Mistborn Trilogy - Brandon Sanderson [606]
“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