Swiss Arms 34 (Patreon)

Swiss Arms
Chapter 34

-VB-

It took me the rest of the year, but I managed to get the rest of the Compact to work towards my vision for our people’s future.

Of course, this wasn’t without its troubles.

A lack of a paved road to help facilitate trade between each of the villages made life extra hard. Fixing that within a year was not possible, even for me. I did manage to put a dirt paved road between Davos and Klosters, and I already had people using it frequently. Mostly, it was people from Klosters also getting in on selling me clay.

Speaking of clay, I did manage to find a lithomarge deposit within our territory. It was, however, at the very edge of it. It was within Davos’s claimed lands, which made up for the fact that it was at the southern edge of it.

When I inquired Kraft about hiring workers permanently to regularly supply me with lithomarge (I marked it down for him on a crude map), he told me that he had enough young men to do the work and if he didn’t, then he would inquire from Klosters.

As for Maienfeld, Schiers, and Castels, those three have banded together to form their own co-op. I taught them how to make paper from fibrous tree bark. While I had initially thought about teaching them how to make paper from wood logs and chips, the entire process was too mechanically involved for villagers to do the work. Grinding up flexible bark was more manageable, and so I experimented and taught them how to make paper with that.

Sure, the paper wasn’t the bleached industrial white A4 paper I was so familiar with in my past life, but I didn’t need to care about quality when the paper I taught them to make was cheaper and easier than making parchment from animal skins.

After all, the binding agent and the raw material all came from the bark itself, so there wasn’t even a need to source other materials.

Last I heard, they managed to get the ever-parchment-hungry abbots, priests, nuns, and the bishop of Chur to start buying their paper.

I am a little concerned about profit from that particular trade getting to the heads of those villagers… but then I remembered that we, the Compact, didn’t quite have taxes.

That’s right, the Compact didn’t have taxes.

Due to how the Compact was formed through a defensive pact, there was no official position on leadership, taxation, and even military affairs outside of “come protect each other against outside threats.” For that reason alone, the three villages had a reason to stay within our Compact, because as soon as they are conquered by other lords or even the now severely weakened Prince-Bishop, they would start having to pay a lot of taxes on what was a very special trade.

So I wasn’t too concerned about them becoming rich. I wanted them to taste an iota of wealth because I knew that they would have no way to keep up with the demands on their own, even if they hired workers from outside of the Compact.

My mass pottery manufacturing also progressed really well. I also made a “print dipper,” a device for precise pattern painting. It was a bouncy stretch of leather (a result of my many experimentations) that could fit into a bowl that’s gone through its first baking, and leave behind a “print” of the painted pattern on the ceramic bowls that would go under a second baking.

… Admittedly, it didn’t work as well as I wanted it to. It seemed to break down at least twice a week, but the fact that I could now mass manufacture semi-ornately decorated dishes and bowls remained revolutionary for our little corner of the world.

It took half a year before the regional peddlers and merchants realized that I sold something unique, and began to regularly buy from me.

To accommodate the merchants, I expanded my little fort towards Davos. The extension of the fort basically had me double the size of my fort, but most of that space was for four new buildings: stables, inn, warehouse, and apartment. The stable and inn was for the travelers and merchants. Not all peddlers had horses, but quite a few had ox pulling their carts and carriages, and they still needed to stay inside the stable and not roam outside the fort where they could be stolen by opportunistic humans. Or animals.

The warehouse and the apartment was for my business and people. See, the opening and expansion of my pottery factory saw a lot of young men - and two women - from Davos come to work at my place. I couldn’t house them all in the fort like I did before; last time I did that, it had been under a serious threat to all of our lives. As the demand was there, I spent the time to make a two story apartment with enough units to house five small families and seventeen more individuals in separate units. It was also built into one of the valley cliffs, so there was room in the new half of the fort for people to gather.

What concerned me was that it’s been less than two months since the completion of the apartments and the rest of the fort when I started getting migrants from Tyrol.

I was the concerned because in this medieval serfs could not simply get up and leave the lands they worked at because that was illegal.

How illegal?

Capital punishment illegal.

However, I was not going to let people die due to my reluctance to help them, and this was where my second concern came in: illegal serf migrantion and acceptance of these people was one of the main issues that caused lords to butt heads.

It was troubling that I had already accepted serfs, two families of four and five and nine stragglers of seven men and two women.

I sighed as I looked at the equally frustrated and exasperated Count of Zernez.

“I … really hoped that we wouldn’t meet again after the last incident,” Terrace von Waldenberg, the Count of Zernez, grumbled.

“Yeah,” I grumbled back. “Didn’t bring a lot of people?” I asked as I looked over six men-at-arms.

All of those men-at-arms recognized me, though that might been an intentional thing on his part.

Terrace had also grown in height and size. He wasn’t the lanky teenage boy only a little younger than me. He now had the height and size of a leader, though I would need to see how much he’s matured.

“My men found track marks of my serfs coming into the valley,” he began.

“They passed by,” I replied. “I told them it would be foolish of them to stick to a region that was right next to their former lord’s lands.”

He gave a deadpan. “What if they remained?”

“I’m sure they didn’t.”

“Do I have your assurances that they didn’t remain? Swear your name to Saint Nicholas?”

I didn’t say. I did accept those people, after all.

“I do not tell people to stay or go,” I replied. “But if they did stay, I don’t want to see them get taken away to suffer the consequences of a situation that they did not have a choice in.”

“And I am supposed to accept serfs just running away?”

I thought about how I could solve this issue. Terrace was rightfully angry. Serfs may be born serfs, but it didn’t change the fact that a single person was important in these sparsely populated Alppian valleys.

“What if I were to pay for their loss of service?”

Terrace stared at me.

“What?”

“What if I were to pay you to not pursue them and acknowledge that they are lost to you. That I am paying you to help you, my neighbor, offset his losses.”

He stared at me some more before reaching up and gripping the bridge of his nose.

“They’re here, aren’t they?”

I didn’t say anything that would incriminate myself.

“I am merely concerned about the fact that -”

“The fact that you are trying to pay me is an insult,” he snapped at me, dropping his hand and glaring at me.

I didn’t return the glare. “Why is it an insult?” My words brought him to a pause. I used this pause to bulldoze forward. “I am your neighbor. You must understand what a neighbor means, Lord Terrace. A neighbor is affected by his neighbor whether he or she likes it or not. If you lose people in your lands, then I am losing people I can buy and sell to.”

He sneered at me. “Mercantile as always, I see.”

“Being pragmatic, Terrace,” I snapped for the first time in our conversation, and saw him flinch. “Is not mercantile. It is when I try to profit from your suffering that I become mercantile.”

“... Fine.”

“So a loss of my neighbor is a loss for me, so a neighbor should be helped. Or would you rather if I ignored your plight?”

He glared at me. “Fine. Fine! What would you even give me th-?!”

I gestured for my ever present helper, Arnold, to come forward with a small sack the size of a fist I’d prepared. I took the sack and tossed it over to Terrace. He caught it, and his eyes widened as he felt its weight. He quickly opened it and looked up at me in shock.

“Half in silver. Half in gold. It should be enough, yes?”

He begrudgingly kept the pouch. “... The serfs must have made a good impression on you.”

“No,” I replied without any explanation as I turned away with Arnold. I heard Terrace turn away and leave, and sighed in relief.

I really hoped this wouldn’t become a regular occurrence.