Indeed, the more he marched, the more Moash admired the Voidbringers. The armies were efficient, and the troops learned quickly. The caravans were well supplied; when an overseer saw that Moash’s boots were looking worn, he had a new pair by evening.
Each wagon or sledge was given two parshman overseers, but these were told to use their whips sparingly. They were quietly trained for the position, and Moash heard the occasional conversation between an overseer—once a parshman slave—and an unseen spren who gave them directions.
The Voidbringers were smart, driven, and efficient. If Kholinar fell to this force, it would be no more than humankind deserved. Yes … perhaps the time for his people had passed. Moash had failed Kaladin and the others—but that was merely how men were in this debased age. He couldn’t be blamed. He was a product of his culture.
Only one oddity marred his observations. The Voidbringers seemed so much better than the human armies he’d been part of … except for one thing.
There was a group of parshman slaves.
They pulled one of the sledges, and always walked apart from the humans. They wore workform, not warform—though otherwise they looked exactly like the other parshmen, with the same marbled skin. Why did this group pull a sledge?
At first, as Moash plodded across the endless plains of central Alethkar, he found the sight of them encouraging. It suggested that the Voidbringers could be egalitarian. Maybe there’d simply been too few men with the strength to pull these sledges.
Yet if that were so, why were these parshman sledge-pullers treated so poorly? The overseers did little to hide their disgust, and were allowed to whip the poor creatures without restriction. Moash rarely glanced in their direction without finding one of them being beaten, yelled at, or abused.
Moash’s heart wrenched to see and hear this. Everyone else seemed to work so well together; everything else about the army seemed so perfect. Except this.
Who were these poor souls?
The overseer called a break, and Moash dropped his rope, then took a long pull on his waterskin. It was their twenty-first day of marching, which he only knew because some of the other slaves kept track. He judged the location as several days past Inkwell, in the final stretch toward Kholinar.
He ignored the other slaves and settled down in the shade of the sledge, which was piled high with cut timber. Not far behind them, a village burned. There hadn’t been anyone in it, as word had run before them. Why had the Voidbringers burned it, but not others they’d passed? Perhaps it was to send a message—indeed, that smoke trail was ominous. Or perhaps it was to prevent any potential flanking armies from using the village.
As his crew waited—Moash didn’t know their names, and hadn’t bothered to ask—the parshman crew trudged past, bloodied and whipped, their overseers yelling them onward. They’d lagged behind. Pervasive cruel treatment led to a tired crew, which in turn led to them being forced to march to catch up when everyone else got a water break. That, of course, only wore them out and caused injuries—which made them lag farther behind, which made them get whipped …
That’s what happened to Bridge Four, back before Kaladin, Moash thought. Everyone said we were unlucky, but it was just a self-perpetuating downward spiral.
Once that crew passed, trailing a few exhaustionspren, one of Moash’s overseers called for his team to take up their ropes and get moving again. She was a young parshwoman with dark red skin, marbled only slightly with white. She wore a havah. Though it didn’t seem like marching clothing, she wore it well. She had even done up the sleeve to cover her safehand.
“What’d they do, anyway?” he said as he took up his rope.
“What was that?” she asked, looking back at him. Storms. Save for that skin and the odd singsong quality to her voice, she could have been a pretty Makabaki caravan girl.
“That parshman crew,” he said. “What did they do to deserve such rough treatment?”
He didn’t actually expect an answer. But the parshwoman followed his gaze, then shook her head. “They harbored a false god. Brought him into the very center among us.”
“The Almighty?”
She laughed. “A real false god, a living one. Like our living gods.” She looked up as one of the Fused passed overhead.
“There are lots who think the Almighty is real,” Moash said.
“If that’s the case, why are you pulling a sledge?” She snapped her fingers, pointing.
Moash picked up his rope, joining the other men in a double line. They merged with the enormous column of marching feet, scraping sledges, and rattling wheels. The Parshendi wanted to arrive at the next town before an impending storm. They’d weathered both types—highstorm and Everstorm—sheltering in villages along the way.
Moash fell into the sturdy rhythm of the work. It wasn’t long until he was sweating. He’d grown accustomed to the colder weather in the east, near the Frostlands. It was strange to be in a place where the sun felt hot on his skin, and now the weather here was turning toward summer.
His sledge soon caught up to the parshman crew. The two sledges walked side by side for a time, and Moash liked to think that keeping pace with his crew could motivate the poor parshmen. Then one of them slipped and fell, and the entire team lurched to a stop.
The whipping began. The cries, the crack of leather on skin.
That’s enough.
Moash dropped his rope and stepped out of the line. His shocked overseers called after him, but didn’t follow. Perhaps they were too surprised.
He strode up to the parshman sledge, where the slaves were struggling to pull themselves back up and start again. Several had bloodied faces and backs. The large parshman who had slipped lay curled on the ground. His feet were bleeding; no wonder he’d had trouble walking.
Two overseers were whipping him. Moash seized one by the shoulder and pushed him back. “Stop it!” he snapped, then shoved the other overseer aside. “Don’t you see what you’re doing? You’re becoming like us.”
The two overseers stared at him, dumbfounded.
“You can’t abuse each other,” Moash said. “You can’t.” He turned toward the fallen parshman and extended a hand to help him up, but from the corner of his eye he saw one of the overseers raise his arm.
Moash spun and caught the whip that cracked at him, snatching it from the air and twisting it around his wrist to gain leverage. Then he yanked it—pulling the overseer stumbling toward him. Moash smashed a fist into his face, slamming him backward to the ground.
Storms that hurt. He shook his hand, which had clipped carapace on the side as he’d connected. He glared at the other overseer, who yelped and dropped his whip, jumping backward.
Moash nodded once, then took the fallen slave by the arm and pulled him upright. “Ride in the sledge. Heal those feet.” He took the parshman slave’s place in line, and pulled the rope taut over his shoulder.
By now, his own overseers had gathered their wits and chased after him. They conferred with the two that he’d confronted, one nursing a bleeding cut around his eye. Their conversation was hushed, urgent, and punctuated by intimidated glances toward him.
Finally, they decided to let it be. Moash pulled the sledge with the parshmen, and they found someone to replace him on the other sledge. For a while he thought more would come of it—he even saw one of the overseers conferring with a Fused. But they didn’t punish him.