Swiss Arms (vagabond)

Swiss Arms

Chapter 129

-VB-

Louis von Wittelsbach

“Are you sure about this, milord…?”

He glanced up from where he had the servants and squires fit him in his armor. But now, he was alone in the room with someone whom he might address as his mistress. She wasn’t his lover by any means; she was closer to a bedwarmer than a mistress, really, but he could acknowledge that he felt more at ease with her than most. 

The only ones who stood higher than her in his places of esteem were his spymaster and his longtime friend who didn’t even know he was the duke. 

And if tonight went horribly against him, then that’s how it would stay in the mind of that peasant tavern owner who just thought of him as a “good chap with a stick up his ass.” 

He almost chuckled at the memory. Ah, he almost exploded then and threatened to bring down the the might as one of then two dukes of Upper Bavaria… but his better senses had won out. And he was thankful for that, too.

Goodness, what was he doing when someone was waiting for a reply? 

“I do have surety in my action,” he replied. “But the world is oft an indifferent mother. Who knows? Maybe I will face no one or face the entire enemy army. But you know what the situation is like.”

She fidgeted, her beautiful hair cascading down her shoulders and framed her face in such a way that it hid her slightly large jaws to give her the appearance of a truly beautiful lady. Marie was a lost noble woman from up north in the lands of the Poles. Lost in the sense that her family had lost their fight against their rivals and had their entire male lineage castrated.

“Are you not scared?”

He paused. 

Was he scared? 

Tonight, when the sun set and the damnable rural peasants from the Alps no doubt began to taunt him, he would strike at them not by sallying out but with the same tactic they deployed: ambush. Indeed, he intended to sneak out of the town walls with his trusted knights and men-at-arms and hide in the now abandoned houses that clung close to the walls. From there, when the rowdy Swabians came by and distracted themselves with distracting his garrison, he would strike at them.

If he succeeded, then it would restore a measure of his authority within the town and they will hold out for days more. If he didn’t even do this much, then there was a very good chance that the garrison soldiers, who weren’t men-at-arms, might turn on him and his trusted knights as food ran dry. 

He knew his history. 

Sieges were messy, especially when food got low and the populace had no respect for their ruler. Whether that distrust and disrespect was earned was secondary to the reality that was starvation. 

“... I am a little nervous,” he admitted. Who else would he admit this to? He approached her and gave her a kiss on her forehead. “”But I am more afraid to be stabbed in the back or poisoned at meal than to die on the battlefield. I would rather try this than be tied up in my own home by the weakly willed and disciplined, who would throw open the gates.”

He may have done some evil deeds but nothing so shameful as to deserve that sort of fate. 

It wasn’t like he cucked married men and broke marriages like Rudolf had done. 

It wasn’t fair. 

But he knew all about what fair was, didn’t he?

“If you hear of my fall, then you know what to do, yes?”

She nodded tearfully. 

“Good,” he said as he stepped to the side and walked out of the room. He pretended to not hear her sobbing quietly. 

He walked down the castle’s corridor until he was at the yard where his men stood waiting for him.

He stared at the one hundred souls who volunteered for this mission.

“Are you all ready?” he asked them.

They all snapped to attention. “We will follow you, Your Grace!” his master-at-arms thumped his chest in salute. 

He grinned. “Then let’s go out there and show those peasants why they belong on the farm and not the battlefield.”

-VB-

Louis the Mine Manager

One of the rangers hurt his throat too much to shout in the night, so Louis ended up getting voluntold to take his shift. 

“Ugh, this is going to be horrible!” he bemoaned his fate. 

He didn’t think he’d end up on the frontline so quickly again in such a small group of soldiers! He was the weakest and slowest among them, too! If something horrible went down, then he was going to die because being a mine manager made him slightly fatter than before! 

“Relax, Mister Manager,” one of the rangers, Frederick, son of Frederick of Davos, from Davos, chuckled as he gave him a playful slap on the shoulder as the last light of the day disappeared over the horizon and bathed the world in darkness. It was a night of the half moon, too, so he really couldn’t see anything. 

He sighed. “... I guess. We’ll be under bales of hay, right?”

“Yup. Bales of hay under rolling wheels. We’ll be perfectly safe, even if the archers shoot arrows slick with oil and fire. These bales have been soaking up water all day long in the nearby stream.”

That made him feel better.

He walked in light armor, carrying a shield and shortsword that had been loaned to him while he left his new halberd behind. 

All around him were dozens of rangers, some pushing weird looking bed-less carts with hay bales on top like a roof. Actually, was that just a market stand put on wheels and tied together? 

He glanced at the three pairs of donkeys pulling the market stand on wheels and the wet hay bales on top of them. Poor bastards. 

