Re: Blood and Iron

The vineyards outside Madrid had ripened early that year.

Spring had not yet touched most of Europe, but here in the Castilian basin, the sun held court over rows of ancient vines budding with new life.

The civil war raging just a few dozen kilometers east felt a thousand miles away.

The low hum of engines stirred the clouds above. A sleek silver aircraft descended through the haze like a falcon over a quiet field.

The guards at the villa's perimeter barely raised their heads; everyone had been briefed.

The plane, a swept-wing prototype derived from the Fernbomber line, braked with surgical precision on the improvised airstrip beside the vineyard estate.

Behind it came the unmistakable growl of the Focke-Wulf PFL escorts; turboprop fighters with curved wings and black cruciform silhouettes, slicing across the sky like vultures too bored to land.

The door opened.

Bruno von Zehntner stepped out alone, dressed entirely as a civilian, without the slightest hint of militarization or chivalric honor.

He did not bring aides. He needed no security. The war had shifted so decisively that even the most diehard Republican saboteurs would sooner blow up a cathedral than risk an attempt on his life.

King Alfonso XIII awaited him under a marble canopy, seated beside a rustic wooden table overlooking the valley. A bottle of 1919 Rioja had already been uncorked, sweating gently in the early sun.

"Your Majesty," Bruno said with a nod, taking the seat opposite.

"Your Highness," Alfonso replied, lifting a glass. "To Castile. And the madness we live in."

Bruno clinked his own glass to the king's, savoring a long, thoughtful sip before setting it down.

The silence lingered; comfortable at first. Then Alfonso broke it, his eyes never leaving the vine rows in the distance.

"Your weapons have changed the course of this war. My generals believe Barcelona will fall entirely within a month."

"They're optimistic," Bruno said calmly. "But not wrong."

Alfonso turned to face him now. "And yet, here you are. Not to toast victory. But to deliver… what, exactly? A warning?"

Bruno smirked faintly. "You read your intelligence briefs."

"France is scrambling to explain the Catalonian breach. Britain and the Americans are… concerned."

"They're not just concerned," Bruno corrected. "They've begun covert aid deliveries through Gibraltar. Small arms for now. Trucks. Radios. Training cadres."

"Officially?"

"No. And it won't be for a while. But the letters have already been written. The ink is still wet. And your enemies will bleed with foreign bandages if not foreign men."

Alfonso frowned and took another sip. "You've intercepted this?"

Bruno's reply was dry. "I wrote half of it."

The King blinked.

Bruno leaned back, the wind catching his coat like wings. "We monitor them all. De Gaulle makes noise because he fears obsolescence. Roosevelt sends aid because he despises tradition. MacDonald dithers, as he always does. But none of them sees what you and I see."

"And what is that?"

Bruno turned his gaze to the horizon, where the vines dipped toward the ridges beyond Madrid.

"That Spain is not a battlefield. It's a crucible."

"The future is being forged here; not in London, not in Paris, not in Washington. And certainly not in Geneva."

Alfonso studied the man opposite him. Not a monarch. Not a general. Not even a politician in the traditional sense.

A maker.

A builder of empires in the shape of modernity.

"What would you have me do, Bruno?"

"Win. Before they can decide to intervene. Before they can turn sympathy into ships, and charity into tanks."

"And if they intervene anyway?"

Bruno smiled, but there was no joy in it.

"Then I will teach Madrid how to burn politely. And show them why we never needed permission."

Alfonso leaned forward, brow furrowed, his glass untouched now. "Forgive me, Herr von Zehntner… but I want to be very clear on what you're proposing."

Bruno met his gaze without flinching. "I'm not proposing, Your Majesty. I'm explaining."

"Then explain it plainly."

Bruno set his glass down, fingers tapping once against the wood. The wind was picking up, brushing through the vines like a whisper of the coming storm.

"If the Republicans yield," Bruno said, "then peace can still be made through surrender. But they won't. And if the Allies wish to turn this war into the prelude of something greater, then we are no longer playing at civil war, or foreign containment."

Alfonso stared, his jaw tightening. "And what do you call it then?"

Bruno's voice lowered, calm and chilling:

"War by annihilation."

The King said nothing.

Bruno leaned forward, eyes sharp as razors. "You shell them. You bomb them. You leave no soldier alive. You do not argue. You do not negotiate. You destroy the front; not just their forces, but their will."

He tapped the table once more, as if marking time. "And when it is nothing but ruin, you send in your tanks. And you put a bullet into any armed man still breathing."

Alfonso recoiled, just slightly. "That sounds like a slaughter."

"That's because it is," Bruno said simply. "And it is the only language tyrants and saboteurs understand."

"Is that what we are now?" Alfonso asked, tone suddenly brittle. "Butchers for peace?"

"No," Bruno said, just as softly. "We are surgeons. The tumor must be cut out. The longer we wait, worried about decorum, borders, the illusions of peace, the more it metastasizes."

He stood now, letting his shadow fall long across the vineyard.

"The fate of this conflict no longer rests in tens of thousands of lives, Your Majesty. It rests between hundreds of thousands… or tens of millions."

"Choose mercy," Bruno said, turning back to him with something like sorrow in his voice, "and you risk the world. Choose clarity; and you may still save Spain."

The vineyard was quiet again. The only sound was the clink of a bottle sweating in the spring breeze, and the distant buzz of aircraft training overhead.

Alfonso looked down at his trembling hand and reached, wordless, for the wine.

Bruno turned his gaze toward the sky, clouds gathering in long, lazy streaks above the golden hills of central Spain.

The scent of grapevine and earth still clung to the breeze, but something colder crept beneath it now. A stillness.

He adjusted his gloves, reached for his overcoat folded neatly over the back of his chair, and stood.

Alfonso remained seated, motionless, wine glass half-raised but forgotten.

Bruno's boots crunched softly against the gravel as he stepped away from the table, but he paused before descending the terrace stairs.

He looked back; expression unreadable, voice calm.

"Choose wisely, Your Highness."

A beat.

"Or I will choose for you."

There was no bravado in his tone. No cruelty.

Just certainty.

And then he added, with a faint smile that never reached his eyes:

"And trust me…"

He adjusted the cuffs of his coat.

"…my response will be even more ugly."

Without waiting for a reply, Bruno turned and walked toward the idling convoy at the edge of the vineyard.

A sleek command car waited, engine humming, flanked by guards in matte grey field uniforms.

Overhead, the soft whine of turboprops signaled his personal escort forming up; ghosts in the sky.

Alfonso sat there alone, the vineyard silent once more save for the wind in the leaves.

He drank.

But the wine tasted like ashes now.