Chapter 187: Bleeding Out the Truth

A continuous whine was the only sensation registering in Baron von Reischach’s brain.

It drilled directly through his skull, entirely drowning out the concussive echoes, the shouting, and the very concept of rational thought.

White smoke swallowed the abandoned wine cellar, stinging Reischach’s eyes and coating the back of his throat with the bitter taste of burnt primer caps.

Suddenly, a crushing weight slammed into him from above, driving the breath from his lungs and pinning him flat against the floor.

For a fraction of a second, Reischach’s disoriented mind assumed one of the cellar’s support beams had splintered and collapsed under the shockwave of the Swabian volley.

It was the scarred mercenary...

Reischach lay paralyzed beneath the massive man’s chest, his eyes wide and unblinking in the blinding smoke.

Then, he felt a hot liquid begin to drip rapidly onto his cheek, sliding down his neck and soaking into the filthy collar of his velvet robes.

It was the mercenary’s blood.

Reischach desperately wanted to scream, to shove the heavy corpse off his chest, but his nervous system refused to obey his commands.

Hot, meaty fragments of shattered bone and ruined leather slid down the side of Reischach’s face.

The mighty mercenary, a hardened veteran who looked as though he could wrestle a draft horse to the ground and win, had been swatted out of existence in less than a heartbeat.

The devastation of the Swabian conical rounds was beyond human comprehension.

Slowly, the white smoke began to thin, drifting toward the drafty stairwell.

A pathetic sound cut through the ringing in Reischach’s ears. He shifted his eyes, barely able to turn his head an inch beneath the crushing weight of the dead mercenary.

Just inches away from his face, nestled in the damp dirt of the cellar floor, was one of the Toledo explosive cylinders. It had slipped right out of Lord Kinsky’s grasp when the gunfire erupted.

Reischach’s hearing began to return, first in throbbing pulses, and then with clarity.

"Please... I beg you, do not order another volley...!"

It was Kinsky.

Reischach peeked out from under the mercenary’s limp, blood-soaked arm, his breath hitching in his chest.

Lord Kinsky, the untouchable spymaster of the Holy Roman Empire, the architect of grand rebellions, the man who had just minutes ago spoken of reducing Augsburg to a landscape of exploding steam and shattered iron... was on his knees.

He was shaking. His cloak was covered in dust and blood.

Both of his hands were raised high above his head in surrender.

"Take the Spanish gold!" Kinsky cried out. Tears streamed openly down his face, cutting tracks through the soot on his cheeks.

"Take every last doubloon! Just spare my life! I will give you the cipher keys! I possess the names of every secret financier funding the Emperor in Genoa and Antwerp! I will work for you, Princess Elise! I will burn the Habsburg network to the ground for you, I swear it upon my soul! Just don’t shoot! Please!"

Reischach felt a suddent wave of nausea wash over him, born entirely from the profound disgust welling up in his chest.

*This is him?* Reischach thought, his mind reeling. *The man I threw away a full pardon for? The man I was ready to forfeit my life to follow?*

Before Princess Elise could even formulate a corporate response to Kinsky’s pathetic begging, the control of the Swabian Jaegers snapped.

A secondary explosion rocked the enclosed cellar, followed instantly by a blood-curdling scream of agony.

One of the younger Jaegers, operating on lack of field experience, had attempted to cycle the bolt of his Pattern-3 rifle for a second volley.

In his haste, he had failed to fully lock the steel breech-block into place before pulling the trigger.

The pressure of the Swabian powder vented backward. The breech blew open, sending a jet of superheated gas and brass shrapnel straight into the young soldier’s face.

"Aaaaaagh! My eyes! Mother of God, my eyes!" the Jaeger shrieked, dropping the rifle onto the floor.

The right side of his dark-grey uniform collar had caught fire, burning brightly in the cellar.

Two veteran Jaegers instantly dropped their own weapons and rushed to their screaming comrade, tackling him to the ground and slapping at the flames on his neck and chest, shouting over his agonizing cries.

Princess Elise was caught off guard by the catastrophic malfunction.

The back-blast of the explosion sent a dense wave of smoke into her impeccably composed face.

"Cough... Idiots!" Elise roared, coughing as she waved the smoke away from her watering eyes.

"Smother those flames, you fools! Check his breech! Smother it!"

