Swiss Arms 39 (Patreon)

Swiss Arms

Chapter 39

-VB-

“That makes no sense.”

“Eh?”

John was a citizen of the Free Imperial city of Lindau. He was a man who has been working in this city even before King Rudolf Habsburg the first of his name declared Lindau an imperial city.

This place sat right at the edge of the Bavarian lands and the Swabian lands. Trade to Nuremberg, one of the largest cities in the empire, all passed through Lindau.

He may not be the Patrician of the city, but he was the city’s main accountant. His eyes saw everything that came and went.

“Where the hell are all of these papers coming from?”

His trusted subordinate seemed to know what he was talking about and quickly pulled out a sheet of paper with the list of goods that had come through and the supposed origin of those goods according to the merchants and peddlers who brought them.

He grunted, accepting the paper in thanks, and read the contents of it. As he read down the list written in Latin, he found what he was looking for.

“Peddler Jon Arbuckle of … Where is this London?”

“Some weird place far to the west according to the peddler himself,” Issac, his subordinate, responded.

John liked Issac; the man was a meticulous recorder of all things and made his job so much easier. If it wasn’t for Issac, then he might have missed so many guilders…

“Why is he here?”

“Something about his home island being a shit hole with shit king and not making enough money off of sheep shaggers.”

John grunted. Everyone knew that there were no sheep shaggers. Not only was it directly against God’s order of the world and what he intended for men and women, people who claimed to be sheep shaggers when caught were all people trying to get away with livestock theft.

Bestiality got a hand chopped off, so the punishment was still bad, but it wasn’t as bad as the execution involving livestock theft.

He kept reading and frowned.

The paper’s origin was Chur?

Yeah, that made no sense. Paper - good paper like the one he was reading this from and what the paper this Arbuckle brought to Lindau - always came from further away like Venice and other richer parts of Italy like Treviso, Amalfi, and then some.

Chur?

The backwater, mountain valley, lose wars to peasants Chur?

No, he refused to believe it.

… But it wasn’t something he could just not let go and also move on like he could with spices and dyes. Chur was practically next door, and paper was important enough that if he didn’t go to ascertain the truth of the matter, then the Patrician was sure to send someone over, if only to secure this new source of paper for himself.

Because it was smooth as h-.

… Well, he could probably earn himself some respect in the eyes of the Patrician by investigating this. He would, of course, request permission first. After all, Chur was right next door.

---

Permission came easily because the Patrician trusted him to not slack off during the investigation.

First, he traveled to Sargans of the County of Sargans. He did so to hear any rumors or obtain any confirmation about paper’s origins. Instead, the local count became incensed when Chur was mentioned and he was promptly kicked out.

Then he traveled to Chur… and the merchants there gave him an equally aggrieved reply about the Bishop of Chur hoarding all of the paper and selling only to passing peddlers and merchants instead of local merchants.

However, one merchant did note that the paper seemed to come from the new “Compact of the Seven,” whose regional capital was in some even more remote village of “Davos.”

He got the directions and took the southern route to find this Davos.

It was … not a good sight.

He knew that the local lords had fought a war against each other over land that the Bishop of Chur held. He hadn’t seen much of the damages of the war until he arrived at Vaz.

It was hard to miss the fact that there were far more homes than people.

Or the fact the villages of Lantsch and Albula had no one living in them.

He warily noted in his personal journal that he felt like he had seen just a bit more of human nature and why Jesus’s guidance was so important. Without God as the defining morality of man, then all men and women will act like beasts and ravage the lands like what he saw.

He made it to the village of Filisur. This village was also a sight. Half of the men missing and or buried and half of the women pregnant? It was … not a pretty picture of what happened during the Unruly Year.

Blasted nobles…

They told him that he had to go through the eastern valley to reach Davos, which they claimed to be a treacherous journey of cliffs.

He took the journey and agreed once he made out of the valley with his life intact but not his left shoe.

This … was where things started to not make sense.

First off, he encountered road in the middle of nowhere. There were no villages nearby but there was a road. In the middle of nowhere. And it wasn’t a packed dirt road but a paved stone road. John could not comprehend the existence of the road. If the road was old, then he might be able to excuse it. However, the road was not old.

It was too new.

It wasn’t until he traveled down the road that he found a potential reason why the road had been made there in the middle of nowhere mountain valley; there was a quarry for some kind of white rock on the eastern side of the valley. A dozen men worked there, digging and cutting stone before hauling it upon a cart and walking away.

When he approached them…

They hogtied him up and brought him to Davos.

