فصل 53

53

Straff was actually starting to feel quite well as his army crested the last hill to overlook Luthadel. He’d discreetly tried a few drugs from his cabinet, and he was pretty certain he knew which one Amaranta had given him: Black Frayn. A nasty drug indeed. He’d have to wean himself from it slowly—but, for now, a few swallowed leaves made him stronger and more alert than he’d ever been before. In fact, he felt wonderful.

He was sure the same couldn’t be said for those in Luthadel. The koloss pooled around the outer wall, still beating on several of the gates on the north and east sides. Smoke rose from inside the city.

“Our scouts say the creatures have broken through four of the city gates, my lord,” said Lord Janarle. “They breached the eastern gate first, and there met with heavy resistance. The northeastern gate fell next, then the northwestern gate, but the troops at both are holding as well. The main breach happened in the north. The koloss are apparently ravaging from that direction, burning and looting.” Straff nodded. The northern gate, he thought. The one closest to Keep Venture.

“Do we attack, my lord?” Janarle asked.

“How long ago did the northern gate fall?”

“Perhaps an hour ago, my lord.”

Straff shook his head leisurely. “Then, let us wait. The creatures worked quite hard to break into the city—we should at least let them have a little fun before we slaughter them.” “Are you sure, my lord?”

Straff smiled. “Once they lose their bloodlust in a few hours, they’ll be tired from all the fighting and calm down. That will be the best time to strike. They’ll be dispersed through the city and weakened from the resistance. We can take them easily, that way.” Sazed gripped his koloss opponent by the throat, forcing back its snarling, distorted face. The beast’s skin was stretched so tightly that it had split down the center of the face, revealing bloody muscles above the teeth, around the nose holes. It breathed with husky rage, spraying droplets of spittle and blood across Sazed with each exhalation.

Strength! Sazed thought, tapping his pewtermind for more power. His body became so massive that he feared splitting his own skin. Fortunately, his metalminds had been built to expand, braces and rings that didn’t connect on one side so that they could bend. Still, his bulk was daunting. He probably wouldn’t have been able to walk or maneuver with such size—but it didn’t matter, for the koloss had already knocked him to the ground. All he needed was some extra power in his grip. The creature clawed him in the arm with one hand, reaching behind with the other, grasping its sword….

Sazed’s fingers finally crushed the beast’s thick neck. The creature tried to snarl, but no breath came, and it instead thrashed about in frustration. Sazed forced himself to his feet, then hurled the creature toward its companions. With such unnatural strength, even a body eleven feet tall felt light in his fingers. It smashed into a pile of attacking koloss, forcing them backward.

Sazed stood, gasping. I’m using my strength up so quickly, he thought, releasing his pewtermind, his body deflating like a wineskin. He couldn’t continue tapping his reserves so much. He’d already used up a good half of his strength—strength that had taken decades to store. He still hadn’t used his rings, but he had only a few minutes of each attribute in those. They would wait for an emergency.

And that might be what I’m facing now, he thought with dread. They still held Steel Gate Square. Though koloss had broken through the gate, only a few could pass through at once—and only the most massive seemed able to jump up to the wall.

Sazed’s little troop of soldiers was sorely pressed, however. Bodies lay scattered in the courtyard. The skaa faithful at the back had begun pulling the wounded to safety. Sazed could hear them groaning behind him.

Koloss corpses littered the square as well, and despite the carnage, Sazed couldn’t help but feel a sense of pride at how much it was costing the creatures to force their way inside this portal. Luthadel was not falling easily. Not at all.

The koloss seemed rebuffed for the moment, and though several skirmishes still continued in the courtyard, a new group of monsters was gathering outside the gate.

Outside the gate, Sazed thought, glancing to the side. The creatures had cared to break open only one of the massive door gates, the right one. There were corpses in the square—dozens, perhaps hundreds—but the koloss themselves had cleared many out of the way of the gate itself so that they could get into the courtyard.

