Sturm rising musket men.., p.13
Sturm Rising (Musket Men Book 4), page 13
“Precisely,” Gold said with a predator’s smile. “He sends us a complete record of all the business he has done.”
“So, what you’re showing us here are the notes that your banker has sent to you?” Sturm asked.
“Precisely,” Gold repeated.
“Then where are the actual agreements signed by my cousin?” Sturm wanted to know.
For the first time, it seemed to occur to Gold that his victory was not yet secure. “They would be in Ciadade Fortaleza.”
Sturm turned to Rutger Visser. “My Lord Exchequer, I am perfectly willing to make good on any debts my cousin lawfully incurred, but given the already demonstrated willingness of Mr. Gold and his bank to steal from my cousin, I insist that they prove that these debts actually exist by producing the original documentation of the loan.”
“But those documents are in Ciadade Fortaleza!” Gold protested.
“Then I suggest,” Sturm told the room, “that we put the question of whether or not Fortaleza owes Gold Bank money to the side until you can have those documents brought here. In the meantime—”
Gold stood up. “Our bank in Ciadade Fortaleza was burned to the ground! Who knows how many records were lost? Maybe all of them!”
Sturm kept his temper. “Mr. Gold, I am appalled that your bank in Fortaleza was assaulted with great loss of life and property damage. I hope that the authorities in Fortaleza are doing everything they can to bring the criminals to justice. But I am not willing to permit you to use your misfortunes as a way of covering up or adding to your crimes against me and the earldom of Fortaleza. You have been caught stealing from the earls of Fortaleza over a period of decades. You weren’t even subtle about it. Now you produce documents your staff has written which claim I owe you more than two million crowns and conveniently, the original agreements have been lost. Perhaps if you had dealt honorably with my predecessors and me, you would have some credibility now. But as you did not, you do not.”
“When have I acted dishonorably toward you?” Gold demanded.
Sturm smiled wanly as he shook his head from side to side. The sheer gall of the man was impressive. “Putting to the side four attempts on my life, I came to you looking to rent or buy a home that I could use while in the city and you failed to mention that I already owned one of the grandest estates in Aachen. You are a thief and I will not credit anything you cannot prove.”
“Rutger!” Gold turned to his friend the exchequer. “This is preposterous!”
The exchequer did not race to his aid. “What do you expect me to say, Ernst? You actually used this exact same argument to get out of repaying a loan to the Carter Bank not so many years ago. Come to think of it, the fire that destroyed their records was mighty suspicious too.”
“Rutger!” Gold protested, but evidently thought better of pressing his friend further. Rutger Visser clearly thought that Gold had tried to murder Sturm.
“Now we are here to discuss Earl Fortaleza’s assets in this city,” the exchequer brought them back to task. “We want to know when they were acquired, the rents you have collected on them, and what happened to that money. We also want to see every item you billed to the earls of Fortaleza, including the expenses related to managing their house. Did you bring the records?”
“Yes,” Gold spat the word.
“Good,” the exchequer responded. “Then we can finally stop wasting time and get on with the real purpose of this meeting.”
Chapter Twenty-Two: An Unexpected Talk with the Master General
Aachen, Capital City, Kriegsturm
The Frost Moon, Day 16, Year 1196
“Earl Fortaleza?”
A mentally exhausted Marshal Sturm looked up at the sound of his name as he, Steen, Rohrbach, and their staffs exited the meeting. This was not going to be resolved quickly. There were too many records in question and Gold wasn’t cooperating. The exchequer had ended the meeting early and announced that they would continue after the army of clerks he had secretly sent to Gold Bank finished examining the records there.
Gold had been predictably outraged, but he was also beaten. It was just a matter of time. To save his bank, he was being forced to cooperate. Slow the investigation too much and he’d be put on trial for murder. He was beaten, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t keep fighting.
“Master General Weber,” Sturm recognized the ranking military man in Kriegstrum approaching him down the hallway.
