A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 3

river and took up inwardfacing
stations, whereupon they waited. On the slope
directly opposite, foot-soldiers began the march down,
whilst advance skirmishers crossed the river, followed by
medium and then heavy infantry, each reinforcing the
advance bridgehead on this side of the river.
    The Trell warriors were shouting still, throats raw, and
something like fear growing in the ever longer intervals of
drawn breath and pauses between beats of weapon on
shield. Their battle-frenzy was waning, and all that it had
succeeded in pushing aside – all the mortal terrors and
doubts that anyone sane could not help but feel at the edge
of battle – were now returning.
    The bridgehead, seeing itself unopposed, fanned out to
accommodate the arrival of the army's main body on the
east side of the river. As they moved, deer exploded from
the cover of the thickets and raced in darts this way and
that between the armies.
    Century upon century, the Trell ever fought in their wild
frenzy. Battle after battle, in circumstances little different
from this one, they would have charged by now, gathering
speed on the slope, each warrior eager to outpace the others
and so claim the usually fatal glory of being the first to close
with the hated enemy. The mass would arrive like an
avalanche, the Trell making full use of their greater size to
crash into and knock down the front lines, to break the
phalanx and so begin a day of slaughter.
    Sometimes it had succeeded. More often it had failed –
oh, the initial impact had often knocked from their feet
row upon row of enemy soldiers, had on occasion sent
enemy bodies cartwheeling through the air; and once,
almost three hundred years ago, one such charge had knocked an entire phalanx on its ass. But the Nemil
had learned, and now the units advanced with pikes
levelled out. A Trell charge would spit itself on those
deadly iron points; the enemy square, trained to greater
mobility and accepting backward motion as easily as
forward, would simply absorb the collision. And the Trell
would break, or die where they stood locked in the fangs of
the Nemil pikes.
    And so, as the Trell did nothing, still fixed like windplucked
scarecrows upon the ridge, Saylan'mathas
reappeared on his charger, this time before the river, gaze
tilted upward as if to pierce the stolid mind of Trynigarr as
he rode across the front of his troops. Clearly, the general
was displeased; for now, to engage with the Trell he would
have to send his infantry upslope, and such position put
them at a disadvantage in meeting the charge that would
surely come then. Displeased, Mappo suspected, but not
unduly worried. The phalanxes were superbly trained; they
could divide and open pathways straight down, into which
their pikes could funnel the Trell, driven as the warriors
would be by their headlong rush. Still, his flanking cavalry
had just lost much of their effectiveness, assuming he left
them at their present stations, and now Mappo saw
messengers riding out from the general's retinue, one down
and the other up the valley's length. The cataphracts would
now proceed upslope to take the same ridge the Trell
occupied, and move inward. Twin charges would force the
Trell to turn their own flanks. Not that such a move would
help much, for the warriors knew of no tactic to meet a
cavalry charge.
    As soon as the cataphracts swung their mounts and
began their ascent, Trynigarr gestured, each hand outward.
The signal was passed back through the ranks, down to the
ridge's backslope, then outward, north and south, to
the hidden, outlying masses of Trell warriors, each one
positioned virtually opposite the unsuspecting cavalry on
the flanks. Those warriors now began moving up towards
the ridge – they would reach it well before the cataphracts
and their armour-burdened warhorses, but they would not
stop on the summit, instead continuing over it, onto the
valley slope and at a charge, down into the horse-soldiers.
Trell cannot meet a cavalry charge, but they can charge
into cavalry, provided the momentum is theirs – as it would
be on this day.
    Dust and distant sounds of slaughter now, from the
baggage camp west of the river, as the fifteen hundred Trell
Trynigarr had sent across the Bayen Eckar three days past
now descended upon the lightly guarded supply camp.
    Messengers swarmed in the valley below, and Mappo saw
the general's train halted, horses turning every which way
as if to match the confusion of the officers surrounding
Saylan'mathas.