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-VB-

Alvaschein, Grison

Fredrick, the Free Baron of Vaz, glared across the small field that was to be the battlefield.

Across the field, the damned Sax-Misox baron waited with his own army. Unlike Fredrick, he had both his men-at-arms and levies at the ready and outnumbered Fredrick\'s army by a large margin.

Fredrick really didn\'t want to take the fight here, but he must. If he fell back any further, then he would give even more of the higher ground, and considering how devastating he\'s made high ground against the Prince-Bishop of Chur, he was in no mood to let that happen to him.

He could move his army no more than three hundred yards behind him to a small forested hill, but that would leave the wide passage from Alvaschein to Albula open. If he did, then he would be cut off from his own barony. The steep forest to the north that stretched the whole width of his valley made moving his troops through it to reach his barony a possibility, but one that would definitely result in him losing manpower when he couldn\'t.

"I really should have sent for Hans," Frederick grumbled. The only blessing he had was that their number of men-at-arms matched evenly.

No, this was the place to fight.

"Form up!"

He would let them come to him.

Then he heard something from his right. From the very forest he was reluctant to travel through.

Frederick turned his head, almost reluctantly, and then his eyes widened comically as he saw armed and armored men coming out of the forest.

A dozen. Two dozen. Four dozen.

It was an army matching his army in number, but all of them were armored and armed like men-at-arms. They were less than a hundred yards from his own men.

Frederick gritted his teeth when he saw the sigil they carried.

He snapped his face towards Sax-Misox.

"You son of a bitch! You hired mercenaries from Uri?!" he roared. He snapped back to his men. "Turn! Turn!" he shouted as he saw from the corner of his eyes as Sax-Misox sounded the charge while shouting something in Romansh and not German. Whatever it was said to them, his words made their charge less hesitant.

Seeing their allies charging in, Uri mercenaries slowly advanced forward with their halberd pointed forward.

"Tighten up! Form the phalanx!" he shouted to his men, and unlike the levies, they listened. They pulled up their shields and their spears forward.

There was no way he was going to win this battle, but he could hold out -!

And then the frontlines clashed.

Men thrust spears forward from both sides, arrows flew freely, and mercenaries… mercenaries were trying to flank him.

"Step five paces back! Don\'t let your comrades die!" he ordered loudly.

But then it was too late. All of it was too late.

His left flank dissolved as ten mounted men-at-arms broke through the few men there, and moved deeper to the back of his line. What few levies he had broke at the sight of the dead and dying, and the men-at-arms tried to defend themselves by allowing a few of their numbers to turn around to stab the cavalry with speartips.

But that was enough for the Sax-Misox charge to stab a few of his men-at-arms.

The middle broke. And then the right broke.

"Retre-!"

fffwwWEEEEPPPP-!

Urk!

He staggered and reached for his throat. He felt a wooden shaft. An arrow.

"\'Uoo…-!" he coughed out as he lost strength in his body.

With trembling hands reaching out even as his son tried to reach him, he felt the darkness close in on him.

\'Why did this happen, God?\' he thought weakly but then he saw the final blow to his forces.

His son, who tried to reach for him, his good boy who never did anyone wrong, screamed as half a dozen arrows bit into his back.

Frederick wanted to cry, but the pain in his neck and from falling onto his back stopped him.

He watched as his son\'s eyes dulled before him.

And then a stampede of boots came upon Fredrick\'s own eyes.

Crunch.

-VB-

Landwasser-Fluela, Barony of Vaz

"Kraft, what brings you here today?" I asked my neighbor(?) as he walked up with a wagon pulled by him and Arnold. They were making their way up the small hill that obscured the lower valley from where I stood right next to the walls of my compound.

I walked a bit forward and saw that it wasn\'t just Kraft with his wagon but an entire caravan of people.

What the fuck?

"What the hell is happening, Kraft?!" I turned around with a whirl.

The man looked exhausted from pushing the cart up the mountain valley. That was a whole fifty-yard altitude difference (I believed)!

"Hans…!" Kraft tried to say something but he was too out of breath. Instead, I turned to Arnold while walking up to the handles of the cart and -. Wait, why was Alvia and who looked like her mother in the cart?

"Arnold?" I asked the man\'s son.

"It-It\'s the baron, Hans. He died in battle!"

My eyes widened.

How… What?

"When?!"

