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Chapter 26
Chapter 26. Arriving at the Capital, Saint-Denis
On the last day of March, the party finally caught sight of Saint-Denis.
They had traveled this road for more than half a month, heading north all the way from Rainveil City, crossing House Carey’s unmanaged wasteland, circling around several mountain ridges, and then following a broad official road for another week.
The scenery along the way gradually changed. The farmland became more and more orderly, the villages grew denser, and there were more pedestrians coming and going on the road.
When the official road climbed over the final gentle slope, Saint-Denis suddenly appeared before their eyes.
Е n uṁ а.іd
The older residents of Saint-Denis City all knew a saying: to understand the Holy City, one first had to look at the Holy River.
A great river came from the south and turned southeast at this place. The river was more than two hundred meters wide, its current gentle yet abundant.
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It was this very river that had determined Saint-Denis’s status as the capital of the Saphile Empire. It was both the city’s natural moat and the lifeline of the trade route connecting the inland regions to the sea.
Two stone bridges spanned the river, built three hundred years apart. The eastern bridge had been built during the orc era. Its piers were thick and clumsy, and its arches were semicircular, a typical remnant style from the previous century. The western bridge was newer, with soaring pointed arches and broad openings that allowed fully loaded ships to pass through without lowering their sails.
Forty or fifty ships were moored at the docks. There were flat-bottomed cargo boats for the inland rivers, as well as cogs that had come from the sea.
The calls of the stevedores and the muffled thuds of wooden crates hitting the ground could be heard even from two hundred and fifty meters away .
W̃е bn̆ оvе l̄ Е̇ n̈ u m а̃
The volume of goods entering and leaving this place—wool, tin ingots, timber, salted fish, and Magic Crystals—was also the largest in the entire Empire.
Only after crossing the Holy River did one reach the Holy City.
The Empire had a total population of about twenty million, but nine-tenths of them were scattered through the countryside. A great city like Saint-Denis was the only one of its kind in the entire Empire.
Saint-Denis was divided into the New City and the Old City. It covered about twenty square kilometers and housed no fewer than three hundred thousand people. This population ratio ranked first among all the cities of the Saphile Empire, and second on the entire continent.
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If one included the civilian districts, workshop districts, and dock districts extending outside the city, the population would double.
Riding on horseback from the south of the city to the north took more than half an hour. The carriage firms in the city specifically kept a group of young, quick-footed drivers who specialized in long-distance routes within the city.
Е̂ ṅ ŭ m̀а
The outermost of the three city walls was about eight meters high, enclosing the dock district and the outer city markets. Six gates opened along the wall and remained open day and night. The middle wall was twelve meters high and enclosed the main body of the old city. It was locked after nightfall and opened only at dawn. The innermost wall was fifteen meters high and enclosed the palace and noble district. Heavy troops guarded it all day, and anyone entering or leaving had to prove their identity.
Even the ignorant and incompetent Fick knew that the innermost wall of Saint-Denis was a military marvel that had once withstood the siege of ten thousand orc catapults without falling.
The wall foundations were three meters thick. The wall gradually narrowed as it rose, reaching a height of about twelve meters. Its circumference was roughly four kilometers, enclosing about one hundred and sixty hectares of land.
The wall itself was built from blue-gray limestone. The stone surfaces were rough, and the gaps were filled with mortar. After more than a century of wind and rain, they had taken on a mottled rust-colored cast.
Every thirty paces along the top of the wall stood a square battlement tower, about seven meters higher than the wall itself, where imperial archers were stationed.
The city gate was open. The gate tunnel was deep and broad, wide enough for five carriages to pass side by side. Above the tunnel was a relief carving depicting the first king, Saphile I, on horseback. His features had already been weathered by wind and rain until they were indistinct.
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The guards at the gate wore half-plate armor and leaned on halberds, their eyes sweeping across the lines of people coming and going. They stood at the entrance, watching every passerby who presented an entry certificate at the clerk’s registration desk.
The stream of people entering the city was endless—vegetable vendors pushing wheelbarrows, salt merchants driving pack donkeys, apprentices carrying bolts of cloth, and country gentry riding mules. People of every sort squeezed together in a dense crowd.
After getting off the carriage and presenting proof of identity together with Shulia, the carriages slowly entered the city gate with the flow of people.
The moment they entered, the street suddenly narrowed.
This was the common pattern of imperial cities. City walls were expensive to build, and land inside the city was precious, so the streets could only be built narrow.
The main street was no more than twenty meters wide, and the sidewalks on both sides were even narrower, allowing only four people to walk shoulder to shoulder.
Ӗnû m̄ а̌ .їd
The road surface was paved with irregular stone slabs. Two deep grooves had already been worn into the middle by wheels, and after the rain, muddy water had collected inside them. When horse hooves stepped into the grooves, they splashed up brown water.
The houses on both sides varied in height, but they were all timber-framed with mud walls, their gables facing the street. The eaves pressed close to one another, squeezing the sky into a long, narrow slit.
