After the Downfall (59 page)

Whatever her reasons, he was glad she was there. She had the same fears as Zgomot. They boiled down to one basic question, which she asked Hasso in the tent they shared the night after they set out from the capital: “Can we really beat the big blond pricks?”

“Can we?” the German echoed. “Yes, of course we can.”

She gave him an exasperated look. “Will we?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. The look got more exasperated. But he went on, “I am not a god, to know things ahead of time. Maybe they ambush us. Maybe their magic works in spite of amulets. Maybe

... I don’t know what. All kinds of things can go wrong.” His mouth twisted. “Believe me when I say that. I know what I talk about.”

Could
Germany have beaten Russia? Maybe, if the Yugoslavs hadn’t fought, costing the
Wehrmacht
six weeks of good weather in the East. Maybe, if the second year’s campaign that led to Stalingrad hadn’t got fucked up from the start. Maybe Germany could have got a draw if she hadn’t thrown away so many panzers in the Kursk bulge. Almost two years lay between Kursk and Berlin, but it was downhill all the way after that.

“What are our chances?” Drepteaza asked.

That was a better question. Hasso shrugged. “Better than they would be without gunpowder. Better than they would be without amulets. Better than they would be without the Hedgehogs.”

“You’re supposed to pat me on the back and tell me everything will be fine,” Drepteaza said.

“Maybe it will. I hope so,” Hasso said. “But what you hope and what you get are two different beasts. I make no promises. I can’t without lying.”

“What if we lose?” she persisted.

“Even if we lose, I think we scare the Lenelli out of their hair.” That was what you did in Bucovinan instead of scaring somebody out of a year’s growth. “I think they think twice about messing with Bucovin after this fight.”

“Either that or they all get together and jump on us while they still can.” Drepteaza’s mood swung much more than usual. “If they see dangerous Grenye, then they will make friends. And they will stay friends till we are beaten.” The priestess sounded very sure of herself.

Hasso wanted to tell her she was wrong, but that wasn’t so easy. The Lenelli were full of contempt for the Grenye. It sprang from their certainty that the natives couldn’t
really
be dangerous. If the Grenye suddenly turned out to be opponents worth fighting, the Lenelli might go after them like hunters after wolves - or maybe more like hunters after mad dogs.

“About time they find out they make too many mistakes when it comes to Grenye,” Hasso said. “My kingdom made mistakes about its neighbors. It will spend a long time paying for them.”

“You see? You can make the verbs behave when you think about it,” Drepteaza said. For a moment, he was annoyed she’d changed the subject. Then he was just surprised. And, after that, he decided he’d eased her mind, at least a little.

Now if only he could ease his own.

Bucovinans with pots of gunpowder, fuses, and spades - and others with fuses and spades but no pots of gunpowder - did their best to delay Bottero’s march east. Hasso figured they would blow up a few Lenelli and make the rest thoughtful. None of them knew how to make gunpowder; he wanted to hold that secret as tight as he could as long as he could. It would leak eventually - such things always did. But eventually wasn’t now, and now was what counted.

All the natives who harassed the Lenelli also wore dragon-bone amulets. If Aderno and his pals wanted to try to pick them out by magic - well, good luck. Hasso kept gaining confidence in his amulet. Even after he’d come some distance from Falticeni, Aderno and Velona weren’t able to break through and give him a hard time. As far as he could tell, no Lenello magic had come down on Zgomot’s army at all. Just as much to the point, if the wizards wanted to set off the army’s gunpowder at a distance, the dragon bone would make sure they had their work cut out for them.

Had Hasso been a proper wizard, and had Zgomot had other proper wizards working for him, they could have used sorcery to stay in touch - not radio, but good enough. Hasso would have known what was going on closer to the border while it was going on. As things were, he had to wait for messengers the way Caesar and Napoleon did.

The news the messengers brought wasn’t good. Bottero was tearing up the countryside as he advanced, and enslaving or killing the Bucovinans who didn’t flee before him. None of the news was surprising - the Lenelli had done much the same the year before. That didn’t make hearing they were doing it again any more welcome.

Bottero seemed to be taking a more southerly track into Bucovin this time around. That surprised neither Hasso nor Zgomot. If the Lenelli came up the path of devastation they’d made the autumn before, they would have a harder time foraging off the countryside, and would need to bring more supplies with them. Better - from the invaders’ point of view - to let the natives feed their army.

