Preface to the Compendium of Maps
Kellarstellis of Li Heng
The vast shelves and ridges of coral had been worn into flat-topped islands by millennia of drifting sand and wind. Their flanks were ragged and rotted, pitted and undercut, the low ground in between them narrow, twisting and filled with sharp-edged rubble. To Gamet’s eye, the gods could not have chosen a less suitable place to encamp an army.
Yet there seemed little choice. Nowhere else offered an approach onto the field of battle, and, as quickly became evident, the position, once taken, was as defensible as the remotest mountain keep: a lone saving grace.
Tavore’s headlong approach into the maw of the enemy, to the battleground of their choosing, was, the Fist suspected, the primary source of the unease and vague confusion afflicting the legions. He watched the soldiers proceeding, in units of a hundred, on their way to taking and holding various coral islands overlooking the basin. Once in place, they would then construct from the rubble defensive barriers and low walls, followed by ramps on the south sides.
Captain Keneb shifted nervously on his saddle beside the Fist as they watched the first squads of their own legion set out towards a large, bone-white island on the westernmost edge of the basin. ‘They won’t try to dislodge us from these islands,’ he said. ‘Why bother, since it’s obvious the Adjunct intends to march us right into their laps?’
Gamet was not deaf to the criticisms and doubt hidden beneath Keneb’s words, and he wished he could say something to encourage the man, to bolster faith in Tavore’s ability to formulate and progress sound tactics. But even the Fist was unsure. There had been no sudden revelation of genius during the march from Aren. They had, in truth, walked straight as a lance northward. Suggesting what, exactly? A singlemindedness worthy of imitation, or a failure of imagination? Are the two so different, or merely alternate approaches to the same thing ? And now they were being arrayed, as stolid as ever, to advance-probably at dawn the next day-towards the enemy and their entrenched fortifications. An enemy clever enough to create singular and difficult approaches to their positions.
‘Those ramps will see the death of us all,’ Keneb muttered. ‘Korbolo Dom’s prepared for this, as any competent, Malazan-trained commander would. He wants us crowded and struggling uphill, beneath an endless hail of arrows, quarrels and ballista, not to mention sorcery. Look at how smooth he’s made those ramp surfaces, Fist. The cobbles, when slick with streaming blood, will be like grease underfoot. We’ll find no purchase-’
‘I am not blind,’ Gamet growled. ‘Nor, we must assume, is the Adjunct.’