Chapter 218: Diego

September 10, 1527 AD

Salzburg, Austrian Empire

The Prince-Archbishopric of Salzburg, a loyal vassal state under the Holy Roman Emperor.

In a smoky tavern littered with ale spilled on the wooden floor and many serving women hurrying between the crowded tables, drunk mercenaries shouted, threw bone dice, and fought over stolen silver coins.

Sitting alone in the corner of the tavern, wholly ignoring the noise around him, was a truly frightening figure.

It was a man wearing a dirty hemp rope tightly tied around his neck like a twisted necklace... a brutal souvenir from a Swabian hanging he had somehow survived. And this time, right in the middle of his forehead, a black brand of a traitor was burned firmly into his skin.

The scarred man sat down on a stool. He reached into his thick fur belt and pulled out a throwing knife.

Across the noisy room, a man was literally hanging upside down by his ankles from the wooden rafters of the bar, swaying like a piece of butchered meat.

The scarred man did not even blink. He just flicked his wrist.

The blade flew across the smoky room and buried itself incredibly hard into the wooden beam.

It nearly hit the hanging man right in the middle of his forehead, missing his skin by a fraction of an inch and shaving off a small clump of dirty brown hair.

The drunk mercenaries slammed their cups against the tables, amused by the incredibly cruel game of accuracy.

Suddenly, the doors were shoved open. The loud laughter in the room quickly died down as the soldiers saw who had just stepped inside.

A man walked into the tavern. He was wearing wolf furs and a gleaming silver chainmail shirt.

This was Diego, the enforcer and brother to the Duke of Alba.

Diego marched through the puddles of spilled ale. The serving women and the drunk mercenaries quickly scrambled out of his way, fearing his notorious temper.

Diego approached the corner, his hands resting on his belt. He looked down at the man with the burned forehead.

"Come on, Vargas," Diego grunted. "Get up. We do not have much time."

Captain Vargas slowly turned his head, his cold eyes locking onto Diego. "Is it done? Did the rat return from his little suicide mission to Augsburg?"

"Yes," Diego grinned, a greedy fire lighting up his black eyes. "The Spanish spy just dropped anchor in the hidden river cove. He said he took a throwing dagger to King Konrad’s shoulder, set the royal archives on fire, and slipped right past their fancy charcoal-coated Jaegers."

After hearing such words, Vargas let out a raspy chuckle.

He stood up from his stool, adjusting the dirty rope around his neck.

"...Did the spy bring the explosive alchemy?"

"He brought it all," Diego nodded, wiping the foam from his beard. "Fernando is already looking at the blueprints."

Diego turned around, gesturing toward the tavern doors leading out into the rainy, muddy streets of Salzburg.

"But my brother wants to test it first," Diego said.

Captain Vargas followed Diego out of the noisy tavern, stepping into the freezing rain.

None of this testing would have been possible, however, without the secret meeting that took place three nights ago.

***

Two men were riding their heavy warhorses through the knee-high mud of a shadowy forest path. The huge warrior leading the way was Diego, wrapping his woolen cloak tightly around his neck to block the bitter alpine wind.

Riding right beside him, strapped tightly into a custom-made leather saddle so he would not fall, was his brother, Fernando, the Duke of Alba.

Fernando’s legs had been hopelessly crushed under a Swabian rockslide months ago during the battle for the Brenner Pass.

"Curse it all," Diego grumbled, wiping a layer of mud from his face. "Why are we riding all the way out to this abandoned pig farm in the middle of a storm? We have a perfectly good tavern back in Salzburg."

"The tavern is full of drunk idiots with big mouths," Fernando chuckled, gripping the reins with his hands. "The Spanish spy is waiting for us at the farm."

Diego scoffed, spitting a mouthful of rainwater into the mud. "I heard the mercenary only managed to steal some useless farming blueprints. Konrad kept his precious rifle designs locked away. What good is a farming paper going to do us? Are we going to defeat Swabia by throwing cabbages at their walls?"

Fernando threw his head back and let out a mocking laugh. "Yes, he brought the farming blueprints. The formulas for their winter fertilizers. But he brought another one, too. The blueprints for the subterranean coal mining."

Diego frowned, looking at his crippled brother. "Mining? We do not have time to dig holes, Fernando."

"We are not digging anything, you big oaf," Fernando said in an excited whisper as they finally stopped their horses near the farm gate. "I finally know the exact mixture for his explosive black dirt."

Diego’s eyes widened slightly in the shadows. "You can make the Swabian powder? With farming chemicals and coal? Then... we can build our own rifles?"

"No, we cannot," Fernando sighed, shaking his head in frustration. "If we try to cast a rifle barrel in an Austrian forge, the moment we pull the trigger, the impure metal will just explode and blow our own cursed hands off."

"Then the powder is useless..." Diego groaned.

"However," Fernando grinned, his smile turning wicked as two of his loyal guards rushed out into the rain to help him down from his horse. "We do not need to shoot the powder out of a fancy iron tube. We just need it to explode."

Fernando leaned on his crutches, staring up at his hulking brother. "If we take this gunpowder... and we pack it incredibly tight inside a sealed clay pot or a hollow ball... and we stick a burning rope inside it..." Fernando explained. "We just light the fuse, throw it at a Swabian castle wall, and the explosion will do all the heavy lifting for us."

"An exploding clay pot?" Diego whispered, his mind grasping the concept.

"Well... yes," Fernando said, his grin widening. "That is exactly what the powder is for."

"But how the hell are you so confident that you can actually make the powder?" Diego grumbled.

"I am not entirely confident," Fernando laughed softly, adjusting his grip on the crutches. "Perhaps all my theories were nonsense. I have been guessing for months, trying to figure out how Konrad shatters the earth with such ease. But we will know for sure after seeing these stolen blueprints."