After the downfall

by Harry Turtledove

  "Ha!" Orosei's shout of triumph echoed over the field.

  The Bucovinan went to both knees this time, and bowed his head. How much chivalry was there here? Would Orosei send him back to his own side, especially since he couldn't fight in the battle ahead? The Lenello's sword rose, then fell with a flash of sunlight on the blade. Blood spouted. The body convulsed. Orosei picked up the head by the hair and turned to show it to the enemy.

  Still carrying his trophy, he went over to his horse, which was cropping dead grass not far away. The stink of blood made the beast snort and sidestep, but he grabbed the reins and swung up into the saddle. He rode back toward the Lenello line. Bottero's men cheered wildly. The Bucovinans stood silent as the tomb.

  "Toss me another lance, somebody," Orosei called as he drew near. "Mine cracked when I hit this bastard." He held up the head again.

  "Use mine," King Bottero said. "I'll take another one. Now they've seen: victory will belong to us."

  "So may it be!" Velona shouted.

  "So may it be!" the Lenelli echoed. If the embodiment of their goddess said so, they thought it had to be true.

  Hasso peered up the slight slope toward the Bucovinan line. "I don't see any striking column there," he said to Nornat, who rode beside him at the head of the one King Bottero would hurl against his foes.

  "Neither do I," Nornat said. "They haven't put one together yet, I guess. They copy things from us all the time, but they need a while to work out what to do with them and how they go. They aren't real big, and they aren't real bright."

  Bottero rode out in front of his army, not to challenge the enemy as Orosei had done but to harangue his own soldiers. "One more fight, boys!" he said. "One more fight, and then it's on to Falticeni. Then we take over Bucovin, and all the other Lenello kings turn green with envy and die. And we all get rich, and we all get estates, and we all get lots of slaves, and we all get plenty of pretty Grenye women to screw!"

  The soldiers cheered like maniacs. Hasso yelled along with everybody else. No German officer's speech had ever been so direct. But this was what war was all about, wasn't it? You killed the other guys and you took away what they had. Whether you talked about estates and slaves and women or about Lebensraum, it boiled down to the same thing.

  "All right, then!" King Bottero yelled. "Let's go get 'em! The goddess is with us!"

  "The goddess is with us!" the Lenelli shouted. Hasso looked over to Velona. She blew him a kiss. He sent one back to her.

  Bottero waved to the trumpeters. They blared out the charge. The Lenelli — and Hasso — set spur to their horses. They thundered forward. The striking column aimed straight for the little gap Orosei had noted in the Bucovinan line. Break through there and they'd cut the enemy army in half.

  While Bottero heartened his men, some Bucovinan bigwig or another was doing the same with the small, swarthy natives. They'd shouted, too, but the lusty cheers of the Lenelli all but drowned them out. As Hasso galloped toward the Bucovinans' battle line, he knew the same feeling of invincibility, of playing on the winning team, he'd felt in France in 1940 and in Russia in the summer of 1941.

  Once he'd been dead right to feel that way. Once…

  To his surprise, the waiting Bucovinans just held their ground. They didn't gallop forward to meet the Lenelli with impetus of their own, the way they had the first time the armies met. That went dead against everything he thought he'd learned about cavalry. "Are they going to stand there and take a charge?" he shouted to Nornat, trying to pitch his voice to carry through the drumroll of hoofbeats all around them.

  "Looks that way, the cursed fools," the Lenello answered. "They should have found out they couldn't do that a hundred years ago. Well, if they need a fresh lesson, we'll give 'em one." Below the bar nasal of his helmet, his lips skinned back in a predatory grin.

  Closer… Closer… Along with the thuds of the horses' hooves, the Lenelli were howling like wolves, both to nerve themselves for the collision and to scare the living piss out of the Bucovinans. Would the natives break and run? If this kind of charge were bearing down on Hasso, he knew damn well he would think hard about running himself.

  Here and there along the enemy line, archers started shooting at Bottero's soldiers. Beside Hasso, Nornat laughed what had to be the most scornful laugh the German had ever heard. "Do they think they'll even slow us down like that?" he said.