Perhaps…

Sazed didn’t have time to think. He dashed forward, tapping his pewtermind again, giving himself the strength of five men. He picked up the body of a smaller koloss and threw it out the gate. The creatures outside snarled, scattering. There were still hundreds waiting for the chance to get in, but they tripped over the dead in their haste to get out of the way of his projectile.

Sazed slipped on blood as he grabbed a second body, throwing it to the side. “To me!” he screamed, hoping that there were men who could hear, and who could respond.

The koloss realized what he was doing too late. He kicked another body out of the way, then slammed his body against the open door and tapped his ironmind, drawing forth the weight he had stored within it. Immediately, he became far heavier, and that weight crashed against the gate, slamming it closed.

Koloss rushed at the doorway from the other side. Sazed scrambled up against the gate, pushing corpses out of the way, forcing the massive portal closed all the way. He tapped his ironmind further, draining its precious reserve at an alarming rate. He became so heavy he felt his own weight crushing him to the ground, and only his increased strength managed to keep him on his feet. Frustrated koloss pounded on the gate, but he held. Held them back, hands and chest pressed against the rough wood, toes wedged back against uneven cobbles. With his brassmind, he didn’t even feel the cold, though ash, snow, and blood mixed at his feet.

Men cried out. Some died. Others slammed their own weight against the gate, and Sazed spared a glance behind. The rest of his soldiers set up a perimeter, protecting the gate from the koloss inside the city. The men fought bravely, backs to the gate, only Sazed’s power keeping the portal from flying open.

And yet, they fought. Sazed cried out in defiance, feet slipping, holding the gate as his soldiers killed the remaining koloss in the courtyard. Then, a group of them rushed in from the side, bearing with them a large length of wood. Sazed didn’t know where they’d gotten it, nor did he care, as they slid it into place where the gate bar had been.

His weight ran out, the ironmind empty. I should have stored more of that, over the years, he thought with a sigh of exhaustion, sinking down before the closed gate. It had seemed like a lot, until he’d been forced to use it so often, using it to shove away koloss or the like.

I usually just stored up weight as a side effect of making myself lighter. That always seemed the more useful way to use iron.

He released pewter, and felt his body deflating. Fortunately, stretching his body in such a manner didn’t leave his skin loose. He went back to his usual self, only bearing a dreadful sense of exhaustion and a faint soreness. The koloss continued to beat on the gate. Sazed opened tired eyes, lying bare-chested in the falling snow and ash. His soldiers stood solemnly before him.

So few, he thought. Barely fifty remained of his original four hundred. The square itself was red—as if painted—with bright koloss blood, and it mixed with the darker human kind. Sickly blue lumps of bodies lay alone or in heaps, interspersed with the twisted and torn pieces that were often all that remained of human bodies once they were hit by the brutal koloss swords.

The thumping continued, like low drums, on the other side of the gate. The beating picked up to a frenzied pace, the gate shaking, as the koloss grew more frustrated. They could probably smell the blood, feel the flesh that had so nearly been theirs.

“That board won’t hold for long,” one of the soldiers said quietly, a bit of ash floating down in front of his face. “And the hinges are splintering. They’re going to get through again.” Sazed stumbled to his feet. “And we will fight again.”

“My lord!” a voice said. Sazed turned to see one of Dockson’s messengers ride around a pile of corpses. “Lord Dockson says that …” He trailed off, noticing for the first time that Sazed’s gate was closed. “How…” the man began.

“Deliver your message, young man,” Sazed said tiredly.

“Lord Dockson says you won’t get any reinforcements,” the man said, reining in his horse. “Tin Gate has fallen, and—” “Tin Gate?” Sazed asked. Tindwyl! “When?”

“Over an hour ago, my lord.”

An hour? he thought with shock. How long have we been fighting?

“You have to hold here, my lord!” the young man said, turning and galloping back the way he had come.

Sazed took a step to the east. Tindwyl….

The thumping on his gate grew louder, and the board began to crack. The men ran for something else to use to secure the gate, but Sazed could see that the mountings that kept the board in place were beginning to pull apart. Once they went, there would be no way to hold the gate closed.

Sazed closed his eyes, feeling the weight of fatigue, reaching into his pewtermind. It was nearly drained. After it was gone, he’d only have the tiny bit of strength in one of the rings.

