Chapter 19: The Rescue
He had given his men a month to complete their given objectives but that was just an artificial deadline. There was no way of knowing how soon the corrupt nobles would make their move but by giving his men a month he should be able to put a stop to whatever they were planning. Still though, with his men gone on missions he was left with a lot less responsibility. Of course, he still had his own work to do, which was largely laying the groundwork for the future, but he had way more free time than he had in a long time. He spent his days training at the knight's area with Dan in the morning and then spending the rest of the day he wasn't doing his own work with Alice. After a few days the whole awkward event had blown over, neither of them spoke about it and so they moved on. However, both of them still had thoughts about that day that they refused to share.
For David he still was unsure why he didn't stop her back then. He could not understand what had possessed him. He also remembered the way she felt on him, and the warm feelings that came with having his blood drank. That comfortable feeling was something he never got with Maria. But more than anything he remembers how safe he felt while in her arms, despite the fact she was drinking his blood. He couldn't explain it. Since he could not explain it and didn't know how to confront the feelings from that day, he decided to bury it all and not bring it up.
For Alice she was terrified that she had crossed a line with her friend. Of course, he had not objected in any way. But that did not mean that he was okay with it. He had not brought it up with her once since it happened, so she was scared that David was holding a grudge against her. But most of all she could still feel his body trembling beneath her, she could still remember the urge to be just a little closer to him in that moment and thus putting her arms around him, only to have him do the same. And she could clearly remember the tightness in her chest when she looked him in the eyes and the way her heart was racing, it was almost too much. So, she too decided to repress the events of that day in her head and not bring it up.
Besides that, everything was back to normal, it was a breath of fresh air for David to be back at Alice's side working together with her like before. No training men, no brutal swordsmanship work, also, by working less in the areas he was before, he encountered the two knights a lot less. Of course, they still found him on occasion and when they did, they would rough him up, but besides that he was living pretty good.
He had also heard from Lily that she had received requests from nearly every squad for special clothing ranging from cloaks to common wear. She also expressed how pleased her father was to receive such large orders, even if he was feeling a little swamped at the moment. Still she once again tried to express her adoration to David for helping her and her family out only to be rebuffed by him telling her not to put him on too high a pedestal. Even as a maid she was very talented, her work ethic was top tier and she always seemed to have a smile on her face. And while it was not like the servants in his house hadn't been happy to be there, the house certainly brightened up a lot since she started living in the house. If she were to have one weakness, it was that she was rather clumsy. She always seemed to manage to trip over the smallest bumps in the rug or the tiniest elevation changes, and while she had yet to break anything this way, it doesn't mean she won't in the future. She also seemed to be bad at saving face after she fell as she always spazzed out immediately after. But since Sebastian approved of her, this shortcoming was easy to overlook.
He also managed to set up a personal "gym." He had a few pieces of gymnastic equipment custom made; he had a pull-up bar installed as well as a special-order punching bag. Of course, this world had no idea what a punching bag was, so his request had to be laid out very specifically, in fact much of his equipment got a few raised eyebrows when he placed his order. Outside, near the back garden he installed a few sword training dummies and tools so he could practice at home if needed. Even though he was living much easier than he had in the Velma House, he was not about to let his guard down, especially now that he was Alice's knight, he had vowed to make sure to protect her.
In the assigned month his squad had really proved their efficiency. They had gained more intelligence of the assigned nobles in just a few weeks than the entire army had in 5 years of searching. It was amazing to both him and Alice how quickly they were moving. The only downside to the whole thing was there was a lot more bribes paid to presumably guards and bookkeepers then he had expected. In just a few weeks he had already blown almost the entire 6-month budget he was allotted. But he was sure if they proved their usefulness Alice would give him more money, if not he still had money left over for personal use that was just sitting around so if he had to dig into that it wouldn't bother him.
In just 2 weeks his men had already managed to gather enough information to allow the King to send in forces to seize one of the nobles and their assets. After another week went by, 2 nighttime raids had been carried out and 2 more nobles had been seized with proper evidence. As the 4th week was coming to a close the last noble managed to escape the country before he could be captured, however enough information had been gathered about him so all his assets were seized, he was stripped of his title, and any influence he may have had on the country was destroyed in large measure.
It had nearly been a full month when a letter once again arrived from House Velma. So as usual he headed to the tavern to go meet her again. However, when he entered the tavern, he saw that it was completely empty. He took a seat at the table and waited. 10 minutes. 30 minutes. 1 hour. 2 hours. It was clear to him by that point that they were not coming. So, he just decided to leave, if they weren't going to show up he had no obligation to continue to wait for them any further. The next day he headed to Alice's office like normal and saw that she was in a panic.
