Mistborn: The Hero of Ages (4 page)

ELEND VENTURE, SECOND EMPEROR
of the Final Empire, had not been born a warrior. He'd been born a nobleman which, in the Lord Ruler's day, had essentially made Elend a prof essional socialite. He'd spent his youth learning to play the frivolous games of the Great Houses, living the pampered lifestyle of the imperial elite .

It wasn't odd for him to have ended up a politician. He'd always been interested in political theory, and while he'd been more a scholar than a true statesman, he'd known that someday he'd rule his house. Yet, he hadn't made a very good king at first. He hadn't understood that there was more to leadership than good ideas and honest intentions. Far more.

I doubt you will ever be
the t ype of leader who can lead a charge against the enemy, Elend Venture
. The words had been spoken by Tindwyl the woman who'd trained him in practical politics. Remembering those words made Elend smile as his soldiers crashed into the koloss camp. Elend flared pewter. A warm sensation now familiar to him burst to life in his chest, and his muscles became taut with extra strength and energy. He'd swallowed the metal earlier, so that he could draw upon its powers for the battle. He was an Allomancer. That still awed him sometimes. As he'd predicted, the koloss were surprised by the attack. They stood motionless for a few moments, shocked even though they must have seen Elend's newly recruited army as it charged. Koloss had trouble dealing with the unexpected. They f ound it hard to comprehend a group of weak, outnumbered humans attacking their camp. So, it took them time to adjust.

Elend's army made good use of that time. Elend himself struck f irst, f laring his pewter to give himself yet more power as he cut down the first koloss. It was a smaller beast. Like all of its kind, it was human-like in f orm, though it had oversized, drooping blue skin that seemed detached from the rest of its body. Its beady red eyes showed a bit of inhuman surprise as it died, Elend yanking his sword f rom its chest.

"Strike quickly!" he yelled as more koloss turned f rom their firepits. "Kill as many as you can before they frenzy!"

His soldiers terrified, but committed charged in around him, overrunning the first few groups of koloss. The " camp" was little more than a place where the koloss had tromped down ash and the plants beneath, then dug f irepits . Elend could see his men growing more confident at their initial success, and he encouraged them by Pulling on their emotions with Allomancy, making them braver. He was more comfortable with this form of Allomancy he still hadn't quite gotten the hang of leaping about with metals the way Vin di d. Emotions, however those he understood.

Fatren, the city's burly leader, stuck near Elend as he led a group of soldiers toward a large pack of koloss . Elend kept an eye on the man. Fatren was the ruler of this small city; if he died, it would be a blow to morale. Together, they rushed a small group of surprised koloss. The largest beast in that group was some eleven feet tall. Like that of all large koloss, this creature's skin once loose was now pulled tight around its oversized body. Koloss never stopped growing, but their skin always remained the same size. On the younger creatures, it hung loose and folded. On the big ones, it stretched and ripped.

Elend burned steel, then threw a handful of coins into the air in front of him. He Pushed on the coins, throwing his weight against them, spraying them at the koloss. The beasts were too tough to fall to simple coins with any reliability, but the bits of metal would in j ure and weaken them. As the coins f lew, Elend charged the large koloss. The beast pulled a huge sword off its back, and it seemed elated at the prospect of a fight. The koloss swung first, and it had an awesome reach. Elend had to jump backward pewter making him more nimble . Koloss swords were massive, brutish things, so blunt they were almost clubs. The f orce of the blow shook the air; Elend wouldn't have had a chance to turn the blade aside, even with pewter helping him. In addition, the sword or, more accurately, the koloss holding it weighed so much that Elend wouldn't be able to use Allomancy to Push it out of the creature's hands. Pushing with steel was all about weight and force. If Elend Pushed on something heavier than himself, he'd be thrown backward.

So, Elend had to rely on the extra speed and dexterity of pewter. He threw himself out of his dodge, dashing to the side, watching for a backhand. The creature turned, silent, eyeing Elend, but didn't strike. It hadn't quite frenzied yet.

