The cold resolve in his mind was a fortress against the tidal wave of the boy's fear. Christian took a slow, steadying breath, forcing the frantic pulse of his new heart to slow. He was an analyst, a strategist. Panic was a luxury he could not afford; it was a variable to be observed in others and exploited.
He turned from the mirror, his movements deliberately slow and measured, projecting a sense of gravity rather than the post-concussion instability he actually felt. "Dr. Madsen," he said, his voice level. "My apologies. A moment of weakness."
Dr. Madsen, still hovering with concern, nodded cautiously. "Of course, my lord. The news of the war is a shock to us all. To be so close to it, and after such an injury..."
"The injury is precisely why I must be clear-headed," Christian countered, walking carefully to the room's single armchair and sitting down. He needed to control the narrative of his own behavior. A head injury was the perfect cover for any strangeness in his manner, any questions that might seem odd. "My memory is... fragmented. Help me piece it together. My father, he is at the Dybbøl position itself?"
"With the 8th Brigade, yes," the doctor confirmed, seeming relieved to have a concrete subject. "He commands the redoubts on the left flank. They are the anchor of the entire Dannevirke line."
Christian's mind raced. The Dannevirke. An ancient line of fortifications that the Danish army, in his history, would abandon in a controversial and demoralizing winter retreat within days. His father was at the very heart of a soon-to-be-relinquished position. He fought the urge to curse.
"And the mood in the Rigsdag? In the city?" he pressed, feigning a hazy recollection. "Before my... fall."
Dr. Madsen's face soured. "The National Liberals are screaming for war to the last man, promising English and Swedish intervention that never seems to materialize. The landowners worry about the cost. The King is... the King. It is a mess of patriotic fervor and private panic, my lord. The same as it ever was."
The assessment was crude, but it matched the historical record perfectly. A divided government, fueled by unrealistic nationalism, leading a small, under-equipped army into a conflict against a burgeoning industrial titan. It was a textbook recipe for disaster.
Christian filed the information away. He could do nothing about the war. Not yet. He was an eighteen-year-old boy, a minor baron with a concussion. To march into the King's palace or the parliament spouting warnings based on "a feeling" would get him locked in an asylum. Powerlessness was his current reality, and he had to accept its tactical limitations.
His strategy, therefore, could not begin in Copenhagen.
"Doctor," Christian said, his tone firming with newfound purpose. "I require parchment and ink."
"My lord, you must not strain yourself with correspondence—"
"It is not for correspondence," Christian interrupted, meeting the man's gaze with an intensity that made the older doctor flinch. "It is for my own clarity. I must put my thoughts in order. And I must make plans."
"Plans?"
"When my father is at the front, and I am the only man of the family here, I have duties. I intend to return to Eskildsgård as soon as I am able to travel."
This gave the doctor pause. Eskildsgård was the family's primary estate, a large and profitable barony on the island of Funen. It was far from the war and the political chaos of the capital. It was, to the doctor's mind, a sensible retreat.
To Christian's mind, it was the perfect laboratory. It was a closed system. A place of fertile soil, forests, a fishing port, and a few hundred souls whose livelihoods depended entirely on the will of their Baron. It was a place where he could implement changes on a small scale, test his knowledge, and begin building the economic engine that would one day fund an army. It was the only chessboard he could control.
He saw the path forward with absolute clarity. He would use his recovery time in Copenhagen to devour every contemporary book, newspaper, and report he could find, overlaying his future knowledge onto the immediate present. He would learn the intricacies of this boy's finances, his family's connections, his social obligations. He would map out the political landscape.
Then, he would retreat to Eskildsgård. And there, in the quiet fields of Funen, the Danish Empire would lay its first, silent foundation stone.
"A wise decision, my lord," Dr. Madsen finally conceded. "The country air will do you good. I will fetch the writing materials at once."
As the doctor left the room, Christian leaned his head back against the chair. The boy's sorrow for his father, a man he now knew only through borrowed memories, was a dull ache in his chest. But beneath it, the strategist was ascendant. He closed his eyes and began to draft the first page of a new history, not with ink, but with cold, hard, meticulous thought. Phase one had a location. Now it needed a timeline and a budget.