Chapter 186: A Rotten Noble Spoils the Barrel

Reischach’s mind was reeling... Had the Chancellor just lied to their faces about the entire pardon?

"You look like a stunned ox," the scarred mercenary grunted, grabbing Reischach by the collar of his robes.

Before the Baron could stammer a protest, he was shoved forward.

"Hey! Unhand me—" Reischach yelped, stumbling over his own boots.

The mercenary tossed him into the back of a large wagon piled high with rotting cabbages.

"Keep your mouth shut," Lord Kinsky hissed, pulling his cloak tight as he climbed into the front of the cart. "If the Swabian patrols hear you whining, Elise von Frundsberg will have you dissecting coal ledgers until the day you die."

Reischach gagged at the stench of decaying vegetables, burying himself deep beneath the leaves.

He held his breath as the wagon suddenly jolted into motion, pulled by a single draft horse.

The night sky over Vienna was overcast, but the capital was bathed in an orange glow radiating from the newly constructed Swabian rail-yards in the distance.

Those demonic engines... They represented everything that had humiliated his empire.

He was once Baron von Reischach, a proud Austrian noble whose voice commanded armies. Now, he was a filthy fugitive hiding beneath rotting produce, reliant on the mercy of a spy.

"Halt!" a voice echoed.

"Identify yourselves," a Swabian Jaeger demanded.

"Just hauling the spoiled refuse from the lower markets, friend," the scarred mercenary replied, his tone bored.

"Let me inspect the cargo."

"I wouldn’t advise poking around in that filth, Jaeger," Kinsky’s voice cut in. "We hold a transit token issued directly by the Ministry of Logistics. Urgent disposal orders before the rot spreads to the remaining winter silos."

"...."

"...Very well. Proceed." the Jaeger finally sighed, stepping back from the wagon.

The cart lurched forward again. Reischach let out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding.

He was astounded. Kinsky possessed influence that bypassed even the Swabian bureaucracy, utilizing forged logistics tokens right under Konrad’s nose.

After what felt like an eternity of slow travel, the wagon finally ground to a halt.

The rotting cabbages were roughly pulled back, revealing a wine cellar on the outskirts of the city.

The mercenary grabbed Reischach’s arm and hauled him out. The Baron stumbled, his legs numb from the cold.

"Welcome to our temporary sanctuary, Baron Reischach," Kinsky smiled, gesturing around the cavernous cellar.

Several other men clad in dark, unadorned clothing were preparing satchels of black powder, sharpening daggers, and assembling specialized crossbows.

Reischach collapsed onto a crate. "I... I do not comprehend this."

Kinsky walked over, poured a generous measure of cheap wine from an unsealed cask, and handed the cup to the noble.

"Drink," Kinsky ordered softly.

"Princess Elise knew that if you remained in that crypt, you would eventually become a martyr." Kinsky began, pacing slowly across the stone floor.

"But..." Kinsky raised a single finger. "If you suddenly abandoned your righteous defiance for a hot meal and a desk in her Ministry... you become a traitor to the Emperor. A coward who sold his honor for a comfortable chair and Swabian silver."

The cup slipped from Reischach’s hands. "That..." Reischach whispered, his eyes widening. "She wanted me to destroy my own legacy? Wenzel was just playing a role to trick me into surrendering my pride..."

"Precisely," Kinsky nodded, looking immensely satisfied.

"Do you know the truth of the Swabian King, Reischach?" Kinsky spat, his composure cracking slightly.

Reischach shook his head, leaning in closer despite himself. "What truth?"

Kinsky offered a mocking bow. "Do you know that the Princess’s own chambermaid confessed to me that Konrad personally ordered the execution of thirty striking foundry workers, burying their bodies beneath the foundation of his new academy? This man is a monster masquerading as a savior."

Reischach frowned deeply.

King Konrad, a man hailed as the enlightened herald of a new age, was a butcher in the shadows?

"Lord Kinsky..." Reischach murmured, his voice trembling. "How can we possibly defeat such a tyrant? Even if his morality is a facade, the sheer devastation of his Gatling carts remains undeniable."

Kinsky threw his head back and offered a short laugh.

The scarred mercenary walked over, dropping a bundle onto the table.

"Show him," the mercenary grunted.

Kinsky untied the straps and dumped the contents onto the timber. Reischach gasped out loud.

It was a pile of pure, minted Spanish doubloons, resting alongside several strange iron cylinders packed with a granular substance.

"What is this?" Reischach asked, his eyes wide.

"This is our key to Augsburg," Kinsky smirked.

Kinsky delicately picked up one of the cylinders. "This is a highly concentrated, delayed-fuse explosive charge, engineered by the finest alchemists in Toledo. One of these placed near the structural supports of a high-pressure boiler, and his foundries will tear themselves apart in a cloud of superheated steam."

"But what about General Voss?" Reischach asked nervously. "His Jaegers guard the capital."

"Ah, you needn’t worry about Voss," Kinsky waved a hand. "Our intelligence indicates Voss has marched south to fortify the Brenner Pass against the Duke of Alba."

Reischach felt a surge of hope. "So, the Swabian capital is exposed?"

"Far more exposed than the Princess calculates," Kinsky confirmed. "They rely far too heavily on their predictable schedules."

The covert operatives in the cellar nodded silently, checking the mechanisms of their crossbows.

