After the downfall

XXVI

Drepteaza rode with the army, too. Hasso wasn't sure she was there to help him translate or just because she couldn't bear to stay behind. He wouldn't have wanted to wait back in Falticeni, either. Better to know than to worry about every courier who came into town.

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.

He did know he wasn't about to put up with the unicorn's doing anything like that to Drepteaza. To his surprise, it didn't even start. It stood quietly and let her come close.

"Boy, I like that!" Rautat said. "What's she got that I don't?" He snickered, coming up with his own obvious answer to that. Drepteaza bent down, picked up a pebble, and threw it at him. The unicorn let out a snuffling noise and bobbed its head, as if to say he had it coming.

"Go get some more honeycomb," Hasso told the underofficer. "I promised, and maybe that makes it put up with you." Rautat nodded and scurried away.

"Do you — do you think I could touch it?" Drepteaza asked.

"I don't know," Hasso answered. "You can try — but be ready to get out of the way in a hurry if it doesn't want you to." Without bit, reins, and stirrups, he had next to no control over the unicorn. If it decided to rear, for instance, all he could do was grab its mane and hang on for — literally — dear life.

Eyes wide and shining, Drepteaza stepped up alongside the unicorn. She reached out and set her palm on the side of its neck. "Oh," she whispered. "It's like… I don't know what it's like. But it's wonderful. It's — more finely woven than a horse, isn't it?"

"Yes." That was a better way of putting it than Hasso had found for himself.

"Thank you," she told him, and moved away. Had Velona been standing there, she would have been wild to ride the animal. Drepteaza was sure she couldn't, and didn't try.

Hasso suddenly wasn't so sure himself. He slid down from the unicorn's back. "Wait!" he called to Drepteaza. She stopped. A few quick strides brought him over to her. She let out a startled squawk when he picked her up. It was easy — she couldn't have weighed more than forty-five kilos.

"What are you doing?" she said. But she needed only a moment to realize exactly what he was doing. "No! Stop! You can't! The unicorn won't let you! The unicorn won't let me — "

And, sure enough, the unicorn looked extremely dubious when Hasso started to put Drepteaza on its back. "Cut that out!" he said again. "She's not going to hurt you. Nobody's going to hurt you." He still didn't think the unicorn could understand him, but he wasn't a hundred percent sure it couldn't.

Rautat chose that exact moment to come back with the honeycomb, which didn't hurt. Hasso set Drepteaza down for a moment and kept his promise to the unicorn. Then he picked her up again.

She had the sense not to kick and flail. She alighted on the unicorn's back as smoothly as she could, and sat very still once she got there. The animal snorted and rolled its eyes, but it didn't try to buck her off.

Hasso patted its flank. "Walk," he told it, and damned if it didn't take a couple of steps.

"It can't do that," Drepteaza said. "I'm not magic!"

"You are to me, babe," Hasso said. She gave him a look that warned she would have a lot to say to him later, but this wasn't the time or place. Pretending he didn't notice, he went on, "Maybe it just needs someone who can do magic close by. Or maybe the Lenelli are full of shit. Who knows?"

"We could never ride them," Drepteaza said. "If we caught them and tried to tame them, they starved themselves to death. But I'm really on it, aren't I?"

"You really are. And everything is good, yes?"

"Yes!" she said, but then, "Maybe you'd better get me down. I don't think I want to push my luck."

"All right." Hasso took her in his arms again. He wanted to give her a quick kiss before he set her on the ground, but he didn't. He didn't want to look like a big blond taking advantage of her in front of her people. As her feet touched the ground, she patted him on the hand, as if to tell him he'd done that right.

"I'm a Grenye," she said. "I'm a Grenye, and I've ridden a unicorn. Who could have imagined that?"

"Will it carry other people?" someone asked.

"It won't carry me, the stupid creature," Rautat said. The glare the unicorn gave him told the world he was right, honeycomb or no honeycomb.

Wondering whether the unicorn disliked Grenye men in particular, Hasso asked a cook's wife if she wanted to try it. "Sure, if the creature will let me," she said.

She giggled when he lifted her off the ground. He didn't giggle; she was at least fifteen kilos heavier than Drepteaza. But the unicorn made it very plain it didn't want her on its back. "Sorry," Hasso said, setting her down.

"Don't worry about it, foreign sir," she replied with more grace than a lot of noblewomen probably would have shown under the same circumstances. "I know I'm no priestess. The unicorn must know the same thing."

Did it? If it did, how? The cook's wife smelled of garlic. But so did Drepteaza. All Bucovinans did; they ate the stuff with everything except melons and strawberries. So what made the difference? The unicorn wasn't talking.

Lord Zgomot came over to see why people were kicking up a fuss. "A unicorn?" he said. "Well, well. I have never been lucky enough to see one close up before." He gave Hasso something that was more than a nod but less than a bow. "An advantage to having a wizard with us that I had not thought about."

