That was if you came by sea. If you first approached by land down through Trakesia—as the Emperor himself was known to have done thirty years ago—what you saw before anything else were the Triple Walls. There were those dissenters, as there always are among travellers—a segment of mankind inclined to have, and voice, strong opinions—who urged that the might and scale of Sarantium were made most evident and overwhelming by these titanic walls, seen gleaming at a sunrise. And this was how Caius Crispus of Varena saw them on a morning exactly six weeks after he had set out from his home to answer
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