The Kaedweni military camp greeted us from afar with the cacophony of sounds typical of such encampments. Officers' commands and sentries' shouts mixed with the growling of platoon leaders enlightening enlisted men as to their mothers' professions and why these ladies charged so little for their services. Veterans cursed, recruits sniveled, whores giggled, horses neighed and dogs barked. The din was accompanied by a jumble of smells. The stench of several thousand men who consider guard duty in the rain to be an adequate bath cannot be mistaken for any other, and this blended with the scents of boiling cabbage, foot wraps and stables. Compared to the noxious odor the wind carried from the camp latrines on sunny days, the smell of the kayran's lair seemed like that of a flowering meadow.