“You can make things harder for them, Lord, if you burn the land in front of them,” Hasso said.

“I know.” Zgomot didn’t sound thrilled about the idea, and explained why: “But if I do that, I also make things harder for my own folk. Until I fear I cannot beat the Lenelli without doing that, I would rather not start the fires.”

Hasso bowed. “You are the king.” He used the Lenello word, not its closest Bucovinan equivalent. To his surprise, Lord Zgomot smiled. “Once again, Hasso Pemsel, you show that, whatever you look like, you are no Lenello. None of the big blond pricks would ever admit that a stinking little mindblind Grenye” - he too shifted to Lenello for the description - “could ever be a king.”

“That only proves they do not know you, Lord,” Hasso said. “Bottero is not a bad king, but you are a better one. I do not think the Lenelli have a king as good as you.”

“For which I thank you. The Lenelli are strong. They can go forward with good kings or bad. Bucovin has less ... less margin for error, is the way I want to put it. A weak Lord of Bucovin, or a foolish one, or even an overbold one, could cost my folk dear.”

He was right. He had a tiger by the ears, and he couldn’t let go. He couldn’t kick the tiger in the ribs, either, not unless he wanted to enrage it and get himself torn to pieces. He had to hang on, and hope he could grow his own fangs and claws (stripes were too much to hope for). Everything the army brought with it had to give him more of that hope than he’d had before.

“Lord, you
deserve
to win,” Hasso blurted.

“Maybe. I like to think so. Bottero and Velona would tell you otherwise, though,” Zgomot said with a shrug. “But even if I do, so what? We do not always get what we deserve. And do you know what? A lot of us, a lot of the time, are lucky that we do not. Was it any different in the world you come from?”

Hasso didn’t need long to think about that. “No, Lord,” he said. “No different at all.” If Germany had got what she deserved...
Well, then what?
He asked himself. The
Vaterland’s
hands weren’t clean. In that goddamn war, whose hands were? Maybe the scariest thought of all was that Hitler’s
Reich had
got what it deserved.

Evening twilight. Soldiers rubbing their sore feet. Other soldiers tending to horses and donkeys and oxen. Somebody playing a clay flute. Somebody else playing the bagpipes - or possibly flaying a cat. Flatbread baking on hot griddles. Millet stew bubbling in big pots. A cook swearing at a trooper who’d stolen some sausage.

And a sentry running back into the encampment calling, “A unicorn! A unicorn!”

The Bucovinan word literally meant
nosehorn.
Since that was also the literal meaning of the German word for
rhinoceros,
the wrong image formed in Hasso’s mind for a moment. Rautat poked him in the ribs. “You’re a hotshot wizard, right? You ought to be riding the bastard.”

“I’ve done it,” Hasso said. “This one probably just runs away from me.”

“You ought to try,” the underofficer persisted.

“Yes, you should,” Drepteaza agreed. “Think how much it would mean to our warriors to see that they had a wizard, a true unicorn-riding wizard, going into battle on their side.”

Infantrymen fought better when they knew a few panzers were in the neighborhood. The tanks didn’t have to do anything; they just had to be there. If the foot soldiers knew armor
could
back their play, they got bolder. Hasso had never thought of himself as a panzer, but he could see that the Bucovinans had a point.

“Well, I see what I can do,” he said, and then, louder, to the sentry: “Where is this unicorn?”

“Who -? Oh, it’s you,” the native said. “Come with me. I’ll take you to him. Do you think you can mount the beast?”

“I don’t know,” Hasso answered. “I want to find out.”

“What will you do if you
can
ride it?” the sentry persisted.

“Piss off the Lenelli,” Hasso said. “Isn’t that reason enough?”

“More than reason enough, you ask me.” The man grinned. He pointed towards a stand of oaks a few hundred meters from the encampment. “I went out there to make sure no Lenello spies were hiding in amongst the trees, and I saw the beast instead.”

Maybe it wasn’t
instead.
Maybe a unicorn had brought a Lenello wizard up here to see what the Bucovinan army was up to. Maybe he was sending word to Bottero’s army like a forward artillery observer back in Hasso’s world. Maybe... Maybe anything, dammit. Hasso made sure his sword was loose in the scabbard as he walked out to the trees. It wouldn’t do him much good against a Lenello soldier, but it might against a wizard. Those boys would depend on magic till they found out it didn’t work. Hasso sure hoped they would find out it didn’t, anyway.

