Chapter 28: Loyalty Can Be Bought

When dawn broke, Seraphine was already on her feet, overseeing the workings like a true taskmistress.

Orders poured from her lips in rapid succession.

The earth around Eisenwald shuddered rhythmically, and the echoes of explosions rolled across the valley as the laborers brought in from Karsfeld shattered solid bedrock with charges of black powder.

Rubble was cleared away at a breakneck pace, and carpenters immediately erected massive timber props, securing the drifts against cave-ins.

Thus passed the entire first week.

Seraphine descended underground several times a day, personally inspecting the progress. Leading the women and fighting for their decent standard of living, she felt entirely safe in their midst.

In their eyes, she saw the very same genuine respect and devotion she had encountered along the lanes of Karsfeld. It never crossed her mind that someone to whom she had granted a better life could ever plunge a dagger into her back.

Ulrike von Eisenwald checked on the mine nearly every day, making no attempt to conceal her admiration. At this rate, the modernization would take barely three weeks - just in time for Seraphine to make it back for her official engagement gala with Rosalie von Rosenfeld, to which she had personally handed the vassal an invitation.

Everything went smoothly until the third day of the second week of work.

That afternoon, Seraphine ventured down into the adit on a routine inspection, guided by the pit boss she herself had appointed to the post.

The woman owed her handsome wages and her family's safety to the heir's reforms, so the young noblewoman felt not the slightest inkling of danger. Yet the deeper they ventured into the dark, narrow throat of the gallery, the tighter an uneasy dread gripped her throat. Over the last three hundred yards, they had not passed a single laborer.

At an unstable, raw stretch of the drift, the overseer suddenly halted and spun around. The flame of the miner's safety lamp cast its glow upon her face, twisted in a ghastly, cold smirk.

"Your sister, Cordelia, sends her regards."

Before Seraphine could even react, the realization hit her that she had walked straight into a trap. She had basked in the trust of her subjects for too long, forgetting the timeless truth: human greed can purchase even the most sacred loyalty. For a hefty coin pouch from Cordelia, the overseer had not hesitated to sell out her benefactor's life.

The woman bolted in panicked flight toward the exit, and a fraction of a second later, a deafening blast violently shook the ceiling. Thousands of tons of rock thundered down with an ear-splitting roar, burying Seraphine in absolute, suffocating darkness.

***

Many hours had elapsed by the time she regained consciousness.

She lay pinned beneath a massive slab of fallen rock, every shallow breath tearing through her with agonizing pain. Sticky blood oozing from a deep gash on her brow slicked her face, while an acrid, choking stone dust hung thick in the air.

Around her reigned a tomb-like silence and impenetrable gloom.

"Fuck me..." she covered her mouth, choking on the dust. "Serves you right, you damn idiot... You put far too much faith in the gratitude of commoners..."

She gritted her teeth and braced her hands firmly against the boulder crushing her chest. The stone weighed at least seventy kilograms.

Fortunately, the punishing strength training of recent months and the raw vigor of her futa body paid rich dividends. With a guttural snarl, straining her abdominal wall and arms to their limit, she shoved the boulder aside, greedily gasping for air.

She took stock of the rubble around her.

A few paces away, through a narrow fissure in the cave-in, filtered a faint sliver of light and fresh draft. That meant she would not suffocate from a lack of oxygen.

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The real death sentence, however, was the absence of water - if rescue did not arrive within three days, her second life would come to an abrupt end. And if the local laborers were in on the conspiracy, no one would ever come looking for her.

For half an hour she searched in vain for a way out of the stone trap, before slumping powerlessly onto the cold debris, abandoned entirely to the whims of fate.

***

That same night within Castle Karsfeld, Cordelia sat in her bedchamber, unrolling a parchment dispatched by Lady Eisenwald. The letter read:

"Dear Cordelia, rightful heir of the Barony of Karsfeld. It is with unconcealed satisfaction that I report your elder sister has been trapped beneath a cave-in within the deepest adit, leaving zero hope of rescue. It is now merely a matter of days before you are officially proclaimed Adelgarde's sole inheritor. I congratulate you in advance on your triumph and assure you of my presence at your wedding in the months to come. I trust you will burn this missive immediately upon reading it. Yours devotedly, Ulrike von Eisenwald"

Cordelia held the parchment above the candle flame with a triumphant smirk, just as the chamber door swung open and Vivienne von Drachenberg appeared on the threshold. Catching the burning gleam in her fiancée's eyes, the noblewoman immediately scented a ploy.

