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Trotts was a huge[2] Barghast warrior and a member of the 9th Squad of the Bridgeburners under Sergeant Whiskeyjack.[3] He served as the squad's pointman[4] and its 'fist'. He was the only Barghast in the Bridgeburners.[5]

Trotts was described as burly,[6] a wide-shouldered man with black hair, braided into a ponytail and knotted with charms and fetishes. His arms were covered in blue woad tattooing, the spiral patterns interrupted every now and then by white scars. He had coal dark eyes, blue-stained filed teeth, a thin, wide mouth, and would use a monotone voice when counting in a card game.[7][8][9][10]

He was a savage and brutal fighter equally adept with throwing axes as well as the longsword. His protective fetishes and tattoos made him fearless in the face of sorcery.[11] He often defaulted to an unnerving, sharp-toothed grin when suspicious,[12] and chanted in the thick of battle.[13]

Like many Malazan soldiers, his name was bestowed by the legendary Master Sergeant, Braven Tooth.[14] As fellow Bridgeburner Hedge put it, the Barghast had not been given the name 'Trotts' because he liked jogging...[15]

In Gardens of the Moon[]

Day 8 - Teeth by Shadaan

Trotts by Shadaan - Inktober 2020

Trotts survived the Siege of Pale. He and his squad mates were then sent on deployment to Darujhistan. They were airlifted by Moranth Quorl to the northern shore of Lake Azur. Before crossing the Lake via fishing boat supplied by the Moranth, Whiskeyjack told them that he had changed the official plan as that would get them all killed. He divided the squad into two teams, one to be led by Kalam, the other one by the Sergeant himself. Trotts would be in Whiskeyjack's team. Kalam told Whiskeyjack that he was concerned for Fiddler, Hedge and Trotts, who had all shifted a lot of earth in the tunnels at Pale.

Trotts was trying to get the boat into the water and getting no help from the others. Seeing this, Whiskeyjack told him to sit in the boat and ordered the others to push it into the water. Kalam and Quick Ben's amusement was cut short when Whiskeyjack told them to help.[16]

The Bridgeburners' mission in Darujhistan was to weaken the city prior to a Malazan invasion. Trotts, Fiddler, and Hedge worked to mine the city's intersections with Moranth munitions.[17]

In Kalam's absence, Quick Ben trusted Trotts to watch over him as the mage confronted Hairlock through his warrens.[18]

While in Darujhistan, he used the pseudonym 'Niganga'.[1] The titillating presence of a big tattooed Barghast barbarian was what secured the Bridgeburners employment as guards at Lady Simtal's fete.[19]

Trotts was the first of the Bridgeburners to throw in with Captain Ganoes Paran when the squad joined former High Fist Dujek Onearm's revolt against the Malazan Empire.[20]

In Memories of Ice[]

Trotts by Dejan Delic

Trotts by Dejan Delic

After Dujek's army went renegade, the decimated Bridgeburners were reorganised and Trotts was moved to Antsy's 7th Squad.[21] Dujek allied the Malazans with their old enemies, Caladan Brood and Anomander Rake, against the Pannion Domin. Cadre mage Spindle led Trotts, Blend, Detoran, Hedge, and Picker into Brood's command tent to steal Fiddler and Hedge's old card table. Rigged to win card games using the Deck of Dragons, it had been lost as a spoil of war when the Bridgeburner camp in Mott Wood was overrun. Spindle and the squad soon put the table back into action to swindle their fellow soldiers. But the presence of a new and heretofore unknown Master of the Deck card caused the plan to backfire, lightening their own purses.[22]

The Bridgeburners were sent by Quorl to the Barghast Range where Trotts' played a crucial role in gaining the temporary support of the White Face Barghast tribes for the war. It transpired that he was once a high ranking member of his clan,[23] and its last survivor. The tattoos on his scarred body depicted the history of his tribe, a tale five hundred generations long, the blood-ties knotted at the very beginning, showing him to be descended of the First Founders. On the base of his lineage being older than that of the other Barghast, Trotts not only claimed kinship but a right to leadership of the Barghast.[24] At a gathering of the tribes, he challenged, and narrowly defeated, Humbrall Taur's youngest son in single combat, thus proving his claim to be a Barghast warleader. His trachea was crushed in the conflict, making it necessary for Mulch to improvise a way of opening a passage for air to get into his lungs, till Mallet could reach the scene and magically heal him. Trotts had earned the right to rule, but had no tribe. Paran offered up the Bridgeburners for his command, taking on an advisory role for himself.[25]

Trotts's Bridgeburners and the various Barghast tribes journeyed to Capustan, where the Pannion Domin forces had already breached the walls. The first of the allied forces to make contact with the enemy, Trotts directed the Bridgeburners to the city's North Gate. Using munitions, they punched their way through 200 Betaklites and over a thousand Tenescowri blocking the way inside the city.[26]

After the Siege of Capustan was lifted, the Bridgeburners traveled secretly to Coral to reconnoiter the next battlefield. During the Siege of Coral, Trotts and the other Bridgeburners were inserted into the city by quorl under the cover of darkness. Their mission was to attack the keep of the Pannion Seer while Dujek led the rest of the army into the city itself.[27] He assisted with driving away the Seer's demonic Condors while the squad sappers blasted a breach in the keep's wall.[28] Then he joined the others inside the keep to fight the enemy Seerdomin.[29]

