The Crippled God (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #10)

by Steven Erikson

Karsa stared at the wretched shape at his feet. He set his sword to lean against the wall behind him, and then crouched down. The crippled man’s face lifted, the sightless eyes white as polished coins. ‘What are you doing?’ Karsa reached down, gathered the skeletal figure into his arms, and then settled back. ‘I stepped over corpses on the way here,’ the Toblakai said. ‘People no one cared about, dying alone. In my barbaric village this would never happen, but here in this city, this civilized jewel, it happens all the time.’ The ravaged face was turned upward, the last of the raindrops dripping away as he huddled beneath the cover Karsa provided. The mouth worked, but no sounds came forth. ‘What is your name?’ Karsa asked. ‘Munug.’ ‘Munug. This night – before I must rise and walk into the temple – I am a village. And you are here, in my arms. You will not die uncared for.’ ‘You – you would do this for me? A stranger?’ ‘In my village no one is a stranger – and this is what civilization has turned its back on. One day, Munug, I will make a world of villages, and the age of cities will be over. And slavery will be dead, and there shall be no chains – tell your god. Tonight, I am his knight.’ Munug’s shivering was fading. The old man smiled. ‘He knows.’ It wasn’t too much, to take a frail figure into one’s arms for those last moments of life. Better than a cot, or even a bed in a room filled with loved ones. Better, too, than an empty street in the cold rain. To die in someon...