"It let me on its back, Lord!" Drepteaza exclaimed. "Me!"

"Really?" Zgomot did bow to her. "I am jealous."

"Do you want to try, Lord?" Hasso asked. Zgomot wasn't much heftier than the cook's wife. Hasso thought he could get him onto the unicorn's back. Whether the unicorn would put up with it…

"Me?" The Lord of Bucovin sounded surprised.

"If it doesn't want you up there, it lets you know, but it doesn't hurt you. It is a polite unicorn," Hasso said.

That made several Bucovinans smile, so it probably wasn't just the word he should have used. But what the hell? It got his meaning across. And the cook's wife affirmed that she'd tried, failed, and still had all her giblets. Lord Zgomot plucked at his beard. "Well, why not?" he said. "Let us see what will happen."

The unicorn let him come up alongside it. It let him touch it, which seemed to impress him as much as it had Drepteaza. "Can you lift me up there?" he asked Hasso.

"I think so, Lord," the German answered. "You don't eat a big lunch, I hope?"

Zgomot smiled a crooked smile. "No, I was moderate." Wonderingly, he stroked the unicorn again. You had to touch a unicorn like that. If you were a man, it was like touching your first girl, only more so. "Whenever you are ready," Zgomot said.

Hasso picked him up. The unicorn laid back its ears and snorted when the Lord of Bucovin's behind touched its back, but it didn't buck or run wild or do any of the other things that could have made Zgomot's bodyguards use Hasso for a pincushion. "You are on a unicorn," Hasso told him.

"I am on a unicorn." Lord Zgomot sounded amazed. Well, who could blame him?

How the Bucovinans cheered! Drepteaza looked as proud of her sovereign as could be. And Hasso said, "King Bottero never does this."

"No? He is missing something, then," Zgomot said. "Will it walk for me?" He urged the unicorn forward as if it were a horse. But it wouldn't go, not even the couple of steps it had for Drepteaza. Shrugging, Zgomot slid off. "I am a Grenye, and I have been on a unicorn," he declared, as Drepteaza had. By the way he said it; he might have been the first man to set foot on the moon.

His subjects cheered louder than ever. Hasso looked at the unicorn. It looked back at him. If it didn't wink, he was losing his mind. Or maybe he was losing his mind if he thought it did wink. No one else seemed to notice. Was he going to start collecting omens and portents?

Why not? Everybody else in this world did. And, as far as he could see, a winking unicorn couldn't be anything but a good one.

A Bucovinan named Shugmeshte was almost out of his mind with glee. He was one of the gunpowdermen who'd gone forward to slow down Bottero's advancing army. "I fooled 'em!" he told Hasso and Zgomot. "Bugger me blind if I didn't fool 'em!"

"What did you do?" Hasso asked.

Shugmeshte swigged from a mug of beer. "So I dig holes in the road and run fuses to them, right? This is before the big blond bastards get there, you understand. So then I plant some real jugs in the field alongside, but real careful-like, so you can't spot 'em easy."

Hasso grinned." I think I like the way this story is going." The Lord of Bucovin nodded. Hasso said, "Well? Tell us more."

"So the blond pricks come by," Shugmeshte said. "So they see there's trouble in the road. So they get smart — or they think they do. So they ride into the field so whatever happens in the road doesn't hurt 'em. So I light the fuses, and bam! They go flying! I blew up a unicorn, I did."

"I'm not sure I want to hear that," Hasso said — he was still riding the wild one himself. But he clapped Shugmeshte on the back. "You do good — you did good. And this says something important."

"What?" Zgomot asked.

"It says the amulets really do keep Lenello wizards from spotting gunpowder. This is good news." Hasso wondered whether Shugmeshte had blown Aderno to hell and gone. That would be very good news. He could hope, anyhow.

"Ah." The Lord of Bucovin nodded. "I see. Yes, what you say makes good sense. You seem to have a way of doing that."

"Thank you, Lord," Hasso said. Coming from a resolutely sensible fellow like Zgomot, that praise meant something.

Zgomot turned back to Shugmeshte. "Are you ready to do this to the Lenelli again?"

"Lavtrig, yes!" the gunpowderman exclaimed."We can hurt them. We can scare them. We've never been able to scare them before. I like it."

"Go, then," Zgomot said. Shugmeshte saluted: clenched fist over his heart, the same gesture the Lenelli used. How long ago had the Bucovinans adopted it? Did anyone here even remember? Hasso wouldn't have bet on it. Zgomot nodded to Hasso. "We have kept security as well as we could. None of the gunpowdermen knows how to make the stuff. Not many folk besides us and the men who get them — oh, and Scanno — know our amulets are made from dragon bone."

"This is how you should do things, Lord," Hasso said. "Sooner or later, secrets get out, but you always want it to be later, not sooner."

