Swiss Arms 24 (Patreon)

Swiss Arms
Chapter 24

-VB-

Attacking the men of the Baron of Bardis was an attack upon the Count of Toggenburg, the baron’s direct liege.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but that’s what my actions meant, even if it was in the defense of my personhood, safety, and neighbor. This was especially so because I was technically one of the signers of the “Compact of the Seven.” By attacking me with a knight, whether or not the attack had been ordered, when I was one of the leaders of the Compact, the Count of Toggenburg more or less declared war on us.

This declaration was not lost on five of the eight leaders, including myself, of the Compact. When the incident happened, I sent out a call for those who were able to come to travel to Maienfeld so that we could discuss this without any one of us taking unwanted unilateral action.

Did it make any kind of offensive or even defensive action against the count hard? Fuck yes! However, I now had responsibilities, and unless these people gave me that privilege in the first place, I couldn’t do that.

It was only thanks to the fledgling and barely comprehensible semaphore system that we were able to gather faster than the count could muster his levies, and despite this, three of us couldn’t make it due to circumstances they themselves were facing and of the five who came, three were not the chiefs, or mayors, or whatever, but representative of the village or town.

Including Travaos. Instead of Kraft, they sent Arnold who should have been still learning how to properly lead the men and women at the Fluela Fort, not making life-changing decisions right at the edge of the border!

“They want to crush us,” I grumbled at a table where those six leaders sat.

“They were going to burn my village to do it,” the village chief of Maienfeld, the reedy man who greeted me warmly when I arrived not too long ago, spoke with gritted teeth. I saw the rage in his eyes. Fear, yes, but the rage was bigger. He was using it to not fall into a pit of fear.

If I was being honest, then he had a good reason to be a shivering fetus-ball of fear.

A count was declaring war.

For reference, the total population of the Compact of the Seven was roughly nine thousand people, and this wasn’t the size of the militia, which was at most five hundred.

Yeah, me and Travaos fighting back against the Count of Zernez was a desperation thing. The Count of Zernez had a similarly sized population as all of the Compact of the Seven, but he was in charge of administering a small town and its immediate surrounding area with a total population of four thousand, which was less than the Compact’s.

The Count of Toggenburg, on the other hand, was one of the powerhouses of the region. According to the merchants, peddlers, and Deacon Benjamin, there were four powers in our region: Toggenburgs, Werdenberg, Chur, and Sargans.

Oh, and we sat in the middle of them.

Had I actually made our situation worse by forming this small alliance? It wasn’t even a political alliance, just a defensive pact.

The lords didn’t care, apparently.

“We’ll have to fight like we did against Zernez, wouldn’t we?” Arnold asked me. His tone sunk too low to be optimistic. “But we have none of the advantages we’ve had at Fluela. No thick walls, no preparation beyond what we have now, no meager amount of iron to turn to weapons, no -”

“But we attack,” I cut him off with the best solution I had. “If we cannot defend our homes because our homes are too weak,” I gulped. “Then we take the fight to them. We make them bleed for their lord until our very visage becomes too gruesome and fearful for them to stand their ground. Then we force the count to … white peace. Or something.”

Because the Count of Toggenburg was not like the Count of Zernez. The County of Zernez was nothing but a barony with an inherited count title. The County of Toggenburg was a proper county with the military means to back it up. Let’s say, like a thousand levies and five hundred men-at-arms at minimum.

On the other hand, our defensive pact had a maximum of one thousand and five-hundred volunteers. This was the total amount of volunteers we agreed upon when we first signed that contract and was, of course, under the assumption that they would be willing to provide.

It was all too common for people to sign up on a deal and then back out when disaster struck.

I … I didn’t know what to expect from them.

“We fight.”

I looked up in surprise. The oldest among us had spoken. Even more surprising, it was the village chief of St. Peters.

“We fight,” he spoke again despite the tremble common in the elderly coloring his voice. He stood up with purpose at the table that five of us had gathered. “Those greedy lords are here to kill us now that we are ready to stand up on our own two feet! They’re already fighting over the bishop’s scraps! What will they do when they get to us? We all heard about what happened to Albula, Lantsch, and Vaz! I’m not going to sit by and watch it happen to us!”

I continued to stare in surprise.

I… thought they were going to back off from how fearful they looked.

“We’ll tell them to fuck off!” Maienfeld chief agreed wholeheartedly as he shot up from his seat.

I let myself relax.

The worst hadn’t come to pass.

Thank God.

“Then let’s get our men out here,” I declared with a grin. “We got lordling ass to kick.”