Chapter 188: Austrian Commander

The surviving Jaegers, still reeling from the misfire of their comrade’s rifle, pivoted to locate the source of the sudden scream...

There, crawling out from beneath the corpse like a blood-drenched ghoul, was the Austrian Baron.

"What in God’s name...?" Elise hissed. "Shoot him!"

Two of the Jaegers closest to the stairwell raised their Pattern-3 rifles, their thumbs rushing to cock the hammers.

With his right hand still locked around the bloody stiletto, Reischach looked at the Toledo explosive in his left.

He knew nothing of Swabian thermodynamics or Spanish alchemy, but he knew exactly what fire did to black powder.

Just five feet away, the younger Jaeger whose breech had exploded was still rolling on the floor, his collar and chest ablaze with a stubborn fire.

Mustering the last reserves of his strength, the Baron hurled the cylinder in a desperate arc directly into the center of the burning soldier’s flames.

Then, Reischach threw his hands over his ears, rolled to his right, and scrambled behind the base of a wine vat.

The moment the superheated flames licked the Spanish explosive, the flawed casing failed.

An apocalyptic roar instantly consumed the underground cellar. A blinding wave of orange fire and jagged iron shrapnel erupted outward.

The shockwave threw the burning Jaeger like a ragdoll and shattered the wine vats lining the walls. Hundreds of gallons of aged red wine flooded the floor, vaporizing into a crimson steam as it met the blistering heat of the explosion.

The blast ripped upward, taking out a chunk of the vaulted stone ceiling. Chunks of masonry rained down like artillery fire, crushing the tables and obliterating the lantern light.

"Fall back!"

"The ceiling is coming down!"

"Get the Princess out of here! Now!"

The legendary discipline of the Ironstorm Jaegers finally broke under the primal threat of being buried alive.

They abandoned the scattered Spanish gold, abandoned their burning comrade, and formed a protective wall around Elise.

They dragged the coughing, furious Princess up the collapsing stairs toward the night air.

Reischach used his bruised knees and scraped hands to drag himself through the grotesque mixture of mud, blood, and boiling wine.

He crawled on his belly like a rat, desperate to find an exit.

"...do not leave me!"

A cry pierced through the roaring flames and the hiss of evaporating wine.

Reischach paused his scramble for a split second, turning his head over his shoulder.

Through the shifting curtain of black smoke and orange fire, he saw Lord Kinsky.

The premier spymaster of the Holy Roman Empire was dragging himself toward the stairwell, his hand reaching out toward the retreating Swabian boots.

"Take me to Augsburg!" Kinsky pleaded, coughing as the smoke filled his lungs. "I have the ledgers! Do not leave me to burn! Please!"

Reischach turned his face away and kept crawling.

He dragged his battered body toward a small ventilation shaft near the ceiling of the cellar.

With agonizing effort, he kicked a wooden crate into place, climbed up, and squeezed his shoulders through the opening, pulling himself out of the underground inferno.

He squeezed through the grate and rolled out onto a patch of snow-dusted grass, his muscles screaming in protest.

He tumbled down a slight embankment, finally coming to a halt in a ditch beneath the bare branches of a tree.

Reischach lay flat on his back, staring up at the sky, gasping for breath.

The cold air burned his lungs, but it was the sweetest thing he had ever tasted.

Reischach slowly propped himself up on his elbows, peering over the edge of the ditch.

The ground was smoking slightly from the underground collapse...

Suddenly, he noticed a dark silhouette moving near the edge of the street.

Kinsky had somehow managed to drag his ruined body out of the main entrance just moments before the collapse. The spymaster was leaning against a wall, his clothes singed and ruined. He was weeping openly, looking around for the Swabian soldiers who had already vanished into the safety of the city.

Reischach watched him from afar, concealed within the shadows of the elm tree.

The inferno of the wine cellar was already dying down beneath the rubble, choked out by the winter sleet.

"Damnable cowards," Reischach coughed. "Where are the Jaegers?"

He strained his eyes. There was no sign of Princess Elise or her elite guards. The Swabian intelligence director had vanished into the labyrinth of Vienna’s occupied streets, leaving Reischach to freeze in the mud.

Though he had once been a pillar of the Austrian nobility, Reischach had never felt so utterly fragile. His knees were useless from the explosive shockwave, and his arms trembled from exhaustion.

"Arrogant bastards," he muttered, digging his fingers into the earth, trying to pull his dead weight up the embankment.

After struggling for what felt like an eternity, he finally collapsed, his bruised cheek pressing against the mud. He closed his eyelids, listening to the hissing of the dying flames under the rubble and the distant howl of the wind sweeping off the Alps.

"Fire in the lower crypts! Move!"

A voice shattered the silence. Reischach forced his eyes open, squinting against the stinging rain and the darkness.

Several figures holding sputtering pitch-torches were sprinting down the alley toward the smoking crater of the cellar.

They wore the colors of the Vienna City Watch... Austrian militiamen now answering to the Swabian occupation.

"Fetch the bucket brigades from the river!" someone shouted.

"Over here!" another militiaman cried out, thrusting his torch toward the ditch. "We have a survivor in the muck!"

Footsteps rapidly approached him. Reischach groaned, turning his face away from the blinding light.