At first, John thought he was done for. That he must have run into some bandit tribe. He was going to die horribly or live as a slave horribly.

But that wasn’t the case!

He found himself in Davos, and once his identity was confirmed by his personal belongings as an accountant and inspector of the Free Imperial City of Lindau, the villagers gave him a warm welcome. They even replaced his missing shoe for cheap!

However, that welcome became a little frosty when he asked about the origin of the paper.

The village chief, a man named Kraft, merely pointed him toward Fluela Pass.

---

“From Lindau?”

John nodded as he warily eyed the wooden fortress that took up the entire width of the gorge. Sure, the Fluela Gorge was not as wide as the one that the village of Davos was in, but it was still a wide gorge. A fort that could cover its entire width was also one that couldn’t possibly be made in under a year by a single village, and yet here it was.

He decided to focus on talking. It’s been a long journey taking him more than a month already. He was tired and just wanted his answer.

“Yes. I am an accountant and investigator from the Free Imperial City of Lindau. I am here to ascertain the truth of paper manufacturing in Chur and the surrounding region.”

The man, some kind of miner from the shiny steel pickaxe and odd clothes, hummed.

“Yeah, the local paper making came from here.”

John blinked.

“You … admit it so easily?” he asked, flabbergasted.

The man shrugged. “I told the people of Mainefeld how to make it. It’s not like I’m telling you the exact recipe and process.”

John froze.

Maienfeld?

Maienfeld?

He passed by Maienfeld village on the fifth day of his travel! That was A MONTH AND A HALF AGO-!

John drew in a deep breath and slowly released it.

Fluela… Fluela…

He frowned.

Wasn’t this place also the origin of those potteries? The ones that were all the trend back in Lindau. He remembered how his wife had asked for some. If it wasn’t for the fact that they were cheap, he wouldn’t have given her that allowance for her to buy it.

Not that he will admit that it was pretty, easy to clean, and an art in and of itself.

Who didn’t like eating food off from art? Everything tasted slightly better.

Someone passed by them and bowed before hurrying to do whatever job he had. John eyed the miner. No one bows to a miner. "Who are you?"

"Oh. Sorry, forgot my manners," he said sheepishly. "I am Hans of Fluela. Nice to meet you."

John shook the man's hand before realization lit up in his head and his body froze.

Hans? Of Fluela?

The man who lit a castle on fire? The man who slaughtered soldiers on the battlefield?

John couldn't help but feel the callouses on the man's hands, well defined muscles, and the way the passerby had been respectful.

He felt pale.

He had been talking to the most murderous man in all of Swabia.

Hans the Brandschafzer.

He took a deep breath in as he pulled his hand back and smiled as best as he could. He opened his mouth to say how he was done confirming and would be on his way when the Verbrennugmann decided to do something else.

"Well, come in. I'm not going to show you the most up to date accounting, but I may as well show you that we do make stuff."

---

"What is all of this?" John asked. He'd lost some of his fears after watching the wooden fort's furnaces, pottery workshops, and more.

Rather than a warlord's den, Fluelaburg felt more like an artisan's wet dream.

Now, he stood inside the central tower's third floor room. The room had a desk and a lot of paper.

Like stacks upon stacks of paper.

"This is my records room."

John grimaced. Oh no.

Hans shuffled through the papers, some stacked on top of the desk and others in wooden boxes, and brought out a bundle of stacked paper with a hole and string at top left. "This should be Maienfeld's July report on paper production and sales."

He took the paper and was immediately confused by …

"What are these debits and credits? Accounts? Accounts receivable? Accounts payable? Why do these numbers repeat?

"That's how we keep track of everythi-. Ooh… you guys don't use double bookkeeping yet?"

Yet? "What is this double bookkeeping?"

-VB-

In 1303, financial documents were used in Lindau by the imperial city’s head accountant to prove that the nearby town of Tettnang had been cheating them of their taxes. And this is the first recorded instance of double bookkeeping in use. Created by John of Lindau, the very same man who used double bookkeeping to find fraud, double bookkeeping forms the basis of how all financial information is kept around the world, whether it be that of warlords in Africa or a humble shopkeeper in Siberia.

-Quote from “Paper, Finances, and Economics: a History of Financial Evolution through the Ages” by Renard Truman

-VB-

A/N: yes, it is what you think it is. John decided to copy double bookkeeping method Alan was using without even thinking about it and published a book later about how he created the method.
We are also seeing Hans' impact starting to spread out from the Eastern Swabian Alps. Seeing as cities back then went to war for all sorts of reasons, be ready for more conflict~.