Chasm Duty
POV: kaladin
Summary
Two evenings into milking knobweed reeds by hooded lamp in a thumbnail crack at the bottom of one of the closer chasms, Kaladin walks into the warcamp apothecary with a row of clay vials of sap in his belt-loop. The aged proprietor performs his standard pretense of feebleness until he recognises the customer, and then he straightens. Sadeas's standing order forbids him from giving supplies to bridgemen. It does not forbid him from *buying* a tincture that any field-surgeon will pay for at a premium; what he chooses to do with the antiseptics, bandages, salves, and needles he then has on his shelves is no business of any standing order. Syl flits invisibly between the jars on the back shelf, examining each in turn. Kaladin walks out with the medicine his wounded — Leyten, Hobber, Dabbid — have needed since the first run he survived.
The mornings get marginally better. Kaladin, Rock, and Teft are still the only members of Bridge Four who join the morning plank-run; the rest watch from their bunks. The three runners are bleary from staying up half the night on the reeds, and Kaladin is hungry because he has been giving most of his rations to the wounded. On the day's bridge run the Parshendi arrive late to the plateau, and for the first time in months no Bridge Four man dies — though the Alethi line still buckles, and the bridge crews lead a defeated army the long walk home.
That stops as soon as the apothecary's coin does. Gaz has noticed the chasm visits, smells the trade, and instead of confronting Kaladin over it he assigns Bridge Four to chasm duty — the worst rotation in the camp, lowered on ropes into the Plains's deep chasms to harvest spheres and weapons and salvage from the Parshendi and bridgeman dead the highstorms wash into the bottoms. Kaladin hears the order and very nearly laughs. Down in the chasms there are no overseers, no sky, and far more knobweed than grows on the open plain. He keeps his face flat and thanks Gaz for the punishment.