Dunny
POV: kaladin
Summary
A razor-edged Parshendi arrow snaps into the wood of the bridge next to Kaladin's face on the day's plateau assault — Bridge Four's first really bad run since he took command of it. The arrow that follows it would have gone through his temple if Moash had not stepped in and angled his shoulder into it instead. Moash keeps moving with the shaft in him. Beside them, Dunny — the young darkeyes who took to calling Kaladin *Captain* the night they decided to break out — is not so quick on his feet. An arrow takes him under the ribs and out the back. He is dead before they get the bridge across.
Bridge Four holds together. The crews around them shatter. By the time the Alethi line stabilises across the bridge, every other bridgeman in eyeshot is either dead or running, and Bridge Four is alone on the chasm-edge with seven wounded and one dead and a bridge that still needs to be lifted for the retreat. They lift it. They carry Dunny home on it.
At the bridge head afterwards, in the long quiet after a heavy run, Moash finds Kaladin kneeling by Dunny's body and offers him his hand. *I was wrong about you*, he says. *You're a fool and an instigator — but an honest one. If you get us killed, it won't be on purpose.* They shake. The crew tends the wounded together, properly together for the first time, Rock running the triage and Lopen and Dabbid handing out water and learning the names of men they had not bothered to know yet. They treat Dunny's death as their loss, not Kaladin's alone — and Kaladin, grieving the boy in his hands, finds himself somehow steadier for it than he has been in months.