They all stank.
The men, women, and children clinging to their mother's withered tit smelt as if they had bathed themselves in the dead. It wasn't a scent any sort of human would find pleasant. Altair had never seen anything like it, not even in Yarwin during the final days where demons pillaged and raped all that caught their eye.
He covered his nose. "Why do they all smell like a rotten corpse."
"To hide from the dead," one of the Spearmen said. He looked embarrassed but still spoke. "The undead tend to ignore us when they perceive us as one of their own."
Altair glanced at the children, who were as thin as dried leaves, ravaged by diseases. There wasn't one present whose skin hadn't been inflamed by undead blood.
It looked painful.
"We don't need your judgment!" A gaunt woman said, holding her infant tighter. "We do it to survive! You will, too!"
"So we have to take in another!"
"We already took in that woman!"