Yet, what else could he do?

He heard the board snap, and men yelled.

“Back!” Clubs yelled. “Fall into the city!”

The remnants of their army broke apart, pulling back from Zinc Gate. Breeze watched with horror as more and more koloss spilled into the square, overrunning the few men too weak or too wounded to retreat. The creatures swept forward like a great blue tide, a tide with swords of steel and eyes of red.

In the sky, the sun—only faintly visible behind storm clouds—was a bleeding scar that crept toward the horizon.

“Breeze,” Clubs snapped, pulling him back. “Time to go.”

Their horses had long since bolted. Breeze stumbled after the general, trying not to listen to the snarling from behind.

“Fall back to the harrying positions!” Clubs called to those men who could hear him. “First squad, shore up inside Keep Lekal! Lord Hammond should be there by now, preparing the defenses! Squad two, with me to Keep Hasting!” Breeze continued on, his mind as numb as his feet. He’d been virtually useless in the battle. He’d tried to take away the men’s fear, but his efforts had seemed so inadequate. Like…holding a piece of paper up to the sun to make shade.

Clubs held up a hand, and the squad of two hundred men stopped. Breeze looked around. The street was quiet in the falling ash and snow. Everything seemed…dull. The sky was dim, the city’s features softened by the blanket of black-speckled snow. It seemed so strange to have fled the horrific scene of scarlet and blue to find the city looking so lazy.

“Damn!” Clubs snapped, pushing Breeze out of the way as a raging group of koloss burst from a side street. Clubs’s soldiers fell into a line, but another group of koloss—the creatures that had just burst through the gate—came up behind them.

Breeze stumbled, falling in the snow. That other group…it came from the north! The creatures have infiltrated the city this far already?

“Clubs!” Breeze said, turning. “We—”

Breeze looked just in time to see a massive koloss sword sheer through Clubs’s upraised arm, then continue on to hit the general in the ribs. Clubs grunted, thrown to the side, his sword arm—weapon and all—flying free. He stumbled on his bad leg, and the koloss brought his sword down in a two-handed blow.

The dirty snow finally got some color. A splash of red.

Breeze stared, dumbfounded, at the remains of his friend’s corpse. Then the koloss turned toward Breeze, snarling.

The likelihood of his own impending death hit, stirring him as even the cold snow couldn’t. Breeze scrambled back, sliding in the snow, instinctively reaching out to try and Soothe the creature. Of course, nothing happened. Breeze tried to get to his feet, and the koloss—along with several others—began to bear down on him. At that moment, however, another troop of soldiers fleeing the gate appeared from a cross street, distracting the koloss.

Breeze did the only thing that seemed natural. He crawled inside a building and hid.

“This is all Kelsier’s fault,” Dockson muttered, making another notation on his map. According to messengers, Ham had reached Keep Lekal. It wouldn’t last long.

The Venture grand hall was a flurry of motion and chaos as panicked scribes ran this way and that, finally realizing that koloss didn’t care if a man were skaa, scholar, nobleman, or merchant. The creatures just liked to kill.

“He should have seen this coming,” Dockson continued. “He left us with this mess, and then he just assumed that we’d find a way to fix it. Well, I can’t hide a city from its enemies—not like I hid a crew. Just because we were excellent thieves doesn’t mean we’d be any good at running a kingdom!” Nobody was listening to him. His messengers had all fled, and his guards fought at the keep gates. Each of the keeps had its own defenses, but Clubs—rightly—had decided to use them only as a fallback option. They weren’t designed to repel a large-scale attack, and they were too secluded from each other. Retreating to them only fractured and isolated the human army.

“Our real problem is follow-through,” Dockson said, making a final notation at Tin Gate, explaining what had happened there. He looked over the map. He’d never expected Sazed’s gate to be the last one to hold.

