Lumberling and Eldric rode in silence along the winding road, headed for the Church of the Sanctum of the Sunlit Path. It was time to tend to Eldric's injuries. Only the two of them had departed, fewer eyes, fewer questions, and a quicker pace.
By midday, the spires of Valdorin rose into view. The city's walls were tall and well-built, yet what caught Lumberling's attention lay outside them.
A sea of ragged figures clustered at the gates and along the dirt road leading up to them. Refugees, men, women, and children, huddled beneath makeshift shelters of cloth and scrap wood. Their clothes were torn, faces streaked with grime, eyes hollow from exhaustion and hunger.
Near the gates, a group of young people flung small sacks of grain and baskets of hard bread onto the ground. The crowd surged forward like a wave, voices breaking into desperate shouts. Hands clawed and pulled, and more than one person was knocked to the dirt as the stronger took from the weaker.
