After the Downfall

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 a

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 ca

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 ru

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.