A full day passed, and Anton’s unit, which I’d dispatched to Grefeling, still hadn’t returned. I was just about to send Drek out in case something had gone wrong when Anton’s unit finally rejoined us.
And with them were some entirely unexpected but welcome faces.
Oscar and Ted, who should have been in Feuzen.
"Oscar! Ted! What are you two doing here?"
"Have you been well, Master? It’s been far too long!"
I was delighted to see Oscar and Ted, but I was thrown off as well. It wasn’t right for retainers to act on their own without my orders, so there had to be a reason.
"Anton, explain the situation. What on earth happened?"
"Well, after arresting the administrator in Grefeling, we stopped briefly at Radensdorf."
Grefeling is a village northeast of Radensdorf. After a game of cat and mouse with the administrator, who put up a fight, they captured him, returned to Radensdorf, and threw him into the prison tower.
Just as they were regrouping to set out for Schafen, Anton spotted Oscar and Ted carrying a banner emblazoned with the Streit family crest.
And what was even more bewildering—no, more shocking—was...
"As it happened, we were headed the same way. So I escorted them here."
"This young lord here kindly guided us. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank him once again."
"Think nothing of it. The baron’s retainers have excellent manners. Oscar, come visit Tyrol sometime."
"Hahaha, the invitation alone is an honor."
The man casually chatting with Oscar was Maximilian, imperial crown prince of the Holy Roman Empire and Duke of Tyrol. Everyone who recognized him froze on the spot.
Anton, who looked as though he’d given up on everything, said to me,
"I tried to tell those two he was His Highness the imperial crown prince, but His Highness stopped me."
"My poor subordinates have no idea who they’re dealing with."
"Playing dumb nearly killed me too!"
"A nasty prank from His Highness the imperial crown prince, I see."
It had been a short journey together, but Maximilian seemed to have taken a liking to Oscar. Ted, perhaps sensing instinctively that Maximilian was no ordinary man, had been stiff with him instead.
"Baron, my mother keeps pestering me to be home by the new year, so I must be on my way."
"I see. It was a brief meeting, but I hope our bond and friendship remain unchanged."
"Is that a farewell? As far as I know, we’ll be seeing each other next year."
"Regrettably so. I’ll see you next year."
"I’ll be waiting eagerly. There are so many people I want to introduce you to."
The people he wanted to introduce me to would most likely make my life very tiresome, but in any case, I said my farewells to the imperial crown prince. He headed southeast with his escort.
Only now did the Habsburg eagle banner rise high.
Michael, who came out late, wore the expression of a man who’d seen something he shouldn’t have.
"Brother-in-law, please tell me that isn’t what I think it is."
"It’s exactly that. He even played a mean prank on my retainers."
My retainers had no idea their traveling companion was the imperial crown prince. The banner was flying high enough now for anyone to see, and still neither of them had anything to say about it. Then again, commoners wouldn’t know noble crests well.
"Do you two know who your kind traveling companion was?"
"I understood him to be a man of high standing who greatly enjoys the heroic tales of the Gale Knight."
"He is the heir to the Archduchy of Austria and the current Duke of Tyrol."
"What? He was that important? A duke, no less!"
Oscar praised the man’s humility and kindness, saying he knew how to enjoy a conversation with commoners. Michael, unable to hold it in any longer, burst into hearty laughter. Only Oscar and Ted stood there baffled.
"Which means he is the next Kaiser. That was His Highness the imperial crown prince."
"...No way. Why would His Highness the imperial crown prince travel with us?"
"He’s right, Master! If that was the imperial crown prince, I-I can’t even imagine it."
As I gazed at them meaningfully, Oscar and Ted finally read the room and turned white as sheets. The man they’d ridden alongside, shooting the breeze, was the crown prince of the empire! That was the look on their faces.
"D-did we just make a terrible mistake...!"
"It’s fine. As you sensed, His Highness is a down-to-earth man. And he’s very friendly toward me. That’s probably why he treated you well, as my retainers."
Think well of the master, and you think well of his retainers too.
To my eyes it was closer to a prank, but either way, the imperial crown prince apparently wanted to put me in his debt. Now I’d have no choice but to be kind to his retainers in turn.
