“Because we can be persuasive. All we need is the right clothing, and we can work our way inside.”

“Easily said. You suggest we just kidnap the first Scab that happens by and tell them we wish to convert to Horde? ‘Give us some clothes and take us to your priest?’ ”

“That’s one way.”

Horses drew carts of straw and barrels down the roads. The Scabs ate desert wheat, Johnis knew that much. And they drank mostly wine made from the wheat. The barrels likely held either water, wine, or grain.

“We need to get closer,” he said. “Jackov is right; we need the right clothing. Maybe then we can take over one of those carts and slip past the main gate.”

“The main gate? Why not from the side?”

Johnis slid back and walked toward their horses in the valley behind. “Because the carts are faster and natural. And the barrels could provide a way in.”

It took them half an hour to work their way to a large outcropping of rock just outside the outskirts that Jackov insisted they use for cover. From here they could smell the awful sulfuric stench of a million Scabs. The city was nothing more than an open sewer.

They tied the horses off, shoved enough hay under their muzzles to keep them fed, and climbed one of the rocks for a better view.

Streams of tan-clad merchants angled their carts through the gates several hundred paces off, perhaps back from the desert wheat fields Johnis had heard about. From here they could still mount the horses and flee the city faster than any ambush could take them. Once they stepped into the city, however, an escape wouldn’t be so easy.

“We wait for dark, Johnis,” Silvie said.

“Maybe.”

“Not maybe, not bulldog. Snakes, remember. We slip in and slip out.”

“At night the streets will be deserted,” Jackov said. “I say the more people on the streets, the better.”

“We don’t have the clothing! Even if we did, they’d see our smooth hands and feet. And we smell to them, right? They’ll smell us coming, even at night.”

“What do you suggest?” Johnis asked. “Caking our faces with mud and rolling in horse droppings?”

She looked at him, and he knew immediately he’d struck upon something.

A giggle drifted on the air from their left. Johnis froze. He and Silvie jerked their heads and saw that Jackov already had his lens out, searching the nearby dunes against which the city butted.

Four Horde suddenly ran across the sand directly in front of them, three chasing one.

Children.