Chapter 109: The Dead Cannot Testify
Commander Orsini’s arrogant sneer faltered for just a fraction of a second.
Orsini was a high-ranking officer of the Vatican, a man entirely used to watching secular lords bow their heads and completely submit to the overwhelming authority of Rome.
But as he looked into Konrad’s dead, unyielding eyes, the Commander finally began to process the reality of his immediate surroundings.
Orsini looked past Konrad’s lone figure.
He saw the fifty Swabian Reiters sitting on their destriers.
Then, the Commander looked further down the road.
He saw Marshal Eckhard’s three thousand veteran halberdiers, surrounding the treasury wagons.
The Vatican commander clearly knew the math.
He knew that if he ordered his three hundred holy knights to draw steel and kill Konrad right here in the freezing mud, it would be a suicide mission.
The Swabian army was fiercely loyal to the Viscount.
If Konrad died, those Reiters and halberdiers wouldn’t break or route; they would instantly surge forward and butcher every single man wearing a papal cross to avenge their lord.
Even so, Orsini did not order his men to stand down or clear the road.
He was confused as to why the Swabian Viscount was acting so serious and hostile.
Orsini knew that everything was completely against Konrad politically. The Vatican had the absolute ultimate authority over the continent.
The Commander was in a singular place of power, which was rooted in the bright crimson banners fluttering above his men, not in the actual number of swords he commanded.
A secular lord simply did not threaten a papal envoy unless he wanted his entire bloodline erased from the history books.
"You speak treason, Viscount von Frundsberg." Orsini declared. "If you fire a single shot at these holy banners, you will be excommunicated before the sun sets. Your lands will be seized, and your soul will burn in eternal damnation."
Though the threat of excommunication was the ultimate weapon, Konrad didn’t even flinch.
In his mind, Konrad was calculating how long it would take to wipe the Vatican detachment off the face of the earth.
He desperately wanted to kill them...
He could simply raise his hand, and Marshal Eckhard would uncover the Gatling carts hidden behind the infantry lines.
The volley guns would shred Orsini and his three hundred knights into bloody paste in less than two minutes.
Konrad could already picture the exact excuse he would use.
He would just write a formal, highly polite letter to the Pope claiming that they misunderstood everything.
He would state that the morning fog was entirely too thick, that his men didn’t know about the holy banners, and that they genuinely thought they were being ambushed by rogue mercenaries who didn’t know about the legal casus belli.
It was an deniable lie... the dead couldn’t testify, and the fourteen thousand silver florins would be safely locked inside the Swabian vaults.
However, Konrad’s brain forced his hand away from the iron of his wheellock pistol.
He didn’t want a prolonged war with the Pope right now. He needed time to build his atmospheric steam engines and establish his domestic supply lines.
A massacre today would bring the entire Holy Roman Empire crashing down on his borders tomorrow.
"Orsini, you are a completely blind fool if you think I am the one committing treason here," Konrad said. He kept his hand near his belt, but he relaxed his rigid posture just a fraction.
"I am not a rogue warlord randomly burning border keeps," Konrad explained. "I am a lawful lord of the Empire, and I am simply executing a highly justified retrieval of my own stolen property."
Orsini frowned deeply. "Stolen property? What the are you talking about, Viscount? You leveled a Savoyard fortress and slaughtered thousands of men. That is not a simple retrieval!"
Konrad slowly reached inside his cloak.
The Vatican knights instantly tensed, raising their heavy lances, thinking the Viscount was drawing a hidden weapon.
But Konrad simply pulled out a folded piece of damp vellum. It was one of the thousands of pamphlets Master Johannes had just printed in the lower levels of the keep.
"This is my casus belli." Konrad stated firmly, holding the paper up in the wind.
"..seven days ago, a peaceful Swabian merchant caravan was violently ambushed on the western trade road.
The caravan was carrying the personal wealth of the Fugger banking family.
The Savoyard border guards completely slaughtered my drivers and dragged the silver into their fortress."
Konrad let the dense, detailed lie hang in the air.
He explicitly bombarded the Vatican commander with undeniable facts that made the Swabian invasion legal under the rigid laws of the Holy Roman Empire.
"I sent Marshal Eckhard to demand the return of the stolen Fugger silver," Konrad continued, entirely weaving the fabricated narrative.
"...but instead of negotiating, Duke Charles of Savoy secretly allied with rogue Bohemian mercenaries and attempted to completely ambush my men.
My forces merely defended themselves against an entirely unprovoked attack.
We shattered the mercenaries, breached the keep, and reclaimed the stolen silver."
Orsini stared at the damp pamphlet in Konrad’s hand.
The Commander’s expression slowly cracked into genuine confusion.
He hadn’t heard anything about a stolen merchant caravan... the Vatican spies had only reported a massive, sudden Swabian invasion.
"You claim... you claim the Savoyards attacked you first?" Orsini asked, his tone losing a significant amount of its previous holy bluster.
"I don’t just claim it, Commander." Konrad replied naturally. "I have the exact ledgers. I have the captured Savoyard quartermasters currently sitting in my dungeons who will confess to the theft. And I have five thousand of these printed declarations circulating through every single merchant guild from Munich to Vienna. The entire Empire knows the truth by now."
Konrad knew he had the Vatican officer boxed in. Orsini was standing in the freezing mud, relying entirely on the political weight of his banners.
But Konrad had just flipped the board.
If the Vatican openly attacked a lord who was simply reclaiming stolen Fugger silver, the powerful banking families of Europe would instantly turn against the Pope.
The Church relied on those banks to fund their wars. They couldn’t afford to anger the men who controlled the continent’s gold.
The silence stretched across the mudy trade road.
Marshal Eckhard stood by the treasury wagons.
The old veteran knew what Konrad was doing.
The Viscount was explicitly giving the Vatican a clean, honorable way to back down without losing face.
"Your presence here is unnecessary, Orsini." Konrad stated.
"You were sent to stop a rogue warlord. But as you can clearly see, I am just a simple victim of Savoyard greed, safely escorting my own recovered property back to my peaceful valley."
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