“Might I have a word with you before you depart?” the master general asked.
Sturm’s lawyer, Rohrbach, opened his mouth to say something, but Weber cut him off. “In private, if you would be so kind?”
Sturm didn’t want to talk anymore today, but he saw no choice but to agree. “Of course, master general, where would you like to meet?”
“In my office, if you wouldn’t mind,” Weber answered.
Sturm said goodbye to Steen and Rohrbach and followed the military man to a rather plush office where the two of them sat together at a small sitting table where a stein of beer had been set for Sturm and a glass of wine for Weber.
“Thank you for this,” Sturm said as he tasted the good stout.
“I know you are in negotiations to buy a brewery and take it south with you,” Weber informed him. “It’s the only one of your purchases that does not trouble me—muskets, cannon, wagon loads of black powder, pikes, Kriegsturm uniforms for two thousand men, need I go on?”
“They’re not actually Kriegsturm uniforms,” Sturm noted without, he hoped, being defensive. “I had them not add the stripe to the pants. It’s convenient that Fortaleza’s colors are also green and black.”
“Yes, you’ll fit right in with southern stereotypes of us,” Weber said. “They call us Greenies, you know, because of the military uniforms.”
“I had heard that,” Sturm admitted.
“So, what do you think you’re doing,” Weber got to the point.
Sturm leaned back in his chair and considered the older man quite carefully. In a very real way, everything that had gone wrong for the Kriegsturm military in the past years was this man’s fault. Weber had been in charge of the army for twelve years—taking over after the loss of Melk but doing nothing to reverse the decline.
When the silence grew too long, Weber prompted him. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked again.
Sturm gave him a different answer than the one Weber was expecting. “I am trying to decide if I will be the earl of Fortaleza or not.”
“You are the earl of Fortaleza,” Weber told him. “You could, I suppose, abdicate in favor of your cousin in Sturmkuste, but that doesn’t change the fact that now you are the earl.”
“On paper, perhaps,” Sturm agreed. “You know, I’m finding the politics of this both perplexing and overwhelming. I only know one way to deal with the world. It served me well on the battlefield and it served me well governing Hekt, but it is not diplomatic.”
Weber laughed. “Now you sound like an earl of Fortaleza. None of them were ever diplomatic.”
“Did you know them then?”
“The last one?” Weber asked. “No, I did not. But I met his father—that was a shrewd man who took the generous grant King Harald made to the first earl and turned it into the powerhouse it is today. Truth be told, if your cousin was more like his father and worried about more than the next pair of thighs he was going to stick his pecker between, then the earldom would be a serious problem for the high kingdom today. But your cousin really didn’t expand Fortaleza’s wealth—he just spent it.”
“I am not particularly concerned with wealth or whose thighs I’m going to stick my pecker between,” Sturm told him. “I think, from the little I have been able to learn, I am more like the first earl.”
“Meaning?”
“I want to serve my high king as Wotan bade us to,” Sturm stated as bluntly and truthfully as he could.
“Then why are you making all of these purchases?” Weber demanded with a touch of fire in his voice.
“Back to this again, are we?” Sturm asked.
“Al-Andalus is very fragile right now,” Weber snapped. “It will take very little to break it into pieces.”
Sturm just stared at him, wondering if the show of temper was real or a rhetorical trick. He didn’t really want to have this conversation today.
“Well, say something, damn it!” Weber goaded him.
“I had hoped to have my audience with the high king before being pressed to make this decision,” Sturm confided.
“What decision?” Weber demanded, clearly not understanding what Sturm was getting at.
“I am trying to decide whether I will be the earl of Fortaleza in reality rather than merely in name,” Sturm told him.
Weber settled back in his chair and took a sip of his wine, “I don’t think I understand what you’re trying to tell me.”
