"Lord Count!"
The door to my office burst open before the visitor could even knock.
One of my knights stood there, gasping for breath. His face was deathly pale, sweat dripping from his chin.
"Our carriage has been attacked! The escort... they’ve all been wiped out!"
I was already on my feet. I didn't even remember rising from my chair.
"Who was inside?"
"Lady Katia and Mira. They're safe—they managed to hide beneath the carriage seats."
I felt a single breath of relief return to my lungs. But the knight’s expression remained taut.
"According to Lady Katia... there was one more person with them. Lord Rein."
My heart hammered against my ribs.
"They say Lord Rein hung Lady Katia’s Crest Identification around his neck and leapt from the carriage to act as a decoy. He reportedly ran toward the castle, but... he wasn't at the scene."
"Where did the attackers go!?"
"Well..."
The knight bit his lip.
"The attack took place right near the South Town Gate. They had escape horses tethered near the gate in advance. The gatekeepers... it seems they were killed the same time the attack began. We found their bodies."
This was no random band of brigands. This was coordinated, meticulously planned. And they were professionals.
"And after they passed the gate?"
"They seem to have scattered in several directions once they cleared the walls, fleeing off the main roads. According to a farmer who saw them, they split into at least three groups—"
"Seal the town gates."
"They have already been closed, sir."
"Do not open them until every inch has been inspected. There’s a chance some of them are still hiding within the Territorial Capital with Rein."
The attackers had fled outside the gate; I knew that. But the fact that the gatekeepers had been murdered meant I couldn't rule out the presence of internal collaborators.
"Send word to the Knight Commander. Split the First and Second Companies immediately. One squad will exit through the South Gate to track the escape. The other will scour every corner of the Territorial Capital. Check every single house for accomplices, for Rein, or for anyone who might have aided them."
Even as I spoke, my mind was racing through the variables. Could we actually catch them if they had scattered? Three directions, off the beaten path... if they were on horseback and reached the forests or hills, their tracks would be gone.
But I had to try.
"I'm going out as well."
The knight rushed off to deliver the orders.
I grabbed my sword belt from the wall and buckled it around my waist. As my attendant brought my breastplate and I threw on my cloak, I realized for the first time that my hands were shaking.
The pursuit ended exactly as I had feared.
While horse tracks were indeed found outside the South Gate, they vanished the moment they left the main road and hit the dry grass and stony hills. The knights who had split up to follow the three trails returned after half a day of riding. They had found nothing.
The sun set.
When I returned to the castle, Albrecht and Heide were waiting for me outside the Great Hall.
"Father! Where’s Rein!?"
"...Not yet."
"Father..."
"I will bring him back. I promise."
That was all I could offer them.
Albrecht bit his lip and walked away with his head bowed.
Heide gave a small, silent nod and headed toward her room, her footsteps uncharacteristically unsteady.
Sophie emerged from the inner parlor. Her eyes were rimmed with red.
"Liese and Rose... they keep asking me. They want to know when Elder Brother Rein is coming home. I... I didn't know what to tell them."
Sophie pressed a hand to her mouth. She was the one who always smiled, the one who kept the atmosphere of the house light. Now, that composure was shattering.
"Tell them he’ll be home soon."
It might have been a lie. But what else do you say to three-year-old children?
Sophie nodded a few times and retreated back into the parlor.
I started walking, my pace quickening. I didn't have the luxury of standing still.
I summoned Roswitha to the small briefing room. Klaus was already waiting in the hallway before I even arrived.
As Head of the Guard, Klaus was responsible for the family's personal security. He was an expert in indoor combat and assassination—the darker arts—and was well-versed in intelligence gathering. Given the gravity of the situation, we needed to collect information through the underworld as well as official channels.
Roswitha had clearly already grasped the situation; she likely heard from the servants before I reached her. Her expression was harder and more wooden than usual, but I saw her knuckles turning white where her hands were clasped.
Klaus’s narrow eyes were sharper than I had ever seen them. While protecting people outside the castle was technically the knights' duty, the fact that he had been outmaneuvered in his own specialties of security and intelligence clearly ate at him. I could see the simmering frustration on his face.
"The initial pursuit failed. Since they scattered on horseback and avoided the roads, tracking them through normal means will be nearly impossible."
Both of them nodded solemnly.
"Starting tomorrow, I will lead the knights on a wide-area search. We will solicit help from the villages, the post towns, and the Margraviate, scouring every inch of ground until we hit the border. I will be away from the castle during this time."
"Roswitha. I am entrusting the command of our intelligence network to you."
Roswitha looked up. For a fleeting second, I saw a flash of grim resolve in her eyes.
"Use every person and every coin at our disposal. I leave the decisions to you. Just find some trace of Rein."
"Understood."
"Klaus. You will serve under Roswitha. I know you have your duties as the Head of the Guard, but—"
"It will not be an issue, my lord."
"...I'm counting on you."
The words caught in my throat. We stood in silence as the stars began to appear outside the window.
Then, a knock came at the door.
"Pardon the interruption. I have a report regarding items left by the attackers."
A knight entered and placed a cloth-wrapped object on the table. When he unwrapped it, a single leather talisman lay there.
"This was recovered from the body of one of the slain attackers. On this leather talisman..."
Klaus picked it up. He glanced at the front, then flipped it over.
"A Seltheim mercenary..."
There was a distinct engraving on the back. It was a registration mark issued by the Mercenary Guild within Seltheim.
"The neighboring country...!" Roswitha whispered.
I stood and turned my back to them, piecing the logic together in my mind.
"Based on what Lady Katia and Mira said, the target was Katia. Not Rein. Rein acted as a decoy on impulse and was taken in her place."
"What would they want with the Margrave's daughter?"
"There are several ways to use her as a hostage, but the location of the attack is what bothers me. They chose to strike inside our Territorial Capital. It would have been far easier to ambush her on the road, yet they didn't."
"Because they wanted the incident to happen on our land," Klaus said.
"Exactly. The daughter of House Laufen, kidnapped in the capital of House Werl while under our protection. It would have been a catastrophic failure of responsibility."
"It would drive a wedge between the Margrave, the lynchpin of our border defense, and us. We would be forced to dance to their tune if they used Lady Katia to demand we 'take responsibility.' And everyone knows how much Georg dotes on her. Our hands would have been tied. They likely planned to use her to spark some larger movement."
"But because Rein stood in for her, their plan has likely been derailed," Roswitha added tonelessly.
"The question is, when will they realize he was a substitute?"
"And how they’ll react once they find out."
None of us spoke the thought that followed.
When they realize he's a decoy, the boy has two choices: reveal his identity or hide it. If he reveals who he is, he might be treated with some level of care so they can make demands of us. A ransom is a terrible thing, but in this situation, it would be the better outcome.
In the other scenario, he has no value. And I didn't want to think about how mercenaries treated a valueless hostage.
Don't think about it. Not now.
Days passed.
The knights conducted an exhaustive search of the territory. They scoured the roads, the villages, and the post towns along any potential flight path. Under Roswitha's direction, we interviewed merchants and travelers while dispatching spies into the neighboring kingdom.
We found only one thing.
Deep in a thicket along a game trail in the woods near the border, someone found House Laufen’s Crest Identification. The chain had been snapped. It had been tossed carelessly onto the grass.
When the report reached me, I spent a long time simply staring at that pendant.
No demands for ransom had arrived.
I crushed the horrific images beginning to form in my mind by barking out the next set of orders.