The Hero of Ages

completely turned off his metals.

Which, apparently this man had done. Again. This was the second time he'd eluded her.

It bespoke a disquieting possibility. Vin had tried very hard to keep her ability to pierce copperclouds a secret, but it had been nearly four years since her discovery of it. Zane had known about it, and she couldn't know who else had guessed, based on things she could do. Her secret could very well be out.

Vin remained on that rooftop for a few moments, but knew she'd find nothing. A man clever enough to escape her at the exact moment when her tin was down would also be clever enough to remain hidden until she was gone. In fact, it made her wonder why he had let her see him in the first. .

Vin stood bolt upright, then downed a metal vial and Pushed herself off the rooftop, jumping with a furious anxiety back toward the camp.

She found the soldiers cleaning up the wreckage and bodies at the camp's perimeter. Elend was moving among them calling out orders, congratulating the men, and generally letting himself be seen. Indeed, sight of his white-clothed form immediately brought Vin a sense of relief.

She landed beside him. 'Elend, were you attacked?'

He glanced at her. 'What? Me? No, I'm fine.'

Then the Allomancer wasn't sent to distract me from an attack on Elend, she thought, frowning. It had seemed so obvious. It-

Elend pulled her aside, looking worried. 'I'm fine, Vin, but there's something else- something's happened.'

'What?' Vin asked.

Elend shook his head. 'I think this all was just a distraction-the entire attack on the camp.'

'But, if they weren't after you,' Vin said, 'and they weren't after our supplies, then what was there to distract us from?'

Elend met her eyes. 'The koloss.'

'How did we miss this?' Vin asked, sounding frustrated.

Elend stood with a troop of soldiers on a plateau, waiting as Vin and Ham inspected the burned siege equipment. Down below, he could see Fadrex City, and his own army camped outside it. The mists had retreated a short time ago. It was disturbing that from this distance he couldn't even make out the canal-the falling ash had darkened its waters and covered the landscape to the point that everything just looked black.

At the base of the plateau's cliffs lay the remnants of their koloss army. Twenty thousand had become ten thousand in a few brief moments as a well-laid trap had rained down destruction on the beasts while Elend's troops were distracted. The daymists had kept his men from seeing what was going on until it was too late. Elend himself had felt the deaths, but had misinterpreted them as koloss sensing the battle.

'Caves in the back of those cliffs,' Ham said, poking at a bit of charred wood. 'Yomen probably had the trebuchets stored in the caves in anticipation of our arrival, though I'd guess they were originally being built for an assault on Luthadel. Either way, this plateau was a perfect staging area for a barrage. I'd say Yomen set them up here intending to attack our army, but when we camped the koloss just beneath the plateau. .'

Elend could still hear the screams in his head-the koloss, full of bloodlust and frothing to fight, yet unable to attack their enemies, which were high atop the plateau. The falling rocks had done a lot of damage. And then the creatures had slipped away from him. Their frustration had been too powerful, and for a time, he hadn't been able to keep them from turning on each other. Most of the deaths had come as the koloss attacked each other. Roughly one of every two had died as they had paired off and killed each other.

I lost control of them, he thought. It had only been for a short while, and it had only happened because they hadn't been able to get at their enemies. However, it set a dangerous precedent.

Vin, frustrated, kicked a large chunk of burned wood, sending it tumbling down the side of the plateau.

'This was a very well-planned attack, El,' Ham said, speaking in a soft voice. 'Yomen must have seen us sending out extra patrols in the mornings, and correctly guessed that we were expecting an attack during those hours. So, he gave us one-then hit us where we should have been the strongest.'

'It cost him a lot, though,' Elend said. 'He had to burn his own siege equipment to keep it away from us, and he has to have lost hundreds of soldiers-plus their mounts-in the attack on our camp.'

'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