Chapter 225: Uncle Wilhelm

Archbishop Wilhelm stared at the trembling man, realizing that the traitor who killed little Peter was standing right inside his bedroom. But what was even more frightening, Wilhelm realized the man had not come to finish the job.

Gregor looked like a man who had just realized the catastrophic scale of the conspiracy he had been bribed to join.

"Gregor..." Wilhelm asked, his voice tight and low. "You look like a man who has seen a ghost. Or perhaps... like a man who just realized his new friends are insane."

Gregor let out a miserable whimper, dropping the silver tray he was holding to clatter loudly against the stone floor.

He collapsed to his knees at the foot of the royal bed, hiding his face in his trembling hands.

"I am so sorry, my Lord!" Gregor wept, breaking down under the crushing weight of his guilt. "They gave me so much gold... They said it was just a sleeping powder. I did not know the boy would drink it... I did not know he would die!"

Wilhelm forced himself to sit up slightly, ignoring the burning pain radiating through his spine.

"Who paid you, Gregor?" Wilhelm demanded.

"The Imperial Vanguard..!" Gregor cried. "A huge man with scars all over his face... He paid me to poison the wine, and he paid me to open the old smugglers’ tunnel in the wine cellar!"

Then, Gregor looked up, his eyes bloodshot.

"Wine barrels, my Lord..." Gregor gasped. "They are rolling dozens of heavy wine barrels beneath the main support pillars of this palace. But... but when one of them cracked by accident... there was no wine inside."

"What was it?" Wilhelm demanded.

"Black dirt, my Lord," Gregor whispered, his voice shaking. "Just heavy, foul-smelling black dirt. And they are stacking a hundred barrels of it right beneath our feet."

"A hundred barrels?" Wilhelm repeated.

The Archbishop of Salzburg stared at Gregor, the weeping Master of the Cellars, entirely unable to process the sweeping scale of the betrayal.

One hundred barrels of explosive Swabian powder, packed tightly directly beneath the floor he was sleeping on. It was enough firepower to blow the royal fortress into the sky, taking half of Salzburg with it.

Before Wilhelm could even ask about the length of the fuses, a voice rang out from the corridor.

"Uncle Wilhelm!" Anna cried out.

Wilhelm’s niece rushed past her older brother, dropping to her knees beside the bed and throwing her arms carefully around Wilhelm’s neck.

"Oh, my little wildcat..." Wilhelm smiled, overwhelmed with joy as he awkwardly patted her back. "I am alright. The fever broke."

"You look like a walking skeleton..." Anna scolded him, pulling back to wipe her eyes. "When the healers told us you were finally waking up, I almost did not believe them!"

"We dropped everything, Uncle," Viktor said, stepping closer, his hand resting on the pommel of his cavalry sword. "I locked down the entire city. The tournament is canceled. The trade ports are closed. I pulled every single guard from the outer walls and stationed them entirely inside the inner keep to protect you... Nobody is getting in or out of this palace."

Even so, Wilhelm did not look pleased. He frowned, looking at his fiercely protective nephew.

"You pulled the outer guards inward?" Wilhelm asked. "Viktor... if you leave the outer walls empty, you leave the city vulnerable. Who is running the empire while I am sweating in this bed?"

"Who cares about the empire?!" Viktor barked, crossing his arms. "If you died, the empire would burn anyway! Your health is priority number one, old man. We are not leaving your side until we find the bastard who poisoned you!"

"And we already found the rat who helped them!" a young, cheerful voice echoed from the hallway.

Wilhelm looked up as his second nephew, Karl, walked into the room. But Karl was not alone.

Trailing right behind him was a chaotic flock of children. There were easily a dozen young boys and girls — Wilhelm’s grandnephews and nieces — all pushing each other playfully as they flooded into the Archbishop’s bedchamber.

The youngest ones were waving little wooden swords, entirely oblivious to the serious tension in the room.

"Uncle Wilhelm!" a little boy cheered, running up and grabbing the edge of the heavy wool blankets. "Are you going to get up and fight the bad guys now?"

Wilhelm was wholly stunned. His entire extended family, the absolute core of his political bloodline, had gathered in this single room.

It was a heartwarming sight that made his chest swell with immense pride. He had built this grand family from nothing.

But as he looked at the children, his eyes slowly drifted down to Gregor, the Cellar Master, who was sobbing on the floor.

"Curse it..." Wilhelm breathed out, a look of profound terror crossing his face for the first time in his entire life.

Before Wilhelm could even scream the order to evacuate, a strange, quiet sound echoed through the floorboards beneath their leather boots.

*Hsssssssss* It sounded exactly like a huge, angry snake.

"Uncle... What is that smell?" Anna asked, her nose wrinkling at the scent of burning sulfur.

"Stefan... Viktor!" Wilhelm roared. "Grab me, haul me up and run! Run right cursed now!"

After hearing such words, Viktor and Stefan did not ask a single question. When their Archbishop screamed with that level of panic, they moved entirely on instinct.

Stefan lunged forward, grabbing Wilhelm’s right arm, while Viktor grabbed his left.

Together, the two men hoisted the frail Archbishop entirely out of the bed, throwing his arms over their broad shoulders.