  One or two riders clutched at themselves and slid from the saddle. One or two horses crashed to the ground. One or two more fell over them, spilling their riders. The rest of the charge rolled on.

  Bucovinan foot soldiers set themselves, spears thrust forward in a forest of iron points to withstand the oncoming lancers. Did they really believe they could make the Lenelli stop that way? Could they possibly be so stupid? Hasso had trouble believing it.

  For a moment, he simply accepted that. All right, he had trouble believing the Bucovinans could be so stupid. Then what? Only at that point did alarm bells start clanging in his mind. The natives had to know the Lenelli thought they were stupid and inept. If they could play on that, take advantage of it…

  "Something's wrong!" Hasso shouted to Nornat. "They're trying to fool us!"

  "What?" Nornat yelled back.

  Before Hasso could say it again, the first Lenello horses fell into the lovingly concealed pits the Bucovinans had dug in front of their line.

  The horses screamed. So did the men on top of them. Hasso and Nornat weren't in the very first rank of the charge anymore; men on swifter horses had got a little ways ahead of them. But they were close, too close. Hasso reined in frantically. His horse saw the danger, too, and tried to swerve, but it was too near the edge. In it went, in and down. Hasso wasn't ashamed to scream, either.

  Then another falling horse's hoof caught him in the side of the head. Blackness swooped down on him. How the fight went from there… he had no idea.

  He came back to himself a little at a time. He was hearing things before he realized he was hearing them. He thought he made out words, but he didn't understand any of them. Had whatever happened to him — he didn't remember what it was, not yet — scrambled his wits for fair?

  Lenello. He had to think of Lenello, not just German. He felt more than a little pride at recalling that. But it didn't help. He thought he could understand Lenello if he heard it. Whatever this was, it wasn't Lenello.

  He felt as if he'd been dropped on his head from about five kilometers up. Concussion, he thought dully. He'd had a couple facing the Russians. Those damn Katyushas could pick you up and throw you around like nobody's business. He didn't think he'd ever had a headache like this one, though.

  He didn't want to open his eyes. He feared his head would fall off if he did — this was much, much worse than any hangover he'd ever known. And he was afraid to open them for another reason: he feared he might not see anything at all, or might see only hellfire. He wasn't a hundred percent sure he was alive.

  And when he forced himself to pull his eyelids apart, what he did see made him wonder and made him even more afraid: darkness shot through by the flickering flames of torches. If this wasn't hell, what was it? Were those demons gabbing not nearly far enough away? What language did demons speak? Hebrew, maybe?

  That was the scariest thought yet.

  But when Hasso sucked in a big breath of air that might have come out as a shriek, he calmed down instead of turning it loose. He smelled blood and shit and horses and unwashed men. That was the smell of a battlefield, not of the infernal regions.

  Then he remembered charging forward with the Lenelli. He remembered going into the pit. "Good God!" he said. "Those little bastards did fool us!"

  The Bucovinans must have won their battle, too, because those sure weren't Lenelli prowling through the pits right now. What happened to Orosei, and to Nornat, and to King Bottero?

  Sweet suffering Jesus, what happened to Velona?

  Sweet suffering Jesus, what's going to happen to me?

  A couple of torch
es were coming closer. The figures they illuminated weren't red-faced demons with horns and spiked tails. They were Bucovinans in tunics and baggy trousers and calf-high boots. That wasn't necessarily reassuring. The little swarthy men carried the torches upraised in their left hands and long knives dripping blood in their right.

  One of them stooped to cut a horse's throat. The beast sighed, almost as a man might have, and died. A moment later, the other one stooped, too, only the throat he cut belonged to a Lenello. The man's dying sound was on a slightly higher note than the horse's.

  They were getting closer. Hasso thought about fighting them — for about a second and a half. The way he felt, he couldn't have fought off a puppy that wanted to lick his face. He wasn't even sure he could twist free of the dead horses that squeezed him — luckily, without quite squashing him.

  What would they do if he played dead? Out of barely open eyes, he watched them finish another Lenello. Chances were they'd slit his throat on general principles. That seemed to be what they were here for.

