Chapter 206: The Quiet Murder of a General

In the south, Giuseppe unleashed hell.

He ordered his men to fire their muskets into the air and set empty barrels of pitch ablaze.To the bishop and the fanatics watching from the ridge, it looked like a glorious crusade.To Giuseppe, it was merely the opening act.

He watched the Spanish gunpowder charges explode harmlessly in the mud—great fountains of dirt and smoke that looked terrifying but struck no one.

“Look at that fury!” the bishop cried, clutching his cross. “It seems it was wise to pressure you. You can unleash a powerful assault after all—they are entering the city quickly.”

Giuseppe wiped a smear of soot from his cheek and suppressed a smirk.

“Yes, Excellency. Thanks to your scolding, I may have evolved as a general.”

With a polite smile, Giuseppe looked at the bishop with practiced seriousness and gratitude, though inwardly he mocked him.The surviving Spanish troops would make the conquest far more complicated—which was exactly what he wanted.

Meanwhile, at the North Gate, soldiers cleared everything blocking the street—rocks, carts, broken debris.

Anastasio gave the order:

“Destroy the munitions. Take only what you can carry. Right now, lives matter more than supplies.”

Then he murmured quietly,

“Though, considering how we have lived until now, there are probably not enough supplies left to matter.”

Under the cover of Giuseppe’s noisy “assault” in the south, Anastasio’s healthy veterans slipped away like ghosts.They did not march—they flowed toward the river, their boots wrapped in rags to silence their steps.

Several groups carried improvised canoes, some built from the doors of civilian houses—especially from the mansions, whose stronger wood made better vessels.By the end, almost no door remained in place.It was a desperate, makeshift path across the river.

The two generals had sealed a silent pact through that single arrow:

Anastasio gave Giuseppe the keys to the city.Giuseppe gave Anastasio the road to Cáceres.

By the time the sun began to rise over the mountains, the exchange was complete.

Giuseppe’s “victorious” troops stormed the South Gate, only to find a handful of confused, coughing Spanish officers and soldiers—men far too hungry to pull a trigger.

The casualties of the Battle of Santa Fe were as follows:

three scorched carriage wheels,

one mule frightened to death by a firecracker,

and the dignity of the Spanish Crown…along with Bishop Ezequiel, who believed the smooth victory came from his pressure on the general, when in truth the Spanish army had simply escaped.

The only real winner was Giuseppe, whose actions convinced the soldiers that the Spanish had fled in fear.They began calling him the Scourge of God—an ironic title for a man who was, in truth, completely anticlerical.

Giuseppe walked through the gates, his boots crunching over spent gunpowder.

He looked north, where the last of Anastasio’s column disappeared into jungle mist and river haze.

They were gone.The city was won.

And the best part?

He had accomplished exactly what the bishop wanted—just not in the way the bishop imagined.

Ezequiel quickly noticed the inconsistencies.The battle had ended too fast, and there were not enough Spanish bodies. When he questioned the townspeople, he was startled to hear that the Spanish had escaped through the north while the assault came from the south.

Clearly, there had been a betrayal.And clearly, Giuseppe was behind it.

But he could say nothing. There was no proof, and Giuseppe’s popularity among the soldiers was dangerously high.If he accused him without evidence, the troops themselves might revolt.

The bishop led his paladins toward the church, wanting to see what remained after the Spanish occupation.But as they approached, they noticed smoke rising from the building.

Alarmed, they ran forward—only to find the church in flames.

The fury on Ezequiel’s face was terrifying.

“Tonight,” he said coldly, “you will deal with Giuseppe. That faithless dog has no place in our army. He is not worth the cost of keeping him.”

The paladins felt a flicker of excitement. They too were tired of the man who disrespected them and their families.Yet one of them hesitated.

“Sir… if we kill him, who will command our troops? I hate that bastard as much as anyone here, but he is the only one skilled enough to defeat the Spanish army.”

The others, though angered, knew he spoke the truth.Most elites in New Granada had never been trained as generals or officers. Such ranks were nearly impossible for them to reach, no matter how much they studied. The Empire had been careful never to teach that knowledge to the people of the colony.

