A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 3

warriors. Surmounting the Orstanz Ridge overlooking
the Valley of Bayen Eckar, so named for the
shallow, stony river that flowed northward to a distant,
mythical sea – mythical for the Trell at least, none of whom
had ever travelled that far from their homeland steppes and
plains. Arrayed on the slope opposite and down on the
river's western bank, fifteen hundred paces distant, was
the Nemil army, commanded in those days by a muchfeared
general, Saylan'mathas.
    So many of the Trell had already fallen, not in battle, but
to the weakness of life encamped around the trader posts,
forts and settlements that now made the borderlands a
hazy, ephemeral notion and little more. Mappo himself had
fled such a settlement, finding refuge among the stillbelligerent
hill clans.
    A thousand Trell warriors, facing an army eight times
their number. Mace, axe and sword hammering shield-rims,
a song of death-promise rising from their throats, a sound
like earth-thunder rolling down into the valley where birds
flew low and strangely frenzied, as if in terror they had
forgotten the sky's sanctuary overhead, instead swooping
and wheeling between the grey-leaved trees clumped close
to the river on both sides, seeming to swarm through
thickets and shrubs.
    Upon the valley's other side, units of soldiers moved in
ever-shifting presentation: units of archers, of slingers, of
pike-wielding infantry and the much feared Nemil
cataphracts – heavy in armour atop massive horses, roundshields
at the ready although their lances remained at rest
in stirrup-sockets, as they trooped at the trot to the far
wings, making plain their intention to flank once the foot
soldiers and Trell warriors were fully engaged in the basin of
the valley.
    Bayen Eckar, the river, was no barrier, barely knee-deep.
The cataphracts would cross unimpeded. Saylan'mathas
was visible, mounted with flanking retainers, traversing the
distant ridge. Banners streamed above the terrible commander,
serpentine in gold-trimmed black silk, like slashes
of the Abyss clawing through the air itself. As the train presented
along the entire ridge, weapons lifted in salute, yet
no cry rose heavenward, for such was not the habit of this
man's hand-picked army. That silence was ominous,
murderous, frightful.
    Down from the Trellish steppes, leading this defiant
army of warriors, had come an elder named Trynigarr, to
this, his first battle. An elder for whom the honorific was
tainted with mockery, for this was one old man whose fount
of wisdom and advice seemed long since dried up; an old
man who said little. Silent and watchful, is Trynigarr, like a
hawk. An observation followed by an ungenerous grin or
worse a bark of laughter.
    He led now by virtue of sobriety, for the three other
elders had all partaken five nights before of Weeping
Jegurra cactus, each bead sweated out on a prickly
blade by three days of enforced saturation in a mixture of
water and The Eight Spices, the latter a shamanistic
concoction said to hold the voice and visions of earth-gods;
yet this time the brew had gone foul, a detail unnoticed –
the trench dug round the cactus bole had inadvertently
captured and drowned a venomous spider known
as the Antelope, and the addition of its toxic juices
had flung the elders into a deep coma. One from
which, it turned out, they would never awaken.
    Scores of blooded young warriors had been eager to take
command, yet the old ways could not be set aside. Indeed,
the old ways of the Trell were at the heart of this war itself.
And so command had fallen to Trynigarr, so wise he has
nothing to say.
    The old man stood before the warriors now, on this fated
ridge, calm and silent as he studied the enemy presenting
one alignment after another, whilst the flanking cavalry –
three thousand paces or more distant to north and south –
finally wheeled and began the descent to the river. Five
units each, each unit a hundred of the superbly disciplined,
heavy-armoured soldiers, those soldiers being noble-born,
brothers and fathers and sons, wild daughters and savage
wives; one and all bound to the lust for blood that was the
Nemil way of life. That there were entire families among
those units, and that each unit was made up mostly of
extended families and led by a captain selected by
acclamation from among them, made them the most feared
cavalry west of the Jhag Odhan.
    As Trynigarr watched the enemy, so Mappo Runt
watched his warleader. The elder did nothing.
    The cataphracts crossed the