Chapter 110: Banners of the Exiled
Commander Orsini’s face turned an embarrassed shade of red.
If he pushed the issue, he risked a bloodbath that the Church could no longer legally justify.
If he backed down, he looked like a misinformed fool who had wasted his men’s time.
"You expect me to simply take your word for this, Viscount?" Orsini demanded, though his grip on his reins loosened. "You expect me to just move my men and let you march fourteen thousand silver florins across the border?"
"I expect you to act like a rational man." Konrad said. "Send a rider to Munich. Read the pamphlets yourself. You will see that everything I have told you is the absolute, entirely documented truth. Now... are you going to clear the road, or are we going to stand here in the mud until we all catch a fever?"
Orsini gritted his teeth, looking back at his three silent knights.
"Move the line." Orsini suddenly roared, yanking his horse to the side. "Clear the road for the Viscount’s caravan!"
The solid wall of silver armor slowly split down the middle.
The Vatican knights pulled their horses to the edges of the road, creating a wide path for the Swabian wagons.
Konrad let out a slow breath.
He turned his head slightly, locking eyes with Marshal Eckhard in the distance, and gave the old veteran a sharp nod.
Eckhard immediately raised his broadsword. "Forward march! Keep the squares tight!"
The three thousand Swabian halberdiers began to move.
The wheels of the treasury wagons groaned loudly as the horses dragged them forward through the freezing mud.
The sheer volume of captured wealth slowly rolled right past the glaring, humiliated faces of the Vatican knights.
Konrad kept his black warhorse positioned in the center of the road, his wheellock pistol still resting within easy reach, ensuring that Orsini didn’t try any sudden maneuvers as the wagons passed.
It took nearly twenty minutes for the entire column to fully cross the threshold.
When the final supply wagon finally rolled past the Vatican lines, Konrad offered Commander Orsini a salute.
"Have a safe ride back to Rome, Commander." Konrad mocked softly.
Orsini didn’t reply. He just glared at the Viscount with pure hatred.
Konrad quickly wheeled his horse around and spurred it into a fast trot, rejoining his fifty elite Reiters and falling in alongside Marshal Eckhard at the front of the moving caravan.
"That was too close, Lord Konrad." Eckhard muttered, wiping sweat from his forehead despite the freezing wind. "I genuinely thought you were going to shoot the bastard."
"I wanted to." Konrad admitted. "But paper is cheaper than gunpowder... the silver is safe. Let’s get these wagons inside the keep before anything else derails this morning."
As the Swabian army finally marched through the final pass, leaving the Vatican blockade behind, the stone walls of the von Frundsberg keep finally came into view.
Konrad felt a profound wave of relief.
As the castle gates slowly opened to welcome the returning army, Konrad noticed many unusual things.
The keep was entirely awake... a castle of this size usually took hours to fully stir, with the kitchen servants and the blacksmiths slowly starting their daily routines. But today, the entire fortress was buzzing like a kicked hornet’s nest.
The black banners of the von Frundsberg house were fluttering wildly from every single high tower, snapping in the wind.
But it wasn’t just the banners... the battlements were completely packed with people.
Konrad could see the distinctive blue and white tabards of Duke Wilhelm’s Bavarian halberdiers standing nervously on the outer walls.
He could see the colorful robes of the noble guests crowding the balconies of the guest wing.
He could even see the fat silhouette of Bishop Tomas, the papal envoy, glaring down at the approaching army with watery, highly suspicious eyes.
"...."
"The entire castle is out of bed. They are all watching us."
"They see the wagons, My Lord." Captain Ragnar laughed from his left, unbothered by the audience. "Let them see what Swabian iron can do."
Even so, Konrad knew that parading an army carrying stolen wealth in front of his rivals was incredibly dangerous.
But he had no choice. The silver had to be secured inside the deep vaults.
The column of soldiers slowly marched up the ramp leading to the primary gatehouse.
The outer doors of the gatehouse had already been pulled back by the garrison mechanics, leaving only the massive iron portcullis fully lowered.
The bars blocked the entrance to the inner courtyard.
Konrad pulled his warhorse to a halt just a few feet away from the grid. He leaned forward in his saddle, peering through the bars into the vast, space of his own courtyard.
His eyes instantly locked onto an impossible sight.
Standing in the dead center of the cobblestone courtyard, ignoring the thousands of panicked peasants and highly nobles watching from the balconies, was a slender figure.
She wore a customized suit of black and silver armor. Her face was hidden behind a featureless metal mask.
And she wasn’t alone.
Parked behind her, taking up nearly half of the courtyard, was a caravan of transport wagons.
The wagons were flying the exiled black and yellow banners of the Duchy of Württemberg.
After hearing such words of absolute dismissal from Isolde just a few hours ago, claiming this woman was nothing more than a foolish little girl playing a noble game, Konrad felt his blood freeze in his veins.
"What is this?" Marshal Eckhard gasped.
The veteran stared through the bars, his eyes wide. "Is that... is that the masked lady from the northern ridge?"
How the did she get in here? And exactly when did she arrive?
He knew exactly how his own security grid operated. He had personally designed it.
To get a single wagon into the von Frundsberg keep required passing through three entirely separate layers of heavily armed checkpoints.
Isolde’s shadow-walkers constantly patrolled a ten-mile radius around the valley.
The outer watchtowers required a daily, highly encrypted numerical password just to lower the drawbridges.
Furthermore, Konrad knew the exact logistical habits of this mysterious smuggler.
Even on the unsecured western trade routes, her people never brought their wagons directly into the towns.
They explicitly packed their black-market weapons and unloaded their Fugger silver deep in the muddy roads or hidden in the dense pine forests to avoid any direct taxation or unwanted attention from the border lords.
But right now, she wasn’t hiding in the forest... she was standing boldly inside his impenetrable walls. With an entire caravan. With all of these people watching them.
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