Bishop Ezequiel smiled faintly.

“Do not worry. I have found a perfect alternative in Rome. His name is Fabrizio Ruffo.”

The paladins exchanged confused looks.

“Forgive me, sir, but I have never heard that name.”

The bishop sighed inwardly.Of course they had not. At this moment, the man worked in the treasury with no military reputation at all. Yet in the bishop’s visions—drawn from the history of Italy, where so many of his thoughts lingered—Ruffo would become one of Napoleon’s nightmares, a master of asymmetric war who used nature itself as a weapon.

Still, Ezequiel chose to speak vaguely.

“Perhaps no one knows him yet—just as no one once knew our General Giuseppe. And you have seen how effective he proved to be. But his temperament is a problem. So I asked God for someone closer to our cause, to our ideals… and He showed me this man, leading a great army. He is the one our order needs.”

The paladins’ expressions grew solemn.Some even began to pray quietly, remembering the many times the bishop seemed to foresee the future—recruiting the Jesuits, uniting the religious elites. Whether miracle or instinct, they believed he possessed some hidden gift.

“Now go,” Ezequiel said softly. “I no longer wish to see Giuseppe’s smug face. Do it discreetly. The soldiers are too loyal to him. If they discover we killed him, we may face rebellion. Better that they believe it was an accident… or perhaps blame the Spanish. That way, the troops may fight those heretics with even greater fury.”

The paladins smiled.This was their true language.

Before the revolution, they had been forbidden from leading armies, yet they had mastered the domestic front. Their power had always lived in the ears of their household slaves and in the hands of their personal servants.

They chose Lucía, the daughter of a servant who had served their family for three generations.To the world, she was only a girl carrying water.To the paladins, she was a living weapon.

That night, while the camp celebrated the “miracle” of the South Gate, the paladins set in motion an operation that only the aristocracy of The Theocracy could execute with such cold precision.

They sent Lucía with the mission of tending to the general’s needs.

Experts in the shadows of their own estates, they used neither dagger nor common poison. Instead, they soaked the wick of Giuseppe’s tallow candle in a concentrated essence of datura and jungle extracts—substances their ancestors had learned to prepare through generations of domination and secrecy.

The plan was flawless:the candle’s smoke would draw him into deep sleep, then into silent cardiac paralysis.An accident.A natural death brought on by the exhaustion of war.

Giuseppe stood at the center of the plaza, bathed in the orange glow of bonfires, laughing in a deep, guttural tone that commanded the attention of the entire camp.

He was surrounded by his men—mercenaries and disillusioned soldiers who looked at him as if he were a god of lead and iron.He boasted of the walls of Toulon and the frozen nights in the Alps, answering their questions with the sharp, cynical wit of a man who had watched too many empires fall.

Suddenly, the circle of soldiers parted.

Sofía, a servant girl with eyes dark as obsidian and a carefully practiced, trembling smile, stepped into the firelight.She leaned close to Giuseppe, her breath warm against the cold steel of his gorget.

“Sir,” she whispered, her voice like silk in the chaos of the camp,”I could help you relax. What do you think of going somewhere… more private?”

Giuseppe’s eyes flashed with sudden, predatory brightness.He began to nod, a grin spreading across his pale face—

but he was interrupted.

Mateo, a scarred veteran who had been watching the girl with suspicion since she crossed the perimeter, leaned in from the other side.His whisper was low, barely more than a vibration.

“General… that girl is the daughter of the bishop’s personal sacristan servants. I saw her earlier receiving a blessing from the paladins in the cathedral’s shadows. She doesn’t smell of perfume… she smells of the apothecary’s bitter almonds be specially carefull of any smell you can find.”

Giuseppe’s expression didn’t change for the crowd, but his gaze sharpened into a needle. He leaned back toward Mateo and whispered a single, chilling order: “Wait ten minutes. Then wake the officers. Arm the men, but keep the torches low. it seems we may need to escape tonigh.”

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