Chapter 157
Swiss Arms
Chapter 157
-VB-
Hans von Fluelaberg
October 1309
I looked down at the paper and "clip"board in my hands and looked at the harvest's numbers while my paid laborers and farmers hauled the harvest into the warehouses.
The cauldron terraces managed to extend the harvest season to the middle of October.
Between the terraces, my introduced fertilizers, and increased flow of water through "solar-powered" heaters I installed at the top of the surrounding mountains, I managed to produce … a lot, actually.
Oh, if the city kept growing at this rate, it wasn't going to be enough, but I still successfully turned a previously unfarmable land into arable land. Now, there were three cauldron terraces, two large ones and the one prototype I built. From these cauldron terraces alone (which had a combined acreage of around 72 acres), my people managed to grow the following. 322 bushels of barley
260 bushels of oats
430 bushels of peas
1,100 pounds of cabbage
880 pounds of onions
1,000 pounds of turnips
200 pounds of miscellaneous berries and other experimental crops that didn't work out well.
Now.
I didn't care about how much this was worth. I cared about how many this could feed.
And after a bit of a generous calculation, I came to the conclusion that the harvest above alone could feed 300 people or so for a full year. Of course, I will need to get my people grow meat, import fish, and make cheese as well, but the fact that my three cauldron terraces could feed 300 people…?
Fantastic.
Even if the investment involved was far higher than what I initially expected, being able to feed 400 people on previously unfarmable land?
Priceless. In fact, those 72 acres of cauldron terraces had - for the same acreage - double the productivity of the normal farms in the Landwasser Valley that Davos sat in.
Of course, I did need to subtract the cost of increased labor, higher fertilizer, and initial cost of setting up the terraces. If I added those to the cost of production, then it will be … years before the terraces would pay themselves off.
But, again, short term profit wasn't the point. Feeding the people and being able to sustain the growth of Fluelaberg was. Infrastructure like this terrace couldn't be made with mere profit in mind. This was the kind of thing long term planning and strategy called for.
And long term kind of planning was exactly what I have been doing for the past few years.
Because right now, all of the reports my rangers and … other spies have been submitting painted a rather damning picture.
The counts of the Habsburg Dynasty stockpiled for war, and their troop movements and stockpile locations made it clear that they were after my friend, ally, and cousin-in-law, Duke Henry of Carinthia.
The former Empress - the mother of all of the current independent counts of the Habsburgs - was also aware of the situation, but her hands were tied on this. Since the death of the former emperor, her power had been locked to a few convents, a few meager holdings, and the trade along the Bavarian Salt Road.
But she also made it clear that while we remained allies against other nobles and their meddlings, she will not work against her children, even if they were working to take land from her brother.
Typical European noble behavior. Or was it pragmatism? Strictly speaking, the vows of marriage and the expectations of women were different here compared to post 20th century America and Europe.
The idea of "woman leaving the house to join her husband's" was literal around here. When I put her actions into that context, her actions made sense.
In fact, she was being generous by not working against her brothers and letting me and Henry know that "yes, shit was going down but I'm not taking part."
So all of this food production? It was necessary.
Why?
Because if Henry got overrun and they came for me, then these valleys that the Compact sat within would become our fortress. No army would be able to reach Fluelaberg without getting run through my rangers' gambit. We prepared everything from poison and boulder traps to bombs and bigger bombs! Actually, I was getting a little excited about using them all.
And once the war was over, I had the Black Death to look forward to. It would kill so many people that it would change the sociopolitical landscape. Where before peasants were nothing but manpower to be burned at the whims of the nobility, nobles would start paying peasants to work for them.
Why?
Because the number of people who could farm would drop. Who else but the peasants would suffer the most when the Black Death came? It wouldn't be the nobles who could lock themselves in their castles and survive off the grain that they collected prior to the plague.
No.
Food production, even if it was not highly prized right now, would be critical in the years to come.
If not for myself, then it would be critical for my children and their children.
"Milord."
I looked up and saw that they completed the move.
"Everything is finished?" I asked as I briefly looked around.
"Yes, milord," the manager of the warehouse, a trusted man who's been with me for close to seven years now, nodded.
"Good. Then all of the old grain can be sold as I ordered," I hummed. "Everyone who's put work today can take half a bushel for themselves!"
