The air in the bottom of the Three Crowns Basin was thick, stale, and dangerous.
One point two million men and eighty thousand draft animals had camped in the marshy basin for three days without a single latrine trench.
The natural drainage of the valley floor was poor, clogged with peat bogs, stale duckweed ponds, and rank rushes.
Clouds of black marsh mosquitoes rose from the reeds in droning swarms, biting horses and soldiers alike.
The foul stench of open dung heaps, rotting camp garbage, and sour marsh mud drifted across the silk pavilions of the Three Emperors.
Down in the Krell encampment, twenty soldiers had already collapsed with dysentery and shivering swamp fevers.
Up on the northern rim, Giles Croft stood beside the watching low roof wall, studying the basin floor through his field binoculars.
He wasn’t looking at the enemy catapults or the golden banners.