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The ground floors were shops, their fronts open and their goods displayed on stalls.
In the blacksmith shops, clanging rang out without pause, and the furnace fires dyed the walls red. From the bakeries drifted the charred fragrance of bread mixed with the sour smell of yeast. At the entrances of the cloth shops hung samples: coarse brown cloth, fine linen, and dyed woolen fabrics.
Signboards were packed densely together. Some had words carved into them, some had pictures drawn on them, and some used real objects as signs—a huge wooden boot, a rusty lock, and three candles tied together.
After they traveled for a quarter of an hour, the main street split into two branches. The left led toward the dock district, while the right led toward the Old City Market. Fick’s carriage turned right, and the scenery along the street gradually changed.
Е̌ nu̇m̆а́ . і̄d̃
This was the commercial center of the old city, also called the Weaving District. Four hundred years ago, all the weavers had gathered here. The name remained, though the people had long since dispersed to the workshops outside the city.
Now, the area was filled with shops, one next to another, selling everything imaginable.
A spice shop assistant stood at the entrance and hawked his wares, raising a small pinch of pepper in his hand and claiming it was a new shipment from the east. A full piece of tanned cowhide hung in the window of a leather shop, glossy with oil. Various swords and blades were inserted into the iron racks of a weapon shop, where several mercenaries in leather armor were picking through the goods and bargaining with the owner.
Farther in, the houses along the street gradually grew taller. Some had two or three floors, and a few even had four.
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This was a phenomenon that even all the economists in the Empire could not stop. Land prices were becoming increasingly expensive, so people could only build upward.
The upper floors jutted outward, supported by timber trusses, almost covering half the street. The second-floor windows were set with glass—not transparent flat glass, but small, greenish round panes fixed into grids with lead strips.
Enũ_ṁ ǎ . і̀ d_
Occasionally, someone upstairs would push open a window and pour a basin of dirty water outside. The people below would curse, dodge aside, and then continue on their way.
The center of the street was crowded with small vendors, squatting on the ground with their stalls laid out. There were vegetable sellers, egg sellers, sellers of needles, thread, and hair cords, sellers of old books—everything was there.
The street singers all leaned against the base of the walls, playing unknown instruments and singing songs Fick could not understand. The only thing they had in common was that a chipped clay bowl sat in front of each of them.
Every street and alley was packed with people, and every inch of land had a price attached to it. Here, a plot of land the size of a palm was enough to equal an entire year’s income for a medium-sized landowner in the provinces.
Among these three hundred thousand people were royalty, nobles, clerics, officials, merchants, craftsmen, porters, servants, and beggars. They wore different clothes, spoke with different accents, and lived in different districts.
Those who dressed somewhat better wore wide-sleeved robes made from fine fabric, usually in black, gray, or dark blue. This was the attire of merchants or well-off craftsmen. Those dressed even better added a cloak made of wool, fastened at the right shoulder with a copper or silver brooch. That was the mark of a prominent figure in a guild.
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Nobles dressed differently again. They wore fitted long garments with hems reaching their knees, a wide leather belt fastened around the waist, and a purse or short knife hanging from it.
Over that, they wore an open-fronted shawl made from fine wool produced by sheep on the North Yankton Plateau. Although the colors were mainly dark as well, the sheen of the fabric and the fit of the tailoring made them clearly different from commoners at a glance. They moved in groups of three or five, riding horses and passing by at a slow rein, completely ignoring the noise on the street.
The most eye-catching were the clerics. Black robes, black hats, and bare feet in sandals, even in March. They lowered their heads and walked through the crowd without looking to either side.
Three hundred thousand people were crammed into these twenty square kilometers. The sheer matter of eating, drinking, defecating, and urinating every day was an astronomical problem.
The city’s excrement had to be hauled outside by carriage and sold to the farmers in the countryside as fertilizer. The city’s garbage had to be sorted by category: what could be burned was burned, what could be buried was buried, and what could feed pigs was fed to pigs.
Even so, the stench of urine at the street corners still lingered, mingling with the charred aroma of baked bread, the foul odor of the tanneries, the strange fragrance drifting from the spice shops, and the fishy smell carried from the river.
Е̂n.ūm̊_а .i d
The carriage could only move slowly with the flow of people. Fick leaned by the carriage window and looked at the street scenery and the people, feeling somewhat dazed for a moment.
This was different from Rainveil City. This place was crowded, noisy, filthy, and chaotic, yet it was full of life. Every person who brushed past seemed to have their own destination and their own affairs.
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The entire city was like a massive machine, rumbling as it operated, while he was being swept along helplessly, forced to turn together with it.
Alex sat opposite him and looked at Fick’s outsider-like expression as he covered his nose. “We have only just entered the city. We are still far from the palace. Saint-Denis is divided into the inner city and outer city. We are currently in the outer city, where merchants, craftsmen, commoners, ordinary nobles, and clergy live. The inner city is where the great nobles and royalty reside. We still need to travel for another half an hour.”
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