"Anna! Karl! Grab the children!" Wilhelm yelled, his legs dragging across the floor as his nephew and his guard captain carried him toward the door. "Do not pack anything... Do not look back! Just run for the courtyard!"

"Come here, you little brats!" Karl shouted, scooping up two of the youngest toddlers under his armored arms.

Anna pushed the older teenagers toward the hallway. "Move! Quickly! Do not stop running!"

They all burst out of the royal bedchamber, wholly abandoning the weeping Cellar Master on the floor.

The royal family sprinted down the wide corridors of the upper keep.

However, as they reached the top of the main spiral staircase, something entirely horrifying made Wilhelm’s blood run even colder.

*Hsssssssss...*

The sound was not fading away. It was getting significantly louder.

Wilhelm turned his head, looking at the walls of the staircase.

The aggressive sputtering of the burning fuses was not just coming from the royal bedchamber above them anymore. It was entirely everywhere.

Though they were sprinting as fast as the heavy armor and the children would allow, the sound of the hissing was unbearable.

It was like an immense, invisible nest of angry snakes was slithering through the very bones of the palace, entirely surrounding them. Every single floor they passed, the hissing was there.

They finally reached the ground floor of the inner keep, bursting through the double doors and out into the pouring rain of the main courtyard.

Stefan and Viktor dragged the Archbishop through the mud, finally stopping in the center of the yard.

Anna and Karl rushed out right behind them, counting the heads of the children.

"Praise the Maker," Karl cheered, wiping the rain from his eyes.

"Bring the horses!" Viktor roared at the stable guards, waving his hand frantically. "We ride out of the city right now!"

Even so, Wilhelm could not share their relief. He hung heavily between his nephew and his captain, panting wildly.

The hissing sound had entirely stopped.

"Did the rain put the fires out?" Anna asked, hugging a shivering little girl tightly to her chest.

Suddenly, the heavy doors of the servant’s quarters on the eastern side of the courtyard abruptly burst open.

Three young maids, covered in black ash and bleeding from their foreheads, came sprinting out into the mud. They were screaming, waving their arms wildly in the air.

"My Lord! Lord Viktor!" the lead maid shrieked, tripping in the mud and falling hard onto her knees.

Anna rushed forward, pulling the crying girl up. "What is it? What happened inside?!"

"The rooms... the rooms are entirely gone!" the maid sobbed, pointing a shaking finger back toward the eastern wing of the palace. "We were in the kitchens... and the entire floor just exploded into fire. The ceiling collapsed! Everyone is dead in there!"

Before the maid could even finish her sentence, a deafening explosion ripped through the eastern wing.

The royal family screamed, covering their ears as the sheer shockwave knocked the closest guards directly off their feet.

A sweeping fireball of bright orange and red punched through the walls, shattering the glass windows and sending chunks of stone shrapnel flying across the courtyard.

"Curse it!" Stefan swore loudly, using his armored body to shield the Archbishop.

The entire eastern wing of the ancient Austrian fortress crumbled inward, collapsing into a pile of smoking rubble.

"Do not just stand there!" Wilhelm roared. "The eastern wing was just the beginning... The whole cursed keep is coming down! Get to the main gates!"

Viktor and Stefan hauled the Archbishop forward, splashing through the mud. Anna and her brothers dragged the children, running for their lives toward the gates that separated the inner courtyard from the safety of the outer city streets.

"Open the gates!" Viktor roared at the two armored gatekeepers standing in the freezing rain.

The two guards grabbed the turn wheel, throwing their body weight into it.

The iron chains groaned loudly, and the heavy gates slowly began to creak open, revealing the streets of Salzburg waiting on the other side.

"We are going to make it..." Karl cheered, running ahead with his drawn sword to secure the street.

However, the ash-covered maid who had escaped the kitchens suddenly grabbed Anna’s arm, her eyes wide with shock.

"Wait!" the maid screamed, pointing a hand toward the gates. "The cellar master... Gregor told the cooks to stack the biggest wine barrels under the gatehouse!"

Anna turned around, looking at her older brother.

"Viktor, stop!" Anna shrieked at the top of her lungs.

Viktor paused, still holding his uncle’s arm, and looked back at his sister. "What do you mean? The gates are open!"

"The maid said Gregor stacked the barrels under the gatehouse!" Anna cried out.

"What do you mean the main gate is—" Viktor started to yell.

*KA-BOOM!*

The explosion was entirely apocalyptic.

It was ten times larger than the blast that had destroyed the eastern wing.

The entire stone foundation beneath the huge gatehouse erupted in a blinding flash of white-hot fire.

The archway instantly shattered into a million pieces, raining a devastating shower of boulders downward.

The shockwave hit the royal family like a wall of solid iron, throwing Viktor, Stefan, and Wilhelm backward into the mud.

Wilhelm slowly forced his eyes open, wiping the bloody mud from his pale face.

He looked toward the front of the courtyard.

The gates were gone. The stone archway had entirely collapsed.

The main gate was crushed, blocking their only exit with a mountain of burning rubble.

They were trapped inside a courtyard, surrounded by a palace that was exploding piece by piece.

And as the smoke slowly began to clear from the crushed gatehouse, Wilhelm saw the silhouettes of heavily armed men climbing over the burning rocks...