"What's wrong?" David asked, concerned for his friend.
"Haven't you heard? Maria has been kidnapped!" This immediately woke David up. That was why she didn't show up yesterday. She was the one who needed his blood so her not showing up never made any sense. But if she was kidnapped enroute to meet him then the whole thing made sense. Despite his overall dislike for House Velma she still had his sympathies, and perhaps that was why he felt so panicked.
"Tell me everything you know." David said seriously.
A few minutes later David and Alice were walking down the hall into a part of the Palace he had never been to. They entered a room with a large door. Inside there a bunch of older Vampire men looking over a large table with a huge map on it detailing the city, they were talking with disturbed faces. As soon as Alice entered the room, they all stopped what they were doing and saluted her.
"Princess, what brings you here? We are rather busy at the moment as you can see." One of the men said as he lowered his salute.
"That is precisely why I'm here, I believe I have a solution to our problem." Alice said as she stepped back and gestured to David.
"This is my sworn knight David, he runs a team he calls the Hawk Platoon, and he has a plan to be able to clear this mess." The men in the room all look at him with scorn as he is introduced, of course David was already used to this, so he didn't let it bother him. So, he clears his throat and prepares to speak.
As David had found out a few minutes ago Maria Velma had been kidnapped presumably yesterday when her carriage was attacked by "bandits." During the time of the attack a delegation from the Zenith Kingdom just so happened to be nearby and "saved" her. They then brought her back with them to their embassy in the capital and have been keeping her there ever since. According to them, they say that she has decided to take this opportunity to "tour" the Zenith Kingdom herself. However, this was all clearly a lie, she was obviously kidnapped by the Zenith Kingdom and they were planning on bringing her back with them to use as a political hostage.
There were a few things that made this whole situation bad. First of all, the Zenith Kingdom and the Cantora Empire had never been on that great of terms, war always seemed to be looming over their heads, and the Zenith Kingdom was usually the aggressor. Maria is the only daughter of Duke Frederick Velma, and the influence he wields is enormous. If they were to manage to escape with her in tow, using her as a hostage there is a high probability that they might be able to coerce the Duke to not take part in a war that they may try to wage. This is a particularly bad development as the Duke made up nearly 1/10th of the total military power in the Empire, and his economic contributions are incalculable. In other words, in such a case where they were at war with the Zenith Kingdom without the Duke's support the Empire would likely fall.
The second bad thing was where they were keeping her. They had her somewhere inside the Embassy of the Zenith Kingdom to the Empire. The building, much like with modern embassies, was treated like foreign soil, as such they could not carelessly march soldiers in without effectively declaring war. No matter how obvious their ploy is, they did not have the justifications to walk in without good reason. War was a last resort, the Empire wished to avoid it at all costs. The Zenith Kingdom had a military comparable to the Empire's so any war with them would be long and costly. Furthermore, the land that sits at the border of the Empire and in the kingdom that they could take if they win a war is largely inarable land and thus would not offer much in the way of compensation. Lastly, the Empire had just recovered from a rather devastating famine 3 years ago and was only now getting back on steady ground, a war would surely rock their still unsteady feet. Overall it was about as bad as a situation could be. But David had a plan.
"Sirs, to be brief, my Hawk Platoon will be able to carry out the rescue operation within a week, without causing a conflict." He said to the men he clearly recognizes as generals.
"Bah!" One of the generals yells. "How do you plan to do what even the army wouldn't be able to do without starting a war?"
"Simple." David said as he began to explain the details of his plan to the generals. After about 10 minutes had passed, he finished explaining. The room was silent for several moments as the generals thought through the plan. To many of them the plan did not seem unreasonable. There was a decent chance of success, and David even prepared for the possibility of failure. But it was not enough.
"No." One of the generals speaks up after some time. "The plan is sound, but I do not trust a bunch of humans to carry out such an important mission." This was bad, David could feel his anger welling up inside him, it had been some time since he felt like this
"You don't trust humans? So, you're willing to wage war over something so petty?" He thought to himself angrily as he began to open his mouth to shout at him when Alice spoke up instead.
"Actually, general, that's not your call to make." Alice said commandingly, making all the generals turn to look at her.
"I have already been given the full authority to carry out a plan to reclaim Miss Velma no matter the cost." She looks up at David and smiles covertly. "If my knight's plan fails then we may have no choice but to go to war, but that is only if he fails. The decision has already been made, we just came here to inform you about it and to tell you not to get in our way as we make preparations." Even though she was his friend and he knew she would take his side, seeing her stick up for him like this nearly brought a blush to his face. He was proud to be Alice's friend, she stuck it to those generals.
After stating her piece Alice turns around and begins to walk out, David gives a salute to the generals and then turns and walks out, catching up to Alice. She turns to him and smiles.
