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Moash sprinted towards the duel, a half-lashing lending wings to his feet. Both figures blazed, throwing ink shadows across the stony ground. Helaran bled stormlight from every inch of his Plate. The arm that Nale had sheared of its pauldron was the only part of him that did not glow. Helaran blocked and stepped in, forcing their blades into a bind, two infinitely sharp edges sawing against each other. Through the Veden’s shattered helm, Moash could see sweat pour down his brow in blood-tinged rivers.
Moash surged forward with spear held shoulder-high. Same move they’d used on Elhokar, and the queensguard Shardbearer in Kholinar. Helaran engaging the Blade, Moash striking from the sky. As he swooped in, Nale released the pommel of his Blade, his left hand held open as if to summon…
A second Shardblade ripped through Helaran’s chest.
In a blinding spray of light his breastplate exploded. A bit of metal tore across Moash’s cheek, so hot that the cut didn’t bleed. He stumbled, rolled, losing both spear and lashings as he flung himself beneath Nale’s backswing. He barely felt the resistance as the Blade sheared through his coat.
Even as he came out of the tumble, boots skidding across the wind-blasted stone, Nale dismissed the second Blade and turned aside. His fingertips brushed Moash’s sleeve and left it glowing. Moash had only a heartbeat before all six lashings seized him and flung him down. He managed to get an arm between his chest and the stone. A rib and something in his arm popped. He drew his knife, slashed the coat open, squirmed free.
He snatched up his spear and threw it at the Herald’s retreating back. Nale cut it from the air, his eyes never leaving the crumple of armor that was Helaran.
Helaran. A lighteyes. A lighteyes who had given him justice when no one else would. Justice, not the Kholins’ highhanded pity. He snatched up the fallen pauldron as he ran, never breaking stride. A lighteyes whose family had been as inconsequential to Nale as Moash’s family had been to Roshone.
The stone skidded beneath his boots as he darted between them, knife in his teeth, pauldron held up in both hands. The spray of stormlight blinded him at Nale’s first blow. He held the scrap of armor up like a shield, once more, twice more, fingers going numb, bleeding stormlight into the thing just to hold it together.
It shattered on the fourth blow. The fifth deadened his right hand below the elbow. Moash just barely felt a buzz of returning sensation in his fingertips, and then his stormlight ran out completely.
The Herald watched him from behind eyes of dun black glass, the rise and fall of his chest the only sign of exertion. Moash dropped the knife from his teeth to his left hand and flipped it into a backhanded grip. His heel met Helaran’s armor as he shuffled back. He risked a glance over his shoulder. The Veden lay still, eyes shut but not burned. Through the chest, not the spine. If he could only get him stormlight…
Gravel crunched beneath Nale’s boots. He took a step closer, eyes flicking towards the fallen Shardbearer.
“You swore your third ideal to this man?” The Herald observed Moash’s posture, the knife in his hand, the knees bent to lunge. Nale inclined his head ever so slightly. “You are to be commended.”
The knife fell from his hand in two perfect halves. His fingers went dead a heartbeat after.
Moash looked into the Herald’s eyes as he raised his sword once more. In those lifeless eyes he saw his own death. In those eyes he saw every slavemaster, every thug serving an unjust brightlord. He saw the callous entitlement of Elhokar, the vindictive spite of Roshone. He saw a man so convinced of his own righteousness that he could cut down a child stealing bread as easily as he could a murderer.
He saw a man who thought Justice was his to wield. A man who chose where Justice would fall, as if it were a pet axehound to be unleashed at its master’s whim. A man who hunted a starving child for stealing and cut down an old man for the only wrong thing he had ever done while the likes of Elhokar sat untouched upon their thrones.
“You call yourself Justice.”
The Herald paused, blade poised to swing.
“You broke your oath,” Moash snarled. “And you dare to judge the rest of us. Justice when you want it. Justice when it’s convenient.” Moash spat blood upon the Herald’s spotless boots. “If you really cared to punish the guilty, you’d fall on your own Blade.”
Black eyes flickered, alight with such hatred that Moash knew it would burn him away. The Blade drew back to swing. He pushed on anyway, for he knew that these words hurt the Herald more than any steel or Shard. Moash had stuck a knife into this Voidbringer’s proud heart, and now he twisted it.
“You don’t deserve that Blade, oathbreaker. You only call for Justice because you think you’re too high for any court to judge!”
The Honorblade swept down, screaming as it sliced the air. Moash’s voice rose to meet it.
“I judge you, Nalan'Elin! I am judgement upon all those who twist the law against the powerless!”
He wished for a weapon, some feeble token of defiance to hold up in his last moments. As stormlight flooded his vision, he had only his deadened hands to raise.
A bar of purest black split the light. Stars flickered amidst the dark, as if someone had drawn a knife through a curtain to reveal the night sky. He felt something cold and solid in his hands — he could feel his hands — and then a ringing clash as Nale’s blade struck steel instead of flesh.
They faced each other through the bind of the crossed blades, one dark and slender, one awash in violet stormlight. A familiar voice tugged at the back of Moash’s mind. For the first time since they’d bonded, he heard his spren hesitate.
“These words… are accepted.”