Elise finally recovered from her coughing fit, her face flushed with anger. She stomped forward, ignoring the burning soldier, and stopped right in front of the sobbing Lord Kinsky.

Without uttering a single word of diplomatic negotiation, Elise pulled back her boot and kicked Kinsky in the jaw.

Kinsky was sent sprawling backward into the dirt, spitting out a mouthful of blood. He scrambled backward until his spine hit a wine cask, still weeping, clutching his mouth.

Elise drew a flintlock pistol from the folds of her dress and aimed it at the spymaster’s forehead.

Reischach shifted his gaze in the shadows. His eyes locked onto the Toledo explosive resting on the dirt, just a few inches from his nose. And then, he saw something else.

Right next to the explosive, gleaming dull silver in the light, was the mercenary’s stiletto.

It must have slipped from the giant’s belt when the Swabian volley cut him down.

"Make sure the mercenary is dead," Elise barked over her shoulder. "And collect the Spanish doubloons from the table. I want to secure this intelligence asset and evacuate this hole before the city watch arrives to investigate the noise."

Reischach possessed exactly two choices in this moment...

He could push the dead mercenary off his chest, crawl out into the open lantern light, and join Kinsky in the dirt.

He could weep, he could beg, he could promise to count Austrian coal shipments for Wenzel for the rest of his miserable life, praying the Princess would see him as a crippled variable.

Or...

Crunch... crunch...

One of the Jaegers had separated from the frantic group treating the burned soldier and was walking toward the mercenary’s unmoving form.

Crunch... crunch...

Reischach felt a strange calm wash over his body. The pride that had driven him to madness, the disgust at Kinsky’s betrayal... it all distilled into a singular focus.

The footsteps stopped right at the top of the mercenary’s head. Reischach could clearly see the polished black leather of the Jaeger’s boots right in front of his face.

The soldier shifted his weight, his boot crushing down on the edge of the mercenary’s bloody gambeson.

With silence, Reischach moved his hands.

His right hand slid through the dirt, his fingers wrapping around the hilt of the mercenary’s stiletto.

At the exact same time, his left hand reached out and gripped the neck of the Toledo explosive cylinder.

Above him, the Jaeger let out a sigh, clearly annoyed by the gruesome task of confirming kills while his comrade bled on the floor behind him.

Reischach heard the rough rustle of clothing as the Jaeger leaned over, his hands reaching down into the shadows to grab the mercenary’s shoulder, intending to turn the corpse over and check for a pulse.

Reischach held his breath. He waited for the exact fraction of a second the soldier’s hand touched the dead body.

*Just a little closer...*

*Come on...*

"Do I really have to touch this bleeding slab of meat?" the Jaeger grumbled, his face stopping mere inches from Reischach’s hidden eyes.

"I said confirm the kill, you idiot!" Elise snapped from across the cellar. "Check his pulse, then secure the perimeter!"

"Fine," the Jaeger sighed, his breath washing over Reischach’s face. "Let’s see..."

A glove reached down into the bloody shadows.

Reischach gripped the mercenary’s dagger handle tightly.

The Jaeger’s glove reached into the gloom, grasping the collar of the dead mercenary’s gambeson.

With a grunt of exertion, the Swabian soldier heaved backward, shifting the corpse’s dead weight and rolling it onto its side to inspect the body.

In that exact fraction of a second, the Jaeger’s gaze dropped.

His eyes widened behind his visor, locking onto the blood-spattered face of Baron von Reischach.

Time seemed to crystallize in the wine cellar.

The elite Swabian soldier found a disgraced Austrian nobleman lying flat in the bloody dirt, clutching a blade in one hand and a Toledo explosive cylinder in the other.

The Jaeger blinked, opening his mouth to shout a warning.

"Princess, there is a—"

Still pinned beneath the mercenary’s arm in the earth, Reischach did not hesitate.

He drove the mercenary’s stiletto with every ounce of his remaining strength straight into the unprotected gap behind the Jaeger’s armored knee.

"GAAAAH!" the soldier bellowed in agony, his grip on the mercenary’s collar vanishing instantly.

He stumbled backwards, clutching his injured leg as hot blood flowed onto the floor.

Princess Elise, who had just been wiping a speck of ash from her sleeve, snapped her head around.