“Follow-through,” he continued. “We assumed we could do a better job than the noblemen, but once we had the power, we put them back in charge. If we’d killed the whole lot, perhaps then we could have started fresh. Of course, that would have meant invading the other dominances—which would have meant sending Vin to take care of the most important, most problematic, noblemen. There would have been a slaughter like the Final Empire had never seen. And, if we’d done that…” He trailed off, looking up as one of the massive, majestic stained-glass windows shattered. The others began to explode as well, broken by thrown rocks. A few large koloss jumped through the holes, landing on the shard-strewn marble floor. Even broken, the windows were beautiful, the spiked glass edges twinkling in the evening light. Through one of them, Dockson could see that the storm was breaking, letting sunlight through.

“If we’d done that,” Dockson said quietly, “we’d have been no better than beasts.” Scribes screamed, trying to flee as the koloss began the slaughter. Dockson stood quietly, hearing noise behind—grunts, harsh breathing—as koloss approached through the back hallways. He reached for the sword on his table as men began to die.

He closed his eyes. You know, Kell, he thought. I almost started to believe that they were right, that you were watching over us. That you were some sort of god.

He opened his eyes and turned, pulling the sword from its sheath. Then he froze, staring at the massive beast approaching from behind. So big!

Dockson gritted his teeth, sending a final curse Kelsier’s way, then charged, swinging.

The creature caught his weapon in an indifferent hand, ignoring the cut it caused. Then, it brought its own weapon down, and blackness followed.

“My lord,” Janarle said. “The city has fallen. Look, you can see it burning. The koloss have penetrated all but one of the four gates under attack, and they run wild in the city. They aren’t stopping to pillage—they’re just killing. Slaughtering. There aren’t many soldiers left to oppose them.” Straff sat quietly, watching Luthadel burn. It seemed…a symbol to him. A symbol of justice. He’d fled this city once, leaving it to the skaa vermin inside, and when he’d come back to demand it be returned to him, the people had resisted.

They had been defiant. They had earned this.

“My lord,” Janarle said. “The koloss army is weakened enough already. Their numbers are hard to count, but the corpses they left behind indicate that as much as a third of their force has fallen. We can take them!” “No,” Straff said, shaking his head. “Not yet.”

“My lord?” Janarle said.

“Let the koloss have the damn city,” Straff said quietly. “Let them clear it out and burn the whole thing to the ground. Fires can’t hurt our atium—in fact, they’ll probably make the metal easier to find.” “I…” Janarle seemed shocked. He didn’t object further, but his eyes were rebellious.

I’ll have to take care of him later, Straff thought. He’ll rise against me if he finds that Zane is gone.

That didn’t matter at the moment. The city had rejected him, and so it would die. He’d build a better one in its place.

One dedicated to Straff, not the Lord Ruler.

“Father!” Allrianne said urgently.

Cett shook his head. He sat on his horse, beside his daughter’s horse, on a hill to the west of Luthadel. He could see Straff’s army, gathered to the north, watching—as he watched—the death throes of a doomed city.

“We have to help!” Allrianne insisted.

“No,” Cett said quietly, shrugging off the effects of her Raging his emotions. He’d grown used to her manipulations long ago. “Our help wouldn’t matter now.” “We have to do something!” Allrianne said, pulling his arm.

“No,” Cett said more forcefully.

“But you came back!” she said. “Why did we return, if not to help?”

“We will help,” Cett said quietly. “We’ll help Straff take the city when he wishes, then we’ll submit to him and hope he doesn’t kill us.” Allrianne paled. “That’s it?” she hissed. “That’s why we returned, so that you can give our kingdom to that monster?” “What else did you expect?” Cett demanded. “You know me, Allrianne. You know that this is the choice I have to make.” “I thought I knew you,” she snapped. “I thought you were a good man, down deep.” Cett shook his head. “The good men are all dead, Allrianne. They died inside that city.” Sazed fought on. He was no warrior; he didn’t have honed instincts or training. He calculated that he should have died hours before. And yet, somehow, he managed to stay alive.

Perhaps it was because the koloss didn’t fight with skill, either. They were blunt—like their giant, wedgelike swords—and they simply threw themselves at their opponents with little thought of tactics.

