Swiss Arms 14 (Patreon)

Swiss Arms
Chapter 14

-VB-

I watched as the majority of the enemy army swarmed towards the minuscule but still stone and brick fort of the Waldenburg. It was built on top of a hill, though, and they climbed up slowly. On top of that, the fort’s defenders had already begun to rain down arrows on them. Coupled with the incline and currently burning wooden blockade on the only stairway up the fort, their army’s progress slowed to a crawl.

Which gave me plenty of time to maneuver and harass.

… This was going to be the battle at my fort again except this time I would have a surprise as an advantage.

Also, free spears from dead bodies.

---

Arnold had practiced shooting arrows before he and his family and village fled to Hans’s fort for safety. Once he was there, his practice time only got longer, not less. He wouldn’t say that his aim was the best; that honor belonged to Hans like oh so many things.

Enemies climbed the steep hill, and most of them didn’t have shields.

Was it any surprise that he made each of his shots count?

He loosed another arrow and watched as it sailed down and struck another poor fucker’s neck. The man barely got to do anything before his backward motion from the impact and reeling from pain added up and pulled him down. He struck a few others on his way down and made a cascade of falling bodies.

Arnold just nocked another arrow, pulled, and loosed.

This arrow missed the first target, but got the man just behind him and slightly to the right. With a target set up like this, there was no way he could miss unless he shot to miss. They moved in such a tight formation against a heavily defended fort that rained down arrows at them.

“I need another quiver!” he shouted. Just like how his villagers had helped at Fluela, the villagers of Waldenburg who’d fled to this fort helped him, the other volunteers from Fluela, and the desperate defenders from Waldenburg. A young woman quickly ran up the stairs and dropped a quiver at his feet before she scurried out of the way.

It was a testament to how easy this fight was that he was able to focus on that brunette girl’s shapely rear…

“Oi, stop looking at my daughter!” one of Waldenburg’s men-at-arms snapped at him as he loosed an arrow down at the enemy.

“Is she married?” Arnold asked instead as he nocked and loosed another arrow.

“You think I’m going to let you marry my girl?!” Loose.

“Well, yeah! I’m my boss’s right-hand man!” Loose.

“You have no proof, and you don’t look like a man-at-arms!”

“Focus on the enemy!” someone else shouted.

Arnold loosed another arrow without a word.

Then he whispered to the old man. “I’m definitely coming back to ask for her hand.”

The walrus mustached man, possibly soon to be his father-in-law, sneered. “In your dreams!”

“In my dream, I would have never expected to kill over forty men in a single battle, and not this one,” he chuckled. Loose. Arnold winced when he missed his initial target and struck another guy who just happened to be behind his target… and struck him in his family jewels.

“... Nice one,” the man-at-arms grunted.

“It wasn’t on purpose, but I won’t ask for forgiveness.”

Snort.

Loose.

---

Louis staggered up from where he’d fallen after an idiot without a shield took an arrow to his face and fell on top of him. He’d rolled with the dead body until he hit the bottom of the hill.

He looked back and grimaced. The assault was lost. Not only was the hill too hard to complete with the only path up blocked and on fire, but the owner of the fort seemed to have stocked up on ridiculous quantities of arrows. The rain of arrows simply did not stop.

‘Wasn’t this count supposed to have less than a hundred men defending the fort?’ he thought to himself as he brought up his shield and made himself scarce behind it as even more arrows came down. A few thunked on his shield and he grimaced.

This was supposed to be an easy expedition. The people of Uri received an offer to hire mercenaries from their neighbor to the east, the Count of Sax-Misox, and the situation had been explained thoroughly. The Prince-Bishopric of Chur, an ally of the Austrian Habsburgs, had fallen from prominence and his lands, as well as the lands of the Habsburgs, had been open. Considering that many people of Uri were still upset by the Habsburg’s theft of the entire Urseren valley from them and that his own relatives had lost land to Habsburg nobles, it had been an easy choice to come and fight for the Count of Sax-Misox. Better for him, his wayward son, who didn’t want to settle down and make a farm next to the family like most of his brothers did or even take a recommendation to go live in the city, was supposed to be in a valley further north and out of the count’s way.

Still…

No one had expected to participate in a siege.

“Damn i-, Louis!”

He looked around and saw his childhood friend Henry walk over to him with his own shield over his head.

“Henry, did you try going up the hill?”

“I didn’t even fucking bother,” Henry spat as he briefly glanced up. “It’s a death trap and all of my boys know it.”