"Is that a missive from my Sire in Arnsbruck?" Vivienne inquired coldly.

Cordelia drew the paper back from the flame and handed it over with smug satisfaction:

"Better! News from our vassal in Eisenwald. Our little problem with Seraphine has been permanently resolved."

Vivienne skimmed the contents of the parchment. The moment it dawned on her that Seraphine had been buried alive beneath tons of rock, tears of sheer dread welled in her blue eyes. Her breath caught dead in her throat.

Cordelia furrowed her brow, stepping closer with an edge of suspicion:

"What is the matter with you? Are you crying?"

Vivienne fought desperately to steady her trembling lips, covering her mouth with one hand and forcing herself to play the part:

"Yes... Of course... Tears of joy! Our goal is finally within our grasp!"

The younger futa swallowed the excuse whole. Yet before she could reach out for her betrothed, Vivienne shoved her away with sudden violence:

"I must write to my mother about our triumph this instant! Forgive me!"

She bolted into the corridor, and the instant she slipped beyond Cordelia's sight, a ragged sob tore from her chest. Half-mad with grief, she sprinted through the darkened keep toward the only soul who could still do anything - provided Seraphine was still breathing.

***

Down at the riverfront manufactory, Sabine Keller was sweating profusely as she hammered an ingot of crucible steel beneath the mechanical trip-hammer.

The master artisan was crafting a masterpiece - a two-handed broadsword with a slender blade of patterned Damascus steel, forged straight from Seraphine's blueprints to serve as a secret wedding gift from the craftswomen to their beloved heir.

In Karsfeld, not a single soul could ever be bribed by Cordelia; the common folk loved the Baroness's elder daughter without measure.

Suddenly, the forge doors slammed open with a deafening crash. On the threshold stood Vivienne - tear-streaked, disheveled, her dress in disarray, crying out from the doorway in a breaking voice:

"You have to help her! Please, save Seraphine!"

Sabine froze in place, tongs still gripped in hand. She knew all about Cordelia's and Arnsbruck's treacherous plots from Seraphine. The sight of the younger sister's fiancée in such an unhinged state aroused deep suspicion:

"Help with what?! Save her from whom?!"

"Cordelia... She bribed the vassal in Eisenwald! They collapsed the adit with powder! Seraphine is trapped underground, she might already be dead!..."

Sabine narrowed her eyes, pinning the distraught noblewoman with a piercing glare:

"You are Cordelia's betrothed. Why on earth would you want to save Seraphine?!"

Vivienne had no strength left for lies. She locked eyes with the smith's stern gaze and choked out the raw truth from the depths of her shattered heart:

"Because... because I love her!"

Sabine hissed air through her teeth, muttering under her breath:

"Bloody nobility and their goddamn foolish games..."

Yet seeing the genuine, raw anguish etched across the girl's face, she dropped the tongs onto the anvil:

"Understood. I'll gather the girls. If our lady is still breathing, we'll haul her out even from the depths of hell itself."

The situation was lethal in the extreme. If Ulrike von Eisenwald was complicit in the assassination, her guards would never allow anyone near the workings.

An official petition to Adelgarde would get bogged down in feudal bureaucracy for days, condemning Seraphine to perish of thirst and starvation.

Sabine rushed straight to the quarters of Major Katarina Falk. The seasoned veteran did not hesitate for a single second.

By midnight, the militia battalion - six hundred women armed with muskets, six steel field cannons on carriages, and hundreds of laborers bearing pickaxes and shovels - marched out in grim silence toward alpine Eisenwald.

At the very moment Seraphine was beginning to lose faith in her bond with the common folk, those very same folk took up arms and marched into the mountains, ready to burn the vassal's entire fief to the ground if that was what it took to save their beloved heir