The Shining Wyrm

12.5

Approaching Kaeketeh on foot was a very different experience to gliding in by wing. Doing it with the footmen and guard of Countess Bathory keeping the road clear so they could march with cheers and the air of a festival in celebration of their victory was something else entirely.

Those they stayed with along the road had been aware there was war. But some of their hosts had not even known who they were even fighting.

But soon were they welcomed to the Capital of Viznove.

Initially, it was hardly different from Rochford’s own villages and those that they had passed on the way here or made forage in during the campaign.

Thatch roofs, wattle and daub walls. Sturdy timber doors and window shutters.

Close to fields with a garden nearby for some.

The far flung households which worked the fields furthest from the city itself.

At the greatest reaches of the fields of Kaeketeh there were even little clumps of houses that anywhere else would have been hamlets in their own right if not for their closeness to the Capital.

Then the houses grew denser. The room for gardens began to come less often. And then at last they reached the outermost extent where Jewel felt it properly changed from fields to city.

The buildings grew closer to one another and sometimes taller.

The simple plain earthen walls take on pale shades and were braced in woodwork.

The roofs make a shift from thatch to wood shingles.

And then brick and stone intermingle a bit as well before the first wall is finally reached.

Made of fine stones that Jewel could now see were also kindred to those in Rochford.

Cut from different cliffs, but in the same manner and aged just as much.

The gate was wide open, and a teeming mass of people were cheering. Musicians, jugglers and other entertainers that found their way to any grounds for a fair moved up and down the street ahead of them. The smell of sausages, hand pies and sweet festival cakes with honey billowed down from the street.

Jewel walked with Father astride Zephyrvam in his ceremonial armor at the head of the retinue.

Mother and Alexander rode just behind Father as Jewel’s own length demanded the place of two more horses when she went as loose in her coils as this.

After them were both Generals from the army, Count Fiebron in his own dress armor upon Cloudspear. The count had flown in that morning and promptly inserted himself into the retinue of honor.

Above, Countess Bathory’s Gryphon Knights were making circles of the city and as they entered the city each gave booming welcoming calls.

And then trailed the rest of the retinue. Smithson rode just behind the generals on Jewel’s insistence. Dressed up in some gifted finery from Alexander’s wardrobe that had only needed minor adjustments.

You’d scarcely believe by the look of him he was anything but a noble’s son.

And then the rest of the lords and their footmen trailed behind them. It seemed such a small group to Jewel now. Even if it counted all heads told at nearly two hundred. Most on horseback.

It had shrunk and grown as they made their way through Viznove, some lords breaking off to return to their duties. Others returning that had broken away from the party bound for Rochford earlier.

But now at last they all marched as one on the streets.

Dirt road to start but swiftly changing to cobblestones.

Small cut and laid out before them between houses that had looked so delicate and small from the air but now managed to loom over even Jewel.

Jewel offered her courtly smile to all the teeming people around them. Mostly peasants, this close to the first walls, but finery was among them all. Mingling and blurring the lines. There were a lot of peddlers about, hawking food, or just simply selling right out of the windows of the closest buildings.

The smell of the food and the thick rich scent of men, horses, pig, duck, goat and fish creeped and swept under everything else.

Smoke, incense, baking bread and all the festival fair running over that.

And bubbling and roiling beneath that the pungent rot of middens and waste.

Nightsoil carts hidden around corners and down alleys from the road of their parade still undeniably evident to Jewel’s nose.

In the scent of the people there was joy and peace and happiness. Hardly a whiff of anything like the oppressive stench that had been clinging to the staff in the war councils.

And as they walked down the streets, the same shift in character Jewel could take in at a glance from the air grew slowly around them.

It started with the buildings.

The lime-bleached white earthen walls braced by dark stained timbres gave way to painted bricks, the roof shingles turned to red clay from dull gray wood. The hawkers and peddlers working either in the street or out their windows were dressed finer.

Their clientele started looking less like peasants.

The smell of fish and animals other than men and horses came from further afield. The pungency of the midden and night soil smells stopped being merely around corners and quite properly distant.

Jewel had to muster every ounce of control to not shout when she noticed her first thief.

It was a smaller child somewhere in the size between Alexander and Smithson and they seemed very well practiced. For no one in the teeming excited masses noticed how they walked by and with a glint of a knife and a shift of their weight a pouch was cut loose from a belt and snuck into a sleeve.

The slender girl (a flicker of Jewel’s tongue when she parted her lips confirmed it) turned to glance at Jewel. And Jewel for her part fixed her with a bit longer stare then she strictly had given the crowd until then.

Which spooked the thief and had them slipping past the crowd in a manner the wyrm could only envy.

It was like watching water flow between reeds.

And then light feet signaled an all out run down an alley and then a turn and another before Jewel finally lost track of her.

The first was a shock, but as they walked further along Jewel spotted more thieves. Some were as skilled as the girl, most not. A few even caught in the act by their targets. Twice one was captured and taken by what Jewel presumed was Countess Bathory’s footmen.

With time it became another detail of Kaeketeh Jewel mostly ignored. A texture to the moving crowds cheering, eating, laughing, waving and all around just filling the air with their smell, sound and joy.

Sour notes of agitation, anger and the like flared up, a few brawls started by good natured folk too deep in their cups strained Jewel’s smile away from the serenity she was supposed to have.

The three men who went so swiftly from beating one another to laughing and holding each other up reminding her so much of Mother.

And then as they made their way to the first bridge, Kaeketeh changed yet again.

The strange little wooden platforms with their boats were visible as they crossed the bridge, leaving the music and dance and cheers of the first crowd behind.

Jutting out from every edge and side that touched the waters.

The smell of the river itself welling up strong here, and from it the hints of chamber pots and other pungencies.

Jewel took a breath and leaned in close to Father, as they had a brief moment in this crossing before the next crowd.

“Alexander cannot be left alone on his own here, I spotted twenty-seven thieves on our walk alone among the crowd.”

To which Father shook his head and laughed.

“Of course, he won’t even be leaving the island keep.”

Assured in her Brother’s safety Jewel turned her attention forward to the waiting crowd ahead.

Middle Kaeketeh had stone instead of brick, fine colored glass windows in many places and fewer peddlers leaning right out of their windows to sell to the crowd but in character it smelled, looked and sounded much the same.

There was a different kind of quality to the music played, the foods smelled a bit different, a lot more finery on display and the scent of men and women was often mingled with that of herbs, flowers and other oils and perfumes.

But they still teemed.

They still smiled and waved and cheered.

And although their number might be smaller Jewel could still spot two thieves making off with other’s property.

There was still, if even more distant and less obvious, the smell of shit, urine, beast and fish.

Jewel kept her face serene as she had been taught.

She walked with a stately grace that Mother approved of.

And she offered a distant but gentle mien to the people that came to enjoy a festival without any seeming concern about what others had fought for it.