Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive 3)

—From Oathbringer, preface

“Now this,” Kaladin said, “isn’t actually that serious a wound. I know it looks deep, but it’s often better to be cut deep by a sharp knife than to be raggedly gouged by something dull.”

He pressed the skin of Khen’s arm together and applied the bandage to her cut. “Always use clean cloth you’ve boiled—rotspren love dirty cloth. Infection is the real danger here; you’ll spot it as red along the outsides of the wound that grows and streaks. There will be pus too. Always wash out a cut before binding it.”

He patted Khen’s arm and took back his knife, which had caused the offending laceration when Khen had been using it to cut branches off a fallen tree for firewood. Around her, the other parshmen gathered the cakes they’d dried in the sun.

They had a surprising number of resources, all things considered. Several parshmen had thought to grab metal buckets during their raid—which had worked as pots for boiling—and the waterskins were going to be a lifesaver. He joined Sah, the parshman who had originally been his captor, among the trees of their improvised camp. The parshman was lashing a stone axehead to a branch.

Kaladin took it from him and tested it against a log, judging how well it split the wood. “You need to lash it tighter,” Kaladin said. “Get the leather strips wet and really pull as you wrap it. If you aren’t careful, it’ll fall off on you midswing.”

Sah grunted, taking back the hatchet and grumbling to himself as he undid the lashings. He eyed Kaladin. “You can go check on someone else, human.”

“We should march tonight,” Kaladin said. “We’ve been in one spot too long. And break into small groups, like I said.”

“We’ll see.”

“Look, if there’s something wrong with my advice…”

“Nothing is wrong.”

“But—”

Sah sighed, looking up and meeting Kaladin’s eyes. “Where did a slave learn to give orders and strut about like a lighteyes?”

“My entire life was not spent as a slave.”

“I hate,” Sah continued, “feeling like a child.” He started rewrapping the axehead, tighter this time. “I hate being taught things that I should already know. Most of all, I hate needing your help. We ran. We escaped. Now what? You leap in, start telling us what to do? We’re back to following Alethi orders again.”

Kaladin stayed silent.

“That yellow spren isn’t any better,” Sah muttered. “Hurry up. Keep moving. She tells us we’re free, then with the very next breath berates us for not obeying quickly enough.”

They were surprised that Kaladin couldn’t see the spren. They’d also mentioned to him the sounds they heard, distant rhythms, almost music.

“ ‘Freedom’ is a strange word, Sah,” Kaladin said softly, settling down. “These last few months, I’ve probably been more ‘free’ than at any time since my childhood. You want to know what I did with it? I stayed in the same place, serving another highlord. I wonder if men who use cords to bind are fools, since tradition, society, and momentum are going to tie us all down anyway.”

“I don’t have traditions,” Sah said. “Or society. But still, my ‘freedom’ is that of a leaf. Dropped from the tree, I just blow on the wind and pretend I’m in charge of my destiny.”

“That was almost poetry, Sah.”

“I have no idea what that is.” He pulled the last lashing tight and held up the new hatchet.

Kaladin took it and buried it into the log next to him. “Better.”

“Aren’t you worried, human? Teaching us to make cakes is one thing. Giving us weapons is quite another.”

“A hatchet is a tool, not a weapon.”

“Perhaps,” Sah said. “But with this same chipping and sharpening method you taught, I will eventually make a spear.”

“You act as if a fight is inevitable.”

Sah laughed. “You don’t think it is?”

“You have a choice.”

“Says the man with the brand on his forehead. If they’re willing to do that to one of their own, what brutality awaits a bunch of thieving parshmen?”

“Sah, it doesn’t have to come to war. You don’t have to fight the humans.”

“Perhaps. But let me ask you this.” He set the axe across his lap. “Considering what they did to me, why wouldn’t I?”

Kaladin couldn’t force out an objection. He remembered his own time as a slave: the frustration, powerlessness, anger. They’d branded him with shash because he was dangerous. Because he’d fought back.

Dared he demand this man do otherwise?

“They’ll want to enslave us again,” Sah continued, taking the hatchet and hacking at the log next to him, starting to strip off the rough bark as Kaladin had instructed, so they could have tinder. “We’re money lost, and a dangerous precedent. Your kind will expend a fortune figuring out what changed to give us back our minds, and they’ll find a way to reverse it. They’ll strip from me my sanity, and set me to carrying water again.”

“Maybe … maybe we can convince them otherwise. I know good men among the Alethi lighteyes, Sah. If we talk to them, show them how you can talk and think—that you’re like regular people—they’ll listen. They’ll agree to give you your freedom. That’s how they treated your cousins on the Shattered Plains when they first met.”

Sah slammed the hatchet down into the wood, sending a chip fluttering into the air. “And that’s why we should be free now? Because we’re acting like you? We deserved slavery before, when we were different? It’s all right to dominate us when we won’t fight back, but now it’s not, because we can talk?”

“Well, I mean—”

“That’s why I’m angry! Thank you for what you’re showing us, but don’t expect me to be happy that I need you for it. This just reinforces the belief within you, maybe even within myself, that your people should be the ones who decide upon our freedom in the first place.”

Sah stalked off, and once he was gone, Syl appeared from the underbrush and settled on Kaladin’s shoulder, alert—watching for the Voidspren—but not immediately alarmed.

“I think I can sense a highstorm coming,” she whispered.

“What? Really?”

She nodded. “It’s distant still. A day or three.” She cocked her head. “I suppose I could have done this earlier, but I didn’t need to. Or know I wanted to. You always had the lists.”

Kaladin took a deep breath. How to protect these people from the storm? He’d have to find shelter. He’d …

I’m doing it again.

“I can’t do this, Syl,” Kaladin whispered. “I can’t spend time with these parshmen, see their side.”

“Why?”

“Because Sah is right. This is going to come to war. The Voidspren will drive the parshmen into an army, and rightly so, after what was done to them. Our kind will have to fight back or be destroyed.”

“Then find the middle ground.”

“Middle ground only comes in war after lots of people have died—and only after the important people are worried they might actually lose. Storms, I shouldn’t be here. I’m starting to want to defend these people! Teach them to fight. I don’t dare—the only way I can fight the Voidbringers is to pretend there’s a difference between the ones I have to protect and the ones I have to kill.”