A few more days on the road, and Erwin’s company finally reached King’s Landing.
Looking out at the city sprawled below the hills, the palace crowning the highest one, Erwin felt something rise in his chest despite himself.
Westeros.
The seat of the Seven Kingdoms.
He’d finally made it.
The feeling didn’t last.
The closer they got, the stronger the smell grew, thick with shit, animal waste, and foul standing water, all of it fermented together into something layered and complex enough to have its own personality.
“Fuck.
This is King’s Landing?
This is what passes for a capital city?
Are people actually meant to live like this?”
Erwin swore out loud without meaning to, one hand clamping over his nose.
He’d heard characters on the show complain about the smell before.
Living it in person was another thing entirely.
His men caught the reaction and grinned.
Willem explained, not unkindly.
“Every man’s first time smelling this place goes about the same, m’lord.
With your coin, though, you’ll want a room on the Street of Silk.”
“The city sits across three hills.
Aegon’s High Hill, Rhaenys’s Hill, Visenya’s.
Every lord and lady worth naming lives up there, along with the rich merchants.
Street of Silk sits on Rhaenys’s Hill.
The finer houses keep servants burning incense day and night, and the height alone carries most of the smell off on the wind.
You’ll manage well enough up there.”
What Willem didn’t say was the rest of it.
Given enough time, a man stopped noticing the smell at all.
Every soul who called this city home had learned to live with it eventually.
The rest of the men traded a look after the laugh died down, thinking privately that a lord soft enough to gag over a bit of stink was exactly the kind of lord they’d expected.
Then again, following him into a fine room on the Street of Silk didn’t sound like such a bad trade for it.
Before long, they reached the King’s Gate, one of the city’s seven, set into the southern wall where the Kingsroad ran in, close by the Blackwater.
Some distance off sat the Mud Gate, and past that the docks and Fishmonger’s Square, but the fish market itself sat close enough that its own reek came drifting in on top of everything else.
Erwin’s frown only deepened at that.
If he meant to make anything of himself in this city, doing something about the smell was going on the list.
At the very least, he wanted to be able to step outside his own door without his nose paying for it.
“Halt!
State your business.”
A handful of gold cloaks stood watch at the gate, the city’s own garrison, sworn to the crown and no one else, a few thousand strong altogether, named for the color they wore.
Every commoner and merchant passing through paid a gate tax for the privilege, coin that went straight to the crown’s own purse.
A column like Erwin’s, armored, mounted, trailing farmers and wagons, drew their attention from a distance.
No banner and no sigil rode with them, though, which left the guards unable to place whose men they were looking at.
Their squad leader stepped forward to ask.
Willem cleared his throat and squared his shoulders before the man.
“Before you rides a great adventurer out of the Holy Empire, far to the east.
Second son to a Great Lord of House Augustus.
Lord Erwin Augustus.”
The gold cloaks exchanged blank looks.
The Holy Empire?
House Augustus?
None of them had heard either name in their lives.
Whatever their doubts, the armor on Erwin’s back and the horse under him said enough on their own.
Nothing that fine came cheap, and no common man wore it.
The squad leader offered an awkward smile.
“Forgive me, my lord, I’ve never heard tell of this Holy Empire, nor House Augustus.
Might you be some kin to House Lannister, out west?”
Erwin cut him off with a short, cold laugh.
“I know of House Lannister.
A great house, by all accounts, though no kin of mine.
This lion’s simple coincidence, a gift from my Emperor himself, nothing more.”
“I’ve crossed an ocean to reach you, hearing your king means to hold a tourney for his son’s name day.
I’ve brought gifts for King Robert and the prince both.”
He let the silence sit after that, eyes on the guard.
Anything else you’d care to ask?
The squad leader thought it over for half a breath, then smiled wide and stepped aside.
“This way, my lord.
You there, see to our guest.”
“I’ll have one of my men guide you through the city, my lord.
Anything you need, he’s yours to command.”
“Good man.” Erwin smiled and flicked a coin through the air.
It landed clean in the squad leader’s palm.
The sight of real gold in his hand bent the man’s back even lower than it already was.
“Safe travels, my lord.”
Coin bought the same thing everywhere, it seemed.
Respect, or something close enough to it.
Erwin rode through the King’s Gate with his head high, his men falling in behind him, into the beating heart of this whole bloody game.
Their guide led them eagerly through street after crowded street, until they reached the Street of Silk on Rhaenys’s Hill.
Erwin took in everything on the way, and the guide, sharp enough to read what was wanted of him, kept up a running account of the sights.
Whenever some slow merchant or wandering commoner blocked the way, the guide cursed them out of it, once even laying his crop across the back of a man too slow to clear the road fast enough.
He wore the look of a man who groveled up and bullied down without a hint of shame in either direction.
Erwin found the whole display distasteful, though he kept it off his face.
This was simply how the world worked here, and there was nothing to be gained by objecting to it now.
His own standing was built on exactly this kind of order, whatever he privately thought of it.
He wasn’t about to play the fool and scold a man for clearing his own path.
So he let it go, and said nothing.
Once they’d settled into the finest inn on the street, Erwin had Willem slip the guide a few silver stags for his trouble, and the man left grinning ear to ear.
Erwin took an entire courtyard of the inn for himself with a wave of his hand.
By nightfall, word had already reached every well-connected ear in the Red Keep.
A generous young lord, second son to a Great Lord out of the far east, had crossed an ocean and arrived in King’s Landing.