Bridge Four
POV: kaladin
Summary
Tvlakv's caravan rolls into the western rim of the Shattered Plains, inside one of the ten craterlike warcamps of the Alethi highprinces. The banner — a yellow tower-and-hammer on deep green — is Sadeas's. Tvlakv parades his slaves before Hashal, scribe-wife of a camp officer, who beats the price down and inspects each man with a rod. She lingers on Kaladin — better-muscled than the others, with a shash-marked forehead — and asks whether he is a military man. Kaladin offers a lie about drunken murder, hoping for a spear; Tvlakv interrupts to confess that he is a deserter and an instigator. Hashal nods, marks him for "special treatment," and assigns him and his wagonmates to the bridge crews.
A scarred, one-eyed sergeant named Gaz receives them in a lumberyard subcamp ringed by bridgemen eating slop. Gaz sends Kaladin barefoot and shirtless to the open slot at the tail of Bridge Four; the crew's last bridgeleader threw himself into the Honor Chasm the night before. A signal of horns sets the bridgemen lifting. Kaladin shoulders an unpadded support and runs, half-blind beneath the wood, across countless plateaus and permanent chasm bridges, with the army close behind. A leathery, kindly fellow bridgeman talks him through breathing and step-counting, names Brightlord Dalinar as the most honorable Shardbearer in the king's army — and notes that Dalinar refuses to use bridge crews the way Sadeas does.
After an hour of carrying, the column reaches an unbridged chasm. The bridgemen reverse positions for the assault, and Kaladin — newcomer — is shoved to the front row, where he can finally see what lies ahead: a line of Parshendi in marbled red-and-black skin and rusty orange armor, kneeling with recurve shortbows. "Talenelat'Elin, bearer of all agonies," whispers the man beside him. The bridges charge; the volley falls. Fearspren wriggle violet from the wood as bridgemen drop in sprays of blood. Kaladin's leathery friend dies, an arrow through the neck. The bridge is laid; armored foot soldiers take over pushing while the cavalry — including Sadeas himself in burnished red Shardplate — thunders across to break the Parshendi line. Kaladin collapses on the plateau and surrenders to unconsciousness.
He wakes hours later to the small voice of his windspren companion slapping his cheek with a pinch of energy. The army has won — soldiers comb the Parshendi dead and a great twenty-foot chrysalis-shell at the plateau's center has already been hacked open. Kaladin scavenges vest and sandals from his dead friend, and when he asks the windspren her name she answers, surprised at herself: Sylphrena — Syl. Gaz waves him back to the bridge: half the crew is dead, and the survivors must carry it home. Kaladin understands that he was sent to the front to die. He shoulders the bridge anyway and walks numbly, the final torment of his life now bearing a name — Bridge Four.