He walked out to a nearby hallway. Up here on the twentieth floor, he should be safe practicing in the open—assuming he stayed away from the atrium. He walked the length of the hallway, setting out amethysts to light the way. Then he stood at one end, looking down the line of lights. The fabrial left his fingers free, but that bar in the center of his hand would interfere with fighting. He’d have to one-hand his spear, as if he were fighting with a shield.

  “We’re going to try it here?” Syl asked, darting over to him. “Isn’t it for getting up and down?”

  “Brightness Navani told me it pulls you in whatever direction you point it,” he said. “New Windrunners always want to go up with their Lashings—but the more experience you have, the more you realize you can accomplish far more if you think in three dimensions.”

  He pointed his left hand down the hallway and opened his palm. Then, thinking it wise, he took in a little Stormlight. Finally, he used his thumb to flip the little lever and engage the mechanism. Nothing happened.

  So far so good, he thought, trying to move his hand right or left. It resisted, held in place. Good.

  He eased his hand into a fist, squeezing the bar across his palm, and was immediately pulled through the corridor. He skidded on his heels, and wasn’t able to slow himself at all. Those weights really were heavy.

  Kaladin opened his hand, stopping in place. Because the device was still active, when he lifted his feet off the ground, he stayed in the air. However, this also put an incredible amount of stress on his arm, especially the elbow.

  Yes, the device in its current state might be too dangerous for anyone without Stormlight to use. He put his feet back down and tapped the toggle with his thumb to disengage the device, and his arm immediately dropped free. The weight—when he went to check on it—was hanging a little further down into the shaft. As soon as he’d disengaged the device, the brakes had locked, holding the weight in place.

  He went out into the hallway, engaged the device, and gripped the bar firmly. That sent him soaring forward. He tucked up his feet, straining—with effort—to keep himself otherwise upright. In that moment, difficult though the exercise was, he felt something come alive in him again. The wind in his hair. His body soaring, claiming the sky, albeit in an imperfect way. He found the experience familiar. Even intuitive.

  That lasted right up until the moment when he noticed the quickly approaching far wall. He reacted a little too slowly, first trying to Lash himself backward by instinct. He slammed into the wall hand-first and felt his knuckles crunch. The device continued trying to go forward, crushing his mangled hand further, forcing it to keep the bar compressed. The device held him affixed to the wall until he managed to reach over with his other hand and flip the thumb switch, releasing the mechanism and setting him free.

  He gasped in pain, sucking the Stormlight from a nearby amethyst on the floor. The healing happened slowly, as it had the other day. The pain was acute; he gritted his teeth while he waited—and split skin, broken by bones, made him bleed on the device, staining its leather.

  Syl scowled at the painspren crawling around the floor. “Um, I was wrong. That wasn’t particularly funny.”

  “Sorry,” Kaladin said, eyes watering from the pain.

  “What happened?”

  “Bad instincts,” he said. “Not the device’s fault. I just forgot what I was doing.”

  He sat to wait, and he heard the joints popping and the bones grinding as the Stormlight reknit him. He’d come to rely on his near-instantaneous healing; this was agony.

  It was a good five minutes before he shook out his healed hand and stretched it, good as new, other than some lingering phantom pain. “Right,” he said. “I’ll want to be more careful. I’m playing with some incredible forces in those weights.”

  “At least you didn’t break the fabrial,” Syl said. “Strange as it is to say, it’s a lot easier to get you a new hand than a new device.”

  “True,” he said, standing. He launched himself down the hallway back the way he had come, this time maintaining a careful speed, and slowed himself as he neared the other end.

  Over the next half hour or so he crashed a few more times, though never as spectacularly as that first one. He needed to be very careful to point his hand straight down the center of the hallway, or else he’d drift to the side and end up scraping across the wall. He also had to be acutely aware of the device, as it was remarkably easy to flip the activation switch accidentally by brushing his hand against something.

  He kept practicing, and was able to go back and forth for quite a while before the device stopped working. He lurched to a halt midflight, hanging in the center of the hallway.

  He rested his feet on the ground and deactivated the device. The weight he’d been using had hit the bottom. That had lasted him quite a long time—though much of that time had been resetting and moving around. In actual free fall, he probably wouldn’t have longer than a few minutes of flight. But if he controlled the weight, using it in short bursts, he could make good use of those minutes.

  He wouldn’t be soaring about fighting Heavenly Ones in swooping battles with this. But he could get an extra burst of speed in a fight, and maybe move in an unexpected direction. Navani intended him to use it as a lift. It would work for that, certainly. And he intended to practice going up and down outside once it was dark.

