Swiss Arms 23 (Patreon)

Swiss Arms
Chapter 23

-VB-

We made enough mirrors using silver and glass for the first semaphore and also a shit ton of nails for the watchtowers the mirrors would be housed in. As spring washed away to summer, I sent those two out, each with thin paperback instructions on how to use light as a communication system.

I personally went out to deliver one such set of mirror and nails to town farthest from the center of our compact and was closest to the frontlines of the regional madness.

When I arrived at Maienfeld, the chief of the town greeted me warmly, especially when he saw the crate of nails and the small box that held the mirror.

“Welcome back to our humble town, Mr. Hans!” the thin man with a bushy beard greeted me heartily. “Come, come! Let us break salt and bread. A friend of the town should get the best of the best, especially when he comes bearing gifts, no?”

“Thank you for your hospitality,” I smiled as the shorter man wrapped an arm around my back and shoulder with some difficulty, and gave me a solid pat on the back. I let him lead me into the town, and I got my second good look at the town.

Maienfeld was small; it was closer to a village than a town. Some four hundred people lived together here, which was significant for a Swabian Alp town. It was as big as Travaos, which I always kept referring to as a village.

I stopped myself before I got lost in my thoughts over semantics.

“I hope nothing’s gone wrong while we have been gone?” I asked him while wordlessly greeting the townsfolk who recognized me.

“No, nothing, but I am glad you are here because the Baron of Brandis has been calling.”

“Is he not your liege lord?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.

“He is, he is,” the thin chief replied. “But he has been calling for more men and tax than he promised to take.”

It’s always that, wasn’t it?

“If it pleases you, then I will stay here to talk with the heralds.”

He grabbed my hands. “Thank you, Sir Hans!” he cheered and I couldn’t help but wonder if I just signed myself up to stay for several months.

At the very least, the valley here was wider, warmer, and livelier than Travaos.

I sent back three of the ten men who came to help me with the delivery. The rest remained with me.

-VB-

It happened on a clear day and on the flat valley ground.

We were only at Maienfeld for a week when a knight of the baron came riding in on a warehouse and a dozen men-at-arms. I spotted them first; I liked to keep an eye out as always, because I had the highest chance of survival should an altercation happen. The knight rode while the rest walked on the road towards Maienfeld.

The knight had a plate helmet, but his chest plate was just that; there was no full plate abdomen guard except for his brigandine. No shoulder, arm, or thigh guards, either. He had forearm and sheen guards, but they looked brittle and ill-maintained.

Was this guy even a proper knight? He could be a hedge knight who just swore allegiance or something.

He spotted me and my big ass sword rather quickly because I was waiting by the entrance of the village.

“Who are you?!” he demanded.

“I am Hans of Fluela! Who are you?!” I demanded in return.

“Hans of Fluela? You are the rumored noble killer!” he snarled as he drew his sword.

I blinked. Wait, was this guy serious? Drawing the sword right off of the bat? Also, I was known and rumored? Should I be flattered or alarmed?

“I don’t think you want to do that,” I warned him while reaching for my sword hanging from my back.

“Shut up, peasant! It is a crime for you to continue to exist when you have broken so many laws and slain so many knights and nobles! Surrender yourself and I will be merciful and deliver a quick death!”

Okay, this man woke up today and chose violence.

He kicked his horse into action, and it screamed as it charged forward.

I took out my sword and waited for him to get in close.

And then when he yelled as he brought his sword down in a decapitating strike as he was passing by, I stabbed my much longer sword forward and let him slam into it.

Moving too quickly as he was, he got less than a second before he slammed into the tip of my sword, chest plate first.

I let gravity do the work and watched as the impaled knight and my sword fell, and the impact of the fall was enough for my sword to cut down his mostly unprotected abdomen. I winced as the guts sloshed around the wound and the blade, but the now bigger wound made it easier for me to pull my blade out. The knight, barely alive at this point and profusing bleeding, keeled over and remained still.

I pulled up my longsword and firmly planted its tip into ground. I then looked at the dozen men now looking at me. Except for a few, their faces set on firmly. They had made their decision.

“Was he a recently sworn in knight on something?” I asked them as they started to spread out.

My own soldiers, who had just watched it from afar, quickly came up to my side and spread out, shields up and weapons pointed towards the enemies just like how I taught them.

“Something like that,” one of them replied. “He was still a knight of the Baron of Brandis, though,” the same man-at-arms said as he raised his spear.

“Is it really necessary for us to fight? If he heard of me, then surely, you’ve heard of me and what I’ve done,” I replied as I pulled my sword back out of the ground.

“Maienfeld’s villagers are traitors anyways,” the same men-at-arms spat. “Instead of fighting for their rightful liege lord, they went behind his back and sought the help of their peasant friends! Kill them!”

“You should have brought more soldiers if you wanted to do something like this!” I roared back as I jumped forward and activated [Intimidation]. Like a wave, the confident men-at-arms suddenly paled and staggered backward while my men, unaffected by [Intimidation] as they weren’t the targets, surged forward.

It took them two seconds to get themselves back together, but by then, I’d crossed the distance between them and had swung my first strike.

My thick and heavy blade tore through one man’s neck, another man’s brigandine-armored torso, and the third man’s hip from high to low in that one strike. Just like that, their force was down from twelve to nine.

Pulling out throwing knives out from under my bear fur cloak, I threw them one at a time but as quickly as I could while I used my other hand to lift my sword back up. I threw three (which was all I had) by the time I had my sword back up, and saw two of the knives find their targets, but only one managed to score a kill.

Four down, eight to go.

That’s when my soldiers crashed into the shocked and unnerved Brandis men-at-arms.

Men screamed as speartips and blades slashed and stabbed.

By the end of the brief skirmish that took only a minute from the first blood to the surrender of the last two men-at-arms, eleven people laid dead, ten of theirs and one of mine.

I grimaced, looking at the man who’d died fighting with us. He didn’t need to, but war caused tragedies like this.

“Strip the bodies of everything valuable except for Dean’s. We’ll… we’ll wrap him up and send him back home. Traoan, go and tell the chief that the baron’s men attacked us first. This is a clear sign of aggression, one we need to answer together. Call up the other villages.”

War had come again to our doorstep.