Sturm answered slowly, choosing each word with care. “I think that to be true to the Rule of Wotan I have to embrace this responsibility no matter how much pain it causes me and those around me.” He drained his stein. “Alright, ask your questions.”
“Why are you making these purchases?” Weber repeated.
“You know why I’m making them,” Sturm countered. “The question is really, why do you pretend to care?”
“I can’t have Al-Andalus blow up right now,” Weber told him.
“Then you should have handled the situation better,” Sturm said. “Because we both know that you made civil war down there an almost certainty when you withdrew all of those regiments. If we do nothing, Al-Andalus is lost. If we show further weakness, Al-Andalus is lost. If we show the right kind of strength, there is a very small chance that we can avoid civil war. I doubt it, but for his majesty’s sake, I think I am willing to try.
“You’re going to cost us the province,” Weber warned.
“No,” Sturm insisted. “You and the rest of the privy council already did that. I am the only hope you have of saving it.”
The master general leaned forward. “How dare you—”
“Spare me the false outrage!” Sturm snapped back. “You knew what you were doing. In my brief time here, I can see the impossibility of your situation. You have no support, do you? As Anjou and Ahl-Alnaar push, you are the only one advising to stand up and fight. All the exchequer wants to do is save money. All the archbishop wants to do is stop the king’s subjects from sleeping with each other—as if Wotan ever gave a damn about that. These are not men who learn from their errors, are they? I gave you back Hekt and none of them wants to talk to me about it. None seek my advice on how we might take advantage of our position and our new musket men to take back the western provinces. They are going to piss the chance away even as they risk losing Al-Andalus for the same idiotic reasons.”
Weber sat back again. “I didn’t expect you to have such a clear view of our internal politics. How did you learn this in only a week?”
“Because it’s obvious and I’m no simpleton,” Sturm responded. “Now, may I ask you a question? Why did you not support the development of my new musket strategy? It could have helped you with these problems. For now, until Anjou adapts to what we have done, you have the ability to make a thousand musket men fight like ten thousand.”
“I didn’t think it would work,” Weber confessed.
“What?”
“You heard me,” the master general said. “It’s embarrassing seeing what you’ve done with it, but I didn't think it would work. Now, you’re right. We have a chance to go on the offensive and no one wants to do it. We should have acted already and marched on Brest, but the opponents of expansion—and there are quite a lot of them—argued that we couldn’t afford to invade Anjou when it looked like the south was going to blow up beneath us.”
“So, instead of expanding our army—” Sturm started.
“It doesn’t look like we’re even going to fully replace our losses,” Weber finished the sentence for him.
“This is madness,” Sturm told him. “Why is this happening?”
The master general shrugged. “It’s happening for a lot of reasons. Different people act from different motivations. Some genuinely think we can get peace by showing Anjou we aren’t going to threaten them. They even want to give Hekt back as a sign of good faith.”
“You're not serious!”
“Unfortunately, I am,” Weber confirmed. “Her majesty is the foremost proponent of this policy and she has a lot of influence over the high king.”
“But it’s crazy!”
“Fortunately, he agrees with you, for now, at least,” the master general said. “But there is a bigger problem and that has to do with his majesty’s physical condition. There was a major movement in Sturmkuste after his majesty lost the use of his legs to bar him from the succession. It had a lot of support. Frankly, if High King Hadrada had had two sons, it might have been successful. The ultimate proof that Wotan is not happy with Kriegsturm for having a lame man on the throne is our military losses. If you want to put another candidate on the throne—say one from Sturmkuste, losing huge parts of Graanland would help your cause.”
Sturm followed the twisted line of reasoning. “Because Graanland supports the high kingdom because he protects them from Anjou.”
“Precisely,” Weber agreed.
Sturm made his decision. “So let me make absolutely certain I understand what you’re telling me before I suggest our course of action. You are being hindered from properly fulfilling your duties by those who have swayed from the laws and the rules of Wotan.”
“That is one way to look at it,” Weber squirmed uncomfortably before agreeing.
