Chapter 42: Entering the City

This shower came quickly and left quickly. The sun’s rays gradually burned through the thick cloud layers, and the weeping cumulonimbus clouds scattered their last raindrops in the sunlight.

The sky after the rain was as blue as if washed, and a few faint white clouds disappeared into the sky before long, crystal clear like a fine sapphire. At the same time, a seven-colored rainbow appeared from the northwest horizon. Contrasting with the blue sky, it looked like a halo formed around a sapphire under the sunlight.

George opened the carriage door, and a breath of moist air mixed with the scent of soil blew towards him. Looking at that patch of blue sky, his mood, which had been irritated from compiling the secret manual, seemed to relax a little. But seeing the rainbow in the sky, George could not help but say, “I didn’t expect to see this even though it’s already autumn.”

On the grass not far from the road, several unknown birds began to chirp, as if pouring out their joy after bathing. Nearby, raindrops condensed on leaves still dripped down, falling into small puddles by the road, making exceptionally crisp sounds. There was actually a somewhat leisurely atmosphere.

Accompanied by the sounds of “Slap! Chirp chirp chirp—” from the birds and “Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!” from flapping wings, George shook his head and couldn’t help thinking, ‘It must be some Mercenaries or Adventurers who couldn’t resist hunting wild game.’

George turned his gaze to the fortress on the ridge less than a thousand meters away from the road. Without the obstruction of the rain, the appearance of that fortress immediately became distinct. Surrounding the front of the fortress was a wide moat. For George, who had been there before, this was less of a moat and more of a super-sized trench, because one side basically had almost no water at all.

Behind the moat were high and straight city walls, with two-meter-wide arrow slits built every few steps on the walls. Somewhat different from ordinary fortresses and strongholds, the outer walls of Costa Fortress had no shooting holes at all. The entire city wall was piled up with huge blue stones and reinforced with adhesive, but in fact, the foundation and other key parts were reinforced with Obsidian. To make up for the lack of defensive fire power , two huge three-story towers were built on each city wall, covered with shooting holes, looking like pitch-black eyes of the Death God! Actually, the truly dangerous things were the downward shooting holes and defensive weapons inside the slightly protruding Crenelations. Only the Guards patrolling back and forth on the Crenelations and the flags fluttering in the wind on the central tower added a few traces of vitality and the color of life.

The gate tunnel of this fortress was not large; according to George’s memory, it was an archway about five meters high and three meters wide. Unfortunately, it was now covered tightly by the raised oak Drawbridge. Looking at the blackened Drawbridge planks, George could probably feel the vicissitudes and weight of this ancient castle acting as a fortress.

The Caravan moved forward at the predetermined speed. However, the road surface, which had become muddy due to the rain just now, caused quite a bit of trouble for the Wagon behind.

Slowly turning past this small hill, the Caravan entered a valley. The high city wall in front of the valley was the final pass entering the capital region—Broken Sword. Different from that ancient castle serving as a fortress, although this pass was also constituted of blue stones, it had a bit less desolation and a bit more worldly atmosphere. After that, it was a flat plain and also the outer region of the capital.

“Raise the flags.” A shout came from Knight Val ahead. Subsequently, multiple flags were raised in the Caravan, some for the Territory and some for the two Knights themselves.

The carriage George was riding in slowly drove towards the city gate. The huge city gate was over nine meters high, and the two door panels seemed to be made of cast iron. However, many people knew clearly that it was just oak wrapped in a thick layer of iron sheet. After all, the Human kingdom was not like races such as the Dwarf and did not have such rich mineral deposits; in this era, all iron products were not cheap.

What really played a defensive role was the gate on top of the city gate, which was cast entirely from raw iron and had sharp spikes at the bottom. It was said that thing weighed 10,000 pounds, so several huge winches had to be installed on the gate tower to control its opening and closing.

At the city gate, stood a squad of Guards. They wore round helmets on their heads, with a large piece of scales hanging from the brim to cover the neck. Outside the thick cotton robes, they wore light chainmail, holding a Halberd in one hand and a diamond-shaped iron-wrapped wooden shield in the other.

The sleeveless short linen shirts worn by these Guards were embroidered with the crest of the Nohan Duke family. Similarly, on the shields in their hands was painted a red background crest pattern mainly consisting of a white eagle wearing a crown and a white knight holding a blue shield. Because the crest colors were mainly red and white, the cloth robes worn by the soldiers were also mainly in these two colors.