That should have been enough. Yet, Sazed held—and where he held, his few men held with him. The koloss had rage on their side, but Sazed’s men could see the weak and elderly standing, waiting, just at the edge of the square. The soldiers knew why they fought. This reminder seemed enough to keep them going, even when they began to be surrounded, the koloss working their way into the edges of the square.

Sazed knew, by now, that no relief was going to come. He’d hoped, perhaps, that Straff would decide to take the city, as Clubs had suggested. But it was too late for that; night was approaching, the sun inching toward the horizon.

The end is finally here, Sazed thought as the man next to him was struck down. Sazed slipped on blood, and the move saved him as the koloss swung over his head.

Perhaps Tindwyl had found a way to safety. Hopefully, Elend would deliver the things he and she had studied. They were important, Sazed thought, even if he didn’t know why.

Sazed attacked, swinging the sword he’d taken from a koloss. He enhanced his muscles in a final burst as he swung, giving them strength right as the sword met koloss flesh.

He hit. The resistance, the wet sound of impact, the shock up his arm—these were familiar to him now. Bright koloss blood sprayed across him, and another of the monsters fell.

And Sazed’s strength was gone.

Pewter tapped clean, the koloss sword was now heavy in his hands. He tried to swing it at the next koloss in line, but the weapon slipped from his weak, numb, tired fingers.

This koloss was a big one. Nearing twelve feet tall, it was the largest of the monsters Sazed had seen. Sazed tried to step away, but he stumbled over the body of a recently killed soldier. As he fell, his men finally broke, the last dozen scattering. They’d held well. Too well. Perhaps if he’d let them retreat… No, Sazed thought, looking up at his death. I did well, I think. Better than any mere scholar should have been able to.

He thought about the rings on his fingers. They could, perhaps, give him a little bit of an edge, let him run. Flee. Yet, he couldn’t summon the motivation. Why resist? Why had he resisted in the first place? He’d known that they were doomed.

You’re wrong about me, Tindwyl, he thought. I do give up, sometimes. I gave up on this city long ago.

The koloss loomed over Sazed, who still lay half sprawled in the bloody slush, and raised its sword. Over the creature’s shoulder, Sazed could see the red sun hanging just above the top of the wall. He focused on that, rather than on the falling sword. He could see rays of sunlight, like…shards of glass in the sky.

The sunlight seemed to sparkle, twinkling, coming for him. As if the sun itself were welcoming him. Reaching down to accept his spirit.

And so, I die….

A twinkling droplet of light sparkled in the beam of sunlight, then hit the koloss directly in the back of the skull. The creature grunted, stiffening, dropping its sword. It collapsed to the side, and Sazed lay, stupefied, on the ground for a moment. Then he looked up at the top of the wall.

A small figure stood silhouetted by the sun. Black before the red light, a cloak flapped gently on her back. Sazed blinked. The bit of sparkling light he’d seen…it had been a coin. The koloss before him was dead.

Vin had returned.

She jumped, leaping as only an Allomancer could, to soar in a graceful arc above the square. She landed directly in the midst of the koloss and spun. Coins shot out like angry insects, cutting through blue flesh. The creatures didn’t drop as easily as humans would have, but the attack got their attention. The koloss turned away from the fleeing soldiers and defenseless townspeople.

The skaa at the back of the square began to chant. It was a bizarre sound to hear in the middle of a battle. Sazed sat up, ignoring his pains and exhaustion as Vin jumped. The city gate suddenly lurched, its hinges twisting. The koloss had already beaten on it so hard….

The massive wooden portal burst free from the wall, Pulled by Vin. Such power, Sazed thought numbly. She must be Pulling on something behind herself—but, that would mean that poor Vin is being yanked between two weights as heavy as that gate.

And yet, she did it, lifting the gate door with a heave, Pulling it toward herself. The huge hardwood gate crashed through the koloss ranks, scattering bodies. Vin twisted expertly in the air, Pulling herself to the side, swinging the gate to the side as if it were tethered to her by a chain.

Koloss flew in the air, bones cracking, sprayed like splinters before the enormous weapon. In a single sweep, Vin cleared the entire courtyard.

