7
We strode out of the ruins and into the fresh, bright air of the open field. The smoke from camp fires rose into the air and signaled the lunch hour. Throngs of people stood in long lines up and down the tent city with bowls in their hands and hunger in their eyes. At the head of every line, at some ten different points in the makeshift city, were cooking fires where women ladled a thick brothy soup into their bowls.
At the far end of the camp stood a long train of what some a dozen creatures that I guessed were eselkatze. They looked like mules, but their ears were shaped like those of a cat and their eyes had slits. Their long tails were like whips with their hair braided around a thick stalk of flesh and bone. The creatures were staked to the ground via their halters and they
