Swiss Arms 66 (Patreon)

A/N: the battle scene felt a little too short (<800 words), so I just went ahead and added the immediate aftermath/what-could-have-been-another-chapter to it. Enjoy.

Swiss Arms

Chapter 66

-VB-

Hans von Fluelaberg

I sensed the danger before it came, but I was too slow to call out the ambush before the first arrow landed.

And it landed on one of the camouflaged rangers that had gotten too close to the ambushers. They had seen each other and the crossbow-wielding enemy had fired. My ranger’s bear fur cloak, however, kept the arrow from digging in too deeply.

“AMBUSH!” I roared, and cranked up my [Intimidation] to the max. Immediately, the road became a skirmish field as ambushers popped out from far sides of the roads, even further than how my camouflaged rangers had been arrayed around us.

And it was a mistake, too, as my rangers, too far apart from each other, couldn’t fight off against half a dozen and more ambushers when they rushed them.

“CLOSE RANKS!”

“HAH!” my rangers shouted back and immediately retreated to me.

“H-Hans?!”

I looked forward and saw John finally getting it together. I forgot that this was his second engagement, the first being him in his father’s castle as it burned around him.

“Get off the horse!” I shouted as I pulled out my repeatable crossbow from my inventory as discreetly as I could. I did not notice, however, that Isabella had been too deep in whatever thought she’d been in to even notice what the hell was going on. “ISABELLA!”

She finally snapped out of it just as an arrow came flying at her.

I didn’t even bother trying to hide my strength and speed and slapped the offending projectile away.

Then I grabbed the second when she finally flinched.

“Get down and behind the horses! Toggenburg men, shields up and around your count!”

The volleys of arrows finally reasserted themselves and came down hard.

And I just cut them all down with two smaller but longer longswords instead of my big slab of metal.

I grunted as I brought the latest of my swings down, chopping four arrows at once. The road ahead was now blocked by the ambushers. Some wielding pitchforks but most had actual swords and spears.

Already, this group was not classified as bandits but another noble patsy. Peasants and bandits didn’t have a lot of quality swords and I saw at least a dozen quality swords. If this was another attack planned by the Duke of Upper Bavaria, then I will tell the emperor to fuck off and go to war. And If the emperor tries to stop me, then I was going to go after his head as I went after the first three counts I’ve met.

The convoy’s left and right were also covered by the ambushers. The rear was also covered.

We were, as they say, surrounded.

Or…

“Men, it seems we are surrounded!” I shouted. They laughed as they pulled out their repeating crossbows, including the wounded rangers. The ambushers looked ready to rush in, and there was someone on top of a horse shouting for the ambushers to do just that.

I needed that one alive.

With a heave, I threw one of the two longswords not at the person but at the horse’s head. The sword hissed through the air like a sawblade and sliced right through the horse’s spine. There was a splatter of blood as the sword sailed over, but it had done its job. The horse just fell over as its brain disconnected from the rest of the body, and the horseman fell.

“FIRE!” I shouted, and my rangers began firing. Their repeatables fired with only minimal reloading. Each ranger fired a bolt every two seconds, which was about as fast as the average bowman and much faster than a crossbowman. The ambushers didn’t expect it at all and began to get peppered by our bolts.

But that didn’t dissuade some, and they charged at us.

I finally brought out my metal slab-sword and swung.

A bisected man’s upper body flew while his wide eyes looked helplessly in shock at his falling legs.

The remaining longsword in my left hand struck like a lashing snake, blurring through air and taking the head off of a spearman who thought he was going to get lucky.

As the ambushers closed in, my rangers also ran out bolts in their magazines… which was why while half of them pulled out their swords to defend their comrades, the other half pulled out a spare magazine and loaded them in.

But even with their superior tactics and weapons, my men died at the end of the enemy speartips and flashing swords.

But it bought us enough time to fire more crossbows.

“Fire!” I roared as a cacophony of hissing bolts and screaming men.

When another two dozen men died at my men’s bolts, they began to run.

I didn’t care too much.

“Men, I only see bandits! Keep shooting!”

And keep shooting they did.

-VB-

Isabella

Her heart refused to return to normalcy. Though the danger had passed, her heart still thumped inside her chest loudly and harshly.

She had nearly died, this time from men looking to kill … someone.

She looked over at John. He was back on his horse, unlike she who had moved to sit in one of the covered carts. He looked shocked as well but carried that shock with the firmness of someone her soon-to-be husband had trained.

It was a grimace that every single one of the rangers had, and it shocked her still to see their effectiveness. With time came realization, and she realized quickly that this ambush had not been an attack made by bandits looking for rich nobles to rob but a noble’s army.

Too many well-trained men. Too many castle forged steel swords. Too many chainmail armor among them.

And with that realization came a delightful enlightenment.

Her husband’s rangers fought off an army thrice their size and suffered a dozen deaths among them, all of whom died defending their comrades when they needed to reload their crossbows. There were twice that many wounded, yes, but to suffer no more than a third wounded and a third dead after killing twice their own numbers?

