Over days those mountains rose up to meet them, and then they came to a river named Salz that pierced the mountain-wall. Churches and castles monitored the valley from stone cliffs. Endless wagon-trains of barley came together, and clashed and merged with the Legions of the Pope of Rome who were coming up from Italy, and Bavarians and Saxons, too: mile-long parades of gentleman volunteers, decorated like knights of old with the Crusaders' red cross, bishops and archbishops with their jeweled shepherd's-hooks, cavalry-regiments that beat the earth as if it were a hollow log – each horseman accompanied by his cheval de bataille, a fresh cheval de marche or two, a cheval de poursuite for hunting stags or Turks, and a cheval de parade for ceremonial occasions, and the grooms to care for them. There were armies of musketeers, and finally a vast foaming, surging rabble of barefoot pikemen, marching with their twenty-foot-long weapons angled back over their shoulders, giving those formations the look of porcupines when they are in a mellow and complacent mood and have flattened their quills.