Elend stared down his oversized enemy.
How did I get here?
he thought, not for the first time.
I'm a
scholar , not a warrior
. Half the time he thought he had no business leading men at all. The other half the time, he figured that he thought too much. He ducked forward, striking. The koloss anticipated the move, and tri ed to bring its weapon down on Elend's head. Elend, however, re ached out and Pulled on the sword of another koloss throwing that creature off balance and allowing two of Elend's men to slay it, and also Pulling Elend himself to the side. He just barely evaded his opponent's weapon. Then, as he spun in the air, he flared pewter and struck f rom the side. He sheared completely through the beast's leg at the knee, toppling it to the ground. Vin always said that Elend's Allomantic power was unusually strong. Elend wasn't certain about that he didn't have much experience with Allomancy but the force of his own swing did send him stumbling. He managed to regain his footing, however, and then took off the creature's head.

Several of the soldiers were staring at him. His white uniform was now sprayed with bright red koloss blood. It wasn't the f irst time. Elend took a deep breath as he heard inhuman screams sounding through the camp. The frenzy was beginning.

"Form up!" Elend shouted. "Make lines, stay together, prepare for the assault!" The soldiers responded slowly . They were far less disciplined than the troops Elend was accustomed to, but they did an admirable j ob of bunching up at his command. Elend glanced across the ground before them. They'd managed to take down several hundred koloss an amazing feat. The easy part, however, was ov er.

"Stay firm !" Elend yelled, running down in front of the soldier line. "But keep f ighting! We need to kill as many of them as quickly as possible !
Everything
depends on this! Give them your fury, men!" He burned brass and Pushed on their emotions, Soothing away their fear. An Allomancer couldn't control minds not human minds, at least but he
could
encourage some emotions while discouraging others. Again, Vin said that Elend was able to affect far more people than should have been possible. Elend had gained his powers recently, directly from a place he now suspected was the original source of Allomancy.

Under the influence of the Soothing, his soldiers stood up straight. Again, Elend felt a healthy respect for these simple skaa. He was giving them bravery and taking away some of their f ear, but the determination was their own. These were good people.

With luck, he'd be able to save some of them.

The koloss attacked. As he'd hoped, a large group of the creatures broke away from the main camp and charged toward the village. Some of the soldiers cried out, but they were too busy defending themselves to follow. Elend threw himself into the fray whenever the line wobbled, shoring up the weak point. As he did so, he burned brass and tried to Push on the emotions of a nearby koloss . Nothing happened. The creatures were resistant to emotional Allomancy, particularly when they were already being manipulated by someone else. However, when he did break through, he could take complete control of them. That, required time, luck, and a determination to fight tirelessly . And so, he did. He fought alongside the men, watching them die, killing koloss as his line bent at the edges, forming a half circle to keep his troops from being surrounded. Even so, the fighting was grim. As more and more koloss frenzied and charged, the odds quickly turned against Elend's group. Still, the koloss resisted his emotional manipulation. But they were getting closer . . .

"We're doomed!" Fatren screamed.

Elend turned, a bit surprised to see the beefy lord beside him and still alive. The men continued to f ight. Only about f ifteen minutes had passed since the start of the frenzy, but the line was already beginning to buckle.

A speck appeared in the sky.

"You've led us to die!" Fatren yelled. He was covered in koloss blood, though a patch on his shoulder looked to be his own. "Why?" Fatren demanded. Elend simply pointed as the spe ck grew larger.

"What is it?" Fatren asked over the chaos of battle .

Elend smiled. "The first of those armies I promised you."

Vin fell from the sky in a tempest of horseshoes, landing directly at the center of the koloss army. Without hesitating, she used Allomancy to Push a pair of horseshoes toward a turning koloss. One took the creature in the forehead, throwing it backward, and the other shot over its head, hitting another koloss. Vin spun, flipping out another shoe, shooting it past a particularly large beast and taking down a smaller koloss behind him.

She flared iron, Pulling that horseshoe back, catching it around the larger koloss's wrist. Immediately, her Pull yanked her toward the beast but it also threw the creature off balance. Its massive iron sword dropped to the ground as Vin hit the creature in the chest. Then, she Pushed off the fallen sw ord, throwing herself upward in a backward flip as another koloss swung at her.

She shot some f if teen feet into the air. The sword missed, cutting off the head of the koloss beneath her. The koloss who had swung didn't seem to mind that it had killed a comrade; it just looked up at her, bloodred eyes hateful.

