POV: kaladin
Summary
Kaladin sidles in his wet uniform through the woods south of Kholinar until he can settle into the brush at the edge of the Voidbringers' camp. Their lone visible guard sits openly on a tree stump and is easy enough to slip past; he assumes a real watcher must be in the treeline above and never finds one. The bushes here draw their leaves in at his touch — he is sure he will be spotted just for that — but none of them so much as look his way. Syl lands on his arm with her hands on her hips and surveys the camp beside him.
What he sees does not match anything he expected of the Voidbringers of the mythological past. Across stretched tarps that leak miserably into the dirt, in a half-built tent that does not, the parshmen sit out in the rain because there is not enough shelter to go around. The stolen sacks of Akanny grain have swollen and split; the people he is hunting are eating soggy handfuls of tallew with their fingers because they own no bowls. Their skin is marbled in white and red rather than the deep red-on-black of Rlain in Bridge Four. Their carapace runs only along the forearms and at the temples and leaves their hair untouched. There is no warform. There are no red eyes. They are wearing the same slave smocks they were given as property.
Right in front of him at the camp's edge, a bearded one — a bearded parshman with each hair in his beard unnaturally thick — plays a round of Herdazian cards with Khen on a flat rock. He places a piece, claims a capture, and is asked whether he can really do that. He thinks so. He had said *squires can't capture* — but unless another of his cards is touching hers, isn't there an exception? He scratches at his beard. He should know the rules. He used to stand at his master's elbow with a tray of drinks and watch this game played for hours. Khen gives up on the round and goes off to help others try to coax a fire out of wet branches under another tarp.
Kaladin hears them speak and cold goes through him as if the rain were under his skin. They speak like Alethi. Common darkeyed villagers from Hearthstone would not sound any different, save that Khen's voice runs lower than most human women's. The forlorn card player keeps holding his card after she leaves. Lacquered set — durable in rain — the kind of expensive deck soldiers save up for. He stares down at it with his shoulders slumped. *This is wrong,* Kaladin whispers to Syl. *We've been so wrong.* He had been ready for destroyers with red eyes and terrible forms, the figures of Bridge Four's nightmares; instead he is looking at a damp, frightened cardplayer who used to fetch drinks.
A glowing yellow ribbon streaks through the air and shrieks — *Alarm! You fools! He's there!* — and the camp comes up off the ground. The parshmen grab cudgels made from snapped branches and broom-handles and bunch together holding the sticks the way Kaladin has seen frightened villagers hold them, no stance, no control. He has trained men out of exactly this grip in the chasms. Syl flits up beside him ready to be a Blade. He knows he could put down every one of them with his hands.
He whispers to Syl *no*, and then steps out of the brush with his hands held to the sides. *I surrender.*