"I've done my part, now the rest is up to you." He smiles back softly.
"I'll do my best to live up to your expectations."
"Is there no way that you would be able to carry out your plan sooner than 7 days, I'm worried what they might be doing to Maria." Alice said, worry overtaking her face. David puts his hand gently on Alice's shoulder to console her.
"You know as well as I they won't be treating a valuable political hostage too poorly." He said as he then sighs as he removes his hand. "As for carrying out the plan earlier, I doubt it. My closest squad can be here by the end of the day, but squad 3, the squad that is furthest out, will take 5 to 6 days to reach here by horseback, plus I need to gather as much intelligence about their manpower and the building's architecture as possible." Alice looks up at him again and gives him a half-hearted smile, still worried but comforted by her friend's efforts.
As soon as he returned, he immediately sent out carrier pigeons to all his squad leaders to drop what they were doing and return immediately. He also sent a message to Lily to tell her father for a rush order of very specific clothing, or just a small edit of any existing clothing he had. Besides that, he could only wait for them to arrive, so he spent the rest of the day in Alice's office waiting anxiously. Eventually as the day was ending, squad 2 arrived and he briefed them on the situation. He gave them orders to immediately begin scouting the building for weaknesses, to look for the number of guards, and to see what times they swapped out. He apologized for sending them out so soon after they returned but the urgency of the situation was that severe.
The next several days moved slowly, the squads returned one by one and he set each of them on different preparatory jobs while he began to look over the intel that was gathered. However, the more he learned the less he liked what he saw. The Zenith Empire was known for its extremely rigid class structure, Humans were treated like second class citizens at best and Vampires ruled over all aspects of society. They made the Empire's treatment of humans look like heaven in comparison. So not only was everyone inside the embassy a vampire, guards and all, but they were also some of the best they had, top notch gear and weapons, amazing training, and they remained vigilant all hours of the day. They even did regular security checks to ensure that all windows and doors not being guarded were locked tight.
"It's like breaking into Fort Knox." David said aloud to no one as he tried to come up with a plan. He was working in Alice's office, but although she was there and normally would be bothering and talking to David, she had been keeping her mouth shut since he began working. She had never seen him look so engrossed in work, it filled her with confidence to see him so absorbed into all the documents he was looking through. Eventually he hit on a weakness they could take advantage of and he set about making the last alterations to his plan.
On the 7th day, the promised hour had come, late in the middle of the night the guards at the front switched giving them a 2 minute window to get inside without being seen, however the entire building was crawling with soldiers, so no matter how well they snuck in they would be found. So, no matter what he needed a distraction. The plan was simple: his men, dressed in plainclothes and cloaks, would break into two teams, team one made up of squads 2 and 3 would sneak inside the perimeter during the 2 minute window and then go to the only viable access point he had found to get in. Team 2 made up of squads 1, 4, and 5 were the distraction, as soon as the changing of the guard occurred they would launch an "attack" on the front gate, making as much noise as possible to attract their attention to the front, hopefully pulling all the men outside. During this time Team 1 would search through the building and find Maria and then extract her. From there once Team 1 was out, Team 2 would pull out as well. Of course, he himself would be leading the operation on the ground as the head of team 1, he put Jason in charge of all the squads from team 2 since he trusted him to handle it most efficiently.
The operation began as soon as David saw the changing of the guard occur, he along with his team snuck in and then went right, around the building, to their access. According to reports, every night at the same time, one of the ambassadors has some wine while he stares out the window onto the city, during which the window is open. The specialist from squad 2, a man with a fascination with herbal medicines, or as David needed, herbal poisons, shot a poisoned blow dart at the neck of the ambassador and after a few moments he passed out. David had decided, before going in, to try to avoid needlessly killing the people inside, if too many people died, even if he planned to remove the blame from them, the Empire would still get blamed for allowing such an attack to occur. However, his men were not forbidden from killing, just discouraged. Especially the ones causing the distraction would probably be too busy defending themselves to kill any vampires anyway.
As soon as the ambassador had fully passed out David had one of his men give him a lift to the open window on the second floor, swallowing his fear and nervousness all at once, and then began shuttling people into the building by helping them up. Once all his men were up, he signaled to them to begin the operation, from here on the operation was to be totally silent. As if on cue he could hear people shouting from outside, the distraction had begun. He was now on the clock, the sooner he got this done the sooner his men on the front could retreat. Quickly and quietly he went door to door, checking every room for Maria, in one room he saw desks with large quantities of documents on them. He ordered some men into the room and moved on, it was his secondary objective to gain those documents, he had to cover up the fact that Maria was taken by hiding behind "gaining intelligence" his cover story needed Maria's "discovery" to be an accident.