How were you supposed to call a unicorn?
Simple. Make a noise like a virgin.
He shook his head. He really was losing it. Not only was the joke weak, it wasn’t even true, not in this world. He stepped around the trunk of a tree that had been growing there a few hundred years and ... there it was. It stared at him out of big black eyes a woman would have killed for.

“Hey,” he said softly - a noise more of recognition than anything else. In the dim, fading light, that pure white coat seemed to glow even more than it would have under bright sunshine. He saw right away that the unicorn was wild; it had never borne a Lenello wizard on its back. It was unshod. No one had gilded or silvered its horn or braided its mane and tail. It had no saddle or reins.

“Hey,” he said again, a little louder. He had a bit of honeycomb - a treat for his horse. He held it out to the unicorn. “Here you go. What do you think of this?”

He watched its nostrils dilate as they took the scent of the honeycomb - and, no doubt, his scent, too. Did magic have an odor? How could a unicorn tell a wizard if it didn’t? Maybe the way Aderno did: by magic.

Slowly, cautiously, the unicorn approached. It took the honeycomb with as much delicacy as a cat would have taken a bit of fish. Its mouth and breath were warm and moist against Hasso’s palm. After it finished, it looked at him as if wondering whether there was more. He reached out to stroke its nose. It let him do that. It felt like fine velvet under his fingers.

“Sorry,” he said. “That’s all I’ve got with me. There’s more back at the camp, though, if you want to give me a lift.”

It couldn’t possibly have understood him ... could it? It was just a beautiful animal... wasn’t it? What did he know about unicorns? Not bloody much. What he knew about this one was that it knelt and gave him an inviting look.

He wasn’t a terrible horseman, but he’d never ridden bareback before. He’d never ridden an animal without reins and a bit, either. The Lenello wizards didn’t do that - he’d seen as much. If he tried it and it turned out not to be what the unicorn had in mind, he was in a ton of trouble. But the last invitation more definite than this one he’d had was the one Velona gave him after he shot the Grenye who were chasing her.

Yeah, and look how that turned out,
his mind gibed. But you couldn’t win if you didn’t bet. He got on the unicorn’s back and patted the side of its neck. It rose to its feet as easily as if he didn’t weigh a thing.

“Wow,” he said, and then, “Come on. This way.” He pointed over toward the encampment, and damned if the unicorn didn’t head in that direction.

The horse the Bucovinans had given him was a plodder. This ... This was like riding lightning and fire. The unicorn’s hooves hardly seemed to touch the ground. He knew they must have, but they didn’t seem to.

When he came out of the little wood, the sentry’s jaw dropped. “Lavtrig’s dick!” he exclaimed. “You did it!”

“How about that?” Hasso knew he was grinning like an idiot. Well, if he hadn’t earned the right, who had?

As usual, the camp was a raucous place. He could tell just when the Bucovinans spotted him, because silence rippled out and through the place. People turned and looked his way, till all he saw were thousands of staring faces, all with wide eyes, most with mouths fallen open. He waved to the natives. “To victory!” he called. If he could have figured out how to say
In hoc signo
vinces!
in Bucovinan, he would have done that.

To victory!
seemed to do the trick. In a heartbeat, everybody was yelling it. The unicorn sidestepped nervously, but calmed down when he patted it again. He didn’t plan on leading a wild cavalry charge - his place was back with the artillery - but he had one hell of a mount under him. Of course, he’d thought the very same thing with Velona, too.

When Rautat came over to congratulate him on bringing back the unicorn, the beast snorted angrily, lowered its head, and aimed its horn at the underofiicer’s midriff. “Hey!” Hasso said.

“I wasn’t going to do anything,” Rautat said. He also backed off in a hurry, which made the unicorn relax.

“Cut that out, you,” Hasso told the animal. It turned its head and looked back at him as if to say,
Who’s
the boss here, anyway?
And it knew the answer, too - it was. Could you train a unicorn? Could you convince it that
you
were the boss? If you could, Hasso hadn’t started doing it yet - and he didn’t know how, anyway.