Re: Counter
Bring your buckler and let their arrows swash against it.
Seriously, a single shield cuts the effectiveness of archery tremendously. A high skill archer can trade-off skill for penalties on the target's Dodge roll, but he can't do squat about a shield.
Run up to them while their arrows bounce off your shield, shield-slam them to take away their mobility, and then engage in a sword-versus-bow contest at point blank range. You should probably win.
As a dedicated melee-ist, you're probably not going to beat a dedicated archer at range. I don't advise messing around with crossbows - a Heroic Archer has a much longer effective range than a high DX swashbuckler who dropped a few CP in Crossbow, and a much better rate of fire. He's happy to take shots at 50 yards; you can't hit (even if you aim) much past 30 yards.
Get fast, bring a shield, chase down those archers, knock off them over, and melee them to death. Bows have all kinds of advantages, but they're terrible for parrying.
Also, some of your allies should get ranged attacks. Eventually you'll deal with flying foes, or foes on the other side of a river, or something that you can't reach, and then your group will want ranged attacks. Heck, it's perfectly sensible for you to carry a pistol or a pistol crossbow for those situations. But a swashbuckler generally does better against archers on the ground by bringing a shield and running them down.
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