Re: Steel and Gunpowder

Konrad ignored the sweating Duke and stepped right up beside his wife.

He placed his hand on the small of Katarina’s back. I

"He says he doesn’t know what you are talking about, Katarina," Konrad stated. He looked down at the Italian, a smile touching his lips.

"But I think our Florentine guest is just being modest. Aren’t you, Cellini?"

The mercenary narrowed his eyes.

"I am an honest man, Viscount," Cellini replied. "I simply brought a wedding gift. A handcrafted silver chalice for the happy couple."

"Don’t play games with me, Italian," Konrad growled. "My wife asked you a direct question. And since you are currently standing in my Great Hall, surrounded by my halberds, I highly suggest you answer her before Captain von Richter takes his ten silver florins out of your hide."

Lukas took a step forward, the steel of his broadsword leveled at Cellini’s throat.

Even so, the Italian glanced past Konrad, making brief eye contact with Duke Wilhelm.

The Duke flinched, looking like he was going to vomit his morning wine right there on the stage.

"Fine," Cellini sighed, dropping the theatrical noble act. He reached into the inner lining of his cloak.

The Swabian guards tensed, ready to strike. But Cellini didn’t pull out a hidden pistol or a poisoned dagger. He slowly pulled out a sealed leather tube.

"It is not a blueprint, Princess," Cellini corrected her. "It is a confidential metallurgical ledgers that I liberated from the private desk of a master gunsmith in Milan."

Konrad’s breath hitched. Milan?

"And why did you bring Milanese ledgers to Swabia, Cellini?" Konrad asked.

"Because the man who hired me told me to bring them here," Cellini answered bluntly, gesturing toward the sweating Duke of Bavaria. "Your esteemed father-in-law paid me a sum of raw gold to steal these forging designs and bring them to him."

The Great Hall erupted into a deafening wave of shocked whispers.

The local peasants and the eastern merchants gasped.

The Bavarian knights suddenly reached for the hilts of their swords, realizing that their Duke’s treason had just been publicly exposed in the middle of the holy ceremony.

Katarina stood still, her face unreadable, though Konrad could feel her trembling slightly against his hand.

"He is lying!" the Duke screamed, He pointed his fingers at the Italian mercenary. "The man is a rogue! A Vatican spy! I have never seen him before in my entire life! Konrad, he is trying to ruin the alliance! Kill him! Kill him right now!"

Konrad stared at Cellini.

Cellini was supposed to deliver advanced Milanese armor designs to the Bavarian army. But because the Italian got delayed on the roads, the fifteen thousand landsknechts waiting in the northern pine forests didn’t have the upgraded armor.

They were vulnerable to the Swabian Gatling carts that Marshal Eckhard was currently unleashing upon them.

And more importantly, Wilhelm had just panicked.

He had just publicly ordered the execution of a guest inside the Swabian Great Hall to cover up his own treason.

"You are throwing your own expensive asset to the wolves, Wilhelm?" Konrad murmured quietly, turning his head to look at the Duke. "That is incredibly bad for business."

"I am the Duke of Bavaria!" Wilhelm roared.

Wilhelm stepped forward and drew a sharp dagger from his robes.

He lunged awkwardly toward Cellini, desperate to silence the mercenary before he could reveal any more of the Pope’s hidden ledgers.

The crowd screamed in terror.

But Konrad was ready.

Before the fat Duke could even take a second step off the stage, Konrad drew the hidden wheellock pistol from his belt.

The customized Swabian firing mechanism clicked loudly in the tense air.

He didn’t aim at Cellini.

He aimed the iron barrel at the center of Duke Wilhelm’s hidden breastplate.

"Drop the dagger, Wilhelm," Konrad commanded.

He stared down the barrel of his gun at the Duke, his finger resting against the trigger.

The fat Duke stood frozen on the stage, his dagger shaking in his grip.

The entire Great Hall was trapped in a silence, waiting for the gunshot.

But the gunshot that finally shattered the silence did not come from Konrad’s weapon... the distinct explosion of black powder echoed from the upper levels of the keep.

A heavy lead bullet tore through the air, splintering the wooden post of the altar just two inches from Konrad’s head.

Sharp shards of wood sprayed across the stage, stinging his cheek.

"Get down!" Konrad roared. He didn’t wait for his wife to react. He reached out, grabbed Katarina by the shoulder of her wedding dress, and pulled her down behind the table that held the roasted pigs.

