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-VB-

Swiss Arms

Chapter 69

-VB-

Duke Rudolf of Upper Bavaria

Munich

When he received a letter from the Baron of Fluelaberg, he expected it to be a letter of acquiescence. After all, he went so far as to send the baron the heads of all of the guild masters responsible for the heinous and greedy crimes they’ve committed here in his duchy and in the baron’s lands.

What he got, however, was not a letter of acquiescence but of demands.

“‘... and so, I regret to inform you that this is simply not enough to satisfy the damages done onto my lands. It is your failure to perform the duties of a duke which led to this situation, and so the punishment and proof of the criminals cannot be the end of this affair. For the damages wrought onto my lands, I will not be satisfied with anything under -’ IS THIS MAN MAD?!”

A guild master was not just a man in charge of a guild of artisans. A guildmaster was a politician with connections to merchant families in and out of the city, someone who knew the inner workings of the city’s commerce, and had direct control over a portion of the economy in and around the city! He executed seven such guild masters in the name of justice, and the petty baron was demanding more?!

Rudolf took a deep breath in and let it out slowly.

“Is this the only letter that arrived?” he asked his steward.

“Yes, Your Grace,” the elderly man, who has been in service of the House of Wittelsbach for as long as he had been alive, replied. “The baron sent nothing else and continued on with his affairs with nary a change.”

He leaned back into his chair and tapped on his table.

Had this been a baron directly under him, then he would have gone over right now and executed the bastard, damn the consequences with the emperor and the imperial laws. However, this was not his vassal but a “fellow” vassal directly under the emperor. This was mostly because there was no ruling duke over all of the Swabian Alps righ-.

He leaned forward.

Was that the case? Was this commoner baron truly reaching that far?

“... No,” he muttered. “There is no way a peasant commoner - a farmer’s son - knows enough to even think that far ahead. This is just a commoner baron’s arrogance finally showing up.”

And then he grinned. “And it is enough for me to punish him.”

Oh, he couldn’t execute the baron. However, he could go to war over this insult and thoroughly ruin everything he’s been building up for the last two years. That Compact of his?

“Call the banners,” he grinned to the shock of his advisors in the room. “It will be quick and easy. A single baron with nary an ally or proper men-at-arms to speak of. Right, Spymaster Erin?”

“Yes,” he replied. “Our last report tells us that the baron has trained up only a hundred or so crossbowmen.”

“He should have been training archers,” he snorted.

There was a reason why crossbowmen’s place on the battlefield was always in defense, high up a wall, and behind barricades. They were cheaper and easier to train but more expensive to field. Archers might take longer to train, yes, but each archer could, for the same force of pull, hit further and more accurately.

This, in Rudolf’s mind, was a show of the baron’s inadequate understanding of how the battlefield worked. Sure, he might be a good fighter. A good warrior. But a single person? Well-trained men-at-arms could take care of him, no matter what his inflated nickname might suggest.

-VB-

Kraft of Davos

Fluelaberg

“War?” he asked with an ashen face. “With a duke?”

“He’s the one responsible for the bandit attacks you have been hearing about,” Baron Hans replied. “I also have the emperor’s permission to pursue this justice.”

“B-But that would have us at war on two sides!” Bruno, an elder of Kloster who came instead of the usual representative, hissed with narrowed eyes.

He, Elder Bruno, and Martin of Schiers had been invited to this meeting because it was their villages that might suffer the first attack should something happen on the battlefield. And if the baron went out to challenge the duke, something was going to definitely happen.

“I know, but this isn’t something I can just ignore and play defensively. Merchants from Bavaria are already telling us about the duke calling his banners.”

Kraft felt his stomach drop.

“But he doesn’t have any feuds…”

“Outside of his brother and, for some random reason, us. He never sent us demands or anything. Can’t you see that this is the actions of a stubborn and unreasonable noble? He won’t be swayed if we stay and do nothing. He’s already called the banners.”

“And you think you can defeat them,” Elder Bruno scoffed. “The duke must have over a thousand men-at-arms, never mind the levies he will bring.”

Hans shrugged. “That’s why I don’t intend to take the fight to him in the fields.”

Kraft looked at Hans and remembered that this was the man who led them to victory time and time again when they weren’t trained and were weak. He must have a plan if he was being this calm. He hadn’t even called the rest of the Compact.

“You have a plan.”

“I do,” he replied. “But … it isn’t one I can share with you right now. Not when I don’t know who or where the spy for the duke is residing in the Compact.”

“Then why even bother to call us here?” the elder asked, slowly stroking his bushy moustache and beard.

“Moving an army through Schiers and Klosters to reach Davos and then Fluelaberg will be hard,” Hans replied as he reached underneath his table and pulled out a map. “Not only does he have to cross over multiple territories that are not cordial with him but this is the long way around.

Martin, a burly man almost as tall as Hans, finally spoke up. “The pass. You think that if they want to come at us from the north, they will use the Schlappiner Pass.”

“Yes.”

Kraft blinked. “But that pass is treachery even for peddlers. An army-.”

“That’s why I also think they won’t use it. If they even know about it, that is,” Hans quickly added. “No. More likely, they will use the more popular Flelaberg pass, cutting through the Duchy of Tyrol. They won’t be able to use any other route without alerting us to their motives otherwise. If they try to use the northern route, passing by the Free Imperial City of Lindau, through the County of Werdenberg, and into Maienfeld lands, then we will hear about it weeks before they march through. The northern entrance is the duke’s scenic route that tells everyone of his intention. No, if he is greedy as he seems as the bandits from his duchy were, then he will use the short pass and aim directly for my throat.”

“Then you can play this defensively. You don’t need to go out there.”

Hans raised an eyebrow. “I can, yes.”

Kraft knew that he was going to add something else.

“But why even let them get close to our home?”

“... Then what would you have us do?” Martin asked.

Hans smiled.

“I need every kind of dung.”

Kraft looked at Hans and then blinked. He picked at his ears. “Excuse me?”

-VB-

Recommendation: Youtuber Kraut the Parrot. If you like history with more context and not just a bland retelling, then go give him a visit.