Tyranny of Steel

During Berengar and Eckhard's dual advancement upon the occupied regions of the Duchy of Austria, Linde had set Berengar's spy network to task with assassination and sabotage once more. At the moment, the same young female agent who had assassinated the Garrison commander at Meran was currently operating within the City of Vienna; she was just one of Berengar's many agents stationed within the Capital of the Duchy.

She had recently received a coded message that claimed Berengar had been successful in his campaign for Salzburg and would soon be marching his massive army into Lower Austria and, by extension, the City of Vienna. As such, she had been tasked by Linde to make preparations for his arrival. 

At the moment, the young and beautiful agent was clutching onto the concealed handgun in her pocket, which was a pepperbox revolver. The device could fire seven shots in a short period and would be instrumental to her plans. 

The woman was currently dressed as a common man, with her breasts bound by cloth to hide their size. She wore a hood over her head and had wrapped her long hair around her face tying it so that it looked like a beard at first glance. 

Her task was a simple assassination; Since the successful capture of Vienna, Duke Dietger had returned to Northern Bavaria to fight against the House of Luxembourg and their allies in the North. In doing so, he has left a promising General in his stead; she was targeting his lead General, who at the moment was taking a walk through the city. As she approached the man from afar, she began to overhear the General conversing with another nobleman. 

"Count Siegmund has been cleared of all suspicion; it has been revealed that Count Berengar of Tyrol had smuggled the Habsburg boy into his territory. The foolish child has declared himself the rightful Duke of Austria and has placed Count Berengar as his Regent.

The General talked to the Nobleman immediately scoffed as he heard such news and proudly declared his opinion.

"Count Berengar? Berengar the Accursed, as the Catholics call him, the Reformists refer to him as Berengar the Indomitable or Berengar the Conqueror; he has many nicknames. One thing is sure he remains undefeated in battle and has a large army.

Out of all the men sent to Salzburg, 5,000 men are the only ones to return from the region alive, even less from Kärnten. They say he alone has an army of 30,000 men at his back; you are renowned for being an able strategist. Tell me how this is remotely possible?"

The General sighed heavily before revealing his thoughts on the matter; it was something that he had thought about a great deal as the war continued to wage. 

"Berengar had roughly 15,000 men in his field army when we first invaded Austria; this is not including the garrisons that he has fortified with hundreds of men each. In a few months, he has raised an extra 15,000 doubling his armies. He has a significant amount of wealth and heaven-defying industrial capabilities. As such, he can outfit every one of those men with proper equipment.

On top of this, his forces utilize some revolutionary form of hand cannon, which no surviving examples have been recovered; as such, we don't know how they function or how effective they are. By equipping his soldiers entirely with these weapons, he must have created a revolutionary set of tactics for them to work correctly. Thus there is no natural way of knowing how to counter them without trial and error. It is no wonder he continues to thwart our best efforts to stop his advance. 

If the rumors are true about the might his army possesses, then invading Austria was a mistake; in my humble opinion, we should retreat to Bavaria until we can learn how to counter the advanced weapons and tactics he uses in his army. Yet, his grace Duke Dietger is determined to hold onto this land. Thus we have no choice but to defend it with our lives."

The General was greatly troubled by Berengar's rapid conquest of the Duchy; he had conquered critical areas and was now marching on the capital, as for the most southern Counties of Austria, the Bavarians had yet to make much progress in their occupation and had forced their troops to withdraw towards Vienna to face off against Berengar's incursion with their full might.

The female agent pretended like she was sweeping a nearby floor and listened intently to the conversation; if she could kill this General, the Bavarian forces in Austria would greatly suffer, and the reconquest of the region would be significantly affected. Thus she continued to act normal as the two Bavarian noblemen carried on their conversation, with the other Nobleman stating his opinions on the matter.

"We can't withdraw, but we also do not have enough men to defend Upper Austria; if I were you, I would pull out of the region and focus on defending Vienna; hopefully, with these walls as our support, we can defend the region well enough."

The General, however, sighed and shook his head.

"The longer Berengar's armies are split, the better chance we have to defend our territory. If the other 25,000 men from his forces and that of his allies regroup with him, we will be facing an army of roughly 45,000 men; by then, we will have no chance to defend the city. We will make our final stand here in Vienna, and if we fail... well, then hopefully, Dietger can learn from our mistakes and use the knowledge gained from this catastrophe to further defend against Berengar and his army in the future."

The two men sighed in defeat, fully realizing that they were not able to fulfill the orders they were given; if the opportunity presented itself, they would gladly surrender and be ransomed back to Bavaria, for now, all they could do was wait, for Berengar's arrival, and prepare for the best of their ability. 

Unfortunately for the two noblemen, there was an assassin in the midst, and they had no idea that their conversation was being overheard. The female agent no longer desired to hear the conversation as it began to shift to banter; as such, she checked her pepperbox revolver to make sure it was loaded correctly and drew the hammer back before approaching the two men.

Before they had time to react, the spy pulled the revolver out of her pocket, pointed it square blank at the General and the Nobleman's chests, and fired two shots rapidly into their breastplates. They could not even withdraw their swords before their hearts had been pierced by the lead balls contained within the revolver. 

Now that the sound of gunfire was overheard, The woman fled into the distance, leaving the two men to bleed out on the street corner with a look of shock in their eyes. Until now, they had no idea that Berengar still had spies in the city.

The last thoughts on the General's mind as his consciousness faded into the eternal abyss was one of deep regret; though it was brief, he had finally witnessed the exchange of one of Berengar's weapons. Unfortunately, he would be dead before he could report the information to Duke Dietger, and as such, shame was the only thing he felt right before he died.

As for the Agent, she swiftly left the scene, where she untied her hair around her face and changed her attire into something more feminine. Not a single soul expected a woman was the one who had assassinated the General, and thus she was spared the pain of relocating once more. Instead, she would continue in her efforts to Sabotage the Bavarians in the coming days as Berengar slowly approached the Capital of Austria. 

For now, she wrote a coded message and sent it off with a carrier pigeon, where it would travel to Kufstein, and inform Linde that the operation was a success, the General and one of his commanders were dead, leaving Vienna in a power vacuum, as at the moment the various Bavarian commanders within the city would now be preoccupied with fighting among themselves for a position fo control. 

With this one action, this spy had brought down the stability of the Bavarian's defense in Vienna; whoever succeeded the General in taking command would surely not be as promising a talent, and as such, would most likely ruin the security—allowing Berengar an easier time in reconquering the capital. As for the towns, cities, and Castles in upper Austria, they too were undergoing events of sabotage which greatly infuriated the Bavarian soldiers occupying the regions, and lowered their morale.

Berengar had long used his intelligence agents as both an offensive weapon, and a defensive shield. His ruthlessness in targeting key personnel for assassination and the sabotage of critical resources was one of his ways of claiming an advantage over his opponents. Unfortunately for them, Austria had long since been trapped in his web of intrigue. Thus he was always in a position of control during his campaign. This massive advantage was all thanks to the efforts of Linde, for if Berengar had to micromanage his Spynetwork himself, it would not nearly be this sophisticated.