"No more than a week ago," Arnold grunted as he pushed the cart forward. I stopped him, moved him out of the way, and pulled it forward myself. The cart moved far further with me at the helm. Arnold, also breathing hard, gasped with his hands on his knees before he recovered and "helped" from the side. "He and the Baron of Sax-Misox fought each other, but from what I heard, there were Uri mercenaries involved. Our baron lost, and Sax-Misox and Uri are looting the entire valley right now."

I almost froze.

Uri?

That\'s… that\'s where I\'m from.

My neighbors there were… some of them were mercenaries.

I gritted my teeth and tried not to think about it all as I pushed forward. Then I gently lowered the handle once we were at the front of the guardhouse - or custom gates or whatever else Rust players called it - before turning to Kraft. The old man recovered somewhat, but he wasn\'t faring well. "And what\'s the wagon caravan about?"

"It\'s the entire village, Hans," he said, and looked apologetic. "You sent Arnold and Alvia back to us thinking that there might be a danger coming from the other side of the mountain, but there\'s now danger coming from the valley itself. Survivors have already reported villages being burned and pillaged by the mercenaries."

"Swiss killing Swiss? What the fuck is happening," I grumbled before I realized that there was no "swiss" identity yet. Hell, if I remembered it correctly, then this area and the surrounding region didn\'t even become part of Switzerland until after Napolean! That\'s five hundred years from now! Or four hundred. Doesn\'t matter!

"What\'s swiss?" Arnold asked me with a frown.

"Doesn\'t matter," I replied with more snap than I intended. "So the rest of the people down there…"

"Are from our village. Others have moved on towards north."

"I don\'t have room for a hundred people, Kraft! Why did you bring them here?!"

"Because your keep is the only thing that can keep us alive!" he snapped right back at me.

I couldn\'t even fault the man. I hated the fact that he just sprung this on me, and I was not cold enough to reject them. Not when women like Alvia and her mother who were behind me would have been raped - if not killed afterward - when pillaging and looting happened.

I couldn\'t just look away when that shit happened to people I knew!

"Did you at least bring food to last the fall and winter?" I asked with a hiss. Because fall was fast approaching, and there was no way they could have harvested their grains already. It didn\'t fall yet so it wasn\'t ready.

"Everything we had."

I gave him the stink. "Is that enough for the fucking fall and winter?" I asked again.

Despite my cussing, he looked down, biting his own lips.

"No."

"Fucking-!"

The situation was devolving fast becoming Don\'t StarveTogether

, not Rust.

"How many people?"

"Forty."

Forty?! My home/base, by my standard, was good for no more than ten people! Forget cramped, we would be packed like sardines!

"We\'re willing to fight if you would have us."

I paused.

… It was true that it would be a mess to keep my home safe by myself. Anything more than a hundred people, which wasn\'t even an army, would leave me too tired to defend myself. If I had even ten people with me manning the watchtowers and shooting arrows, then defending my home wasn\'t out of the picture.

"I have rules about sanitation," I relented.

"It\'s your home, and I\'ve heard of them from Alvia and Arnold. We\'ll be sure to follow them."

"And make sure the rest of your village does, too," I added with a defeated sigh. "I expect everyone to train with bows and spears, alright?" I demanded.

He nodded rapidly.

"Good," I grunted before opening the doors of the guardhouse. "No more than three carts inside the walls. The rest are to be kept out here, understood?"

The smiles I got blinded me with their relief.

I felt guilty about thinking to use them as manpower.

As the refugees from Travaos made their way into my compound, which was much larger than when Alvia and Arnold had been around (the two were looking at me with wide eyes and mouthing about how much bigger the keep was), I realized that there was a chance that my dad or my brothers might be among the Uri mercenaries.

I really hoped they weren\'t part of the mercenary contingent and that the mercenaries won\'t come this way.

I really really hoped. No.

I prayed.

-VB-

Zernez

Rudolf rode before the assembled troops.

This sort of opportunity came once in a lifetime, and he intended to take this chance by the reins.

Standing before him, his one hundred and fifty men-at-arms looked disciplined. Good.

Behind them, the three hundred levies from all over his county stood at the ready. Even better.

And beyond them stood an extra one hundred mercenaries from Bavaria that his family had hired on the fly over the last two weeks.

This gave him a total of five hundred and fifty troops, which was fifty more than he expected. This was good!

"We will conquer Landwasser," he claimed loudly. "And we, the victors, will claim the bounties that we so deserve for being able to stake our claim in the annals of history!"

His men-at-arms cheered.

"Today, we march! Landwasser and its fertile valley will be ours!"

"To the glory of Waldenburg!" they cheered.

And so, they marched.

To glory!