The citizens saw him coming before he reached the gate.
He didn't know how — he had been on foot, leading a heavily loaded horse, approaching from a direction that wasn't the main road — but by the time he came through the gate there were people lining the path toward the castle, and the noise started before he had fully processed that it was happening.
His name, mostly. Some variation of Baron, some just shouting without words, the particular sound of people who had decided that something good had happened and needed to express that at volume even though they did not know what happened.
A few of the knights near the gate had joined the edges of the crowd, grinning in the way soldiers grinned when something had gone right and they weren't sure of the details but were happy to celebrate anyway.
The four carcasses on the horse drew their own reaction, the size of them, the number and the unexpected weight of the animal's load.