Vin Pulled on the fallen sword. It lurched up at her, but also pulled her down with its weight. She caught it as she fell the sword w as nearly as tall as she was, but flared pewter let her handle it with ease and she sheared free the attacking koloss's arm as she landed.

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She took its legs off at the knees, then left it to die as she spun toward other opponents. As always, the koloss seemed fascinated in an enraged, baffled way with Vin. They associated large size with danger and had difficulty understanding how a small woman like Vin twenty years old, barely over five feet in height and slight as a willow could pose a threat. Yet, they saw her kill, and this drew them to her. Vin was just fine with that.

She screamed as she attacked, if only to add some sound to the too-silent battlef ield. Koloss tended to stop yelling as they entered their f renzy, growing focused only on killing. She threw out a handful of coins, Pushing them toward the group behind her, then jumped forward, Pulling on a sword. A koloss in front of her stumbled. She landed on its back, attacking a creature beside it. This one fell, and Vin rammed her sword down into the back of the one below her. She Pushed herself to the side, Pulling on the sword of the dying koloss. She caught this weapon, cut down a third beast, then threw the sword, Pushing it like a giant arrow into the chest of a fourth monster. That same Push threw her backward out of the way of an attack. She grabbed the sword from the back of the one she'd stabbed before, ripping the weapon free even as the creature died. And, in one fluid stroke, she slammed it down through the collarbone and chest of a fif th beast. She landed. Koloss fell dead around her. Vin was not fury. She was not terror. She had grown beyond those things. She had seen Elend die had held him in her arms as he did and had known that she had let it happen. Intentionally. And yet, he still lived. Every breath was unexpected, perhaps undeserved. Once, she'd been terrified that she would fail him. But, she had found peace somehow in understanding that she couldn't keep him f rom risking his life. In understanding that she didn't want to keep him from risking his life. So, she no longer fought out of fear for the man she loved. Instead, she fought with an understanding. She was a knif e Elend's knife, the Final Empire's knife. She didn't f ight to protect one man, but to protect the way of life he had created, and the people he struggled so hard to defend. Peace gave her strength.

Koloss died around her, and scarlet blood too bright to be human stained the air. There were ten thousand in this army far too many for her to kill. However, she didn't need to slaughter every koloss in the army.

She just had to make them afraid.

Because, despite what she'd once assumed, koloss
could
feel fear. She saw it building in the creatures around her, hidden beneath frustration and rage. A koloss attacked her, and she dodged to the side, moving with pewter's enhanced speed. She slammed a sword into its back as she moved, and spun, noticing a massive creature pushing its way through the army toward her.

Per f ect ,
she thought. It was big perhaps the biggest one she had ever seen. It had to be almost thirteen feet tall. Heart failure should have killed it long ago, and its skin was ripped half free, hanging in wide flaps .

It bellowed, the sound echoing across the oddly quiet battlefield. Vin smiled, then burned duralumin. Immediately, the pewter already burning inside of her exploded to give her a massive, instantane ous burst of strength. Duralumin, when used with another metal, amplified that second metal and made it burn out in a single burst, giving up all of its power at once.

Vin burned steel, then Pushed outward in all directions. Her duralumin-enhanced Push crashed like a wave into the swords of the creatures running at her. Weapons ripped free, koloss were thrown backward, and massive bodies scattered like mere flakes of ash beneath the bloodred sun. Duraluminenhanced pewter kept her from being crushed as she did this. Her pewter and steel both dis appeared, burned away in single f lash of power. She pulled out a small vial of liquid an alcohol solution with metal flakes and downed it in a single gulp, restoring her metals. Then, she burned pewter and leaped over fallen, disoriented koloss toward the massive creature she had seen earlier. A smaller koloss tried to stop her, but she caught its arm by the wrist, then twisted, breaking the j oint. She took the creature's sword, ducking beneath another koloss's attack, and spun, felling three different koloss in one sweep by cutting at their knees. As she completed her spin, she rammed her sword into the earth point-first. As expected, the large, thirteen-foot-tall beast attacked a second later, swinging a sword that was so large that it made the air roar. Vin planted her sword just in time, for even with pewter she never would have been able to parry this enormous creature's weapon. That weapon, however, slammed into the blade of her sword, which was stabilized by the earth below. The metal quivered beneath her hands, but she held against the blow.