[h1]Kingdom of Akron[/h1]
	[h2]River to Arkronia[/h2]

	“'An on  m'right I seek to fight the winter's blight that doth threaten our summer love.” recited Matheias in a muted sing-song as he paced the open deck of the ferry boat, fist clenching tight the pummel of his sword as he recited a poem from memory. He held a small number of attendees in rapt interest, the princes, the gray bearded Akronian captain and the assorted crewmen setting forth to the imperial capital. The humans of the boat, and there were many were largely deep at work of ferrying the boat against the river. Their bare bodies glistening in the spring sun as they sweated into the cold air at the oars. They could not give the luxury of listening to the knight, who wore his helmet visor down to avoid the scorn of the imperial hosts and their servants as a free human in Arkronian lands.

	“An' from darkened forest comth the very lowest t'take from me mine love.” the knight continued. The lowered visor had a long beak shape helping to conceal not only his face but his race.

	King William stood elsewhere, leaning across the side of the boat smoking his long pipe. He watched the countryside scroll slowly by them. The coming spring had lifted much of the snow from the countryside, revealing it gray and barren under naked trees beginning to bud with new life. However, the lack of any growth had not stifled the turnings of life in the country. As they rowed up the great black river leading to Arkron's cosmopolitan heart he watched the stooped form of peasants and serfs at work in the fields to prepare them for a new season of planting. Fences were being mended and black melt-full soil tilled up and turned over to aerate and lighten it before it settles into hard clay. Beyond the darkened fields rose the marble white columned palaces and estates of Arkronia's towering aristocracy, the very people an Empire's worth of tribute kept alight on the rising updrafts of centuries of unending glory. Many in those distant towering mansions might be said to be richer and more powerful than any other race's nobility across the continent. Presiding over vast teams and townships of humans and elite Arkronian alike. And while the Arkronian could travel more than easily across the entirety of the Empire often travel, even for William was miserly and seemingly rife with its own mundane complications that irritated it. Whether it was being obliged to submit to some toll master's demands on the highway or to have to face down the barely concealed superiority of his own hosts.

	Yet, by centuries of history William was bound to these people and obliged to offer thanks to them. For without them, there would be no he. The binds of gratitude bound them both tightly at the hand of dynastic politics. And when all things were said and done, and once the trivialities of obliging Arkronian order and legal procedure were done there were individuals in the Empire that William found pleasant enough for him. Those willing to be interested or play at being interested. In these people he placed considerable trust; though he wondered at loyalty. And for the time being he was thankful that he and his party had such an easy time. But he attributed this to the circumstances at hand. There would be little point in directly offending the travelers to descend on the capital for the coronation, and many of Arkronia's best would be making the trip all the same.

	As Matheias continued his poem, William continued to watch over the countryside with glazed meditative impassivity as he slowly smoked through his ration of herb and grass. He watched the passage of peasants and higher born Arkronians pass up and down along the river-side road. All were outpaced by the ferry which made its tiring speed against the current in order to make the time promised to them by the captain. The obsession on order did one thing a Cor Avan could appreciate, or any other raised in the Cor: the punctuality of an Arkronian promise was a gift all of it's own. But watching the shore was to watch what kept this machine all in motion, as it would if one were to watch the oarsmen at their ungrateful work sweating at the bench.

	How much longer might they have to the capital? A day or two perhaps? He thought about it. He had once hiked to the capital from port. It had taken him nearly over a week and a half. But that was stoppages for the weather. It was winter then, and the snow that blew in from off the sea was enough to bury a peasant's hovel. The country nobles had been polite enough to offer him a space to shelter, where from high windows he watched the snow blow in from the sea and drift to nearly as high as the ceilings. And those same nobles not wanting to be daunted had their servants open the door and dig themselves out. As they opened the tunnels out into the snow they dug and melted out of the heavy ocean born snow great dining halls and ate in the comfortable mild warmth that could only be found in there. And having been offered the gratitude of a royal visit offered William and his company snow shoes and coats and let them back out. If at the time he felt he was not possessed to arrive to the capital he believed he may have stayed in those palaces until the snow cleared and as armies of servants continually cleared out and expanded the rural palaces until they stretched out for miles under heavy winter snow.

	Passing from extensive and endless fields and on into pastures where the long fences marched on over the hills and on more undaunted by distance and terrain. Here and there idled flocks of pearl white sheep and the scattered herd of cattle laying out in the mud and taking in the early warmth of a spring sun. There also were horses with their broad and well build shoulders and flanks, ready for war and to equip the armies and officers of the Arkronian military. They pranced and ran about in sweeping pastures and fields as free as they could be, getting their exercise. Here and there among them stood human serfs who leaned on their staffs with whips wrapped at their sides idling supervising the herds doubtlessly appraised more valuable than they themselves.

	And among field and pasture were the well tended forests of their orchards and vineyards were already workers were out with sheers and rakes to clear the earth and trees for a new growing season. The dead were being cleaned from the healthy and tossed aside. A continual regrowth of the Arkronian's own grown luxury.

	William took a puff of his pipe and asked himself: how much longer until their voyage ends?