Steven Erikson - Memories of Ice

A large object thumped beside Paran's head. He blinked his eyes open. To see a man's hips — just the hips, the concavity where intestines belonged yawning black and wet. Thighs were gone, taken at the joints. The captain stared.

His ears were ringing. He felt blood trickling from his nose. His chest ached. Distant screaming wailed through the night.

A hand closed on his rain-cape, tugged him upright.

Mallet. The healer leaned close to press the captain's sword into his hands, then shouted words Paran barely heard. 'Come on! They're all getting the Hood out of here!' A shove sent the captain stumbling forward.

His eyes saw, but his mind failed in registering the devastation to either side of the path they now ran down towards the north gate. He felt himself shutting down inside, even as he slipped and staggered through the human ruin … shutting down as he had once before, years ago, on a road in Itko Kan.

The hand of vengeance stayed cold only so long. Any soul possessing a shred of humanity could not help but see the reality behind cruel deliverance, no matter how justified it might have at first seemed. Faces blank in death. Bodies twisted in postures no-one unbroken could achieve. Destroyed lives. Vengeance yielded a mirror to every atrocity, where notions of right and wrong blurred and lost all relevance.

He saw, to the right and left, fleeing figures. A few sharpers cracked, hastening the rout.

The Bridgeburners had announced themselves to the enemy.

We are their match, the captain realized as he ran, in calculated brutality. But this is a war of nerves where no-one wins.

The unchallenged darkness of the gate swallowed Paran and his fellow Bridgeburners. Boots skidded as the soldiers halted their mad sprint. Dropping into crouches. Reloading crossbows. Not a word spoken.

Trotts reached a hand out and dragged Hedge close. The Barghast shook the man hard for a moment, then made to throw him down. A squeal from Spindle stopped him. Hedge, after all, carried a leather sack half full of munitions.

His face still a mass of bruises from Detoran's fond touch, Hedge cursed. 'Ain't no choice, you big ape!'

Paran could hear the words. An improvement. He wasn't sure who he sided with on this one, but the truth of it was, it no longer mattered. Trotts!' he snapped. 'What now? If we wait here-'

The Barghast grunted. 'Into the city, low and quiet.'

'Which direction?' Antsy asked.

'We head to the Thrall-'

'Fine, and what's that?'

'The glowing keep, you thick-skulled idiot.'

They edged forward, out from beneath the archway's gloom, onto the concourse immediately beyond. Their steps slowed as flickering firelight revealed the nightmare before them.

There had been vast slaughter, and then there had been a feast. The cobbles were ankle-deep in bones, some charred, others red and raw with bits of tendon and flesh still clinging to them. And fully two-thirds of the dead, the captain judged from what he could see of uniforms and clothing, belonged to the invaders.

'Gods,' Paran muttered, 'the Pannions paid dearly.' I think I should revise my estimation of the Grey Swords.

Spindle nodded. 'Even so, numbers will tell.'

'A day or two earlier…' Mallet said.

No-one bothered finishing the thought. There was no need.

'What's your problem, Picker?' Antsy demanded.

'Nothing!' the woman snapped. 'It's nothing.'

'Is that the Thrall, then?' Hedge asked. 'That glowing dome? There, through the smoke-'

'Let's go,' Trotts said.

The Bridgeburners ranging out cautiously in the Barghast's wake, they set forth, across the grisly concourse, to a main avenue that seemed to lead directly towards the strangely illumined structure. The style of the houses and tenement blocks to either side — those that were still standing — was distinctly Daru to Paran's eyes. The rest of the city, he saw from fragmented glimpses down side alleys and avenues where fires still burned — was completely different. Vaguely alien. And, everywhere, bodies.

Further down the street, piles of still-fleshed corpses rose like the slope of a hill.

The Bridgeburners said nothing as they neared that slope. The truth before them was difficult to comprehend. On this street alone, there were at least ten thousand bodies. Maybe more. Sodden, already swollen, the flesh pale around gaping, blood-drained wounds. Concentrated mounds around building entrances, alley mouths, an estate's gate, the stepped approaches to gutted temples. Faces and sightless eyes reflected flames, making expressions seem to writhe in mocking illusion of animation, of life.

To continue on the street, the Bridgeburners would have to climb that slope.

Trotts did not hesitate.

Word arrived from the small company's rearguard. Tenescowri had entered through the gate, were keeping pace like silent ghosts behind them. A few hundred, no more than that. Poorly armed. No trouble. Trotts simply shrugged at the news.

They scrambled their way up the soft, flesh-laden ramp.

Do not look down. Do not think of what is underfoot. Think only of the defenders, who must have fought on. Think of courage almost inhuman, defying mortal limits. Of these Grey Swords — those motionless, uniformed corpses in those doorways, crowding the alley mouths. Fighting on, and on. Yielding nothing. Cut to pieces where they stood.

These soldiers humble us all. A lesson … for the Bridgeburners around me. This brittle, heart-broken company. We've come to a war devoid of mercy.

The ramp had been fashioned. There was an intention to its construction. It was an approach. To what?

It ended in a tumbled heap, at a level less than a man's height below the roof of a tenement block. Opposite the building there had been another just like it, but fire had reduced it to smouldering rubble.

Trotts stopped at the ramp's very edge. The rest followed suit, crouching down, looking around, trying to comprehend the meaning of all that they saw. The ragged end revealed the truth: there was no underlying structure to this ghastly construct. It was indeed solid bodies.

'A siege ramp,' Spindle finally said in a quiet, almost diffident tone. 'They wanted to get to somebody-'

'Us,' a low voice rumbled from above them.

Crossbows snapped up.

Paran looked to the tenement building's roof. A dozen figures lined its edge. Distant firelight lit them.

'They brought ladders,' the voice continued, now speaking Daru. 'We beat them anyway.'

These warriors were not Grey Swords. They were armoured, but it was a ragtag collection of accoutrements. One and all, their faces and exposed skin were daubed in streaks and barbs. Like human tigers.

'I like the paint,' Hedge called up, also in Daru. 'Scared the crap out of me, that's for sure.'

The spokesman, tall and hulking, bone-white black-barbed cutlasses in his mailed hands, cocked his head. 'It's not paint, Malazan.'

Silence.

Then the man gestured with a blade. 'Come up, if you like.'

Ladders appeared from the rooftop, slid down its edge.

Trotts hesitated. Paran stepped close. 'I think we should. There's something about that man and his followers-'

The Barghast snorted. 'Really?' He waved the Bridgeburners to the ladders.

Paran watched the ascent, deciding he would be the last to go. He saw Picker hanging back. 'Problem, Corporal?'

She flinched, massaging her right arm.

'You're in pain,' the captain said, moving to her side, studying her pinched face. 'Did you take a wound? Let's go to Mallet.'

'He can't help me, Captain. Never mind about it.'

I know precisely how you feel. 'Climb, then.'

As if approaching gallows, the corporal made her way to the nearest ladder.