The Hall of Heroes

14. - Traveling Scholars

St. Vinoblechta was a rural country. Golden fields of crop shone in the morning sun as far as the eye could see. The fields were already alive with farmers, welcoming the sunshine, fully engulfed with their routine work.

As Crefar and Duzz passed groups of these farmers, they realized the commoners were looking at them strangely. At first, they waved at them and Goodmorninged them, but taking the second glance, they drew back uncertainly. Looking at one another, Crefar and Duzz had to admit they were a curious sight. They still had farmers' clothes on, but one of them carried weapons, had severe convulsions every other minute and there was a squirrel sitting in her hair, while the other walked about in his best clothes, stained and worn by weeks of traveling, yet carried his head up proud as if the world was at his command.

"I need to go to a tailor as soon as we get to some decent town. These workers' clothes and I - it just doesn't fit together." Crefar said upon reflecting on his looks. "Even though I'm in this body only temporarily, it helps if one projects a decent stature on the outside."

Duzz looked down on her own clothes. They were a village girl's simple clothes, but she had adjusted them to work as traveler's clothes, so her skirt was in long strips and everything was strapped to her body tight so she had less loose fabric to worry about.

"Hmmm. G-g-guess I could swap these f-f-for some proper l-l-leather clothes a-a-as well." she answered. A little voice at the back of her head whispered, "No," but before it could say anything more, it was stamped out by Duzz shaking her head.

Later that morning, as lunchtime was looming and Alois's belly started to growl, the two had passed through a wide strip of bushy wood, behind which a rewarding view awaited them. Crefar only saw it as a large blot through Alois's eyes and had to be told most of the details, but there was a city built in the river valley ahead of them. Its size was not overwhelming, but it had enough bustle about it to be called a center.

There were wooden palisades going all around it and many rich-looking villas stood by the river running through, but there was one striking element to the town that captured the two "heroes" the most. At the very center of the city, there stood a majestic structure that seemed so old and worn by time that it looked more like a landmass than a building. Its shape was much like a stepped pyramid, but the steps of it weren't built horizontally. They were at an angle, rising up all around the pyramid like a single spiralling ramp.

And even more curious were the arches that ran all around the structure's walls. They made the whole pyramid seem more like a sort of a honeycomb. And within these arches, wedged into the walls of the structure, there stood the fanciest villas one could find in the town, making it a sort of a rich quarter.

The front gate was open and carriages and carts were going in and out practically one after another. At the sides of the gate, there were armored guards stationed, though their simple equipment made them look more like farmer militia. As Crefar and Duzz passed them, the guards eyed them curiously, but made no move against them.

Behind the gate, there was a long street lined with shops going from left to right. The bustle of this city was new to both Alois and Tereza, who had never in their lives left the mountains. Crefar tried to seem cold and uninterested, but his eyes were wide open and he studied curiously all that he could see about the shops around him and the town in general. Duzz and her squirrel were not happy at all about being in that place. Duzz felt the multitude of people around her like a knife on her throat and she walked on clutching her satchel and holding her other hand defensively to her chest. The squirrel darted its eyes around, squeaking uneasily and huddling inside Duzz's hair.