Hundreds of local peasants, off-duty halberdiers, and wealthy eastern merchants scrambled over each other, knocking over benches and spilling massive barrels of expensive ale across the floor.

They didn’t care about the wedding anymore; they just wanted to survive... the commoners flooded toward the doors, running toward the safety of their small stone homes in the lower valley, desperate to lock their shutters against the sudden warzone.

Konrad peeked over the edge of the overturned table, his eyes scanning the upper balconies and the adjacent guest buildings.

They were swarming...

Dozens of figures suddenly poured out from the shadowed archways and the corridors of the guest building.

They threw off their heavy brown monk robes, revealing blackened steel cuirasses and short-barreled carbines.

These were the Pope’s Hounds. The five hundred elite Vatican killers Isolde had warned him about.

However, a different sound began to rumble through the lower courtyard.

The gates of the main entrance groaned, pushed open.

"Swabia!" a gruff, familiar voice roared from the archway.

Marshal Eckhard marched into the Great Hall.

He wasn’t alone... behind him, pouring through the doors like a tide of black iron, were the Swabian halberdiers and the elite Swiss Pikemen.

Captain Lukas von Richter and the other newly minted captains rushed in, their broadswords already drawn, organizing their men into tight, defensive pike squares right in the middle of the spilled ale and broken benches.

Konrad’s eyes widened slightly. Eckhard had really done it?

The marshal hadn’t just marched north to ambush them; he’d crushed the Bavarian vanguard and swiftly returned his men to the keep?

The Swabian army had returned exactly when the ledgers demanded it.

The Swabian halberdiers controlled the ground floor, their long pikes creating a literal wall of steel across the room.

But the Pope’s Hounds controlled the upper balconies and the high windows of the guest buildings.

They had their carbines and crossbows aimed down into the crowded hall. I

If a single shot was fired now, it would be a massacre for both sides in the enclosed space.

"Hold the line!" Eckhard bellowed, raising his fist to stop his men from blindly charging the walls.

"Do not fire unless they fire first!"

"Lock the shields!"

Konrad crouched lower behind the table. He looked to his right.

Benvenuto Cellini, the arrogant Florentine mercenary, had also abandoned his theatrical swagger.

The Italian was pressed flat against the floorboards right next to them, his eyes darting nervously between the armed Hounds above and the wall of Swabian pikes below.

He still clutched the leather tube of Milanese ledgers tightly to his chest.

"This is bad for my business, Viscount!" Cellini shouted over the noise. "I was told this would be a simple delivery!"

"Shut up and keep your head down, Italian." Konrad grunted, shifting his weight to get a better angle.

Though his primary objective had been to force the Duke into making a mistake, the sudden arrival of the Vatican assassins had flipped the board.

Konrad needed to secure his high-value targets.

He looked around for Duke Wilhelm.

The Bavarian lord was crawling on his hands and knees through the spilled wineز He was terrified, trying to squeeze his frame behind the same table where Konrad and Katarina were hiding.

"Konrad!" Duke Wilhelm whimpered, dropping his dagger as he slid behind the wood.

He looked at his son-in-law with wide eyes. "The Vatican betrayed me! They said the Hounds would wait for my signal! They are going to kill us all!"

Katarina looked at her father with disgust. "You brought the Pope’s assassins into my wedding, Father? You actually let them inside the walls?"

"I was securing our future!" Wilhelm stammered, shrinking under her cold glare.

"You are an idiot, Wilhelm," Konrad stated, keeping his eyes on the upper balconies. "You thought you could leash the Vatican? They don’t care about your new imperial seat. They just want my forges burning, and they don’t care if they have to shoot through your fat chest to make it happen."

The screams of the fleeing peasants faded as the last of the commoners managed to slip out the side doors, running toward the lower valley.

Now, it was just the soldiers...

Hundreds of Swabian veterans stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the ground floor, their wheellock rifles aimed upward.

Above them, lining the high balconies and the windows, the five hundred Pope’s Hounds held their weapons perfectly still, waiting for the order to fire.

Konrad stayed crouched behind the table. He had his wife, his treacherous father-in-law, and a highly valuable Italian mercenary pinned down with him.

He had his army holding the ground. But he knew that this standoff couldn’t last forever.

Someone was going to flinch. Someone was going to pull a trigger, and the walls would run red.

He needed to break the deadlock without losing half his veterans in a crossfire.

He turned his head slightly, locking eyes with Marshal Eckhard across the hall. The veteran gave a single nod.

He had the Gatling carts positioned just outside the main doors... they were ready.

Konrad tightened his grip on his pistol.