I had a feeling this was going to be exhausting...
But that wasn’t what mattered right now.
Oscar and Ted’s faces turned grave.
"The mistress sent us."
"Hilda did? Did something happen?"
"We’re sorry to bring you bad news, Master!"
At the words "bad news," my heart dropped.
Had something happened to Hilda while I was away?
"Bodo has been kidnapped!"
"...Who’s been kidnapped?"
"Bodo! That cunning little brat!"
"Wait, of all people, why Bodo?"
The name was so unexpected that my mind stalled for a moment. Of all the people who could have been taken, Bodo was the last one I’d have imagined. It’s cold and unfair to him to say this, but he has zero value as a hostage.
So why had Bodo been kidnapped?
First things first: I needed the full picture. The who, what, when, where, why, and how.
"Explain it from the beginning, step by step."
"The mistress told us to gather supplies for the new year celebration. So Ted and I were planning to go to Breisburg together, but Bodo begged us to take him along."
"Why would Bodo suddenly do that?"
"He said it was to check on the underground information network in the slums. He got the mistress’s permission, so we headed to Breisburg with him."
"Sir Viktor assigned a few order members to escort us."
Ted added that to Oscar’s explanation.
Breisburg and Rosenheim are close, but with the civil war throwing everything into chaos, the roads weren’t safe enough for the three of them to travel alone. So the Gale Knights reserve unit, still in training, had been attached to them.
Besides the Gale Knights reserves, a hundred duchy soldiers were stationed there to defend Feuzen and to keep watch over the commoner-born soldiers who still hadn’t been released, their ransoms unpaid.
Fiel and Viktor, who had been recuperating from serious wounds, had offered to train the reserves. It might be about time to accept those reserves as full order members. They were, after all, first-class selected cavalry in their own right.
The vacant reserve slots could be filled with the second-class reserves, with Viktor handling their training for a while. Fiel is slated to become Imperial Knights commander, so regrettably, he’s no longer the Gale Knights’ vice commander.
"Bodo told us to meet at Rosemary when the cathedral bell rang twice."
"But he didn’t show up as promised?"
"Correct. We waited an hour, and when our gut told us something had gone wrong, we went into the slums. We asked around the brothel district, and people said Bodo had gone into the old Rafel territory."
That brought back memories of the Rafel gang, the ones who’d made their living trafficking people. We wiped them out in the end, and their boss and officers vanished like dew on the executioner’s block. But what business could Bodo have had in Rafel territory?
"The Treppen people helped us."
"They call themselves the slum’s militia. They were surprisingly cooperative."
Oscar and Ted began their search with the Treppen people’s cooperation and found a beggar who had witnessed Bodo being dragged off by someone.
But things like that happen in the slums all the time, so the beggar hadn’t paid close attention.
And Oscar and Ted could only get so far on their own.
"The slums are too big and too tangled. We couldn’t possibly find him by ourselves. Even with the Treppen people’s help, they don’t control the entire slum territory. Deserters who fled from the east have formed their own gangs too. The slums are practically a war zone right now."
Slums never disappear from big cities because they’re the final destination for every kind of lowlife from all across the country. The government leaves the slums alone precisely so it can pen those people into one place and keep tabs on them.
The reason it never even attempts a cleanup like mine is a chronic shortage of manpower. So the slums were left essentially abandoned, and the criminal organizations built their own ecosystem and society there.
The important point here is that the guards don’t avoid policing the slums out of fear of the criminal organizations. However notorious the slums may be, when the guards move in, the gangs fall like autumn leaves. The guards simply can’t be bothered.
And yet I’ve cleaned out those slums twice now. Without a particular reason, I wouldn’t have dreamed of touching them either. Clean them out, and the garbage just piles back up anyway.
Hm, maybe I was never a prince at all, just a slum janitor.
Those men are no better than garbage, so the comparison isn’t even wrong.
But what mattered most, of course, was Bodo’s safety.
What were those men after? I couldn’t even guess, and it was maddening.
And I hated myself for feeling relieved that it wasn’t Hilda who’d been kidnapped.