It was a charnel yard on the hill-side, near to one of the town's six gates.

The dead creatures were not buried there, but merely cast on the bare ground to rot and to bleach in the sun and the heated wind.

It was a horrible place.
The skinny dogs of the town soon found it.

And after these scavengers of the East had torn the putrefying flesh and gnawed the multitude of bones, they prowled around the country, with tongues lolling out, in search of water.

By this time there was none that they could come at nearer than the sea, and that was salt.