At sunrise, a massive herd of animals was gathered in front of the town gates. Pigs, goats, chickens, geese—the only ones missing were horses, since they were too useful for evacuation. They clucked and bleated loudly, aggravating the headache I was feeling from the lack of sleep.
Even now, there were still people in the town, ones that were too slow or too stubborn to leave—but they were less than a tenth of an original number.
Sadly, the idea of using the animals as a lure for rats came to me too late. By then, the fleeing people have already taken most of the animals with them. There were still several thousand of the animals kept together by several shepherds.
Besides them, next to me stood ten soldiers on horseback. I asked Captain Qui Chai to pick ten volunteers for an extremely risky and important mission, and he delivered.
All these soldiers looked at me with resolute eyes of war veterans who stared death in the eyes more than once.
