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-VB-

I stared down at the shorter woman who I\'ve already met to negotiate our help and the younger man who stood next to her.

"Our pay?"

"It is already prepared," Lady Planta, the Lady Dowager of Waldenberg, replied before gesturing towards the village. Indeed, carts had been made ready to transport all of the grain that we have been promised.

I grunted before turning to the young man.

Actually, he was around my age, so I couldn\'t even call him a young man despite my cumulative mental age. "Oi."

"And look where that got your father," I snipped back at him. "Lords, ladies, kings, queens, peasants, and serfs. These are all manmade titles, but understand that against might, none of these matter," I said as I casually pointed to and fro with my sword, making breezes around us with its broad blade. "When you piss off enough of us peasants, even your guards won\'t be able to stop a literal stampede of flesh. Don\'t forget that lest you end up just like your dear deadest dad."

He clenched his jaw at the insult delivered. "You think you\'re so powerful."

"I am powerful," I scoffed. "Otherwise, you and your mother here would not have hired me to help you lot out."

The grey sky above us crackled and rumbled.

I clicked my tongue irritably. Turning briefly to my men - because they were my men until we got back - I shouted at them. "Make sure the grains are properly covered! I don\'t want to deal with rotten shit!"

"AYE!"

I turned back to the young lord. "Be humble. Be kind. Be patient. Be ready. Be polite," I said. "You never know when doing any of those will give you an advantage. After all," I nodded to the lady dowager. "If she was rude to me, then I would have left after pillaging while you and your little fort would still be under siege, or worse, at the mercy of the late Count of Sax-Misox."

The boy grimaced before nodding.

I gave him a cheeky salute before turning around and walking down the steps of the staircase towards the castle town.

I kicked aside last of the burnt debris the defenders had used to block the stairway, ignoring how the burnt lumber that weighed over half a ton tumbled away from the force of my casual kick, and continued my way down.

"We\'re ready, boss!" Arnold yelled.

"Alright, then we\'re moving, people!" I shouted back, and my group of volunteers - no casualties from the battle - slowly pushed forward the six carts and the five cows; I agreed to trade the four cart\'s worth of grain in exchange for those cows and got agreement from my men that those cows would be my share of this successful(?) pillage. Each of those cows now pulled a cart with a yoke around their neck.

Some of the men pushing the cart, however, were not my volunteers but people I had seen while growing up.

I got behind the yoke of the wagon and began to pull.

My dad quickly got to my side.

"When did you end up as a mercenary captain?" I asked him.

"I\'m not," dad replied. "That would be Hans, father of Fredrick and Jordan."

Right, I remembered him. While sharing the same given name as me, no one confused the two of us because everyone would call me Little Hans and him Bearded Hans.

"I didn\'t see him," I commented.

"He\'s in our own cart. You did him in real well."

"Dead?"

"No, broken leg."

"Oh. Good. I\'d hate to write to Jordan about how I killed his pops."

Dad rolled his eyes. "You know Jordan can\'t read or write."

"But that\'s not the point. If I kill a guy\'s dad, both of whom I knew, then I better be upfront about what and how it happened."

"... You\'ve grown."

"Well, yes? I did get a little taller," I hummed happily.

"No, that\'s not what I mean," he sighed. "Since when were you the responsible one?" he asked before glancing at my men again. "And they follow you."

"Of course. Only volunteers for this mission. Anyone who did anything I told them not to gets the blade."

Dad\'s face darkened. "I didn\'t know you were so free with your blade."

I scoffed. "You mean how can I be not freer? I told them time and time again what my expectations were. No raping, no senseless killing, and stuff like that. I\'m just glad I didn\'t have to put us all through actual pillage."

"... Sorry, I didn\'t expect that\'s what you meant. I thought you were … being a baron rapinatore."

I actually looked at him in shock. "Wait, you thought…?"

He looked sheepish. "I did talk to a few of your men, but they weren\'t forthcoming with details."

It … actually hurt me a little, emotionally, that my dad thought I was some kind of stealing and raping murderer, because what was a robber baron if that wasn\'t the case?

I wanted to snap at him but reined it in. I knew that our reunion wasn\'t exactly a rose and cherry-scented joyous occasion. Battlefield seldom was not a good place for a reunion. I definitely did not make him feel good about what might have happened since he last saw me when I stood over him and our friends and neighbors with a bloodied sword and a bear fur cape that made me loom over everyone with how much volume it added.