  But Kaladin also saw martial applications. And all in all, the device worked better than he’d expected. So he walked to the end of the hallway to set up again.
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  “More?” Syl asked.

  “You have an appointment or something?” Kaladin asked.

  “Just a little bored.”

  “I could crash into another wall, if you like.”

  “Only if you promise to be amusing when you do it.”

  “What? You want me to break more fingers?”

  “No.” She zipped around him as a ribbon of light. “Breaking your hands isn’t very funny. Try a different body part. A funny one.”

  “I’m going to stop trying to imagine how to manage that,” he said, “and get back to work.”

  “And how long are we going to be doing this decidedly unfunny crashing?”

  “Until we don’t crash, obviously,” Kaladin said. “I had months to train with my Lashings, and longer to prepare for my first fight as a spearman. Judging by how quickly the Fused found the first node, I suspect I’ll have only a few days to train on this device before I need to use it.”

  When the time came—assuming Navani or the Sibling could give him warning—he wanted to be ready. He knew of at least one way to quiet the nightmares, the mounting pressure, and the mental exhaustion. He couldn’t do much about his situation, or the cracks that were ever widening inside him.

  But he could stay busy, and in so doing, not let those cracks define him.

  The sand originated offworld. It is only one of such amazing wonders that come from other lands—I have recently obtained a chain from the lands of the dead, said to be able to anchor a person through Cognitive anomalies. I fail to see what use it could be to me, as I am unable to leave the Rosharan system. But it is a priceless object nonetheless.

  —From Rhythm of War, page 13 undertext

  Jasnah had never gone to war. Oh, she’d been near to war. She’d stayed behind in mobile warcamps. She’d walked battlefields. She’d fought and killed, and had been part of the Battle of Thaylen Field. But she’d never gone to war.

  The other monarchs were baffled. Even the soldiers seemed confused as they parted, letting her stride forward among them in her Shardplate. Dalinar, though, had understood. Until you stand in those lines, holding your sword and facing down the enemy force, you’ll never understand. No book could prepare you, Jasnah. So yes, I think you should go.

  A thousand quotes from noted scholars leaped to her mind. Accounts of what it was like to be in war. She’d read hundreds; some so detailed, she’d been able to smell the blood in the air. Yet they all fled like shadows before sunlight as she reached the front of the coalition armies and looked out at the enemy.

  Their numbers seemed endless. A fungus on the land ahead, black and white and red, weapons glistening in the sun.

  Reports said there were about forty thousand singers here. That was a number she could comprehend, could analyze. But her eyes didn’t see forty thousand, they saw endless ranks. Numbers on a page became meaningless. She hadn’t come to fight forty thousand. She’d come to fight a tide.

  On paper, this place was the Drunmu Basin in Emul. It was a vast ocean of shivering grass and towering pile-vines. In meetings, the Mink had insisted that a battle here favored the coalition side. If they let the enemy retreat to cities and forts, they could hunker down and make for tough shells to crack. Instead he’d pushed them to a place where they’d feel confident standing in a full battle, as they had a slight advantage in high ground and the sun to their backs. Here they would stand, and the Mink could leverage the coalition’s greater numbers and skill to victory.

  So logically she understood that this was a battle that her forces wanted. In person, she felt overwhelmed by the distance to the enemy—distance she, with the others, would have to cross under a barrage of enemy arrows and spears. It was hard not to feel small, even in her Plate.

  The horns sounded, ordering the advance, and she noted two Edgedancers keeping close to her—likely at her uncle’s request. Though she’d always imagined battles beginning with a grand charge, her force moved mechanically. Shields up, in formation, at a solid march that the veteran troops maintained as arrows started falling. Running would break the lines, not to mention leave the soldiers winded when they arrived.

  She winced as the first arrows struck. They fell with an arrhythmic series of snaps, metal on wood, like hail. One bounced off her shoulder and another skimmed her helm. Fortunately, the arrows were soon interrupted as Azish light cavalry executed a raid on the enemy archers. She heard the hooves, saw the Windrunners soaring overhead, guarding the horsemen from the air. The enemy kept misjudging cavalry, which hadn’t been available in significant numbers thousands of years ago.

  Through it all, the Alethi troops kept marching forward, shields up. It took an excruciatingly long time, but since Jasnah’s side was the aggressor, the enemy had no impetus to meet them. They maintained their position atop their shallow incline. She could see why the enemy would think it wise to stand here, as Jasnah’s forces had to make their assault up this hillside.

