Swiss Arms 115 (Patreon)

Swiss Arms

Chapter 115

-VB-

Hans von Fluelaberg

Relaxation.

Not a lot of people would consider holding a baby and rocking it back and forth in the night to be relaxing. Especially if it was something they had to do in the middle of the night. 

Because, whether it was medieval or modernity, babies woke up in the middle of the night to complain about something. 

As a man with supernatural endurance, I found the extra time I could spend with my first child to be euphorically relaxing. Probably it’ll change in the future, but the idea for me was that in this world where there were no cameras to take pictures with, these memories I’ll make of my son’s infancy was the only way for me to remember his infancy.

It also meant that I was getting ahead of Isabella in collecting memories of our son’s “firsts.” 

Unfortunately, she got the first “shit,” “piss,” “suckling,” and “burp,” so I had to contend with the first “coo” and  “finger grab.” Him sucking on my finger didn’t count because that fell in the category of “sucking,” which was a larger category that “suckling” fell into.

Were we being petty with collecting these kinds of things? 

Maybe.

But it was also a fun game for us two.

I rocked Albert back and forth, and read the letter I’ve received from my family in the Forest Cantons. 

I actually sent one of my messengers to send a letter to them. And if necessary, to read out the letter. I knew my parents knew how to write a little, but I got the messenger to write out exactly what they said anyway when they inevitably wanted to write a letter back to me.

My dad was extremely happy to hear that I had my first son. Even happier to hear that I gave his grandson his name as the middle name. In fact, he and mom wanted to visit as soon as the planting season came to an end. This was doable because there was a path from Erstfeld to Disentis and from there to the rest of the Compact, including my barony. 

Mom was also happy and had a bunch of advice for me to follow. Some of them made sense, like giving the baby lots of food and drink and to avoid honey. Some of them didn’t make sense.

The rest of the family was also jubilant and promised to visit when they could. 

I set the letter aside and bounced Albert a little, and my son rewarded me with a coo. I smiled as I imagined what kind of a great man my son could become.

And I hoped that he would be happy. 

Because if he wasn’t, then there was going to be a lot of heads that would roll to make sure he did. 

-VB-

Life continued. 

As spring began to give away to summer, farmers got ready to plant their crops. Up here in the Swiss Alps, farming was a very risky business. There were very few crops that could be planted because of the short summer and days. The ground often didn’t thaw until spring half ended in other places. 

But even if the ground didn’t thaw out completely, wild plants still grow and farm animals could graze. It was why, even with my help in innovating agriculture, Davos and Fluelaberg farmers still depended heavily on their livestocks for subsistence until the first harvests came.

With not much going on anywhere, I went to work on my own stuff between watching Albert and Isabella.

I looked around my storeroom while holding a wooden board. As I went through the storeroom, I made a check of what was there and what wasn’t. This particular storeroom was the “explosives” room, which was not actually under the castle anymore but inside a tunnel dug out of the mountain. 

Ever since the Battle of Lower Engandin, I have been improving better ways to make better explosives. And it was only recently that I managed to do it using saltpeter, charcoal, and, of all things, an oxidized and refined sulfur from pyrite. 

Sulfur as a resource was hard to find to gather in large quantities. Pyrite, however, was easily found. It just took me a long time to understand how to properly break it apart. Having glassware to do this in also helped, even if they weren’t the best lab equipment material and would break on occasion. 

Anyway, with pyrite available to me now, I could now make moderate quantities of gunpowder. 

However, I don’t think I’ll use it for guns and bullets. Improving gun technology was going to take some time, which meant that until I had a really large production of them, I wouldn’t be able to use them effectively. 

No, what was more effective was using gunpowder to make grenades. Much easier to aim, and for some like me, an iron shell grenade not only killed people on impact, their follow-up explosion would result in a lot of casualties which weren’t my people. Saltpeter was going to be expensive to acquire. I needed a way to find a way to produce them.

‘Wasn’t saltpeter originally mass produced with urine or something? Or was I remembering things incorrectly?’ I thought to myself. 

But, of course, I wasn’t going to limit myself to only one weapon.

Oh, I also had the dung bombs in storage (just elsewhere and not next to the actual gunpowder). I got giddy thinking about the new dung bomb. I managed to find a new bacteria species that didn’t make hydrogen gas but toxic gas. I could toss that into a castle or pit and cause some nasty damage. 

So why was I here checking up on my supply of gunpowder?

Because I knew that sooner or later, Duke Louis’s inability to deal with his currency crisis would come to damage his neighbors. There would be calls to do something… and Duke Henry would step in.

War would come to Bavaria, and I very much intended to be there to crush Louis. 

And gunpowder was a good way to achieve that. 

Speaking of which, I needed to go and check up on my rangers. Can’t let them grow rusty just because it was winter and all.

… I should send a letter to each of the conspiracy members, asking if we should meet or not for the next step of the plan.

-VB-

Louis of Bavaria

He stared at the coins in front of him.

Louis knew that the coin on his left was real and the coin on the right was not. The castle’s blacksmiths minted the coin on the left less than a week ago while the right one had come somewhere from the market after merchants started to complain to him about the inauthenticity of his coins. 

And he couldn’t tell which one was real.

It was right in front of him and he couldn’t tell. That was a big problem.

Normally, fake coins used a lot of copper to fill out the volume where silver and gold used to be. This made such fake coins take on different colors, but because these fake coins didn’t do that, they didn’t look any different from the real silver coins! 

Worse, these illegal minters targeted silver coins instead of gold coins for a quick gulden. No, they specifically went after the silver pfennigs to ensure that they wouldn’t get caught. If it hadn’t been for some paranoid merchants, then he wouldn’t have known about this at all until it was too late.

Except it kind of was too late. 

One of the more trusted merchants groups just up and left Munich. Merchants and peddlers were complaining. Neighboring towns and villages stopped accepting his silver coins. 

And everyone thought he was the one to do it!

He needed to get the situation under control. But how? He didn’t know who carried them in. They came in at a trickle, so he suspected that one of the towns surrounding Munich was the base of operation of the illegal minters, but no, that hadn’t been the case. Torturing the blacksmiths hadn’t gotten him any answer. 

The conclusion he came to was that the coins came from further away. 

He originally suspected the Habsburgs or even his own house, but no, they were only just realizing his situation and only now looking to take advantage. 

If he didn’t root out the cause, then it would just keep on repeating. 

But even his spymaster couldn’t find the source. 

Louis, however, began to suspect someone else. Someone who very much had a reason to do this.

His older brother in the Compact. Someone who might have a copy of the mint stamp. Someone who might know how to sneak the coins in through merchants he knew. 

Rudolf … couldn’t possibly be the source. He doesn’t do subtlety! That’s why he took almost all of the knights and men-at-arms and lost them all against a baron!

And the baron was a glass smith, not a blacksmith.

Right…?

… But he did have a lot of blacksmiths under his control than most barons did. 

He … did have the means to do it.

Except that wasn’t the case either because he already checked the Compact! He had spies there, and no one reported anything about fake mints or coins! In fact, the Compact’s merchants were only just starting to realize that Munichen coins weren’t what they seem to be.

So who was behind it?!