The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen

by Steven Erikson

Turning his head back, Buke caught a glimpse of a single tenement building just off to his left. Fires surrounded it, but it seemed the squat structure defied the flames. In the glow of the banked bonfires, he saw red-limned, naked corpses. Filling the surrounding streets and alleys. No, that must be a mistake. My eyes deceive. Those dead are lying on rubble. They must be. Gods, the tenement’s ground level isn’t even visible. Buried. Rubble. There cannot be naught but bodies, not piled that high … oh … depthless Abyss! The building was where Gruntle had taken a room. And, assailed by flames, it would not burn. And there, lit on all sides from below, the walls wept. Not water, but blood. Buke wheeled closer, and the closer he flew, the more horrified he became. He could see windows, shutterless, on the first visible floor. Packed with bodies. The same on the next floor, and on the one above that, directly beneath the roof. The entire building was, he realized, virtually solid. A mass of flesh and bone, seeping from the windows tears of blood and bile. A giant mausoleum, a monument to this day. He saw figures on the roof. A dozen, huddled here and there beneath makeshift awnings and lean-to shelters. And one, standing apart, head bowed as if studying the horror in the street below. Tall, hulking. Broad, sloping shoulders. Strangely barbed in shadows. A cutlass hung heavy in each gauntleted hand, stripped and gleaming like bone. A dozen paces behind him a standard had been ra...