A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 3

soldiers of their god ...'
    'All that they do in that god's name is at its core profoundly godless.'
    'And the truly godless – such as you spoke of earlier –
cannot but see such blasphemers as allies.'
    She studied him until he grew uneasy, then she said,
'What drives Icarium to fight?'
    'When under control, it is ... inequity. Injustice.'
    'And when out of control?'
    'Then ... nothing.'
    'And the difference between the two is one of
magnitude.'
    He glanced away once more. 'And of motivation.'
    'Are you sure? Even if inequity, in triggering his violence,
    then ascends, crossing no obvious threshold, into all-destroying annihilation?
    Mappo Trell, I believe motivations prove, ultimately, irrelevant. Slaughter
    is slaughter. Upon either side of the battlefield the face grins with blunt
    stupidity, even as smoke fills the sky from horizon to horizon, even as crops
    wither and die, even as sweet land turns to salt. Inequity ends, Trell, when
    no-one and no thing is left standing. Perhaps,' she added, 'this is Icarium's
    true purpose, why the Nameless Ones seek to unleash him. It is, after all,
    one sure way to end this war.'
    Mappo Trell stared at her, then said, 'Next time we speak
like this, Spite, you can tell me your reasons for opposing
the Nameless Ones. For helping me.'
    She smiled at him. 'Ah, you begin to doubt our alliance?'
    'How can I not?'
    'Such is war among the gods, Trell.'
    'We are not gods.'
    'We are their hands, their feet, wayward and wilful. We fight
    for reasons that are, for the most part, essentially nonsensical, even when
    the justification seems plain and straightforward. Two kingdoms, one upriver,
    one down river. The kingdom downriver sees the water arrive befouled and sickly,
    filled with silts and sewage. The kingdom upriver, being on higher land, sees
    its desperate efforts at irrigation failing, as the topsoil is swept away
    each time the rains come to the highlands beyond. The two kingdoms quarrel,
    until there is war. The downriver kingdom marches, terrible battles are fought,
    cities are burned to the ground, citizens enslaved, fields salted and made
    barren. Ditches and dykes are broken. In the end, only the downriver kingdom
    remains. But the erosion does not cease. Indeed, now that there is no irrigation
    occurring upriver, the waters rush down in full flood, distempered and wild,
    and they carry lime and salt that settles on the fields and poisons the remaining
    soil. There is starvation, disease, and the desert closes in on all sides.
    The once victorious leaders are cast down. Estates are looted. Brigands rove
    unchecked, and within a single generation there are no kingdoms, neither upriver
    nor downriver. Was the justification valid? Of course. Did that validity defend
    the victors against their own annihilation? Of course not.
    'A civilization at war chooses only the most obvious
enemy, and often also the one perceived, at first, to be the
most easily defeatable. But that enemy is not the true
enemy, nor is it the gravest threat to that civilization. Thus,
a civilization at war often chooses the wrong enemy. Tell
me, Mappo Runt, for my two hypothetical kingdoms,
where hid the truest threat?'
    He shook his head.
    'Yes, difficult to answer, because the threats were many,
seemingly disconnected, and they appeared, disappeared
then reappeared over a long period of time. The game that
was hunted to extinction, the forests that were cut down,
the goats that were loosed into the hills, the very irrigation
ditches that were dug. And yet more: the surplus of food,
the burgeoning population and its accumulating wastes.
And then diseases, soils blown or washed away; and kings –
one after another – who could or would do nothing, or
indeed saw nothing untoward beyond their fanatical focus
upon the ones they sought to blame.
    'Alas,' she said, leaning now on the rail, her face to the
wind, 'there is nothing simple in seeking to oppose such a
host of threats. First, one must recognize them, and to
achieve that one must think in the long term; and then one
must discern the intricate linkages that exist between all
things, the manner in which one problem feeds into
another. From there, one must devise solutions and finally,
one must motivate the population into concerted effort,
and not just one's own population, but that of the neighbouring
kingdoms, all of whom are participating in the slow
self-destruction. Tell me, can you imagine such a leader
ever coming to