Swiss Arms
Chapter 175
-VB-
Leon (Once a Mine Manager, Always a Mine Manager)
1310
Bruneck burned.
It burned because the idiots who came to kill him and his comrades flailed around with their torches and set fire to their own hay bales by the stables.
Yes, that’s actually how it happened.
Hans stood in front of the officers who survived and the soldiers who came into the city to help put out the fire and save them. Somewhere along the line, though, Bruneck city’s soldiers started killing them, so they did what Hans always taught them to do: if someone tries to kill you, then kill them back and he’ll always have our backs.
It turned out that they weren’t the only ones who’d run into trouble because Hans looked like a mess.
He was covered in blood, carrying his sword around and it was also bloodied. His hands were bloodied, his feet were bloody, and was walking around in a tattered shirt and pants. And he still refused to gear up in his armor after leaving the city with prisoners, who were getting some nasty glares from the rest of the soldiers.
His liege lord continued to stare at the burning city. “Leon, tell me the numbers.”
“Yes, sir,” he replied while trying to hold back a sigh. Because tonight had been rough on the Fluelaberg Army. “First off, half of the officers who joined you are dead, a quarter are alive but the nurses and doctors attending them don’t think will make it through the night either because of the poison or the attacks that came afterwards, and the last quarter will make it but almost all of them are hurt, one way or another.”
Hans closed his eyes, and Leon saw veins bulging and throbbing on his lord’s face from the wrath flaring off of him. Other people who weren’t familiar with his lord backed off with pale faces while Leon remained standing. He knew that his lord would never hurt him if he didn’t deserve it. The near decade of service showed him that his lord was just, and would not allow his emotions to be directed at those undeserving of it.
… Well, there were those who deserved it. The city of Bruneck. The city opened their arms, invited them in, and then stabbed them in the back.
“... How many others?”
“We lost eighteen in the ur… urbin fighting.”
“Urban,” his lord corrected reflexively. “... Eighteen, you say?”
“Yes, my lord.”
He took a deep breath in. “What about the officers who remained outside?”
“All are alive and well. None of us died in the fighting or the fire.”
“... Good. Good. Leon, make sure to let everyone know that Baron von Bruneck and his family are my hostages. Harm to them is harming me. No liberties are to be taken with them. At all. Understood?”
“I will let everyone know.”
His lord stayed silent for a long while after that, just staring at the burning city. Only a quarter of the city was on fire, but the fire was spreading.
“What about the castle?” he asked.
“The soldiers there have surrendered.”
His lord looked disappointed by that. “Have the soldiers put out the fire, and after that, have all of the people of the city gathered at the city square.”
---
It took until dawn for the fire to go out, and when the people, tired from fighting fire and terrified of the soldiers who now looked ready to skewer them at any given chance, found themselves either “encouraged” or outright dragged to the city square…
They expected the worst.
Leon expected the worst as well… not that it wouldn’t be deserved. Violation of guest rights was an affront to God himself, because all oaths were sworn before Him. On top of this, even a commoner like him that guest rights stood above many other oaths. Hell, nobles could abandon their land and people and would face less dishonor than breaking guest rights.
And whether they wanted it or not, this meant the people of Bruneck shared the same burden because it was their liege lord who broke that sacred oath.
If it had been just Leon’s lord, then this could have been limited to just the baron…
But the other officers and even regular soldiers were poisoned and attacked as well.
That made them accomplices in the baron’s treachery.
“My lord…” he spoke up from Lord Hans’s left because there was no other officer currently on duty who could. He, who wasn’t even a “major” in the new ranking system, had to stand here because everyone above him had been either incapacitated for the time or dead.
And he knew just how much work his lord put into this army, and with just one treachery, all of that work had been ruined.
“Is everyone who can walk and hear here?” Lord Hans asked quietly from where he stood on top of a makeshift wooden platform.
“They are,” one of the soldiers replied. Leon glanced at the soldier. He was one of the more “enthusiastic” soldiers who dragged anyone he caught to the city square. And why wouldn’t he be when his brother laid dead in the camp outside the city? After eating the food these people gave them.
“People of Bruneck!” Lord Hans shouted, and the entire city square stilled from how loud and bone-rattling that shout was. “I am Count Hans von Fluelaberg! And these are my soldiers. Yesterday, you and your baron invited us in. I woke up early this morning with an attempt on my life and my soldiers dying from the food you provided.”
For a second, the people stared up at him with wide eyes.
Then the denials came.
Women screamed that they didn’t know. Men shouted that they never met one of our soldiers.
Thankfully, there weren’t any children present.
“There is no denying it. I have surviving servants from the baron’s manor here to tell you about what they know.”
Leon watched as three servants, two men and one woman, walk up to the platform without any soldiers to push them forward. In fact, they walked up by themselves.