Sturm continued. “Some of those forces probably wouldn’t mind us losing Al-Andalus in the short run, while others have unrealistic hopes of my mere arrival saving the day.”
“Also true,” Weber confirmed.
“So, we have to appear to give them what they want while we secretly prepare for the crisis we both know is coming.”
“You’ve lost me,” Weber admitted. “I don’t understand what you’re thinking.”
“I am going to prepare us to fight the war that those friendliest to our cause among our opponents have convinced themselves can’t happen,” Sturm told him. “To do that, I need those corporations I’m negotiating and I need those supplies I’m buying. You convince the exchequer to give me the charters I need. Tell him it’s a sort of bribe. You’ve promised to let my company supply muskets to the army when it finally returns those regiments to Al-Andalus.”
“But we’re not going to return them there,” Weber protested.
“I know, but if matters go to hell as we fear they will, I must have a dependable source of weapons production in Al-Andalus. If the absolute worst happens and Ahl-Alnaar invades, I have to have a source of supply closer than Aachen or even Kasteel.”
“Kasteel has almost no manufacturing capacity,” the master general said.
“You merely make my point stronger,” Sturm told him. “Let the exchequer think you have convinced me to go south by bamboozling me. It will strengthen you in his esteem, and yet, when things go badly as they must, we will have a chance to set them straight again.”
“Oh.” Weber said, thinking through what Sturm was saying. “Oh, I see, you’re giving me deniability.”
“And simply don’t mention the other things I’m buying, or the quantity I’m buying them in,” Sturm continued. “I will get down south with a small force of musket men that no one really believes is all that dangerous. Despite Steil Pass and Oosten Graanland, most people have not revised their ideas about the weapon. It will not look all that threatening, but it will give me a strong enough hand to give us a chance if we’re right and Al-Andalus explodes.”
The master general stood and offered Sturm his hand. “I’m going to take a chance on you,” he told him. “I don’t know that I actually have a choice, but at least I believe that with you we have a chance.”
“I will do the best I can, Master General Weber,” Sturm assured him. “And while I cannot guarantee the outcome, I will promise you this. I will not yield, I will not bend, I will not break in my support for the high king.”
“Now, you’re making me worry again,” Weber complained.
Chapter Twenty-Three: Frenzy
Aachen, Capital City, Kriegsturm
The Frost Moon, Day 16, Year 1196
“Where have you been?” Else screamed the words at Sturm as he came through the door into the banker’s house. He didn’t like staying here, especially now that his own house had been burnt down, but Steen had insisted and the prime minister had arranged to have a few militia men standing guard outside.
“What’s happened?” Sturm asked, not bothering to answer the question despite the look of near rage on Else’s face.
“The high king has moved your audience from the day after tomorrow to tonight,” Else snapped. “You should have been here getting ready instead of galivanting around.”
“I’ve been at the palace all day,” Sturm pointed out. “They could have informed me there if they had wanted to.”
“Well maybe someone is trying to make you look bad, then,” Else said. “It doesn’t matter. Get your clothes off and get into the bath.”
When he continued to hesitate, she screamed, “Now!”
Sturm conceded and did as he was told, wondering both why the meeting had been moved and why he hadn’t been told. Given what Master General Weber had told him, it might be as simple as Else had suggested—someone was trying to make him look bad by having him miss his audience with the high king.
The pettiness didn’t really surprise him, although he had to wonder if the high king would really be angry with him when he learned what had happened.
Not that it mattered. He wasn’t going to be late.
When he got out of the bath, Else and Henna were standing over servants who were polishing his boots and shining his medals. Else especially seemed to be going crazy, much as she had the night before the first party. She had a high standard for dress and deportment in general, but the thought of him having a single hair out of place on a visit to the high king sent her into a frenzy. For Sturm’s part, he understood how important it was for his uniform to be immaculate and appreciated the help. He just wished she could do so with less…rage.