Trotts was killed in the battle, along with many of the remaining Bridgeburners. After single-handedly fighting his way through as many as twenty Pannion Seerdomin at a time, he simply collapsed from all his wounds and died. Like the other Bridgeburners who perished, his body was placed in a sarcophagus within the throne room of Moon's Spawn after the battle by Anomander Rake. The failing Skykeep was then sent out over the Rust Ocean where it was presumed to have crashed into the sea.[30]

In House of Chains[]

Like most of his regiment, he became an Ascendant of High House Death.[citation needed]

In The Bonehunters[]

Ganoes Paran, now Master of the Deck, travelled to the newly reborn sea of Raraku. On its shores he performed a ritual to summon all of the dead Bridgeburners by name, including Trotts. Among the ranks, Hedge bragged this was not the first time this group of dead Bridgeburners had walked among the living, noting that they had twisted the hair of Korbolo Dom and his Dogslayers at the Battle of Raraku. Shank spoke directly to Paran, asking their former captain what he required. Paran requested that they help him find the Deragoth to destroy Dejim Nebrahl.[31]

In Reaper's Gale[]

Quick Ben and Fiddler separately thought of Trotts when reminiscing over lost friends.[32][33] Fiddler recalled the first time Moranth munitions had been given to himself and Hedge to test. Whiskeyjack had said that if the two sappers carelessly blew themselves up, the only other Bridgeburners he trusted with them were Trotts and Kalam.[34]

In Toll the Hounds[]

Antsy recalled a time when he had faced down a charging wild boar. Blend and Picker scoffed at the tale, reminding him that the boar had been Trotts' pet.[35]

Trotts appeared among the Bridgeburners serving in Hood's army of the dead to battle Chaos within Dragnipur.[36] As overall commander, Whiskeyjack placed the Bridgeburners at the head of the spear with Dujek and his troops on his left flank with Skamar Ara's Jacuruku legions. On the right flank were Brukhalian and the Grey Swords, as well as Bult with the 7th Army and the Wickans.[37]

Quotes[]

"You, sapper, are the scum beneath a pebble in a stream running through a field of sickly pigs."
―Trotts, after Hedge successfully crept up behind him[src]

Notes and references[]

  1. 1.0 1.1 Gardens of the Moon, Chapter 21, UK MMPB p.604
  2. Memories of Ice, Chapter 11, US SFBC p.407
  3. Gardens of the Moon, Dramatis Personae, UK MMPB p.xii
  4. Memories of Ice, Chapter 17, US SFBC p.562
  5. Gardens of the Moon, Chapter 3, UK MMPB p.121
  6. Gardens of the Moon, Chapter 4, UK MMPB p.159
  7. Gardens of the Moon, Chapter 13, US HC p.302
  8. Gardens of the Moon, Chapter 8, US HC p.196
  9. Gardens of the Moon, Chapter 3, UK MMPB p.120/121
  10. Memories of Ice, Chapter 2, US SFBC p.79-81
  11. Gardens of the Moon, Chapter 15, US HC p.324
  12. Memories of Ice, Chapter 23, US SFBC p.828
  13. Memories of Ice, Chapter 25, US SFBC p.928
  14. House of Chains, Chapter 5, US SFBC p.252
  15. Gardens of the Moon, Chapter 3, UK MMPB p.121
  16. Gardens of the Moon, Chapter 8, UK MMPB p.258,264-266
  17. Gardens of the Moon, Chapter 11, US HC p.258
  18. Gardens of the Moon, Chapter 15, US HC p.324
  19. Gardens of the Moon, Chapter 20, US HC p.411
  20. Gardens of the Moon, Chapter 24, US HC p.481
  21. Memories of Ice, Chapter 2, US SFBC p.82
  22. Memories of Ice, Chapter 4, US SFBC p.139-143
  23. Memories of Ice, Chapter 8, UK MMPB p.372
  24. Memories of Ice, Chapter 11, UK MMPB p.455/456
  25. Memories of Ice, Chapter 11, US SFBC p.386-394/400-405
  26. Memories of Ice, Chapter 17, US SFBC p.560-566
  27. Memories of Ice, Chapter 24, US SFBC p.877-878
  28. Memories of Ice, Chapter 24, US SFBC p.883
  29. Memories of Ice, Chapter 25, US SFBC p.918
  30. Memories of Ice, Chapter 25, US SFBC p.928-930/982/985-986
  31. The Bonehunters, Chapter 8, US SFBC p.396-397
  32. Reaper's Gale, Chapter 12, US HC p.317
  33. Reaper's Gale, Chapter 17, US HC p.495
  34. Reaper's Gale, Chapter 17, US HC p.493-494
  35. Toll the Hounds, Chapter 5, US SFBC p.181
  36. Toll the Hounds, Chapter 24, US SFBC p.956
  37. Toll the Hounds, Chapter 22, US SFBC p.912
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