Swiss Arms 89 (Patreon)

Swiss Arms

Chapter 89

-VB-

Hans von Fluelaberg

Klosters was arguably the town that benefitted the third most within the Compact from the increase in traffic and trade. The first would obviously be the Davos-Fluelaberg (the shortest distance between Kraft’s village and my town was no more than a kilometer) and the second was the most populous and the other end of the Compact, Chur under Prince-Bishop Siegfried.

The reason for this was rather simple.

The valley south of Davos was treacherously dangerous with cliffs that were, on average, around 50 degrees to 80 degrees. On top of that, there was no easily passable riverside land. In comparison, the valley that Davos was in had a river that was 10 meters to 20 meters wide with the entire valley itself was around 500 meters even at the narrowest. In comparison, the southern valley’s river was less than 10 meters wide and there were barely a meter of space for people to walk next to the rushing river.

This wasn’t just dangerous for most people; it was outright fatal.

What travel that did happen in the southern valley was through winding mountainside that didn’t even have enough room for a small cart. In comparison, the Fluela Pass was wide, just a straight walk up and down, and not even snowy during spring and fall.

So trade never went through the southern valley from the east, leaving the only way to the west through the north and Klosters. And as a member of the Compact, I sold them some of my personally made goods without tax, which gave them even higher profit margins when they sold to peddlers passing through.

Klosters also saw an increase in population, though unlike Davos and Fluelaberg, their people were all locals, some of whom had come from further north through the Schlappiner Joch (or the Shaky Yoke) Pass. It was not much of a pass compared to Fluela Pass, but it was still passable enough for individuals like peddlers.

If those peddlers could climb with packs weighing several stones, that was.

The point was that Klosters was my most happy ally within the Compact and even more so than Chur. While Chur saw me as a shield against any hostile outsiders, I was Klosters’s lifeline to a new generation of prosperity.

“It’s wonderful to meet you again, baron!” Mayor Daniel of Kloster greeted me with a wide, beaming smile as he shook my head heartily. After Kraft and John (the Count of Toggenburg), he was perhaps the leader of the Compact member that I met the most, and it showed in how familiar he was with me.

After all, I was still a baron, so a commoner would never dare to shake hands with me unless prior permission had been given and the man was familiar with the baron.

“I’m happy to see that you are doing well, Daniel,” I smiled and the people of the village and my guards watched with warmth as their leaders reaffirmed their friendship. “While I would have liked to stay for some time to see what I could help you with …”

“You don’t need to, baron,” he replied with a grin. The middle-aged man then slapped his belly. “I mean, look at this! I’ve never been this jolly in my life!”

People laughed and I chuckled, too.

“Ah well, I hope you remember my wife, Isabella? You were there at our wedding,” I said as I pulled my hand back and openly gestured to my wife, who stepped up with a smile of her own.

Now faced with a noblewoman, Daniel fumbled before one of my ranger guards stepped forward and whispered a few instructions into his ear. He hurried down to a knee and kissed the ring on Isabella’s ring finger.

“I-I, Daniel of Kloster, greet Baroness von Fluelaberg,” he stuttered out, and Isabella giggled.

“Thank you, mayor. I’ve heard good things about you from my husband. Please, rise.”

He did and then cleared his throat before breaking out into a smile.

“Well… there was something that we can use your expertise, Hans,” Daniel spoke up after tittering for a moment. “There has been a problem…”

“What kind of problem?” I asked him as I narrowed my eyes. I swear, if there were more knights masquerading as bandits, then I was going to go apeshi-.

“It’s the ice.”

“... Ice?”

-VB-

I stared at the ice.

Yeah, that was a problem.

Klosters had three valleys that it had access to because it sat in the center of those four’s convergence. Prattigau was where it sat in the upper middle of, and it was connected to the Landwasser valley that Davos was in. The third valley was a smaller canyon that split off the Prattigau toward the north right where Klosters was. That northern canyon was what allowed few people to come and go from the not-yet-Austria’s-Voralberg Montafon Valley.

The problem, or two problems, was that there were now ice in those higher-elevation valleys.

Not snow. Ice.

I stared at the huge ice boulder just sitting and blocking the entire valley.

Something like this should not exist, yet there were two of them.

Fluelaberg didn’t have ice… but that could be because of the constant warmth that my city’s been pumping out with our industry.

… Something about this situation tickled the back of my mind.

This was also something I couldn’t solve. Not really. I did think that this spring was a little colder than any previous years but was it this cold?

I stiffened while people behind me yelped and screamed when a dull rumble echoed through the valley. The ice trembled and then ground its way forward.

Right toward Klosters.

I stood in place, waiting to see just how much the ice moved.

“H-Hans?” Isabella called to me from far behind me, but I stood in place and waited as the literal giant ice wall moved forward.

As the ice moved closer to me, people began to back away, and then the ice came to a crawling stop with a final rumble.

I hummed before reaching out and wrapping my knuckles against the ice wall.

It was a disaster, yeah. If the ice kept on moving without melting, then it might start grinding up against the farms around the village and then on the village itself.

But it was late spring and it would soon become winter.

I turned to look at the unnerved mayor.

“This is not something I can solve as easily as roads.”

Isabella, despite her own nerves, raised an eyebrow at my statement. Yeah, I knew that roads weren’t something that people just solved, but I did it once so I got to say it.

“I-I see. I guess it was stupid of me to ask you to solve a mystery of the world,” Daniel laughed weakly.

This wasn’t something a small village like Klosters, which only had several hundred people, could solve even if they deployed all of their able-bodied men and women. We’re talking about hundreds of tons of glaciers, maybe even over a thousand tons because there were two such glaciers. Breaking it alone required iron or steel tools. And even if we succeeded in breaking it up, where would we dump the broken ice? This wasn’t the modern age where we could pack it with wood shavings and sell it to someone across the ocean.

Yeah.

This was a problem.

… Why were these glaciers still niggling at the back of my head?!

-VB-

Eventually, after two days of rest and talk, we moved on from Klosters and traveled to Schiers, which was to the west of Klosters and down the Prattigau Valley.

The next village-member we stayed at was Schiers.

And they had exactly the same problem if on a smaller scale and more village-centric. A lot of the snow and ice that were supposed to have melted by now hadn’t melted and the seeds planted last year and were supposed to sprout now hadn’t.

When we left Schiers another two days later, I decided to slow down the caravan and check all of the valleys. It was a tedious process that nearly doubled the travel time, but after discovering half a dozen more slow-moving glaciers and not yet melted snow in late spring just between Schiers and Maienfeld, I realized that my town had just been abnormally warm for one reason or another. I passed by Davos’s fields. Their crops were all germinating.

Then I reached Chur.

And problems only compounded from there.

Prince-Bishop Siegfried had fallen ill and hadn’t woken up in the past three days.

My plans got thrown out of the window when, a mere week after I arrived at Chur, the prince-bishop passed away in his sleep, and the Diocese of Chur called upon its cathedral cardinals* to select a new prince-bishop.

-VB-

A/N: cathedral cardinals refer to members of the cathedral chapter, which is a group of advisors (usually clergy) to the prince-bishop in charge of a Roman Catholic Diocese.

A/N 2:At this point in time, the local cathedral chapter chose the bishop according to the imperial church system (Reichskirchensystem) but it was also around this time that the the pope started to wrangle some of that power away from the HRE. You know what this means, boys and girls~! Shenanigans time!

A/N 3: our prince-bishop was a real person who should have ruled up to 1321. I killed him off 18 years earlier. Oh, and look who was supposed to take over the position after him. A noble priest from the Counts of Montfort. Our former enemy.

A/N 4: the glaciers are important.