  Could he surrender? He hadn't wanted to give up to the Ivans, for fear of what they did to prisoners — and because of all he knew about what the Wehrmacht did to Russian POWs. He knew some of the charming things the Lenelli did to Bucovinans they caught. How did Lord Zgomot's men return the favor? Do I want to find out?

  If he wanted to keep breathing, he did. The Bucovinans working their way through the pit killed another Lenello. They weren't especially malicious about it, which didn't mean they hesitated. And they were getting awful goddamn close now.

  What have I got to lose? Hasso thought. If I just lie here, they'll cut me a new grin any minute now. The best defense is a good offense… I hope. Please, Jesus.

  "Do you speak Lenello?" he asked — croaked, really.

  The little men started violently. One of them said something that had to be cussing. They both came toward him. He didn't like the smiles on their faces. Maybe just getting his throat cut was the best he could have hoped for. At least it was over in a hurry then. So many other interesting possibilities…

  Interesting. Right.

  "I speak your language, man out of the Western Sea," answered the native who hadn't sworn. He spoke it better than Hasso did, which still wasn't saying much.

  "Tell me your name, so my gods can spit on it when they bury you in dung in the world to come."

  He plainly still believed in their old-time religion, even if the Lenello goddess had given some Grenye different ideas. And he wanted to use Hasso's name to curse him. The Wehrmacht officer might have lied if he'd thought a Grenye curse would bite. He was sure he would have lied to Aderno. But he was also sure the natives couldn't work that kind of magic.

  And so he gave the fellow the truth: "I call myself Hasso Pemsel."

  It didn't mean anything to the one who'd asked for his name. The other one, though, said something else incendiary in his own guttural language. The two of them palavered, waving their arms — and those damn snickersnees. Finally, the one who admitted to speaking Lenello came back to that language: "We have orders to take you alive if we can. Do you yield yourself to us?"

  "Do I have a choice?" Hasso asked.

  "You always have a choice," the Bucovinan answered. "You can yield, or you can die right now."

  "What happens if I yield?"

  "Whatever we want." The native wasn't helping. But then, he didn't have to.

  Hasso sighed. "I yield." His head hurt too much for him to argue. He tried to twist out from between the dead horses, and discovered he couldn't. He couldn't have put up a fight even if he'd wanted to. "Help me out, please."

  The Bucovinan laughed, none too pleasantly. "Now I know you are the stranger we want. No Lenello would ever say please, not to the likes of us." Resentment — hatred? — simmered in his voice. He went back and forth with his buddy in their language. The other man gestured a fierce warning with his knife before going over to Hasso. They didn't believe in taking chances. In their boots, Hasso wouldn't have, either.

  He took the Grenye's hand. Grunting, the native put his shoulder against the corpse of the horse pinning Hasso's legs and shoved. With some help from the native, Hasso managed to wriggle free. He discovered he couldn't have run, either: his legs were asleep.

  Though small, the local was strong. He dragged Hasso out of the pit and laid him on the ground. There he relieved him of his belt knife. The other Bucovinan, the one who spoke Lenello, came over and peered down at him. "You have a holdout weapon?" the fellow asked, adding, "If you say no and we find it, you won't like that, I promise."

  "My left boot," Hasso said. "And under my left arm."

  They took the knives. "You're full of tricks, aren't you?" the one who spoke Lenello remarked.

  "Oh, yes? What am I doing here, then?" Hasso said with a bitter laugh.

  "Breathing," the Bucovinan replied, which echoed Hasso's own thoughts much too closely. "You want to keep doing it?" He didn't wait for an answer, but nudged Hasso in the ribs with a boot. "Can you stand up now?"

  "I… think so." The German sandbagged a little. He wanted to seem weaker and more harmless than he was. But he would have swayed on his pins any which way. The Bucovinans didn't instantly shove him into motion. More teams of little swarthy men with torches were moving over the battlefield, in the pits they'd dug and around them. Every so often, a native would stoop — and that, presumably, would be that for some luckless Lenello. "Do you — uh, did you — get the king?" Hasso asked.