  The enemy resolved into a block of figures in carapace and steel armor, holding large shields and sprouting with pikes several lines deep. These singers did not fight like the Parshendi on the Shattered Plains; these were drilled troops, and the Fused had adapted quickly to modern warfare. They had a slight myopia when it came to cavalry, true, but they knew far better how to most effectively employ their Surgebinders.

  By the time Jasnah’s block of troops was in position, she felt exhausted from staying at a heightened level of alert during the march. She stopped with the others, grass retreating in a wave before her—as if it could sense the coming fight like it sensed a storm. She had ordered her Plate to intentionally dull its light, so it looked like that of an ordinary Shardbearer. The enemy would still single her out, but not recognize her as the queen. She would be safer this way.

  The horns rang out. Jasnah started up the last part of the incline at not quite a run. It was too shallow to be called a hill, and if she’d been out on a walk, she wouldn’t have remarked much on the slope. But now she felt it with each step. Her Plate urged her to move, as did the Stormlight she breathed in, but if she ran too far ahead of her block of troops she could be surrounded. The enemy would have Fused and Regals hiding among their ranks, waiting to ambush her. Other than the Heavenly Ones, few Fused chose to meet Shardbearers in direct combat.

  Jasnah summoned Ivory as a Blade, the weapon falling into her waiting gauntlets. Ready? she asked.

  Yes.

  She charged the last few feet to the pike block and swept with Ivory. Her job was to break their lines; a full Shardbearer could cause entire formations to crumble around her.

  To their credit, this singer formation did not break. It buckled backward, pikes scraping her armor as she tried to get in close and attack, but it held. Her honor guard—along with those two Edgedancers—came in behind to keep her from being surrounded. Nearby, another block of five thousand soldiers hit the enemy. Grunts and crunches sounded in the air.

  Holding her Blade in a two-handed grip, Jasnah swept back and forth, cutting free pike heads and trying to strike inward at the enemy. They moved with unexpected flexibility, singers dancing away, staying out of the range of her sword.

  This is less effective, Ivory said to her. Our other powers are. Use them?

  No. I want to know the real feeling of war, Jasnah thought. Or as close to it as I can allow myself, in Plate with Blade.

  Ever the scholar, Ivory said with a long-suffering tone as Jasnah shouldered past some pikes—which were practically useless against her—and managed to ram her Blade into the chest of a singer. The singer’s eyes burned as she fell, and Jasnah ripped the sword around, causing others to curse and shy back.

  It wasn’t only academics that drove her. If she was going to order soldiers into battle, she needed more than descriptions from books. She needed to feel what they felt. And yes, she could use her powers. Soulcasting had proven useful to her in fights before, but without Dalinar, she had limited Stormlight and wanted to conserve it.

  She woul
d escape to Shadesmar if things went poorly. She wasn’t foolish. Yet this knowledge nagged at her as she swept through the formation, keeping the enemy busy. She couldn’t ever truly feel what it was like to be an unfortunate spearman on the front lines.

  She could hear them shouting as the two forces crashed together. The formations seemed so deliberate, and on the grand scale they were careful things. Positioned with a kind of terrible momentum that forced the men at the front to fight. So while the block remained firm, the front lines ground against one another, screaming like steel being bent.

  That was a feeling Jasnah would never experience. The weight of a block of soldiers on each side crushing you between them—with no possible escape. Still, she wanted to know what she could. She swept around, forcing more singers back—but others began prodding her with pikes and spears, shoving her to the side, threatening to trip her.

  She’d underestimated the effectiveness of those pikes; yes, they were useless for breaking her armor, but they could maneuver her like a chull being prodded with poles. She stumbled and felt her first true spike of fear.

  Control it. Instead of trying to right herself, she turned her shoulder toward the enemy, turning her off-balance stumble into a rush, crashing out of the enemy ranks near her soldiers. She hadn’t killed many of the enemy, but she didn’t need to. Their ranks rippled and bowed from her efforts, and her soldiers exploited this. On either side of her, they matched pikes and spears with the enemy—the front row of her soldiers rotating to the back line of the block every ten minutes under the careful orders of the rank commander.

  Engulfed by the sounds of war, Jasnah turned toward the enemy, and her honor guard formed up behind her. Then—sweat trickling down her brow—she charged in again. This time when the enemy parted around her, they revealed a hulking creature hidden in their ranks. A Fused with carapace that grew into large axelike protrusions around his hands: one of the Magnified Ones. Fused with the Surge of Progression, which let them grow carapace with extreme precision and speed.