The gate dropped. Vin landed amid a group of crushed bodies, silently kicking a soldier’s war staff up into her hands. The remaining koloss outside the gate paused only briefly, then charged. Vin began to attack swiftly, but precisely. Skulls cracked, koloss falling dead in the slush as they tried to pass her. She spun, sweeping a few of them to the ground, spraying ashen red slush across those running up behind.

I…I have to do something, Sazed thought, shaking off his stupefaction. He was still bare-chested, the cold ignored because of his brassmind—which was nearly empty. Vin continued to fight, felling koloss after koloss. Even her strength won’t last forever. She can’t save the city.

Sazed forced himself to his feet, then moved toward the back of the square. He grabbed the old man at the front of the crowd of skaa, shaking the man out of his chanting. “You were right,” Sazed said. “She returned.” “Yes, Holy First Witness.”

“She will be able to give us some time, I think,” Sazed said. “The koloss have broken into the city. We need to gather what people we can and escape.” The old man paused, and for a moment Sazed thought he would object—that he would claim Vin would protect them, would defeat the entire army. Then, thankfully, he nodded.

“We’ll run out the northern gate,” Sazed said urgently. “That is where the koloss first entered the city, and so it is likely that they have moved on from that area.” I hope, Sazed thought, rushing off to raise the warning. The fallback defensive positions were supposed to be the high noble keeps. Perhaps they would find survivors there.

So, Breeze thought, it turns out that I’m a coward.

It was not a surprising revelation. He had always said that it was important for a man to understand himself, and he had always been aware of his selfishness. So, he was not at all shocked to find himself huddling against the flaking bricks of an old skaa home, shutting his ears to the screams just outside.

Where was the proud man now? The careful diplomat, the Soother with his immaculate suits? He was gone, leaving behind this quivering, useless mass. He tried several times to burn brass, to Soothe the men fighting outside. However, he couldn’t accomplish this most simple of actions. He couldn’t even move.

Unless one counted trembling as movement.

Fascinating, Breeze thought, as if looking at himself from the outside, seeing the pitiful creature in the ripped, bloodied suit. So this is what happens to me, when the stress gets too strong? It’s ironic, in a way. I’ve spent a lifetime controlling the emotions of others. Now I’m so afraid, I can’t even function.

The fighting continued outside. It was going on an awful long time. Shouldn’t those soldiers be dead?

“Breeze?”

He couldn’t move to see who it was. Sounds like Ham. That’s funny. He should be dead, too.

“Lord Ruler!” Ham said, coming into Breeze’s view. He wore a bloodied sling on one arm. He fell urgently to Breeze’s side. “Breeze, can you hear me?” “We saw him duck in here, my lord,” another voice said. A soldier? “Took shelter from the fight. We could feel him Soothing us, though. Kept us fighting, even when we should have given up. After Lord Cladent died…” I’m a coward.

Another figure appeared. Sazed, looking concerned. “Breeze,” Ham said, kneeling. “My keep fell, and Sazed’s gate is down. We haven’t heard anything from Dockson in over an hour, and we found Clubs’s body. Please. The koloss are destroying the city. We need to know what to do.” Well, don’t ask me, Breeze said—or tried to say. He thought it came out as a mumble.

“I can’t carry you, Breeze,” Ham said. “My arm is nearly useless.”

Well, that’s all right, Breeze mumbled. You see, my dear man, I don’t think I’m of much use anymore. You should move on. It’s quite all right if you just leave me here.

Ham looked up at Sazed, helpless.

“Hurry, Lord Hammond,” Sazed said. “We can have the soldiers carry the wounded. We will make our way to Keep Hasting. Perhaps we can find sanctuary there. Or…perhaps the koloss will be distracted enough to let us slip out of the city.” Distracted? Breeze mumbled. Distracted by the killing of other people, you mean. Well, it is somewhat comforting to know that we’re all cowards. Now, if I could just lie here for a little longer, I might be able to fall asleep… And forget all of this.

Alendi will need guides through the Terris Mountains. I have charged Rashek with making certain that he and his trusted friends are chosen as those guides.