Mistborn Trilogy - Brandon Sanderson [803]
“True,” Ham said. “But would you trade a couple dozen siege weapons and five hundred men for ten thousand koloss? Plus, Yomen has to be worried about keeping that cavalry mobile—the Survivor only knows where he got enough grain to feed those horses as long as he did. Better for him to strike now and lose them in battle than to have them starve.”
Elend nodded slowly. This makes things more difficult. With ten thousand fewer koloss . . . Suddenly, the forces were much more evenly matched. Elend could maintain his siege, but storming the city would be far more risky.
He sighed. “We shouldn’t have left the koloss so far outside of the main camp. We’ll have to move them in.”
Ham didn’t seem to like that.
“They’re not dangerous,” Elend said. “Vin and I can control them.” Mostly.
Ham shrugged. He moved back through the smoking wreckage, preparing to send messengers. Elend walked forward, approaching Vin, who stood at the very edge of the cliff. Being up so high still made him a bit uncomfortable. Yet, she barely even noticed the sheer drop in front of her.
“I should have been able to help you regain control of them,” she said quietly, staring out into the distance. “Yomen distracted me.”
“He distracted us all,” Elend said. “I felt the koloss in my head, but even so, I couldn’t figure out what was going on. I’d regained control of them by the time you got back, but by then, a lot of them were dead.”
“Yomen has a Mistborn,” Vin said.
“You’re sure?”
Vin nodded.
One more thing, he thought. He contained his frustration, however. His men needed to see him confident. “I’m giving a thousand of the koloss to you,” he said. “We should have split them up earlier.”
“You’re stronger,” Vin said.
“Not strong enough, apparently.”
Vin sighed, then nodded. “Let me go down below.” They’d found that proximity helped with taking control of koloss.
“I’ll pull off a section of a thousand or so, then let go. Be ready to grab them as soon as I do.”
Vin nodded, then stepped off the side of the plateau.
I should have realized that I was getting caught up in the excitement of the fighting, Vin thought as she fell through the air. It seemed so obvious to her now. And, unfortunately, the results of the attack left her feeling even more pent-up and anxious than she had before.
She tossed a coin and landed. Even a drop of several hundred feet didn’t bother her anymore. It was odd to think about. She remembered timidly standing atop the Luthadel city wall, afraid to use her Allomancy to jump off, despite Kelsier’s coaxing. Now she could step off a cliff and muse thoughtfully to herself on the way down.
She walked across the powdery ground. The ash came up to the top of her calves and would have been difficult to walk in without pewter to give her strength. The ashfalls were growing increasingly dense.
Human approached her almost immediately. She couldn’t tell if the koloss was simply reacting to their bond, or if he was actually aware and interested enough to pick her out. He had a new wound on his arm, a result of the fighting. He fell into step beside her as she moved up to the other koloss, his massive form obviously having no trouble with the deep ash.
As usual, there was very little emotion to the koloss camp. Just a short time before, they had been screaming in bloodlust, attacking each other as stones crashed down from above. Now they simply sat in the ash, gathered in small groups, ignoring their wounds. They would have had fires going if there had been wood available. Some few dug, finding handfuls of dirt to chew on.
“Don’t your people care, Human?” Vin asked.
The massive koloss looked down at her, ripped face bleeding slightly. “Care?”
“That so many of you died,” Vin said. She could see corpses lying about, forgotten in the ash save for the ritual flaying that was the koloss form of burial. Several koloss still worked, moving between bodies, ripping off the skin.
“We take care of them,” Human said.
“Yes,” Vin said. “You pull their skin off. Why do you