“Don’t suppose you can Soothe those koloss?” Clubs asked. “Make them less ferocious?”
Breeze shook his head. “Soothing those beasts has no effect. I’ve tried it.”
They fell silent again, listening to the booming gates. Eventually, Breeze glanced over at Clubs, who sat, unperturbed, on his horse. “You’ve been in combat before,” Breeze said. “How often?”
“Off and on for the better part of twenty years, when I was younger,” Clubs said. “Fighting rebellions in the distant dominances, warring against the nomads out in the barrens. The Lord Ruler was pretty good about keeping those conflicts quiet.”
“And … how did you do?” Breeze asked. “Were you often victorious?”
“Always,” Clubs said.
Breeze smiled slightly.
“Of course,” Clubs said, glancing at Breeze, “we were the ones with koloss on our side. Damn hard to kill, those beasts.”
Great, Breeze thought.
Vin ran.
She’d only been on one “pewter drag” before—with Kelsier, two years ago. While burning pewter at a steady flare, one could run with incredible speed—like a sprinter in their quickest dash—without ever growing tired.
Yet, the process did something to a body. Pewter kept her moving, but it also bottled up her natural fatigue. The juxtaposition made her mind fuzz, bringing on a trancelike state of exhausted energy. Her soul wanted so badly to rest, yet her body just kept running, and running, and running, following the canal towpath toward the south. Toward Luthadel.
Vin was prepared for the effects of pewter dragging this time, and so she handled them far better. She fought off the trance, keeping her mind focused on her goal, not the repetitive motions of her body. However, that focus led her to discomforting thoughts.
Why am I doing this? she wondered. Why push myself so hard? Spook said it—Luthadel has to have already fallen. There is no need for urgency.
And yet, she ran.
She saw images of death in her mind. Ham, Breeze, Dockson, Clubs, and dear, dear Sazed. The first real friends she had ever known. She loved Elend, and part of her blessed the others for sending him away from danger. However, the other piece of her was furious at them for sending her away. That fury guided her.
They let me abandon them. They forced me to abandon them!
Kelsier had spent months teaching her how to trust. His last words to her in life had been ones of accusation, and they were words she had never been able to escape. You still have a lot to learn about friendship, Vin.
He had gone on to risk his life to get Spook and OreSeur out of danger, fighting off—and eventually killing—a Steel Inquisitor. He had done this despite Vin’s protests that the risk was pointless.
She had been wrong.
How dare they! she thought, feeling the tears on her cheeks as she dashed down the canal’s highwaylike towpath. Pewter gave her inhuman balance, and the speed—which would have been perilous for anyone else—felt natural to her. She didn’t trip, she didn’t stumble, but an outside observer would think her pace reckless.
Trees whipped by. She leapt washouts and dips in the land. She ran as she had done only once before, and pushed herself even harder than she had on that day. Before, she had been running simply to keep up with Kelsier. Now she ran for those she loved.
How dare they! she thought again. How dare they not give me the same chance that Kelsier had! How dare they refuse my protection, refuse to let me help them!
How dare they die. …
Her pewter was running low, and she was only a few hours into her run. True, she had probably covered an entire day’s worth of walking in those few hours. Yet, somehow, she knew it wouldn’t be enough. They were already dead. She was going to be too late, just as when she’d run years before. Too late to save their army. Too late to save her friends.
Vin continued to run. And she continued to cry.
“How did we get here, Clubs?” Breeze asked quietly, still on the floor of the courtyard, before the booming gate. He sat on his horse, amid a muddy mixture of falling snow and ash. The simple, quiet flutterings of white and black seemed to belie the screaming men, the breaking gate, and the falling rocks.
Clubs looked over at him, frowning. Breeze continued stare up, at the ash and snow. Black and white. Lazy.
“We aren’t men of principle,” Breeze said quietly. “We’re thieves. Cynics. You, a man tired of doing the Lord Ruler’s bidding, a man determined to see himself get ahead for once. Me, a man of wavering morals who loves to toy with others, to make their emotions my game. How did we end up here? Standing at the head of an army, fighting an idealist’s cause? Men like us shouldn’t be leaders.”
Clubs watched the men in the courtyard. “Guess we’re just idiots,” he finally said.
Breeze paused, then noticed that glimmer in Clubs’s eyes. That spark of humor, the spark that was hard to recognize unless one knew Clubs very well. It was that spark that told the truth—that showed Clubs to be a man of rare understanding.
Breeze smiled. “I guess we are. Like we said before. It’s Kelsier’s fault. He turned us into idiots who would stand at the front of a doomed army.”
“That bastard,” Clubs said.
“Indeed,” Breeze said.
Ash and snow continued to fall. Men yelled in alarm.
And the gates burst open.
“The eastern gate has been breached, Master Terrisman!” Dockson’s messenger said, puffing slightly as he crouched beside Sazed. They both sat beneath the wall-top battlements, listening to the koloss pound on their own gate. The one that had fallen would be Zinc Gate, the one on the easternmost side of Luthadel.
“Zinc Gate is the most well defended,” Sazed said quietly. “They will be able to hold it, I think.”
The messenger nodded. Ash blew along the wall top, piling in the cracks and alcoves in the stone, the black flakes adulterated by the occasional bit of bone-white snow.
“Is there anything you wish me to report to Lord Dockson?” the messenger asked.
Sazed paused, glancing along his wall’s defenses. He’d climbed down from the watchtower, joining the regular ranks of men. The soldiers had run out of stones, though the archers were still working. He peeked over the side of the wall and saw the koloss corpses piling up. However, he also saw the splintered front of the gate. It’s amazing they can maintain such rage for so long, he thought, ducking back. The creatures continued to howl and scream, like feral dogs.
He sat back against the wet stone, shivering in the chill wind, his toes growing numb. He tapped his brassmind, drawing out the heat he’d stored therein, and his body suddenly flooded with a pleasant sensation of warmth.
“Tell Lord Dockson that I fear for this gate’s defenses,” Sazed said quietly. “The best men were stolen away to help with the eastern gates, and I have little confidence in our leader. If Lord Dockson could send someone else to be in charge, that would be for the best, I think.”
The messenger paused.
“What?” Sazed asked.
“Isn’t that why he sent you, Master Terrisman?”
Sazed frowned. “Please tell him I have even less confidence in my own ability to lead … or to fight … than I do in that of our commander.”