"It appears I must assist you, Kinsky," Reischach declared.

"Excellent!" Kinsky grinned sharply. "Our first objective is to secure a supply barge heading up the Danube, but not just any barge."

Reischach’s eyes widened. "The Swabian quartermasters inspect every vessel. We could never smuggle these explosives past the harbor guards."

"That is precisely where your new position comes into play, my friend," Kinsky chuckled, patting the Baron on the shoulder. "You are going to walk right up to Chancellor Wenzel tomorrow morning... and you are going to accept that pardon."

Reischach frowned. "What? But you just explained—"

"You will be our cipher on the inside. Here is the strategy... You will smile at Wenzel, and you will access the departure schedules for the munitions barges," Kinsky interrupted.

"They won’t suspect a sudden change of heart?" Reischach whispered, terrified.

"Why would they?" Kinsky replied with confidence. "To Wenzel and the Swabian intelligence network, you are just another broken nobleman begging for scraps. You are beneath their notice, Reischach."

The mercenary let out a grunt, "Just play the terrified, beaten dog. It shouldn’t require much acting from you..."

Reischach ignored the insult, his gaze locked onto the cylinders resting on the table.

He swallowed the lump in his throat and gave a firm nod. "I will do it."

"Perfect," Kinsky purred. He began packing the explosive charges back into the bundle, treating them with significantly more reverence than the gold doubloons.

"Once we secure the munitions barge, we slip aboard under the cover of the midnight shift change. By the time King Konrad’s engineers realize the integrity of their boilers is compromised, Augsburg will be drowning in a sea of exploding steam and shattered iron."

Suddenly, the wooden doors of the wine cellar rattled.

Daggers were drawn from sheaths in a flash of steel, and the mercenary instantly kicked the oil lantern over, plunging the cellar into darkness.

A slow, mocking clap drifted through the gaps in the doors, followed by a voice echoing from the stairwell outside.

"...tell me, Kinsky, when the chambermaid whispered all those sweet little fabrications to you, did she happen to mention that her salary is paid by my office?"

Clap...

Clap...

Clap...

"My, my, my... what a beautifully dramatic monologue, Lord Kinsky," a chillingly calm, feminine voice drifted down from the shadows.

"I almost want to applaud your creativity, but I wouldn’t want to startle the draft horses... or the poor Baron."

Kinsky’s smile vanished. "Who goes there? Show yourself!"

"Oh, I think you know exactly who holds the ledger here, Kinsky," the voice purred.

From the shadows of the upper stairwell, a figure stepped down.

She was a slender, impeccably composed young woman dressed in a wool dress.

She simply stood there, adjusting the cuffs of her sleeves with a gloved hand.

Kinsky had heard the panicked whispers in the Imperial court...

"Elise..." Kinsky breathed out. "Princess Elise von Frundsberg."

"In the flesh," Elise smiled, "The Director of Swabian Intelligence, at your service. Honestly, Kinsky, I expected a far more secure extraction point from the premier spy of the Holy Roman Empire. A cabbage wagon? Really?"

Before Kinsky could shout an order to his men, the doors of the cellar were kicked off their hinges.

Reischach shrieked, stumbling backward over a crate and falling hard onto his rear.

Ten men marched into the cellar.

They wore the dark-grey uniforms of the Ironstorm Jaegers. They raised their weapons, resting the varnished walnut stocks against their shoulders, the muzzles pointing at Kinsky, the mercenary, and the assembled operatives.

The Pattern-3 Breech-Loading Rifles... The thunderous weapons of Alemannia’s elite guard.

"Hold your ground!" the mercenary roared, drawing his broadsword and stepping in front of Kinsky.

The other operatives raised their crossbows, their hands shaking.

"..." Elise sighed, brushing a speck of dust from her skirt. "My Jaegers are holding the new Pattern-3 rifles. The muzzle velocity will put a lead round through your skull before your nervous system even registers the sound of the ignition."

Kinsky leaned against the table.

He spat, his hand hovering close to the bundle filled with Toledo explosives. "Your clever little traps won’t save you from the blast radius I can unleash right here, right now!"

Elise let out a soft laugh. She took a few slow steps forward.

She walked right up to the edge of the table, her eyes locking onto Kinsky’s furious gaze.

Elise tilted her head, her smile widening into something truly terrifying.

Reischach gasped, his eyes darting between the Princess and the spymaster. He finally understood the first thing she had said in the stairwell.

The chambermaid?

"Oh, please, Kinsky, do not act so offended," Elise mocked, wagging a finger at him.

"Look..." Elise gestured grandly around the cellar. "...Here you all are. Sniffing the bait."

"And we even caught a little confused Baron who tried to run from his job," Elise added. "Chancellor Wenzel will be so profoundly disappointed, Reischach."

Reischach looked at the bundle on the table. He looked at Kinsky’s hand.

"Kinsky!" Reischach screamed. "The explosives! Ignite the charges!"

Kinsky snapped out of his shock. With a roar, he lunged forward, his hand diving into the bundle to grab an iron cylinder.

"Fire," Elise commanded.

The roar of ten Pattern-3 rifles firing shook the very foundations of the wine cellar. A cloud of white smoke filled the air.

Reischach screamed, throwing his arms over his head as splinters of wood and hot blood rained down around him in the blinding smoke.