That got the workers all fired up and thanking me.
I snorted.
"Hurry it up then, if you want to thank me! The daylight's burning out, and we need this done before the first snow!"
And then I paused as I saw exactly that.
The first snow.
…
The first snow in October? It was too early. Way too early.
'Snow that didn't melt quickly enough, snow that comes too quickly,' I thought to myself. 'Three years consecutively at that.'
The Little Ice Age was really kicking off.
---
Rudolph III of Austria
"They know."
His brothers looked at him.
Frederick and Leopold, each of whom were in charge of a large part of their house's domain, glanced at each other before Frederick, the second oldest, spoke up.
"Who knows, brother?" he asked.
"Gorizia and Fluelaberg. They know," he hissed out as one of his knights dragged in a former soldier, now criminal, to the edge of the table and made him kneel. Everyone turned to look at him. "A normal man, this man is. A normal soldier." Then he gritted his teeth and glared. "Until he sold information on food stockpiles near Carinthian borders."
All three brothers froze.
"Our plans?" Leopold, the youngest of the three brothers present, asked. He had been promised the Carinthian lands, however much they conquered from their uncle.
"In jeopardy," Rudolph hissed out. "If we spend too much time deliberating, then the Duke of Carinthia will get better and better support from Fluelaberg. You've all seen what their rangers can do when they want to trap someone."
He noticed Frederick shivered.
The Fluelaberg Rangers were vicious bastards. Sure, they lacked the speed, power, and overwhelming might their lord had, but they made up for it with unerring accuracy, unbeatable precision, and the sheer paranoia their traps struck into the hearts of their enemies.
Too bad Count Fluelaberg was joined at the hips with the Dukes of Carinthia and Carniola.
"Then should we not move in as quickly as possible?" Leopold asked.
"Don't be daft," Frederick replied. "If we move in before we are ready, then Count Fluelaberg will chew us up. He and his rangers are small in number. No matter how elite a unit was, they will die to an overwhelming number when cornered.
They needed to gather the full might of their house to achieve that.
And once Count Fluelaberg died at their hands, the little alliance he made with their mother, the Wittelsbachs, and the House of Gorizia was sure to break apart.
"We continue to gather our forces. We hire mercenaries. Perhaps even hire the rangers so that some of them will be far away from the mountain valleys when we strike," he continued. "But the most important thing we need to do is keep calm and -."
---
Isabella von Fluelaberg
"Habsburgs… are planning on betraying us?"
"Our alliance was strictly with your cousin and her husband, not her children," Hans sighed as he sat next to her in his office. She held his hands. "And obviously, they don't know us as their mother does. Doesn't care to see if this alliance is worth keeping. 28 years old, 20 years old, and 19 years old. All of them are just at that age where their ambition overwhelms every other concern, and their father died before he could properly show what being a smart ruler is like."
"Can it be averted at all? I know you don't want to go to war…"
"It pulls me away from crucial projects," he grunted in agreement. "Both infrastructure and … others."
By infrastructure, he meant his cauldron terraces. He'd shared with her the results of mere three such terraces which held 72 acres across their numbers, and gawked at what he'd achieved.
By others, he meant his magic. And she knew that he had been making strides with it.
"But I do want to see what my rangers have been cooking," he grinned.
She stared at him and rolled her eyes.
Still…
It scared her that this would be a fight in the extended family. Her cousin's children against her husband and another of her cousin.
It would be bloody, at the very least.
But it simply meant that she needed to make her stance clear.
She stood with her husband and their children, and if her relatives wanted to ruin that, then they needed to go.
"Is there something I can do to help?"
Hans blinked and looked at her.
"... You means aside from holding down the fort if I have to go out and kick ass?"
"Yes, aside from that."
Hans looked thoughtful before he nodded to himself. He walked away for a moment to his desk and came back with a notebook filled to the brim with paper.
"... This is more or less my plans for the future, including contingencies for a plague that may sweep across the entire country."
Her eyes widened as he sat down, opened it up, and then their discussions began. Confirmations. Questions. Reactions. Expected consequences. Direction of the nation. Disagreements. Acknowledgements.
And in the coming weeks, he gave her the authority to carry out multiple projects and the purse to go with it.