Side Carry
POV: kaladin
Summary
A new batch of conscripts and freshly-bought slaves arrives at the lumberyard before dawn, and Gaz divides them out among the crews leaving Bridge Four one short. Kaladin presses him for one more. Gaz, with bad grace and a long look at Lamaril across the yard, concedes. A fast-talking one-armed Herdazian with a wide easy grin under an old slave brand calls out to Kaladin as the bargain is being struck — *gancho, gon, you are the lucky one to have me* — and introduces himself as the Lopen. Any other crew would put a one-armed bridgeman in the very front rank to take the first arrow. Kaladin hears, in his head, Tien's voice as a boy: *gotta do what you can to stay alive — turn a liability into an advantage.* He picks the Lopen and signs for him.
On the day's run, Kaladin takes Bridge Four up to a plateau against the Tower in the new side carry he has been drilling, using the bridge itself as a shield wall against the Parshendi archers along the far chasm rim. His crew comes in almost intact. But the other crews see what he is doing and try to copy it at different speeds, in different formations, with the bridge angles all wrong — and the Alethi archers can no longer time their suppression volleys to the bridge landings, because the bridges no longer land together. The whole assault stalls into a slow-motion slaughter on the lip of the chasm. Over two hundred bridgemen die. Sadeas ends the day clinging to the edge of the plateau with his Shardbearer's body across his lap.
Kaladin realises with a sick lurch what he has done — that his innovation, the thing that saved his crew, has just lost the battle and killed bridgemen who were never his responsibility. Gaz and Lamaril march on him at the lumberyard with a squad of reserve spearmen. He orders Rock and Teft back; whatever happens next is his alone. To Gaz he speaks plainly, almost gently: kill him outright and your superiors will read it as a cover-up; leave him alive and he will absolve them in the morning. Lamaril orders him beaten instead. The spearmen drop him to the cobbles and put their boots in; his belt-pouch tears open and the spheres he saved up scatter dun across the stones, Stormlight gone. They keep kicking.