He also looked at his lord, Count Hans von Fluelaberg. Apparently, the good lord hadn’t done much to announce his rise in status to the people of Davos and Fluelaberg. Probably thought it was more of a hassle than the prestige it would get him. Louis had been at Fluelaberg for a long time now, and knew just about how its lord thought. He wasn’t unambitious or lazy. It’s just that if he didn’t see how it would benefit him greatly, then he wouldn’t do it. Little things like announcing his status apparently fell in the “small benefit” category.

Unlike most of the rangers and himself included, the count carried his full ensemble of equipment, including his thick bear fur cape, metal face and chestplate, and that giant slab of metal he called his sword. 

As the entire group made their way towards the western gate for their nightly ritual, they passed by the houses abandoned by the folks who must be either deeper in the countryside or inside Munich. 

House after house, they passed by-.

Whee-!

One of the rangers jerked before falling side ways. 

“John?!” someone shouted from behind. 

“AMBUSH!” someone else shouted. 

“WAHHHH!!!” cries ran out from all around them.

Louis snapped his head from left to right as armored men rushed out from abandoned houses. It was so dark that he couldn’t see anything! 

He hastily drew his shortsword and shield while the rangers drew their own swords.

In that darkness, Louis felt dread. 

Until he saw the count move. 

He burst forward like he had expected the ambush and swung his sword. The wind roared as the sword made a half-circle arc with the count at the center and sliced into an unlucky knight. Metal squealed and screamed as the sword tore through it and sent out sparks of light everywhere.

For a very brief moment, the battlefield paused as its center lit up from those sparks.

“That’s the count! Kill him and you’ll get a hundred guldens!” someone among the enemy shouted. 

A hundred?! That was enough to get someone’s kid into a knight’s service as a squire! Or so the market rumor was around Davos. 

And it spurned the momentarily stunned knights and men-at-arms into a frenzy. They roared as they charged into them.

In the darkness, they did not see or hear how the rangers had drawn their crossbows in the lull of the battle.

The count jumped forward, shoulder-checking a man-at-arms. The man got overwhelmed immediately by the count’s charge and doubled over before something crunched when the count deliberately stomped his feet down on the downed man. 

The man-at-arms did not get back up.

And the rangers loosed their crossbow bolts. 

Their enemies screamed around them as bolts landed. 

Louis hyperventilated, looking around frantically as the smell of blood seeped into his nose, but he held his position next to a pair of rangers. One of them held his shoulder steady as he used his other hand to fire his crossbow. 

“Squad one reloading!” 

“Squad two taking over!” 

It was … how the rangers fought in the open reminded him of workshops where everyone knew what they were doing. 

The ambushing knights and men-at-arms, on the other hand, stumbled and backed away as the sudden burst of bolts left quite a few of them dead or dying in the dark streets. 

And then there was the count. 

“FOUND YOU!” the count cackled. 

Cackled. 

There was a slam. A scream. Winds whooshing. Something metal squealing and bending. 

A grunt and a thrust. 

Sparks of metal. 

A crunch.

A screa-. Cut off. 

Something like leather being squeezed and metal weakly clanging against metal. 

And -.

Snap.

The rangers fired their bolts again. Even if some of the bolts struck some of the shields held by the ambushers, no shield could cover everything and the rangers seemed to be targeting those specifically. 

“EVERYONE STOP!” the count roared and the battlefield once again stuttered to a halt. 

And something got tossed into the dimly lit center of the street. 

Metal clanged against flesh and dirt. 

“I have slain Duke Louis von Wittelsbach!” the count declared. “Lay down your arms or prepare to die! This is your only chance!” 

… Huh?

T-The duke was here? Wait, the count killed the duke in battle?! 

The count rumbled out from among the ambushers, who quickly backed away from him.

Louis froze when he saw the bloodstained visage of the count. Even in the half moon moonlight, he could see it. 

In that short span of time, the count had gone out, found the commander of the ambushers who turned out to be the duke and killed him? 

How long has it been since they were ambushed? Four minutes? Three minutes?!

Someone screamed and charged at the count from behind. 

The rangers didn’t even bother to warn their lord. 

He whirled around, backhanded a fully armored man, grabbed him before he fell, lifted the fully armored knight up because, yes, now that the backhanded man was above them all and moonlight glanced off of his armors, he could see that it was a knight and not a man-at-arms, and then brought him down brusquely over his knee. They all heard bones snapping.

The knight screamed and gurgled before the count dropped him on the ground.

“Anyone else with a bright idea?”

As if to emphasize the question, he lifted one foot and slammed it down on the screaming knight. 

There was a final snap and the screaming stopped. 

Louis heard weapons dropping all around him and the rangers.

He took a deep breath in and looked at the count again.

Yeah… he wouldn’t want to fight that.

“Men, I want their weapons in the cart and their wrists all tied up! We’re walking up to those gates and getting their surrender tonight!” 

That made everyone on their side let out a jubilant roar, and Louis surprised himself by cheering along with them even though he’d done nothing. 

Whatever. The war was over!