Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive 3)

Eshonai would have loved this, Venli thought as she flew hundreds of feet in the air. Rine and the other Fused carried her by means of linked harnesses. It made her feel like a sack of grain being hauled to market, but it gave her quite an amazing view.

Endless hills of stone. Patches of green, often in the shadows of hillsides. Thick forests snarled with undergrowth to present a unified front against the storms.

Eshonai would have been thrilled; she’d have begun drawing maps, talking about the places she could go.

Venli, on the other hand, spent most of these trips feeling sick to her stomach. Normally she didn’t have to suffer for long; towns were close together here in Alethkar. Yet today, her ancestors flew her past many occupied towns without stopping.

Eventually, what first appeared to be another ridge of stones resolved into the walls of a large city, easily twice the size of one of the domes at the Shattered Plains.

Stone buildings and reinforced towers. Marvels and wonders. It had been years since she’d seen Kholinar—only that once, when they’d executed King Gavilar. Now, smoke rose in patches throughout the city, and many of the guard towers had been shattered. The city gates lay broken. Kholinar, it seemed, had been conquered.

Rine and his companions zipped through the air, raising fists toward other Fused. They surveyed the city, then soared out beyond the wall and landed near a bunker outside the city. They waited as Venli undid her harness, then lifted into the air again just high enough that the bottoms of their long cloaks brushed the stones.

“Am I finished with my work, Ancient One?” Venli asked to Subservience. “Is that why you finally brought me here?”

“Done?” Rine said to Ridicule. “Child, you haven’t even begun. Those little villages were practice. Today, your true labor begins.”

“You have three choices,” the Herdazian general said.

He had dark brown skin the color of a weathered stone, and there was a hint of grey in the thin mustache on his upper lip. He stepped up to Sheler, then put his hands to his sides. Remarkably, some men affixed manacles to the general’s own wrists. What on Roshar?

“Pay attention,” the general said. “This is important.”

“To the manacles?” Sheler said in Herdazian. Life on the border had forced him to learn the language. “What is going on here? Do you realize the trouble you’re in for taking me captive?” Sheler started to stand, but one of the Herdazian soldiers forced him down so hard, his knees rapped against the hard stone floor of the tent.

“You have three choices.” The general’s manacles clinked as he twisted his hands in them. “First, you can choose the sword. Now, that might be a clean death. A good beheading rarely hurts. Unfortunately, it won’t be a headsman who gets the chance with you. We’ll give the sword to the women you abused. Each gets a hack, one after another. How long it goes on will depend on them.”

“This is outrageous!” Sheler said. “I’m a lighteyes of the fifth dahn! I’m cousin to the highlord himself, and—”

“Second option,” the general said, “is the hammer. We break your legs and arms, then hang you from the cliff by the ocean. You might last until the storm that way, but it will be miserable.”

Sheler struggled to no avail. Captured by Herdazians. Their general wasn’t even a lighteyes!

The general twisted his hands, then pulled them apart. The manacles clinked to the ground. Nearby, several of his officers grinned, while others groaned. A scribe had tapped off the time, and gave an accounting of the seconds the escape had taken.

The general accepted the applause of several men, then thumped another—a loser in the betting—on his back. Sheler almost seemed forgotten for a moment. Finally, the general turned back to him. “I wouldn’t take the hammer, if I were you. But there’s a third option: the hog.”

“I demand the right of ransom!” Sheler said. “You must contact my highprince and accept payment based on my rank!”

“Ransom is for men caught in battle,” the general said. “Not bastards caught robbing and murdering civilians.”

“My homeland is under invasion!” Sheler shouted. “I was gathering resources so we might mount a resistance!”

“A resistance is not what we caught you mounting.” The general kicked at the manacles by his feet. “Choose one of the three options. I don’t have all day.”

Sheler licked his lips. How had he ended up in this situation? His homeland gone crazy, the parshmen rampaging, his men scattered by flying monsters? Now this? The dirty Herdazians obviously weren’t going to listen to reason. They …

Wait.

“Did you say hog?” Sheler asked.

“It lives down by the shore,” the Herdazian general said. “That’s your third option. We grease you, and you wrestle the hog. It’s fun for the men to watch. They need sport now and then.”

“And if I do this, you won’t kill me?”

“No, but this isn’t as easy as you think. I’ve tried it myself, so I can speak with authority.”

Crazy Herdazians. “I choose the hog.”

“As you wish.” The general picked up the manacles and handed them to his officer.

“Thought you’d fail these ones for sure,” the officer said. “The merchant claimed they’re from the best Thaylen locksmiths.”

“Doesn’t matter how good the lock is, Jerono,” the general said with a grin, “if the cuffs are loose.” What a ridiculous little man—too-wide smile, a flat nose, a missing tooth. Why, Highlord Amaram would have—

Sheler was jerked to his feet by the chains, then pulled through the camp of Herdazian soldiers on the Alethi border. There were more refugees here than actual fighting men! Give Sheler a single company, and he could rout this entire force.

His insufferable captors led him down an incline, past the cliffs and toward the shore. Soldiers and refugees alike gathered above, jeering and calling. Obviously, the Herdazian general was too frightened to actually kill an Alethi officer. So they would humiliate him by making him wrestle a pig. They’d have a good laugh, then send him away smarting.

Idiots. He’d come back with an army.

One man locked Sheler’s chain to a metal loop on the stones. Another approached with a pitcher of oil. They poured it over Sheler’s head; he sputtered as the liquid ran down his face. “What is that stench?”

Above, someone blew a horn.

“I’d say ‘good luck,’ boss,” the Herdazian soldier told Sheler as his companion ran off, “but I’ve got three marks on you not lasting a full minute. Still, who knows. When the general was chained down here, he got out in less.”

The ocean started to churn.

“Of course,” the soldier said, “the general likes this kind of thing. He’s a little weird.”

The soldier dashed back up the bank, leaving Sheler locked in place, doused in pungent oil, and gaping as an enormous claw broke the surface of the ocean.

Perhaps “the hog” was more of a nickname.

Venli’s little spren—whom she’d named Timbre—peeked around the room, looking in each corner and shadowed place, like she did each time Venli let her out of the pouch.