"He is bleeding from his ears," a guardsman noted. "Help me lift him. The Swabian quartermasters will want to interrogate anyone who was near this blast."

Two militiamen grabbed Reischach by the shoulders and hoisted him upward.

The sudden movement sent a spike of blinding agony up his spine, and Reischach let out a scream.

"Hold his weight steady," the guardsman snapped. "He is barely conscious."

As they began to drag him away from the smoking ruins, a second group of men pushed into the alleyway, carrying buckets sloshing with river water.

They were shouting, trying to organize a fire line.

"Halt!" a voice suddenly commanded from the edge of the crowd. "Release him."

A man shoved his way through the disorganized militiamen, his eyes widening as the torchlight fell upon Reischach’s face.

He was a broad-shouldered man, wearing a cloak that obscured his armor, a scar running from his temple down to his jawline.

He looked incredibly familiar, but Reischach’s mind was too fragmented to place the face.

"Mother of God," the scarred man whispered, taking a half-step backward. "It is the Baron."

"Who is this man, Salm?" one of the guards holding Reischach asked, looking confused.

The man addressed as Salm stared at Reischach.

"I know him," Salm finally breathed out. "I rode beside him at the vanguard."

"Identify him, then!" the guard demanded impatiently.

"It is Baron von Reischach," Salm said. "The defender of the inner gates."

A collective gasp echoed through the huddled militiamen.

Every man in Vienna knew the legends of the fiercely loyal Baron who had demanded they fight King Konrad to the last drop of blood, the man who had supposedly been rotting in a Swabian dungeon for treason!

"The mad Baron?" the guardsman holding Reischach’s right arm stammered, his grip loosening in fear. "Are you certain?"

"I am certain," Salm replied grimly. "I would recognize that stubborn scowl in the deepest pits of hell."

Reischach coughed. "What are you gawking at?" he rasped. "Get me to a physician, you fools."

Before the militiamen could move, another voice cut through the rain.

"Step away from him!"

A figure pushed through the crowd. The man’s face was hidden beneath a hood.

"I will take custody of the Baron," the hooded man declared, reaching out to rip Reischach from the grasp of the militiamen.

"Who in the Emperor’s name are you?" Salm demanded, stepping in front of the stranger, his hand dropping to the hilt of his sword.

"I am an old friend of his house," the hooded man replied. "And I am taking him out of this city."

Salm narrowed his eyes. "Friend? The Baron has no friends left. The Swabians bought them all."

"You are operating on outdated ledgers, Salm," the hooded man warned. "Now step aside, or I will ensure you join the corpses in that cellar."

Salm hesitated... He slowly stepped aside, allowing the hooded giant to take Reischach’s weight.

"I have you, Your Lordship," the man whispered as he lifted Reischach into his arms.

Reischach looked up into the darkness of the stranger’s hood, desperately trying to recognize the voice. But his vision was swimming with black spots, and his consciousness was rapidly fraying.

"Who... who are you?" Reischach mumbled, his eyes fluttering shut.

The hooded man offered a faint smile that sent a shiver down Reischach’s spine.

Two hours later, Reischach found himself inside an abandoned hunting lodge in the Vienna Woods.

"Swallow it."

Reischach took a sip from the wooden bowl.

"I asked you a question," Reischach demanded, his voice finally regaining a fraction of its former authority. "Who are you?"

The man sitting across the hearth reached up and pulled back his hood.

The firelight revealed a face that Reischach knew instantly, though it was altered by exhaustion and severe burn scars.

He had the same sharp, aquiline nose and the fiercely intelligent eyes of the Habsburg high command, but his hair was white, and he looked as though he had aged twenty years in the span of six months.

"I told you, Baron," the man said, a bitter smile playing on his lips. "I am an old friend."

Reischach stared at him, his mind short-circuiting. The man sitting across from him was supposed to be a pile of ash on the plains outside the capital.

"General Kaelen?" Reischach whispered. "How... how is this possible? The Swabian mortars vaporized the vanguard. We saw the entire command staff annihilated!"

"It is a miserable story, Reischach," Kaelen sighed, tossing another log onto the fire. "But right now, you need to regain your strength."

Reischach set the bowl down on the floorboards.

General Kaelen, the Emperor’s most trusted Austrian commander, was alive. What did this mean? What could two broken men possibly achieve?

He looked around the room. They were sitting inside an abandoned hunting lodge deep within the Vienna Woods, miles away from the Swabian patrols.

"So, General," Reischach rasped, his throat still raw. "What is our grand strategy?"

Kaelen let out a chuckle. "The strategy is to not get caught by Princess Elise’s shadow-hounds," Kaelen stated bluntly. "We need to keep moving. The Swabian quartermasters will be tearing the city apart by dawn to find out who detonated that Spanish explosive."

Waiting just outside the door was a laden draft horse.

Kaelen hauled Reischach to his feet, threw the Baron over the saddle like a sack of grain, and secured him with a leather strap.

"Where are we riding?" Reischach asked.

Kaelen took hold of the reins and began to lead the beast by foot through the pines.

He looked at the Baron with a serious expression. "I will brief you on the march. Just keep your eyes peeled for Jaeger patrols and try not to bleed out on my saddle."