A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 3

the heads of the front ranks of
Nemil, down, striking pike-heads, bursting apart, each
spike spilling out hundreds of black scorpions – and thus the
women laughed, saying how they had emptied out their yurts for
this gift to the hated Nemil.
    Small, in the scheme of things, yet, that day, in that
moment, it had been one pebble too many in the farmer's
field-cart, and the axle had snapped. Screaming panic, all
discipline vanishing. Hard, cold claws of the scorpions ...
on the neck, slipping down beneath breastplates, the cuffs
of gauntlets, down onto the strapped shield arm ... and
then the savage, acid sting, puncturing like a fang, the blaze
of agony surging outward – it was enough, it was more than
enough. The phalanx seemed to explode before Mappo's
eyes, figures running, shrieking, writhing in wild dances,
weapons and shields flung aside, helms torn off, armour
stripped away.
    Arrows and javelins tore into the heaving mass, and
those that raced free of it now met the waiting maces, axes
and swords of the Trell. And Mappo, along with his fellow
warriors, all frenzy driven from them, delivered cold death.
    The great general, Saylan'mathas, died in that press,
trampled underfoot by his own soldiers. Why he had dismounted
to meet the Trell advance no-one could explain;
his horse had been recovered as it trotted back into the
baggage camp, its reins neatly looped about the hinged
horn of the saddle, the stirrups flipped over the seat.
    The cataphracts, those feared horse-soldiers, born of
pure blood, had been slaughtered, as had the half-legions
of foot-soldiers who arrived too late to do anything but die
amidst flailing, kicking horses and the bawling of the
mortally wounded nobles.
    The Nemil had looked upon a thousand warriors, and
thought those Trell the only ones present. Their spies had
failed them twice, first among the hill tribes when rumours
of the alliance's break-up had been deliberately let loose to
the ever whispering winds; then in the days and nights
leading to the battle at Bayen Eckar, when Trynigarr had
sent out his clans, each with a specific task, and all in
accordance with the site where the battle would take place,
for the Trell knew this land, could travel unerring on
moonless nights, and could hide virtually unseen amidst
the rumples and folds of these valleys during the day.
    Trynigarr, the elder who had led his first battle, would
come to fight six more, each time throwing back the Nemil
invaders, until the treaty was signed yielding all human
claim on the Trell steppes and hills, and the old man who
so rarely spoke would die drunk in an alley years later, long
after the last clan had surrendered, driven from their wildlands
by the starvation that came from sustained slaughter
of the bhederin herds by Nemil and their half-breed
Trellish scouts.
    In those last years, Mappo had heard, Trynigarr, his
tongue loosened by drink, had talked often, filling the air
with slurred, meaningless words and fragmented remembrances.
So many words, not one wise, to fill what had once
been the wisest of silences.
    Three strides behind Mappo Runt, Iskaral Pust, High
Priest and avowed Magi of the House of Shadow, led his
eerie black-eyed mule and spoke without cessation. His
words filled the air like dried leaves in a steady wind, and
held all the significance and meaning of the same; punctuated
by the sob of moccasins and hoofs dragging free of
swamp mud only to squelch back down, the occasional slap
at a biting insect, and the sniffling from Pust's perpetually
runny nose.
    It was clear to Mappo that what he was hearing were the
High Priest's thoughts, the rambling, directionless interior
monologue of a madman vented into the air with random
abandon. And every hint of genius was but a chimera, a
trail as false as the one they now walked – this supposed
short-cut that was now threatening to swallow them
whole, to drag them down into the senseless, dark peat
that would be forever indifferent to their sightless eyes.
    He had believed that Iskaral Pust had decided upon
taking his leave, returning with Mogora – if indeed she had
returned, and was not skittering about among the fetid
trees and curtains of moss – to their hidden monastery
in the cliff. But something as yet unexplained had changed
the High Priest's mind, and it was this detail more than any
other that made Mappo uneasy.
    He'd wanted this to be a solitary pursuit. Icarium was the
Trell's responsibility, no matter what the Nameless