Chapter 55: French Spies

"Sir Streit, here are the next group of surrenderers."

"Good work. Bring them over here."

"Yes! Move it, quickly!"

An officer from another sector brought me a group of surrenderers. I’d thought it was over, but there were still more? Let’s see—which of you belong to Rafel? But what the scouter showed was that three of them were French spies.

French spies?

France and the Holy Roman Empire had a relationship where a good day was reason enough for war, and a great day was reason for a bigger one. Local conflicts were practically casual greetings. Beren, a margraviate of the Empire, had long endured France’s "visits" as a gatekeeper guarding southwestern Germany and Italy.

The Duke of Burgundy had claimed sovereignty over the Duchy of Beren and Duchy of Roden, which were centered on the Main River. Burgundy, which had been hostile to the French crown during the Hundred Years’ War, invaded the two duchies with England’s backing, believing France would lose to England.

The man who had distinguished himself in that war was Adolf Ritter von Steinhof, whose legendary feat of leading a hundred cavalry alone to raid the enemy command and kill the French Count Montferrand was the stuff of heroic tales. However, the war situation had still favored Burgundy.

What forced Burgundy to withdraw was, unexpectedly, the appearance of France’s great saint, Joan of Arc, who inflicted repeated defeats on England. With England’s leadership shaken after the loss of their king, Burgundy was defeated as well, and France was able to drive out the English. This was the war of twenty years ago.

The most recent war had been five years ago—a conflict where sparks from a local skirmish spread into a full-scale campaign. In that war, both my father and Baron Constance had died. The Duke of Burgundy had worked tirelessly to swallow the two duchies along the Main River, but the war ended with the duke’s sudden death.

His successor was Charles I, called the Bold.

In the Medieval Knight worldview, the history of war between Burgundy and Beren was exceptionally fierce. That was why the Duchy of Beren enjoyed considerable standing as a margraviate of the Empire, comparable to an electorate.

However, although the Medieval Knight worldview dealt with fifteenth- to sixteenth-century Europe, since it was history blended with fiction, events could change at any time. The world I was living in was built on a game’s foundation but was clearly a separate world, moving organically and alive.

Of course, there was a transcendent aid called the system helping me, but that was an ability limited to me personally—not a power that could alter the course of events at large. In that context, the discovery of French spies was something I couldn’t have imagined.

"Surround them!"

So I had the soldiers encircle the surrenderers to prevent any escape.

"Sir Knight! We haven’t committed any crime!"

"Please let us go! I swear to God I didn’t steal anything today!"

The surrenderers were naturally terrified when soldiers suddenly closed in around them. I’d have been startled too if armed men surrounded me. But to ensure not a single spy slipped away, the surest method was to seal off every escape route entirely. There were three French spies among them.

"I’m certain there are Rafel executives among you. Only those I point to—step forward."

I released the other surrenderers and kept only the three French spies. The three were noticeably shaken when they weren’t called to leave. But surrounded by soldiers with shields on all sides, there was almost nothing three people could do, even if they were professionals who’d infiltrated a foreign country.

"If you don’t want to end up a battered corpse, drop your weapons and surrender!"

"Sir Knight! We have nothing to do with the organization called Rafel!"

Well, of course they’d say that. I wasn’t trying to catch Rafel executives—I was trying to catch spies. When I gave the signal, Michael directed the soldiers to press in immediately with shields to the front. The three drew their swords and resisted, but their arrest was only a matter of time.

"Press forward!"

"Drop your weapons!"

They were surrounded in layers, so even if the front rank was breached, the rear rank backed it up—there was absolutely no way three people were breaking through that encirclement. If I’d been surrounded like that, I’d have had no choice but to surrender quietly. Even Klugen, who’d momentarily punched through Mainhof’s private soldiers’ lines, wouldn’t have stood a chance.

Given the relationship between France and Beren, spies were par for the course. I shouldn’t assume only France sent them, either. There might well be a Beren spy calmly playing the Parisian in Paris. So I investigated the three men’s residences and found evidence confirming they were foreign agents.

I could easily locate their lodgings with the scouter.

These men had come from Dijon, not Paris.

Meaning they were Burgundian spies.

Naturally, the Judicial Department was thrown into turmoil. So I requested a private meeting with the Judicial Minister.

Michael couldn’t leave because he had to maintain the blockade around Rafel’s headquarters.

So I personally hauled the three spies to the Judicial Department.

The Judicial Minister stared at me as if at a loss for words.

