A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 1

a sobbing breath, straightened away from the shield's support, stepped forward.
    Ahead battled the front line of marines, horribly thinned, yielding step after step as the Guran heavy infantry pushed down the slope. The wedge was about to shatter.
    Semk warriors ranged in the midst of the marines in wild, frenzied mayhem, and it was these ash-stained warriors that the rear ranks had been driven forward to deal with.
    The task was quickly done, brutal discipline more than a match for individual warriors who held no line, offered no support weapon-side, and heard no voice except their own manic battle cries.
    For all that sudden deliverance, the marines began to buckle.
    Three horns sounded in quick, braying succession: the Imperial call to split. Duiker gaped, spun round to look for List – but the corporal was nowhere in sight. He saw his marine companion and staggered over to her. 'Four's the withdraw, were there four blasts? I heard—'
    She bared her teeth. 'Three, old man. Split! Now!'
    She pulled away. Baffled, Duiker followed. The slope was treacherous, blood- and bile-soaked mud over shifting cobbles. They stumbled with the others this side of the divide – the south – towards the high bank, and descended into the narrow ditch, finding themselves ankle-deep in a stream of blood.
    The Guran heavy infantry had paused, sensing a trap – no matter how improbable events had made that possibility – as they shuffled to close ranks four strides down from the crest. A ram's horn bleated, pulling the formation back to the summit in ragged back-step.
    Duiker turned in time to see, seventy paces farther down the ramp, the Foolish Dog heavy cavalry edging forward, parting around Nil and Nether, who still stood on either side of the stationary mare, their hands pressed against the animal.
    'Lord's push,' cursed the woman at his side.
    They mean to charge up this ramp, with its bodies and wreckage and mud and stones. A slope steep enough to force the riders onto their mounts' necks – and all that weight onto their forelegs. Coltaine means them to charge. Into the face of heavy infantry — 'No!' the historian whispered.
    Rocks and sand pattered down the bank. Around Duiker helmed heads turned in sudden alarm – someone was on the bank's top. More dirt slewed down on them.
    A stream of Malazan curses sounded from above, then a helmed head peered over the edge.
    'It's a Hood-damned sapper!' one of the marines grunted.
    The dirt-smeared face above them grinned. 'Guess what turtles do in the winter?' he shouted down, then pulled back and out of sight.
    Duiker glanced back at the Foolish Dog horsewarriors. Their forward motion had ceased, as if suddenly uncertain. The Wickans had their heads raised, gazes fixed on the tops of the banks to either side.
    The Guran heavy infantry and surviving Semk stared as well.
    Through the dust rolling down the ramp from the crest, Duiker squinted towards the north bank. Activity swarmed along it – sappers, wearing shields on their backs, had begun moving forward, dropping down onto the ramp in the body-piled space below the crest.
    Another horn sounded, and the Foolish Dog horsewarriors rolled forward again, pushing their mounts into a trot, then a clambering canter. But now a company of sappers blocked their path to the ridge.
    A turtle burrows come winter. The bastards snuck onto the banks last night – under the very noses of Reloe – and buried them.' selves. What in Hood's name for?
    The sappers, still wearing their shields on their backs, milled about, preparing weapons and other gear. One stepped free to wave the Foolish Dog riders forward.
    The ramp trembled.
    The armour-clad horses surged up the steep slope in an explosion of muscle, swifter than the historian thought possible. Broadswords lifted skyward. In their arcane, bizarre armour, the Wickans sat their saddles like demonic conjurations above equally nightmarish mounts.
    The sappers rushed the Guran line. Grenados flew, followed by the rap of explosions and dreadful screams.
    Every munition left to the sappers arced a path into the press of heavy infantry. Sharpers, burners, flamers. The solid line of Reloe's elite soldiers disintegrated.
    The Foolish Dog's galloping charge reached the sappers, who went down beneath the hooves in resounding clangs that beat a dreadful rhythm as horse after horse surged over them.
    Into the gutted, chaotic maelstrom that had moments before been a solid line of heavy infantry, the