Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive #4) - Brandon Sanderson Page 0,267

fraction of a second to duck to the side as a flash of light—and an earsplitting crack—filled the room.

He hit the ground, blinded and deafened, the sharp scent of a lightning strike filling his nostrils. Strange and distinctive, it was a scent he associated with rainfall. Kaladin didn’t think he’d been struck directly—stormforms had trouble aiming their lightning—but it took a moment for Kaladin’s Stormlight to heal his ears and restore his vision.

A shadow moved over him, swinging its axe down. Kaladin twisted to the side just in time. The axe clanged against the ground.

I’m sorry, Father, Kaladin thought, reaching for the scalpel in his boot. As the axe fell again, Kaladin let it bite him in the left shoulder, praying his Stormlight would hold. He rammed the scalpel into the side of the Regal’s knee, directly between bits of carapace.

The Regal screamed and stumbled. Kaladin’s shoulder hurt like Damnation, but he pushed through the pain and leaped to his feet. His Stormlight ran out as he rushed his enemy, toppling them again—but this time Kaladin fell with more care and dropped on top of the Regal. With the momentum of the fall, he rammed his scalpel into the creature’s neck, right above its carapace gorget.

The knife wasn’t intended for battle, but it was sharpened to exactness. Kaladin twisted it and swiftly cut the carotid artery, then threw himself up.

He stumbled back against the counter, covered in sweat, panting, his hearing not fully healed from the blast. The Regal thrashed on the floor, and orange blood … Well, Kaladin turned away. Some sights were sickening even for a surgeon.

Even for a soldier, he corrected. You’re no surgeon.

He looked across the room at the singer who huddled beside the far wall. He’d watched, stunned, and hadn’t intervened.

“Haven’t been in many fights, have you?” Kaladin asked, hoarse.

The singer jumped, his eyes wide. He was in warform, so he appeared fearsome, but his expression told another story. That of a person who wanted to be anywhere else, a person horrified by the brutality of the fight.

Storms … He hadn’t considered that singers might feel battle shock too.

“Go,” Kaladin said, then winced as the dying Regal’s leg thumped against the wall with a frantic, panicked sound. Bleeding out always seemed to happen too quickly to your friends, and not quickly enough to those you killed.

The singer stared at him, haunted, and Kaladin realized the malen might also have been deafened by the lightning. Kaladin pointed, mouthing the word. “Go!”

The singer scrambled away, leaving wet orange footprints from the dying singer’s blood. Kaladin pulled himself over to the opposite counter, where a few spheres still glowed. He drew those in and healed the rest of his wounds. He should have kept another pouch on him. This had been coming.

He searched out the doorway, and found his father on the floor where Kaladin had shoved him, lit by morning light coming in through the distant window.

“You all right?” Kaladin asked him. “Did that blast hurt you?”

Lirin stood up, staring past Kaladin. Into the room, square at the dying Regal. In the other room, Oroden had started crying. Then Lirin, overcoming his shock, scrambled into the room to try to help the dying singer.

Father is fine, Kaladin thought. The thunder of stormform lightning blasts—at least those made by a single individual—wasn’t as bad as that of real lightning. As long as you were sheltered, as his father had been, you wouldn’t suffer permanent hearing loss.

Kaladin tiredly glanced to Syl, who sat on the counter with her hands in her lap. Her eyes were closed, her head turned away from the dying Regal as Lirin tried to stanch the blood flow. Kaladin had killed dozens, perhaps hundreds of them during this war—though he’d tried to focus his attention on the Fused. He’d told himself that those fights were more meaningful, but the truth was that he hated killing common soldiers. They never seemed to have much of a chance against him.

Yet each Fused he killed meant something even worse. A noncombatant would be sacrificed to give that Fused new life, so each one of them Kaladin killed meant taking the life of some housewife or craftsman.

He moved over to Teft, Kaladin’s glowing body illuminating the man, unconscious on the table. Kaladin spared a momentary worry for the Stoneward who had been taken. Could he somehow rescue her too?

Don’t be a fool, Kaladin. You barely saved Teft. In fact, you might not have saved him yet. Deal with the