the road from muros was a muddy yellow scar , stretching between fields of browned , drooping grasses as it wound down to the arendish plain , and for the next several days they rode past great , rearing mimbrate castles and through dirty thatch and wattle villages where acrid wood smoke hung in the chill air like a miasma and the hopeless expressions on the faces of the ragged serfs bespoke lives lived out in misery and despair .