After the Downfall

Hasso went from one catapult to another. Each one had a shell on the casting arm. He wouldn’t do all the lighting this time, not with several catapults fighting at the same time. All he could do was fight one catapult and direct the rest. “Are we ready?” he asked. “Is everything the way it should be?”

“Ready!” the crews shouted. He hoped to God they were right. Catapults were complicated machinery for this world, and as liable to break down as panzers were back in the world he came from. Well, he’d done what he could do. Now most of it was up to the natives.

More horns blew. The Lenelli moved forward, slowly at first – they wouldn’t boot their horses up to a gallop till they came within missile range of the Bucovinan line. The Bucovinan knights would have to go forward, too, or take the charge with no momentum of their own. That worried Hasso. If something went wrong, the moving wings and the stationary center could come unglued and let the Lenelli in. He didn’t know what to do about it. He hadn’t seen anything he could do about it – except worry.

There was Bottero’s ba

Before long, Hasso recognized his former sovereign. Zgomot made a better administrator. In a fight, Hasso would have bet on Bottero every goddamn time.

And there was Velona, brandishing a sword. She wore a mailshirt, but her head was bare. Her long, fair hair swept out behind her. But that wasn’t what drew his eye to her. The goddess filled her; he could tell. She was beautiful and terrible and terrifying.

He glanced warily toward the sky. The day stayed bright and clear. Hasso allowed himself a sigh of relief. The worst thing the Lenello wizards could have done, as far as he could see, was to start a driving rainstorm. Dragon-bone amulets wouldn’t stop that. Trying to set off mines and launch shells with wet fuses would have been a nightmare. But the wizards hadn’t thought of it… this time, anyhow.

Off to his left, on the forest flank, a mine exploded too soon, and then another one. A Bucovinan there must have come down with buck fever and lit his fuses too soon. Some of the Lenello knights’ horses over there flinched inward, which threw their charge into a little confusion, but not enough, not enough.

And then a mine blew two horses off their feet fifty meters in front of the trees, and blasted another man out of the saddle. More mines went off as the foot archers moving up behind the knights came near. Some of them went down, too, and the rest, like any troops with half a gram of sense, hesitated about going forward. That was good.

But he didn’t have much time to dwell on the archers. The knights were nearing him with frightening speed. They looked as if they could ride down anything on earth, the way a company of panzers would have looked to foot soldiers in his own world. If the Hedgehogs panicked and broke and ran…

They didn’t. The men in the first row went to one knee, the better to receive the charge. Without Hasso’s telling them what to do, the Bucovinans in charge of setting off the mines in front of the Hedgehogs lit their fuses at just about the right time. He didn’t know whether to cheer or to puddle up – his students were going out into the world on their own, and they were doing well.

The world was also trying to break in on them. Velona shouted something. Hasso couldn’t make out what it was, but he shouldn’t even have been able to hear it from a range of several hundred meters, not through his own side’s yells, those of the other Lenelli, and the rising thunder of the horses’ hooves. He shouldn’t have been able to, but he did. The goddess, he thought uneasily.

Maybe – probably – the wizards were thwarted. Whatever power Velona had was wilder and stronger than theirs. It scared the bejesus out of him, because he didn’t know what its limits were or if it had any.

He didn’t know, but he was about to find out. He touched a glowing length of punk to the fuse on the shell in the catapult’s hurling arm. As soon as it caught, he jumped back, yelling, “Loose!”

Swoosh! Thump! The arm shot forward and thudded into place against the padded rest. Other swooshes and thumps said the rest of the catapults were shooting, too. Hasso breathed a prayer of thanksgiving to Whomever that no shell went off too soon. Blowing up a catapult crew would have been bad for morale. An air burst right above the Hedgehogs’ heads would have been worse.

Boom! Boom! Those were mines, going off a little too soon. Horses reared and snorted in fear, but the Lenelli fought them down and kept on coming. They wouldn’t panic the way they did the first time. Experience counted, here as anywhere else. You lived and you learned – if you lived. The Lenelli had nerve, too. Not even their worst enemies, among whom Hasso now counted himself, would have denied that for a moment.

Boom! Boom! More mines. This time, horses went down. Knights crashed to the ground or flew through the air. The charge was disordered, but it came on anyhow. German fifteen-year-olds advancing on Josef Stalin tanks with Panzerfausts couldn’t have shown more guts.

Things happened very fast now. Boom! Boom! Boom! Those were the flying shells bursting on and above the Lenelli and spraying lead balls and sharp fragments of bronze and iron through them. More horses fell. More knights got blasted.

Hasso thought they would break then. His catapult crew, like all the rest, worked frantically to reload the weapon and tighten up the ropes of hair that powered it. They grunted and cursed and sweated as they yanked at windlasses. They didn’t seem to have cranks. Hasso made a note to himself to do something about that before too long. He wondered if he’d remember.

Off on the wings, where the defense wasn’t so tough, the Lenelli engaged the Bucovinans. If the blonds broke through on either side, they might still win no matter what happened to their center. Germany had built up motorized panzer and panzergrenadier divisions, but the rest of the Wehrmacht, the bulk of the Wehrmacht, still relied on horses and shoe leather. Hasso had modernized some of the Bucovinan army, but not all. How well would the rest perform?

For that matter, the Lenelli weren’t beaten yet, even in the center. Hasso lit another fuse. “Loose!” Swoosh! Thump! The catapult flung it away. Boom! It blew up and hurt some blonds. In spite of the pounding to which they couldn’t reply, they kept on coming.

He’d heard that a charging horse would stop short, and wouldn’t impale itself on a picket fence of spearpoints. No doubt that was true – if the horse was left to its own inclinations. But determined riders could make their horses go forward against those long spears. They could, and they did.

Wounded horses shrieked like wounded women. Some of them fouled pikes as they fell. Others pushed forward into the gaps. So did dismounted Lenelli, trying to get within sword reach of the Bucovinans.

The spears held them out. Meshterul and the rest of the Hedgehogs’ officers deserved the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords. This was the first time they’d ever used their phalanx, but they performed like ten-year veterans. Every time a pike got fouled, another man stepped forward to get his point into the fight. Hasso just hoped they didn’t run out of men. They were only ten deep. Next time, they’d be deeper.

Was that Bottero there, a third of a meter taller than the natives? That was Velona, slashing away as if possessed – and so, no doubt, she was. If even she, if even the goddess, couldn’t break through… well, the Bucovinans had a chance, anyhow.