16th July 1574"You still have the guts to spew such bulls.h.i.+t after already picking a side? To think that I once considered you an honourable man who held his homeland in high regard!"
With Jan openly coming out to denounce me, I couldn"t hold my emotions back. While I felt that his allegiances started to change all the way back when I refused the position of the country"s econom, but back then, I just thought that he was disappointed with what he took for the lack of ambition.
Who could"ve known that this guess of mine would turn out to be a great underestimation?!
"Insulting me won"t get you anywhere. I don"t know why you did what you did, but your recklessness ends here. I"m asking one last time, lay down your weapons and surrender. Your crimes will be judged by the senate and I will guarantee your safety all the way there, that"s the least I can do when taking our relations.h.i.+p into account."
Hearing those words, I snapped. Rather than aiming my rifle at this haughty n.o.ble, my face twisted in an unsightly manner as I looked at him as if he was some kind of pest.
"You say you value our relations.h.i.+p? Then at least stop giving me that c.r.a.p and openly admit that you are f.u.c.king traitor! But fear not, even if you somehow manage to kill me here, as soon as my men return with the news from the east, everyone in my developing area will raise up against you!"
At this point, I couldn"t care less about this man. At one moment he was speaking about what kind of great relations.h.i.+p we use to have, only to call me a traitor in the very next sentence. Even the fact that I could see some carriages rus.h.i.+ng from the city towards his position with the very reaper guns that I offered to him, wouldn"t stop me from fighting till the end!
After all, being the very inventor of those guns, I know their drawbacks and faults better than anyone else!
Yet just as I was about to turn to my men and order to put the engine on the reverse run as to move us near the opposite sh.o.r.e so that the range advantage of my rifles could be used, I saw something that I didn"t expect. A face of honest surprise of this former friend and protector of mine!
"News from the east? Just what kind of scheme are you trying to come up with right now? On the account of all your inventions so far, I will let you flaunt your wits one last time!"
While it was obvious that this was nothing more than a move aimed at stalling for time with how it would still take a bit of time before the reaper guns would arrive at the scene, I could tell with almost perfect certainty that mentioning east somehow managed to catch Jan off-guard.
Yet rather than preparing for the combat, I realised that something was insanely wrong!
So far, when thinking about the news of Russian invasion, I thought that it would most likely be yet another element of Ostros plot aimed at worsening my political position. After all, if I were to just come in and start claiming that I received the news about the war, no one would believe me! For this kind of scheme to bear any real effects, with n.o.bles mobilising only to realise I was wrong in the first place, they had to believe my words in the first place! That"s why, when I realised that Jan, one of the major powers relatively close to Zamoyski household that already received the news, was clueless about this fact, I had to admit that my initial guess was wrong!
And if the eastern war wasn"t a part of Ostros plan, then should I consider it as something that was likely a truth?
With how complicated this issue is, I didn"t even realise when I rested my side against the s.h.i.+p"s railing while putting my hand on my chin as I immersed myself in deep thoughts.
If we a.s.sumed that the invasion really did happen, then there were only two possibilities. Either Ostros knew about it in advance and picked the right moment to make their move, indicating that rather than trying to topple me, they were actually set on carving their own country from the falling state of the commonwealth.
On the other hand, if they didn"t know s.h.i.+t about it, then their aggression, both in a political and military sense, would be the act of the treason against the common cause!
Yet before I could figure out which of the possibilities were the truth, the time that I had to immerse myself in my own thoughts ran out. With the two carriages mounted with reaper guns on top of them arriving at the scene, Governor just received the ultimate card he could use to force my surrender.
"Mike, your time is over. Surrender now or…"
"Can you stop for a moment? Can"t you see that I"m trying to figure out just what the f.u.c.k is going on? Wait, can you actually tell me just what am I even accused of?"
Despite how tense the current situation was, I knew that if I allowed myself to think about literally anything other than the current situation, I would lose my only chance to find the crux of the matter.
"Wait, what? Eh, have it your way. You are accused of selling your weapons to the enemies of the state and instigating those people to revolt against the Senate in order to abolish our golden liberty and… ugh… Now that I said that out loud, I realise how stupid that sounds…"
Hearing what Jan just said, I understood two things at once. First, the enemy that was hidden behind all the forces that were already on the move, was far smarter than I actually expected. Rather than coming up with some utter bulls.h.i.+t, he actually took something that I considered on my own accord, mixed what I actually planned to do by installing Batory on the throne, and just spiced things up a bit by adding an element that would turn any n.o.ble against me.
With how everyone interested could easily learn that I was the first one to use those reaper guns, with how Jan was one of the firsts to learn about my new rifle, it only made sense that this story had the elements that involved those moves of mine. Since I saw Jan"s reaction to the prowess of those guns, it was given that he wouldn"t hesitate to stop someone daring to sell it to the enemies of the state!
Yet even with how dire that kid of enemy would make my current situation, there was one aspect to him that was even worse. Actually, this kind of social technique of manipulating information wasn"t something that people of this day and age knew how to use. One had to dabble in the propaganda of media for quite a lot before learning how to use such tricks to create a believable lie, or rather, fake news.
And that could mean only one thing.
I wasn"t the only one who moved from modern times to this timeline!
Did that mean, that this great clan of Ostros that I would otherwise respect, was actually lead by a player that was out for my blood?!