Each and every single one of these rangers would have been guarded jealously by her father and her cousin.

And the repeating crossbows.

Once, it was a cool toy her husband made and forced his men to use.

Now… now she stared at it for what it was: a brutal and efficient weapon of war. It turned a briefly trained commoner into men-at-arms slaying battering ram.

As for the man who claimed that he just “remade” it, he was over at the edge of the camp with only four rangers with the horseman whose horse he’d nearly beheaded from almost half a hundred yards away. With a sword.

She shivered as she remembered the high-pitched hissing of the sword as it spun in the air so fast that its entire spin seemed to be made out of it with light flashing off of the bloodied sword a dozen times a second.

“John, come over here!”

John jolted in his seat and quickly made his horse trot forward and over to Hans. The two talked, and John became furious.The boy suddenly jumped off of his horse, drew his sword, and stabbed the horseman.

“What happened?” she asked. “Why did you get angry?” she asked Johmn

“That was the Count of Werdenberg. And he was here to try to kill John to prevent him from joining us,” Hans answered.

She grimaced. This ambush had been an attempted political assassination. Even at the best of times with the most politically connected and wealthy individuals, this was not something that went ignored or dismissed.

And the Count of Sargans, as she knew, was not someone who was well liked anymore since the fiasco he was part of caused not only troubles here but also troubles outside. The effect wasn’t seen until lately, but it was well known now throughout the neighboring lands that the sudden influx of refugees, loss of food, and trade happened because of Count of Toggenburg, Count of Werdenberg, Count of Zernez, Count of Sax-Misox, and even the Prince-Bishop of Chur.

And of course, the now dead Count of Sargans.

She only came to learn about this because the “Barony” of Fluelaberg had become a trade center that saw people from all around - as far as Constantinople! - come to buy, sell, exchange, and gossip. Peddlers and merchants from neighboring lands were the most vocal about how they felt about the Unruly Year.

The conflict led to this area becoming too dangerous to pass through, this led to increased time spent in just moving goods if the goods didn’t perish from longer travel, some goods couldn’t even be sold, fertilizers from Zernez over could no longer reach the fields around St. Gallens, Abbey of Disentis got raided by Count of Sax-Misox before his demise, so on and so on.

“... This is the only chance.”

The two men turned to her.

She looked at them with her utmost seriousness. “Count of Sargans alienated everyone around him. This ambush was his way of ensuring that he wasn’t completely surrounded by potential enemies and those who had a casus belli against him. It is very possible that he may thought your admission into the Compact would have given the Compact enough internal voices to move it against him. He betrayed his own alliance to attack the prince-bishop and your father was the leader of the alliance.”

“If he thought that far,” Hans noted. “This is the guy who attacked his own alliance member when he was already surrounded by those alliance members.”

Speaking of which, the Count of Sax-Misox had died to Hans himself, the prince-bishop was a nominal equal but an actual vassal of Hans, and Toggenburg was now an equal to Hans… but emotionally and relationship-wise very much submissive to him.

Isabella glanced at him for a moment.

If she hadn’t known the entire story about the Unruly Year, then this would have looked like Hans planned the subjugation of the entire valley as a peasant.

But that’s impossible, right?

“What will you do, Hans?”

“The bastard attacked a member of the Compact,” he grunted. “Of course, we’re going to war.”

She nodded. “Then-.”

“Wait.”

They turned to John, who looked shaken but still resolute despite his age and first combat.

“What is it, John?”

The boy looked at Hans and squared his shoulders amidst the bloodied field and road.

“I pledged to become the western gate for the Compact. An enemy at west has attacked the Compact. It is my duty to lead and fight this. Besides, I know that you will be busy with the Dukes of Bavaria.”

Hans stared at John without so much as a hint of emotion.

And then…

“... If you can stand after I glare at you, then I will let you.”

Glare? What was a glare going to do -?

And then she nearly screamed.

In an instant, Hans became something so dangerous that she immediately recoiled away and wanted to flee. Her throat tightened up with a scream barely suppressed, legs coiled barely kept from jumping away, and her back already strained from having pulled herself away from Hans.

She knew that he was supernatural. She saw how easily he swung that slab of metal he called his sword. She saw him neatly slicing through a dozen arrows straight out of the air.

This? This was new.

Even the rangers near them buckled and a few just collapsed to their knees, gasping and clutching at their throats. One just straight up ran away.

John?

The boy… stood. Sweating profusely, fists clenched so tightly he bled, lips bleeding from biting, and eyes so wide and iris so pinpricked that it looked like everything that he was hurt… but he stood in place. It didn’t matter whether he stood there out of fear or will, only that he did.

Then it stopped.

She gasped and fell to her knees.

She barely saw Hans put his hands on John’s shoulders.

“You have my rangers here as my contribution to your war effort. Good luck.”

John relaxed too and nodded. “I’ll make you proud.”

… She supposed that this was a wonderful bonding moment but her mind was more fixated on what the hell that was that Hans did.

One day, she was going to get a good answer - if not the entire answer - out of him.