After searching for a bit, he eventually came to a door that was locked on the outside, he knew immediately it was where Maria was being held. He opened the door and saw Maria standing there, her eyes in shock to see David, however not even a second of that occurred before her eyes darted to the right side of the doorway, opposite the way the door opened. He understood immediately what she was indicating to him. Without missing a beat, he unsheathed his dagger and stabbed outside his vision. He could not see the soldier that was standing on the other side of the wall, but when his blade made contact with his neck, he certainly felt him. David jumped into the room and caught the man before he fell, just as he was gently putting his body down when Maria began to shout.
"Davi..." David ran over to her and put his hand over her mouth. Then he puts his index finger over his own mouth to indicate to her not to talk. How had she even recognized him in the first place? Everyone, including him, had a special cloth mask over their head to hide their identities, but somehow, she knew him at a glance. It didn't matter right now; he had a job to do. Removing his hand, he looked at the leaders of squads 2 and 3 to see if they accomplished their side objectives. They nod. It was done, time to get out of here.
He remands custody of Maria over to the men of squad 2 and orders them to take her to the safe point designated earlier along with all the documents they stole. Squad 3 was going to join him at the front gate and then they would all disperse into the city. Maria looked to David worryingly as she was escorted away by squad 2. He had no way of reassuring her that everything would be fine, in fact, until she was completely clear of the area there was no telling what would happen. But he just looked at her with his eyes filled with determination and somehow that filled her with a sense of ease.
As soon as they were gone, he and squad 3 made their way to the front gate when they were suddenly stopped by a man wearing notably better looking clothes than anyone else, he was still wearing armor, so he wasn't an ambassador, but he was no ordinary soldier.
"Ah, so there were some rats crawling around inside my castle." The man said with a smug grin. David looks at his men and nods, then they all disperse going different directions, through different rooms and out the windows. Jumping from the second floor wasn't too big of a deal if they were prepared for it. David himself ran for the stairs to try to get to the bottom floor. Perhaps it was because he went for the stairs and not the windows like most of the others, or perhaps it's because this man could tell he was the leader, whatever the reason he chased after David.
David had just enough time to come to the plateau on the stairs before the man came flying at him, sword in hand. Just like David had trained he parried the strike off to the side and then continued running. However, the man was quick and effectively fought David down each step until he was finally on ground level. David got lucky and he managed to get the vampire's sword stuck in the wall for a moment, just long enough for him to run outside and regroup with his men who were fighting ferociously against the guards, David is about to call for a retreat when the man who was chasing him steps out and yells.
"Hold!" Almost at once, all the fighting ceases, and he begins to walk closer to where the other vampires are.
"You guys are good, I'll give you that." He said with a slow clap. "My name is Zeke Turnbull, Captain of the guards for the embassy. I don't normally bother asking, but I'll grant you the right, what's your name?" David paused for a moment, he couldn't obviously tell him who he was, but in fact this was a perfect opportunity to put the last part of his plan into action. He throws his cloak off his shoulders revealing a patch woven into his clothes of a black hand.
"We are the Black Hand! We fight for the freedom from oppression from tyrants for Humanity!" David yells followed closely by cheers of "For freedom!" from his men. This was the last part of his plan, the assurance that he could use to allow the Empire to avoid being blamed for this.
He created a fictitious organization called the black hand, just to cover the whole attack on the embassy. All members had on only plain clothes with the special patch and they all knew to act out this "role" of oppressed freedom fighters. When the night was over the Empire could just blame this Black Hand for all damages done and say that they managed to hunt down the remnants and kill them. The masks ensured that those who got away wouldn't be recognized, and those who unfortunately died would have nothing to trace them back to the Empire. Theoretically if the Kingdom sent spies to the palace to look through the service records they might be able to find some link, but the Empire's record keeping was messy and very behind so even if a spy got in there they wouldn't know where to look. He was prepared for every eventuality.
David then yells.
"Withdraw!" and all his men disperse in various directions. Zeke yells.
"After them!" and then begins to chase David again himself. Being a vampire, he was much faster than David, but David had the advantage of having pre-prepared escape routes already planned. He would go through the slums and various alleyways to lose his pursuer. But Zeke was relentless, and he constantly got close enough to take a swipe on David, landing several blows. The chase lasts a little more than an hour before David finally manages to give him the slip. As soon as David was sure he was safe, exhaustion hit him like a truck as all the adrenaline he felt before drained out of his body. He could also see now that he was bleeding rather badly, and he was finding it hard to get up. He was very tired. As he found it impossible to keep his eyes open, he couldn't help but slowly close them. But as he did the last thing he saw before he fell asleep was... 3 children?