I must have looked like a warlord.

What parents want to see their kid grow up to become a warlord? That was a failure for any parents.

Any real and genuine parents, that was.

"... Tell me about what you\'ve been doing?"

-VB-

Arnold blinked. "You want to know about the boss?"

The mercenary supposedly from the boss\'s home valley in the lands of Uri nodded. "Yes," he said curtly.

He wasn\'t sure what he should say or shouldn\'t say. After all, boss said a lot of things in the past, but often without context. For example, when he was still just working for the boss and not being his pseudo-man-at-arms, the boss liked to talk about how information could make or break communities and kingdoms. The "gem-faceting" that he taught Alvia was wondrous, and understood that such a thing was indeed "community-breaking."

Well, he knew "intellectually" - a word Hans used to describe things one knows in the head but not in practice - that it was "community-breaking" but not really emotionally or spiritually. He still didn\'t quite understand why people would pay so much for shiny rocks.

Maybe it was just him. After all, he preferred to imitate Hans\'s intense and outright suicidal trainng regime instead. There was something awesome about a muscular body.

"Okay, I guess it\'s not gonna hurt anyone to know what he does in his free time."

The man looked eager.

"He trains."

The man\'s shoulders dropped. "Still?"

"Still? Oh, right. You\'re supposed to be from his home. So he trained like he does at his home, huh? Swinging that giant iron slab he calls a sword as if it was a wooden training sword?"

The man looked disturbed. "No… he only swung a wooden training sword he made on his own."

"Ha! That\'s just like the boss. He makes everything on his own, even though he really shouldn\'t. Does he have a forge back in his childhood home, too?"

"...No?"

"... Really? Boss really likes working with metal." Arnold narrowed his eyes. "Are you sure this is the same Hans we\'re talking about here? I mean, you knew about his training, but nothing else seems to fit…"

"No, he is my son!"

Arnold blinked. "Wait, the boss is your son? And you\'re a mercenary? That\'s not what he said about his family."

"We\'re only here because Uri has an understanding - had an understanding - with the Count of Sax-Misox. Something about not liking the Prince-Bishop of Chur."

"Ah, so complicated lord stuff."

"Complicated lord stuff," the man nodded in agreement. "But we are herders and farmers."

"Ah, okay." Arnold paused. "What else did you want to know?"

Boss\'s father hesitated. "Is he married?"

"Oh. No, he isn\'t. My father wants to get my sister to marry him, though, but she\'s not interested?" When he saw the man frown, he quickly spoke up. "It\'s not that Hans is not worthy but more that my sister is more interested in what he teaches her."

"He … teaches?"

"Yes. He taught me and my sister how to read, write, and do numbers."

All of the little things that didn\'t matter, he told this supposed father of the boss. If he wasn\'t boss\'s father, then he would come back to take his pound of flesh from the deceiver. If he was, then he was and that would be all.

-VB-

Louis stared down at the wooden fort that stretched the entire width of the narrow valley.

It had taken them all a week to reach his son\'s new home, and what he heard and doubted but now saw and believed … awed him.

Four months.

His son had used those four months to erect a wooden fort and used it to fight off against an army.

As they drew closer towards the fort, he saw people - villagers, if his son was to be believed - quickly take up their stations on the walls. This soon changed when one of them began to excitedly point and shout. No more than five minutes later, the gatehouse opened and a small group of villagers came rushing out to greet them.

Though he had seen the faces and reactions of the men who followed his son to battle, it was the faces of the villagers that truly told him the full story.

They respected him. A few feared him, yes, but most of them respected and depended on him. He recognized those because those were the expressions many of his own neighbors wore when they looked at him for help.

Louis felt conflicted. He would admit not readily but firmly that he didn\'t quite need to raise Hans, not like his other children. Hans always did things on his own. Always thought and said things that made little sense then but made more sense later. It was hard to reconcile that introspective and lonely child with someone who now stood next to him.

"You changed, and I think you\'ve changed for the better."

Hans scoffed. "I just wanted to live in the mountains and do my own thing."

Louis laughed.

That sounded just like his son.

"Care to show your father around your home?"

"Sure. Why not?"

-VB-

A/N: And that is the end of the first "book" of Swiss Arms! 31k ish words, so it\'s a short light novel.