East

It took some time - about two hours - but I managed to roll the first wall. Sweating when I was done, I stood back to assess my crude work with satisfaction. Batu had managed to sit and was watching, his muscular frame sagging and eyes glazed.

His weakness sent a streak of cold fear and despair through me.

Ignoring it, I went to work raising the other three portions of the walls. My sloppy work would never pass inspection of any eagle-eyed woman of the clan, but it served the purpose I needed it to.

Already the wind of the steppes was sweeping the smells away.

My second item of business: building a fire behind the tent to burn the nastiness within.

Batu had made an attempt to teach me to build a fire during our travels while another of the women had showed me again two days ago. I created a pit and filled it with some of the dried dung from the supplies and a few rags. There was enough flammable material that it was easy to take a flame from the existing fire and then just toss everything else into it.

Stretching out a blanket, I piled the dirty and spoiled rags into it.

Probably the material in the worst shape: the clothes of the men. Ghoajin wasn't strong enough to strip them down, and their tunics were soaked with sweat, blood and puss from exploding boils.

Peering at the worst of the three, I couldn't help thinking this was the most disgusting thing I'd ever seen. The man appeared to be barely alive, and my heart broke for him. I knelt beside him and gently began to pry off his soiled clothing.

"Batu, take off your clothes!" I called to him.

"Not my … belt," he replied.

"Um, okay. You can keep that." Like a belt matters right now. But maybe it was like his Moldavite; it was for morale.

He grunted and did his best to maneuver out of his clothing. I watched for a moment, stricken again by how weak he had become in so short a time. He obeyed and stripped down until he was naked then rested back.

I didn't let my gaze stray where it wanted to. It seemed like something that'd send me to hell if I checked him out while he was on the verge of dying. Instead, I covered him with a blanket from the waist down and returned to wrestling gently with the worst off - a man I was nicknaming Lumpy, since I had no other way to identify him - and pulled off his clothing.