Louis grimaced.

“WAAHH!”

The sudden cry shocked him as he whirled around towards its source. It hadn’t come from the fort or the men dying trying to climb the steep hill but from their rear.

“What the -?”

His eyes widened as he saw a man fly into the sky briefly before crashing back down.

His eyes widened as something launched a spear.

He watched it sail over his head as it flew and then slammed into the steep hill among the climbers.

Said climbers took one look at the spear, another look at the screaming and fighting rear echelon, and the rain of arrows above and promptly started to climb back down.

Louis picked up his halberd. “I think there’s money to be made over there,” he said out loud and Henry laughed.

“Let’s go, then! North Ourzcvelt boys to me!”

“South Ourzcvelt boys to me!” Louis shouted after Henry.

Their men, some climbing but most not, quickly gathered around them and they advanced towards the rear.

The army that had been waiting to climb parted as they approached, and soon began to see that there was something wrong with their lord’s position. The men-at-arms among them quickly realized this, too, and they began to push and make their way. The peasant levies ambled about, staying away from the fort now.

When Louis finally made his way out of the levy army, he found himself staring at the impossible.

A single man wearing a metal mask, cloaked in heavy bear fur, and wielding a sword broad as long and wide as a man stood at the center of dead men-at-arms and knights.

“GET OVER HERE!” the man roared and Louis felt his bones rattle as something pressed down on him.

He was no weakling. In fact, he was a veteran of multiple skirmishes.

So why did he feel scared?

The impossible man moved. He grabbed one of the spears jutting out of a dead knight’s body, pulled it out, and threw it in one fluid motion.

Louis didn’t even have the time to turn his head or dodge as the spear slammed into a poor man-at-arms on the other side of the impromptu circle.

“G-Get him!” Louis heard the count stutter out. “Ten gold guilders for the person who deals the death blow!”

Louis gripped his shield and halberd a little tighter but waited. Obviously, this was a warrior worth a dozen men. He was strong enough to throw spears and wield blades that had to be high dozens of pounds in weight. If he jumped in right now, he would just become the first target of those capabilities. He watched as knights, men-at-arms, other mercenaries and even a few poorly armored and armed peasants jumped at the chance like a pack of wild dogs.

The warrior spun.

Louis watched as the blade sliced through armors and flesh like scythe through wheat. Bisected bodies and limbs flew everywhere, and a hand even landed right in front of his feet.

"Holy shit…" Henry mumbled.

The warrior spun to a stop and gasped for air.

"Now!" Louis shouted, and his men as well as Henry and his men, jumped to finish the warrior off.

Instead, the warrior jumped back before slamming into them.

Louis cried as his arm snapped from the brunt of the tackle, and he skipped like a skipping stone on a calm pond as he bounced away.

Others were not so lucky.

By the time he got his bearing back, more than half of the total of thirty men had died within four seconds. No, not dead. Very painfully removed from battle.

The warrior then jumped towards the horse riding count.

"No-!"

He spun again, and the count fell off the horse in two pieces.

The warrior roared as he grabbed the groin and legless body of the dead count. "I claim victory for Waldenburg!"

His shout reverberated throughout the valley and soon, Sax-Misox men began to flee.

Louis laid there in pain as his friends and mercenary band quickly gathered around him to move him when-.

"You lot!"

They froze when they saw the warrior pointing at them.

"Stay right there. I need to talk with you."

Fear gripped Louis's heart, but after surviving that one clash with that monster, none of the men were ready to run. Worse, Henry was unconscious and Louis would rather die than let the enemies kill his friend!

By noon, the battle was over and the fighting stopped.

The warrior came back to talk with them as he said he would. He was bloodied and his sword dripped with blood.

And then, no more than a dozen steps from their band of fifteen survivors, the man pulled his metal mask off.

"So," a very familiar face scowled at him. "Do you want to explain why you are fighting for someone burning and pillaging these valleys, dad?"

Hans was the Warrior.

His Hans, the boy who spent his free time swinging practice wooden sword, was the Warrior who killed at least four dozen people.

The pain and the revelation combined were too much for him.

Louis of Ourzcvelt, the father of Hans, the warrior in front of him, and a part-time mercenary like so many of his neighbors, fainted.

-VB-

A/N: clarification. Waldenburg, Zernez lay within Habsburg territory at this time (1300 AD), but not directly ruled and governed by them but by a lesser nobility that you have seen the names of. Specific members are not historical.