Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive 3)

It felt good to just be told what to do.

What happened at the Shattered Plains wasn’t my fault, he thought as he hauled the sledge. I was pushed into it. I can’t be blamed. These thoughts comforted him.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t ignore their apparent destination. He’d walked this path dozens of times, running caravans with his uncle even when he’d been a youth. Across the river, straight southeast. Over Ishar’s Field and cutting past the town of Inkwell.

The Voidbringers were marching to take Kholinar. The caravan included tens of thousands of parshmen armed with axes or spears. They wore what Moash now knew was called warform: a parshman form with carapace armor and a strong physique. They weren’t experienced—watching their nightly training told him they were basically the equivalent of darkeyes scrounged from villages and pressed into the army.

But they were learning, and they had access to the Fused. Those zipped through the air or strode along beside carts, powerful and imperious—and surrounded by dark energy. There seemed to be different varieties, but each was intimidating.

Everything was converging on the capital. Should that bother him? After all, what had Kholinar ever done for him? It was the place where his grandparents had been left to die, cold and alone in a prison cell. It was where the blighted King Elhokar had danced and connived while good people rotted.

Did humankind even deserve this kingdom?

During his youth, he’d listened to traveling ardents who accompanied the caravans. He knew that long ago, humankind had won. Aharietiam, the final confrontation with the Voidbringers, had happened thousands of years ago.

What had they done with that victory? They’d set up false gods in the form of men whose eyes reminded them of the Knights Radiant. The life of men over the centuries had been nothing more than a long string of murders, wars, and thefts.

The Voidbringers had obviously returned because men had proven they couldn’t govern themselves. That was why the Almighty had sent this scourge.

Indeed, the more he marched, the more Moash admired the Voidbringers. The armies were efficient, and the troops learned quickly. The caravans were well supplied; when an overseer saw that Moash’s boots were looking worn, he had a new pair by evening.

Each wagon or sledge was given two parshman overseers, but these were told to use their whips sparingly. They were quietly trained for the position, and Moash heard the occasional conversation between an overseer—once a parshman slave—and an unseen spren who gave them directions.

The Voidbringers were smart, driven, and efficient. If Kholinar fell to this force, it would be no more than humankind deserved. Yes … perhaps the time for his people had passed. Moash had failed Kaladin and the others—but that was merely how men were in this debased age. He couldn’t be blamed. He was a product of his culture.

Only one oddity marred his observations. The Voidbringers seemed so much better than the human armies he’d been part of … except for one thing.

There was a group of parshman slaves.

They pulled one of the sledges, and always walked apart from the humans. They wore workform, not warform—though otherwise they looked exactly like the other parshmen, with the same marbled skin. Why did this group pull a sledge?

At first, as Moash plodded across the endless plains of central Alethkar, he found the sight of them encouraging. It suggested that the Voidbringers could be egalitarian. Maybe there’d simply been too few men with the strength to pull these sledges.

Yet if that were so, why were these parshman sledge-pullers treated so poorly? The overseers did little to hide their disgust, and were allowed to whip the poor creatures without restriction. Moash rarely glanced in their direction without finding one of them being beaten, yelled at, or abused.

Moash’s heart wrenched to see and hear this. Everyone else seemed to work so well together; everything else about the army seemed so perfect. Except this.

Who were these poor souls?

* * *

The overseer called a break, and Moash dropped his rope, then took a long pull on his waterskin. It was their twenty-first day of marching, which he only knew because some of the other slaves kept track. He judged the location as several days past Inkwell, in the final stretch toward Kholinar.

He ignored the other slaves and settled down in the shade of the sledge, which was piled high with cut timber. Not far behind them, a village burned. There hadn’t been anyone in it, as word had run before them. Why had the Voidbringers burned it, but not others they’d passed? Perhaps it was to send a message—indeed, that smoke trail was ominous. Or perhaps it was to prevent any potential flanking armies from using the village.

As his crew waited—Moash didn’t know their names, and hadn’t bothered to ask—the parshman crew trudged past, bloodied and whipped, their overseers yelling them onward. They’d lagged behind. Pervasive cruel treatment led to a tired crew, which in turn led to them being forced to march to catch up when everyone else got a water break. That, of course, only wore them out and caused injuries—which made them lag farther behind, which made them get whipped …

That’s what happened to Bridge Four, back before Kaladin, Moash thought. Everyone said we were unlucky, but it was just a self-perpetuating downward spiral.

Once that crew passed, trailing a few exhaustionspren, one of Moash’s overseers called for his team to take up their ropes and get moving again. She was a young parshwoman with dark red skin, marbled only slightly with white. She wore a havah. Though it didn’t seem like marching clothing, she wore it well. She had even done up the sleeve to cover her safehand.

“What’d they do, anyway?” he said as he took up his rope.

“What was that?” she asked, looking back at him. Storms. Save for that skin and the odd singsong quality to her voice, she could have been a pretty Makabaki caravan girl.

“That parshman crew,” he said. “What did they do to deserve such rough treatment?”

He didn’t actually expect an answer. But the parshwoman followed his gaze, then shook her head. “They harbored a false god. Brought him into the very center among us.”

“The Almighty?”

She laughed. “A real false god, a living one. Like our living gods.” She looked up as one of the Fused passed overhead.

“There are lots who think the Almighty is real,” Moash said.

“If that’s the case, why are you pulling a sledge?” She snapped her fingers, pointing.

Moash picked up his rope, joining the other men in a double line. They merged with the enormous column of marching feet, scraping sledges, and rattling wheels. The Parshendi wanted to arrive at the next town before an impending storm. They’d weathered both types—highstorm and Everstorm—sheltering in villages along the way.

Moash fell into the sturdy rhythm of the work. It wasn’t long until he was sweating. He’d grown accustomed to the colder weather in the east, near the Frostlands. It was strange to be in a place where the sun felt hot on his skin, and now the weather here was turning toward summer.

His sledge soon caught up to the parshman crew. The two sledges walked side by side for a time, and Moash liked to think that keeping pace with his crew could motivate the poor parshmen. Then one of them slipped and fell, and the entire team lurched to a stop.

The whipping began. The cries, the crack of leather on skin.