Swiss Arms 44 (Patreon)

Swiss Arms

Chapter 44

-VB-

I hummed as I climbed out of my private mine again, and unloaded the content of my bag and inventory at the same time. The large dusty box clunked and rattled as I dropped all of the ores I managed to find.

And I was quickly realizing over the last September that my mine shaft may be soon running out of precious metals and gems in the near future. At least those within a reasonable distance. As this extraction was the source of precious metal crafting and export, if I stopped right now, then it would cause some issues. Namely, the budding jewel crafting will stop. While this was not a big part of Fluelaberg’s economy, it was still part of it.

In fact, the cheap jewelry, raw gemstones, and raw precious metals made up a third of the reasons why merchants initially visited my town. Yes, my town. Of course, once they saw what other wonderful goods we offered on the cheap, they came back for those.

I have to find a new vein. Would the side of the mountain work? It wasn’t as if it was being used.

… Yeah, why not?

Actually, did I need to work the mine myself? There were plenty of people here. While there was a chance that this might cause my town to convert from a bustling trade town to a mining town,  I would own the mine and thus limit how many times people could access it each day. I could artificially stem the tide, so to speak.

If that was case, then they would get precious metals and gemstones with very little place to sell it. They could sell it to passing merchants, sure, but why not sell it to people like Alvia? At the very least, she could pay them on the spot with money they could use right away whereas merchants from far away places might not even have currency we accepted. On top of that, I had a foundry here and merchants didn’t. The miners would soon learn that raw ore wouldn’t give them a decent payout … not like how I or Alvia can.

Yes, this was an idea.

Now, how could I implement that idea?

-VB-

It’s one thing to keep hearing that their new lord (a lord, no matter what he insisted) was a powerful man whose swings cut armored soldiers in half.

An exaggeration, Leon grew up at the foot of the Tirol Castle by Merano City. Part of his daily life was seeing the men-at-arms and militia practicing in the yards at the base of the hill where the castle sat.

Leon saw some of the best of the best in those valleys. Men with arms thicker than his torso. Men with more time spent fighting battles across the entirety of the empire and beyond. He even saw a siege engine!

Sure, he was certain that Lord Fluelaberg was a mighty man.

But cut a man in half?

Get real.

He looked up from his counter at the butcher’s shop (the butcher didn’t want to learn numbers but he did, so he got hired to record every “transaction”). A bunch of men and women hurried towards the lord’s castle. Or rather, they took a route that would take around the castle and towards the mountain slopes.

“Arnold, what’s going on!?” he asked one of the men among the group.

Arnold, a thin man working as messenger between the towns, stopped and looked at him. “Oh, Leon! You’re in luck! Hans is supposed to be digging a mine for himself and others! He said so in the town meeting!”

Leon blinked.

A town meeting was not an old concept. It happened in most villages, towns, and even cities.

It was odd when the lord showed up and didn’t impose his will, insisting actually that everyone make the vote anonymously.

Leon wouldn’t know; he wasn’t a “proper” resident of the castle town or Davos, so he couldn’t participate in the town meeting nor vote. He did, however, hear about this, even if he had initially dismissed it.

“Wait, how would that work?” he asked Arnold.

Arnold looked like he wanted to ignore him and quickly walk away. It was then that Leon finally noticed that he had a pickaxe slung over his back.

Wait…

“Well, Hans said that if you paid for a daily entrance fee of five pennies or the equivalent, then you can have a go at it all day long from sun up to sun down.”

Leon’s eyes widened as he shot up from where he had been sitting.

“Wait, are you telling me that the lord who has the right to mine … is just giving it away?!”

Five pennies wasn’t a lot but it wasn’t small, but for a chance to work the same mines or the area that the lord brought out handfuls of gold ores out every day, it was nothing compared to what they could potentially gain!

“Not really. There’s weird rules like being allowed to mine only once every week or something like that. Oh, and you gotta have a working job here or in Davos or anywhere else in the Compact. And be a resident or “citizen” of the Compact,” Arnold waved his hand. “Okay, gotta go!”

Leon stood there and then gulped.

Could he … strike it rich?

He gulped and turned to his boss.

The burly man grunted. “You can go tomorrow. It’s not like the mountain is gonna run out in a single day, and you know that Hans has been pulling up all of that gold for … years now.”

Years.

Leon settled his pounding heart.

Yes, he had time. Five pennies. That was a little under half of his daily wage. That wasn’t bad for a chance to get a silver nugget or even a gold nugget.

“Umm… can I go watch for a bit?” he asked.

But if he wanted to succeed, then he needed the know-how. Watching others do it or even the lord himself might get him some of that.

Boss looked irritated but waved him away. “Yeah, yeah. It’s not like today’s a busy day. But if you’re gone for too long, then you can expect to not get paid today.”

“Thanks, boss!”

Leon quickly ran after the miners, and after what felt like a long trek across the entire town (it wasn’t), he arrived at where they had gathered.

He frowned.

There wasn’t anything here. Just a bunch of tools, some sturdy wooden carts, and a lot of men and women.

And then there was the lord.

He looked … strong. The muscles alone was on par if not bigger than that of biggest fat-less men-at-arms he ever saw over in Tyrol.

“He’s starting,” someone muttered and everyone quieted as the lord picked up a …

Was that a steel shovel? It was a giant shovel but it was still a shovel.

And then -.

CLANG!

Leon’s eyes nearly popped out of his eyes as the lord dug into the rocks and scooped them out. He tossed them to the side, and a few of the watchers quickly ran over to see if the first rock was worth a damn.

“Quartz!” someone yelled.

The lord just kept digging as if he hadn’t dug out a rock as big as a man’s torso and did it continuously. He watched as a pile of rock formed within five minutes. Within an hour, there were five such piles and a mine was starting to shape up.

“Alright, I want the support pillars in there now!” the lord shouted as he walked out of the tunnel that was ten ox deep, two ox wide, and angled slightly down. A bunch of men rushed in with planks and timber. Leon watched as they worked furiously. The lord checked their work as they came out and -.

His jaw dropped when the lord reached into his pocket and gave each of the workers responsible for the support pillar two silver pennies each.

Each silver penny was worth ten copper pennies!

They didn’t even work for a full hour!

“Alright! We got room for five prospectors! If you want to have a go at it, line up in front of me with your fee ready!”

A dozen men and women did so, but those in the back grumbled and left once they realized that they had been too late in lining up.

The lord accepted the fees, had them write their names on paper, and let them in.

Leon reluctantly went back to work, but later that day at the bar, he heard that of the five, three had found something worth a damn.

Three-fifths chance that he found something decent? Something worth more than five pennies?

It was an extremely good chance.

Who knew that he, a former dung “farmer,” would be a miner this far from home?

-VB-

“He lets the peasants work the mines? And sell the gold and silver?”

“Most of them found quartz and only one found a very small nugget, but yes.”

“... Is he mad?”

“I think that he wants to ruin the order and peace we have. A peasant lord who knows nothing.”

“He is a threat.”

“Yes. Very much so.”

“And what about our representative? The one who went to meet him?”

“He has rejected the chance to meet him.”

“Then it is time we go and talk with the duke.”