"The more I learn about you, the harder it is to fathom the depth of your abilities."

"You flatter me. More than that, I apologize for catching spies out of the blue at a time like this and adding to your workload, Judicial Minister."

"If it were busywork, I would have been annoyed—but this is clearly a meritorious service to Beren, is it not?"

"It would have been impossible without Sir Michael of the Steiner family and the soldiers’ help."

In cases like this, sharing credit with everyone was far more beneficial than claiming it for myself. The Judicial Minister seemed to grasp my intent and promised to handle it accordingly. Changing the subject, he said he’d been taken aback by the War Minister’s aggressiveness in ordering today’s Rafel suppression operation.

"I’ve known Steiner for a long time, but his aggressiveness still manages to exceed my expectations. As I’d promised you, we responded on our end, but the ministerial council’s decision was carried entirely by the War Minister’s momentum. Reinfeldt objected, but there was nothing he could do."

The justification put forward by the Judicial Minister and War Minister seemed to have decisively swayed the Grand Duke. The Administrative Minister had also ultimately sided against the Finance Minister, so the legitimacy of the troop mobilization was recognized. Hearing that the Finance Minister had been thoroughly outmaneuvered, I felt a quiet satisfaction.

I hadn’t wanted a fight, but the Finance Minister had gone after one of my people and ended up provoking me—an own goal on his part. He probably hadn’t expected me to respond on this scale. Perhaps the Finance Minister was sheltering the Rafel executives and leader who’d vanished.

I’d originally believed Administration was behind it, but it had turned out to be corruption within Finance, and they’d tried to bury it. Then I’d come along like a bloodhound and was tightening the noose.

"But the real problem is that Burgundian spies were discovered."

"Is that so significant?"

"Because His Highness the Grand Duke and your father-in-law, who were enjoying watching Reinfeldt squirm, will inevitably be drawn to the matter of foreign spies. For the War Minister, defending against external threats is always the top priority."

That made sense. I’d heard my father-in-law had fought a total of fifteen battles, large and small, against Burgundy. Among them, the first great war had been twenty years ago. He’d told me he’d witnessed Steinhof’s legendary exploits firsthand in the battle he’d joined as the second son of the War Minister’s family.

But my father-in-law, who’d been driven from battlefield to battlefield in place of the eldest son, survived—while the eldest son, who’d been kept safely in the capital, fell suddenly ill and died, making my father-in-law the legitimate heir of the War Minister’s family. And now he was serving as the War Minister of the Duchy of Beren.

They’d kept the heir safe and sent the second son to the front, yet it was the eldest son who died first. Truly ironic. But that wasn’t someone else’s problem. Every noble harbored the same fear. Families like Constance or Lorden, whose lines of succession had been severed, vanished forever.

So raising an heir well was the family head’s inescapable duty. Because infant mortality was devastatingly high in medieval times, successfully raising children was itself regarded as a measure of the family head’s competence. In that respect, my father-in-law’s achievement of safely raising five children was worthy of being a model.

Naturally, in child-rearing, the mother’s role was paramount, yet all credit went to the family head. In a way, it was a position that received no recognition—but accepting that was the lot of women in this era. Patriarchs held the right to discipline their wives and treated them as possessions.

Drinking the tea the Judicial Minister had recommended, I sometimes wondered what kind of relationship my father—whom I didn’t even remember—and my mother, who’d died giving birth to me, had had. Had theirs been a typical patriarch’s household? Or had he been an affectionate father who cherished his family, like the War Minister?

"We forced an investigation on the merchant guild, but our results weren’t particularly good either—because a guild executive presumed to have been dealing with Rafel set his own house ablaze and took his life."

"Set fire and killed himself? That’s a grievous mortal sin."

"Since he committed two mortal sins, he’ll suffer eternally in purgatory."

Suicide by fire—so two mortal sins: arson and suicide. That was correct. But the problem wasn’t the suicide itself. Even though a forced investigation had been conducted, the Judicial and Military Departments had failed to secure decisive evidence. On top of that, the Burgundian spies had emerged and the focus was about to shift entirely.

I couldn’t have turned a blind eye once I’d spotted them, but from the spies’ perspective, they’d been spectacularly unlucky. Once they’d crossed my line of sight, there was no escaping. After leaving the Judicial Department, I was heading back to rejoin Michael when someone approached me.

"It’s been a while, Sir Streit."

"You are?"

Surprisingly, the person who’d come to see me was Deputy Inspector General Konrad von Mort.