The Mistborn Trilogy (151 page)

“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.