Michael Chabon
from Gentlemen of the Road

ySomeone was singing. Amram heard sawed strings and a voice at once lilting and raspy -- an old man or woman -- and they followed the sound of it up a crooked lane to the top of the hill, squelching through mud that was an impasto of dirt and blood, past the fly-blown carcasses of women, children and defenders alike, some three dozen people in all, among them a crone and a babe in arms. Amram kept up a steady murmur of prayers for the souls of the butchered and his own in this grievous shambles. At the top of the hill in the archway of the main house, an eyeless old man sat on a bucket, scratching at a two-stringed gourd, warbling weird melismas on a madman’s text.