At this pass in normal times, ordinary travelers did not need to be interrogated or taxed when entering and leaving the city gate. But merchants carrying goods had to pay the corresponding tax according to the tax rate set uniformly by the Duke’s mansion. The taxes paid by these endless stream of merchants became one of the important fiscal revenues of the Duchy. If the transit tax paid in Greywood Town before was mainly used for maintaining that trade road, then this tax was a big cake in the national treasury, and even Nobles dared not evade it in large amounts.

The carriage passed through the city gate, and the view suddenly opened up. The biggest feature of Karada was that except for the Noble district and Temple district located in the center acting as a separate Inner City, its Outer City had no city walls. Correctly speaking, the so-called Outer City actually developed slowly relying on the original capital. Later, the inside of the city wall became the Inner City, separated by a wall from the Outer City.

As for why no city wall was added to the Outer City later, according to Father, it was because of funds at the beginning. Later, somehow, such a sentence began to circulate in Karada: “Defending the homeland relies on the bravery and weapons of Knights, not shivering behind city walls.” Since then, no one in Karada mentioned the matter of building city walls again.

It was precisely because of this that without the obstruction of city walls, the development of the Outer District had much fewer constraints. Slowly, it turned into the relatively prosperous scene before one’s eyes.

Because the freight Wagons behind were still being checked one by one by the Tax Collector on duty with his people, George and others who entered first had to wait on an open space after the pass.

Closest to the pass was Karada’s slum area, but George preferred to call this place a shantytown. Because the houses in this area looked very simple as a whole, mostly built with wood, tarpaulins, and thatch, and houses made of bricks and tiles were rarely seen. However, thanks to the planning of the Bokabu Temple in earlier years, the houses along both sides of the road were all neat brick and tile buildings.

The sides of these houses facing the street were all opened up into storefronts, and the back should be warehouses or places for hired workers to live, perhaps some also had storage basements. The storefronts sold daily necessities such as firewood, rice, oil, salt, pots, and pans. Of course, various simple Taverns were indispensable, scattered like stars. This was originally a simple shop set up by the residents of the shantytown just to make a living, to earn some money from passing Caravans. As a result, because of the low prices, it actually attracted many Commoners from the city and other places to come and spend money. There were also some who bought houses here and opened their own shops. Now it looked more like a bazaar, covering everything from vegetables, fruits, chickens, ducks, fish, to daily department stores.

Of course, in a place like this, there were quite a few underground dark forces. Basically, every week, one could see scenes after gang fights in the alleys. However, for this chaotic area, the official side just planted a spy. No matter which family was in control, as long as they paid taxes on time and their actions did not exceed the official bottom line, the officials would turn a blind eye. It could be said that this was a microcosm of the dark side of Karada, although they generally dared not target passing Caravans. But if one encountered a few audacious thieves who stole things, the loss might not be big, but it would definitely be disgusting.

Numerous merchants and travelers brought wealth, and correspondingly brought a lot of trouble; among them, the busy traffic caused a lot of inconvenience to transportation. Outside the city gate, George and his group waited for quite a while. And inside, although the road seemed even noisier and more congested because of the shops, fortunately, there was more than one road here.

Finally, the following Caravan passed the inspection, and after paying enough tax, they were allowed to pass. The two separated teams could be said to have quickly merged into one and rushed towards the center of the city.

After passing the shantytown, both sides of the road were lined with buildings three to five stories high tightly connected together. Most of these buildings had a simple and rough style, pursuing simplicity and practicality. Horse hooves stepped on the road paved with blue bricks, making “Clack! Clack!” sounds.

Closest to the Inner City was the Commercial District of Karada; the buildings here were built as luxurious and exquisite as possible. But except for a few that could be called a good combination of art and architecture, most showed an atmosphere like upstarts. The Caravan from the Territory also separated from George’s Noble Guard here in a square. After that, they would go to the shops belonging to the same Merchant Guild nearby to hand over the goods, and then perhaps have a few days of free time to rest.

When George and his group arrived at the gate of the Inner City, the setting sun was just sprinkling its last touch of brilliant radiance here. The afterglow projected onto the mottled stone walls, and the whole city was filled with a golden radiance, bright and beautiful. Ancient buildings with different styles layered on top of each other in the distance, maze-like old and crowded alleys extending from the vast history to the feet, every gray-white road stone was polished smooth and shiny by the years, and the smell permeating the surroundings revealed the heaviness of vicissitudes in the mysterious distance.

After a strict inspection by the Guards, the group who were able to enter the Inner City hurriedly headed towards the residence of Viscount Bolerum.