Vilon squinted as he stepped down from the rear of the cart, the harsh rays of the midday sun hitting him straight in the iris of his eyes. It felt like receiving a slap to the cheek immediately after waking from a night of hard drinking or, at least, that was what Vilon assumed it felt like, considering he had never actually gotten himself drunk.
He had, spent his youth watching a spectacular model of how not to live, and the lesson had stuck.
Still , drinking or not drinking all Vilon could feel at that moment was dizziness.
The sprawling refugee settlement unfolded before him, so vast and chaotic it could almost pass for a city, if one squinted hard enough and ignored the mud. It possessed walls, at least; stout, three-meter-high timber barriers reinforced at the base by a bristling ring of sharp palisades protruding from the dark earth like the teeth of some sleeping beast's maw.