  "No, curse it." The Grenye sounded unmistakably disgusted. "He fought his way clear. But he won't be going forward any more, by Lavtrig." He and the other Bucovinan swirled their torches clockwise when he named the deity. "The rest of you big blond bastards won't, either."

  I'm not one of those big blond bastards, Hasso thought. But he was blond and he was big by Grenye standards — and he'd fought for King Bottero. Keeping his mouth shut looked like a real good idea.

  Keeping his mouth shut about that did, anyhow. He couldn't help asking, "What about Velona?"

  "Who?" The native who spoke Lenello gave him a blank look.

  "The goddess," Hasso said.

  "Oh. Her? The Bucovinan spoke to his buddy. They both swirled their torches again, this time counterclockwise. What was that supposed to mean? Reverence? Fear? Warding? All of the above? The native went on, "No, we weren't too sorry when she got away. If we could have killed her, fine. But how would we keep her prisoner? It would be like keeping the sun in a roomful of kindling."

  He wasn't far wrong, not from what Hasso knew of Velona. No god or goddess possessed him, but he was a wizard… of sorts. Maybe that would do him some good. Maybe the land here wouldn't let him work magic. He'd have to see.

  "Come on." The native shoved him. "Move." Hasso moved — slowly, but he moved.

  They fed him. They gave him something that tasted like beer brewed from rye, which was just about as bad as that sounded. The native who spoke Lenello stuck with him as they took him to Falticeni. Hasso found out the fellow's name was Rautat, and that he'd worked in Drammen for several years before going home to Bucovin.

  "Why did you go?" Hasso asked. "Why did you come back?"

  "I had to see," the Bucovinan answered.

  They were standing next to a couple of trees by the side of the road, easing themselves. Three soldiers in leather jerkins aimed arrows at Hasso's kidneys in case he tried to get away. The persuasion worked remarkably well.

  "Yes, I had to see," Rautat repeated as he laced up his trousers. "You Lenelli can do all kinds of things we don't know how to do. You can make all kinds of things we don't know how to make. I worked for a smith. I wasn't even a 'prentice. I pumped the bellows. I carried things. I banged with a hammer. And I watched.

  My uncle is a smith, so I knew something about it — the way we do it, anyhow. Now I know a lot of your tricks, too, and I use them, and I teach them to other people who want to learn them. Other Grenye, I mean. My people." He jabbed a forefinger at his own chest
.

  You were a spy, Hasso realized, buttoning his own fly. Rautat watched that with interest. He watched everything Hasso did with interest. The Lenelli didn't use a fly fastening. Hasso had on his old Wehrmacht trousers.

  As they stepped away from the trees, the German nodded to himself. Rautat had been just as much a spy as an Abwehr agent who tried to steal the secrets of some fancy new British steel-manufacturing process. The only difference was, the Lenelli didn't seem to know their processes were worth guarding.

  And I didn't think of it, either, he reminded himself as he swung up onto the scrubby little horse they were letting him ride. He muttered angrily in German. He'd been Bottero's spymaster, and he'd been better at the job than any Lenello ever born. But he hadn't been good enough. How many just like Rautat were there, in all the Lenello kingdoms? Hundreds? Thousands?

  "What is that tongue you used? It's not Lenello," Rautat said. How many of those Grenye were as sharp as he was? Probably very few.

  "No. It's my own language," Hasso answered. "I'm not a Lenello."

  "You look like one," Rautat told him. Hasso shrugged. The dark little man plucked at his curly beard. "You don't sound like one, I will say." He took a scrap of parchment, a reed pen, and a little clay flask of ink from a belt pouch and scribbled a note to himself. Seeing Hasso's eyes on him, he said, "I learned your letters when I was in Drammen, too. We mostly use them now."

  "Yes, I know that," Hasso said. The crude warning the Bucovinans posted had used Lenello characters and, indeed, the Lenello language.

  "We had writing of our own before you big blond bastards came." Rautat sounded like a man anxious to prove he wasn't a savage and half afraid he was in spite of everything. "Your way is a lot quicker to pick up, though. It's mostly the priests who still write the old characters. They take years to learn, and who else has the time?"