Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive #4) - Brandon Sanderson Page 0,550

beside a boy, maybe eleven or twelve years old, in an antiquated uniform. Leather skirt and cap? Kaladin was dressed similarly.

“What do you think, Dem?” the boy asked him. “Should we run?”

Kaladin scanned the small tent, baffled. Then he heard sounds outside. A battlefield? Yes, men yelling and dying. He stood up and stepped out into the light, blinking against it. A … hillside, with some stumpweight trees on it. This wasn’t the Shattered Plains.

I know this place, Kaladin thought. Amaram’s colors. Men in leather armor.

Storms, he was on a battlefield from his youth. The exhaustion had taken a toll on him. He was hallucinating. The surgeon in him was worried at that.

A young squadleader walked up, haggard. Storms, he couldn’t be older than seventeen or eighteen. That seemed so young to Kaladin now, though he wasn’t that much older. The squadleader was arguing with a shorter soldier beside him.

“We can’t hold,” the squadleader said. “It’s impossible. Storms, they’re gathering for another advance.”

“The orders are clear,” the other man said—barely out of his teens himself. “Brightlord Sheler says we’re to hold here. No retreat.”

“To Damnation with that man,” the squadleader said, wiping his sweaty hair, surrounded by jets of exhaustionspren. Kaladin immediately felt a kinship with the poor fool. Given impossible orders and not enough resources? Looking along the ragged battle line, Kaladin guessed the man was in over his head, with all the higher-ranked soldiers dead. There were barely enough men to form three squads, and half of those were wounded.

“This is Amaram’s fault,” Kaladin said. “Playing with the lives of half-trained men in outdated equipment, all to make himself look good so he’ll get moved to the Shattered Plains.”

The young squadleader glanced at Kaladin, frowning. “You shouldn’t talk like that, kid,” the man said, running his hand through his hair again. “It could get you strung up, if the highmarshal hears.” The man took a deep breath. “Form up the wounded men on that flank. Tell everyone to get ready to hold. And … you, messenger boy, grab your friend and get some spears. Gor, put them in front.”

“In front?” the other man asked. “You certain, Varth?”

“You work with what you have…” the man said, hiking back the way he had come.

Work with what you have.

Everything spun around Kaladin, and he suddenly remembered this exact battlefield. He knew where he was. He knew that squadleader’s face. How had he not seen it immediately?

Kaladin had been here. Rushing through the lines, searching for … Searching for …

He spun on his heel and found a young man—too young—approaching Varth. He had an open, inviting face and too much spring in his step as he approached the squadleader. “I’ll go with them, sir,” Tien said.

“Fine. Go.”

Tien picked up a spear. He gathered the other messenger boy from the tent and started toward the place where he’d been told to stand.

“No, Tien,” Kaladin said. “I can’t watch this. Not again.”

Tien came and took Kaladin’s hand, then walked him forward. “It’s all right,” he said. “I know you’re frightened. But here we can stand together, all of us. Three are stronger than one, right?” He held out his spear, and the other boy—who was crying—did the same.

“Tien,” Kaladin said. “Why did you do it? You should have stayed safe.”

Tien turned to him, then smiled. “They would have been alone. They needed someone to help them feel brave.”

“They were slaughtered,” Kaladin said. “So were you.”

“So it was good someone was there, to help them not feel so alone as it happened.”

“You were terrified. I saw your eyes.”

“Of course I was.” Tien looked at him as the charge began, and the enemy advanced up the hillside. “Who wouldn’t be afraid? Doesn’t change that I needed to be here. For them.”

Kaladin remembered getting stabbed on this battlefield … killing a man. Then being forced to watch Tien die. He cringed, anticipating that death, but all went dark. The forest, the tent, the figures all vanished.

Except for Tien.

Kaladin fell to his knees. Then Tien, poor little Tien, wrapped his arms around Kaladin and held him. “It’s all right,” he whispered. “I’m here. To help you feel brave.”

“I’m not the child you see,” Kaladin whispered.

“I know who you are, Kal.”

Kaladin looked up at his brother. Who somehow, in that moment, was full grown. And Kaladin was a child, clinging to him. Holding to him as the tears started to fall, as he let himself weep at Teft’s death.

“This is wrong,” Kaladin said. “I’m supposed to hold you. Protect