And then … the story came out.
Of the baron’s confession.
The messengers between the Prince-Bishop of Brixen and Baron von Bruneck.
Of the prepared poisons served in foods given to the count and his officers and put into the foods given to the people so that they would hand it out to the soldiers.
As more of the story came out, people began to be enraged and horrified all at once.
Leon would be, too. The baron had not just committed this deed by himself but implicated his people so that they would be forced to cooperate with him once the deed was done.
But there were collaborators among the citizens of Bruneck. People who knew about this treachery before it was carried out.
“I will overlook your part in this,” the count spoke up. “If you bring those collaborators to me. But if even one of them escape, then I shall hold you in same contempt as the baron and the consequences that befall such contemptuous people. Go.”
For a moment, there was silence.
And then pandemonium.
By dusk, all collaborators were brought before the count and he judged every single one of them according to the laws of the empire.
Hung to death. Slowly.
---
When night fell, the count left the city and met with the surviving officers, even those who were too weak to move. As such, the meeting was held in the medical tent along with regular soldiers and medical personnel.
“So what now, milord?” one of the few ranger officers who survived asked of their liege.
Hans sat at the center of the medical tent with his hands enclasped around the hand of a dying ranger. He was one of those the doctors and nurses weren’t sure if he’ll make it through the night, never mind the next week.
Unfortunately, the poison used by the baron came from the rye ergot fungus; it wasn’t the only poisonous and toxic substance in the poisons served to them, but it was the main poison. Death was not swift for anyone, and those who still lived screamed and babbled from the severe hallucinations that plagued their minds.
The rye fields that now surrounded Bruneck looked less like farms and more like fields of evil, even though Leon knew in his head that ergot was simply a fact of life not just in a rye field but in any grain farms.
But it’s one thing to have accidents with it. It was another thing entirely to be used … like this.
Lord Hans continued to hold the ranger’s hand without answering.
After a while, he looked up.
His eyes, which were normally full of life and action, looked dull. Instead of a lively fire, there was a simmering anger in them like flickering embers.
“The Prince-Bishop of Brixen is a nobody. He resorted to poison instead of joining the Habsburg with soldiers because, even among his prince-bishopric peers, his realm is especially weak. We can deal with him later. First, we must deal with the Habsburgs.”
There were objections but no one spoke it out loud.
“For now, we will stay here for another week. We’ll give everyone the chance to recover in bed. But after, we’ll move. In the meantime, rangers and cavalrymen will go further out and scout out the area so that we aren’t ambushed by a roaming army. Hopefully, that will do for now.”
-VB-
The Bruneck Poisoning was not a pivotal event in the Gorizia-Habsburg War of Bohemian Crown. It was but a bump that brought the Fluelaberg Army to a pause and would have little impact on the outcome of the war.
But little was not none and the event did have some impact on the course of the war and after it.
The first was the revelation that a Prince-Bishop was revealed to have had a hand in an attempted assassination of a count not just through the act itself but by breaking guest rights. Guest rights were not as sacred as the media portrays them to be through television series like Game of Thrones. However, there was still a significant importance placed upon it. It was said that a knight killing an innocent pregnant woman would be less scorned than someone who broke guest rights. Indeed, this was very much the case as, once the news of the event got out and were confirmed (as much as one could during medieval times), the Prince-Bishop of Brixen, one Johann Wulfing von Schlackenwerth, found himself in both legal and religious trouble.
While power struggles were in no shape or form distant or unknown to the clerical members of the Roman Catholic Church, the prince-bishop’s naked aggression against someone who had done him no wrong set this apart from other clerical assassinations that may appear similar on the surface.
And, of course, the attempt on the count’s life would come to bite the prince-bishop.
First, the Gorizian alliance took this as a declaration of war where it was all of them versus just the prince-bishop.
Second, no one wanted to help Brixen. Brixen was not an economically rich fief, and whatever religious, political, and social importance it once held all dried up once the assassination attempt was revealed.
Third, the Prince-Bishop of Trent and the Prince-Bishop of Aquileia were good acquaintances of Count of Fluelaberg, and being Brixen’s neighbors, they chose to act upon those ties by politically pressuring the Papacy to strip the obviously unfit prince-bishop of his position. Unfortunately for the pope, Brixen and Trent were part of the Guelphs and Aquileia was a Ghibelline. This would have an impact in the future on the unity of the Guelphs in the coming Italian conflicts, but that’s a story for another time.
Most of these events happened after the war.
But what the Bruneck Poisoning did was slow down the Fluelaberg Army.
Slow them down, in fact, that instead of unintentionally missing each other had things gone to plan as Duke Frederick and Count Hans had routed their armies, they ended up meeting each other.