A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 3

On the distant flanks, the Trell had
appeared, voicing warcries, over the ridge, and were beginning
their deadly flow downward into the suddenly
confused, churning knot of riders.
    Saylan'mathas, who moments earlier had been locked in
the mindset of the attacker, found himself shifting stance,
his thoughts casting away all notions of delivering
slaughter, fixing now on the necessity of defence. He split
his army of foot-soldiers, half-legions wheeling out and
moving at dog-trot to the far-too-distant flanks, horns
keening to alert the cavalry that an avenue of retreat now
existed. Elements of light cavalry that had remained on the
other side of the river, ready to be cut loose to run down
fleeing Trell, the general now sent at a gallop back towards
the unseen baggage camp, but their horses had a steep slope
to climb first, and before they were halfway up, eight
hundred Trell appeared on the crest, wielding their own
pikes, these ones half again as long as those used by the
Nemil. Taking position with the long weapons settled and
angled to match the slope. The light cavalry reached that
bristling line uneven and already seeking to flinch back.
Spitted horses reared and tumbled downslope, breaking legs
of the horses below them. Soldiers spun from their saddles,
all advance now gone, and the Trellish line began marching
down into the midst of the enemy, delivering death.
    The general had halted his centre's advance to the slope,
and now reordered it into a four-sided defence, the pikes a
glistening, wavering forest, slowly lifting like hackles on
some cornered beast.
    Motionless, watching for a time, Trynigarr, Wise in
Silence, now half-turned his head, gestured in a small wave
with his right hand, and the thousand Trell behind him
formed into jostling lines, creating avenues through which
the columns of Trell archers came.
    Archers was a poor description. True, there were some
warriors carrying recurved longbows, so stiff that no human
could draw them, the arrows overlong and very nearly the
mass of javelins, the fletching elongated, stiffened strips of
leather. Others, however, held true javelins and weighted
atlatls, whilst among them were slingers, including those with
sling-poles and two-wheeled carts behind each warrior,
loaded down with the large, thin sacks they would fling into
the midst of the enemy, sacks that seethed and rippled.
    Sixteen hundred archers, then, many of them women,
who later joked that they had emptied their yurts for this
battle. Moving forward onto the slope, even as the original
warriors, now aligned in columns, moved with them.
    Down, to meet the heart of the Nemil army.
    Trynigarr walked in their midst, suddenly indistinguishable
from any other warrior, barring his age. He was done
with commanding, for the moment. Each element of his
elaborate plan was now engaged, the outcome left to the
bravery and ferocity of young warriors and their clanleaders.
This gesture of Trynigarr's was in truth the finest
expression of confidence and assurance possible. The battle
was here, it was now, measured in the rise and fall of
weapons. The elder had done what he could to speak to the
inherent strengths of the Trell, while deftly emasculating
those of the Nemil and their vaunted general. And so,
beneath screeching birds and in sight of terrified deer still
running and bounding along the valley slopes, the day and
its battle gloried in the spilling of blood.
    On the west river bank, Nemil archers, arrayed to face
both east and west, sent flights of deadly arrows, again and
again, the shafts descending to screams and the thuds of
wooden shields, until the advancing warriors, cutting down
the last of the light cavalry, re-formed beneath the missile
fire, then closed at a trot with their pikes, the first touch of
which shattered the archers and their meagre guard of
skirmishers. The ranks who had faced east, sending arrows
over the Nemil square into the Trell marching to close,
were now struck from behind, and there was great
slaughter.
    Trell arrows arced out to land within the phalanx, the
heavy shafts punching through shield and armour. Javelins
then followed as the Trell moved closer, and the Nemil
front ranks grew pocked, porous and jostling as soldiers
moved to take the place of the fallen. Trellish throwing
axes met them, and, at last, with less than twenty paces
between the forces, the pole-slings whirled above the
massed Trell, the huge sacks wheeling ever faster, then
released, out, sailing over