"You do make sense," Zgomot told him. "One of the first things a ruler learns is that secrets always get out."

Hasso thought of the American bazooka. It was a wonderful weapon — it let a foot soldier wreck a panzer without needing to creep suicidally close. As soon as the Germans saw it, they knew they wanted something like it. They made capturing one a top priority. Once they had one, the Panzerschreck got into production in a few months. And it was better than the bazooka that spawned it. With a larger-caliber rocket, it had a longer range and could pierce thicker armor.

"Later is better," Hasso said again.

Once the Lenelli got their hands on some gunpowder — and they would, because his fuses were imperfectly reliable — how long would they need to figure out what went into it? Not too long, odds were: none of the ingredients was especially rare. How long would they need to start making their own? That could take a while. They would need to work out the right proportions. Then they would have to figure out how to mix them without blowing themselves a mile beyond the moon. So it wouldn't be a few months. But it might be only a few years.

Cannon! Can I build a cannon? Hasso got the same answer he always did — maybe, but not right now.

And how long would the Lenelli take to realize dragon bone was thwarting their spells? Getting their hands on an amulet wouldn't be hard, but how could you sorcerously analyze something that didn't let you work magic? Damn good question, he thought.

Even if they did know, what could they do about it? Even if you knew what water was, could you get something to burn in it?

He wished he hadn't thought of it that way, because you could if you were sly enough and smart enough. Magnesium would burn even underwater. If you tossed a lump of metallic sodium into water, it would start burning all by itself.

So… did the Lenelli have the sorcerous equivalent of sodium? Hasso shrugged. How was he supposed to know? He was a stranger here himself.

The Lenelli — the Lenelli of Bottero's kingdom, anyhow — had Velona. If she wasn't sodium, Hasso couldn't imagine what would be. Did they know how to use her, or perhaps the goddess, to best advantage? He shrugged again. One more thing he couldn't be sure of.

Well find out, he thought, a little — or maybe more than a little — uneasily.

Zgomot knew where he wanted to make his fight. Hasso hadn't been there before, so he couldn't judge the position firsthand. When he listened to Zgomot and Rautat talk about it, it sounded good. Sometimes you had to assume the other guys on your side knew what the hell they were doing.

Sometimes you got royally screwed making assumptions like that, too. Hasso had to hope this wasn't one of those times.

Knowing where his own force would stand let Zgomot chivvy Bottero in the direction he wanted him to go. Bucovinan raiding parties shoved the Lenello line of march a little farther south than it might have gone otherwise. With a little luck, the invaders wouldn't even notice they were getting shoved.

Peasants fled before the Lenelli. They clogged the roads. In the Low Countries and France, fleeing civilians had worked to the Wehrmacht's advantage. They slowed up the enemy. Then, years later, German civilians fled before the Ivans and made life difficult for the army. What went around came around.

At Hasso's suggestion, Zgomot tried channeling the refugees down some roads, with luck leaving others clear so his soldiers could move on them. It didn't work as well as Hasso hoped. The Bucovinan traffic cops were trying something they'd never done before, and the peasants didn't want to listen to them.

You did what you could with what you had, that was all. With a couple of machine guns and enough ammo, he could have slaughtered the Lenelli without losing a Bucovinan. With a battery of 105s, a forward observer, and a couple of radio sets, he could have slaughtered them before they got within ten kilometers of him. With experienced German Feldgendarmerie personnel, he could have kept the peasants from mucking up the roads so badly.

As things were, the soldiers had to push through and past the farmers and their livestock. They lost time doing it. They lost less time than they would have with no Bucovinans directing traffic, but more than Hasso liked.

"We will use more gunpowder in front of the Lenelli to slow them down, too," Zgomot said when Hasso complained. "Things will even out."

"So they will." Hasso knew he sounded surprised. He should have thought of that himself. Good thing somebody did. No, no flies on Zgomot. Who was the barbarian, anyway?

One evening, Hasso saw the smoke of Lenello campfires — or maybe of farmhouses the Lenelli were burning — rising against the bright western sky. "Soon now," he said.

"Yes." Zgomot nodded. He was never a talky man. The closer the battle came, the less he said. His whole realm rode on this, and he felt the pressure. Well, why wouldn't he, the poor son of a bitch?

Hasso said, "We put the Hedgehogs in front of the catapults, yes?" The Lord of Bucovin nodded. Hasso continued, "On their flanks, we dig trenches. That way, we worry not so much about other troops protecting them."

"Bottero's men will see the trenches," Zgomot said.

"Ja. So what? They see they can't get past them. They go fight somewhere else. We want them to do that, yes?"

"Yes." Zgomot nodded. "We will dig — if we have time."

More smoke fouled the horizon the next day. The day after that, the Bucovinans came to Zgomot's chosen battle site. Hasso smiled when he saw it — the Lord of Bucovin could pick 'em, all right. Well, the German had already found that out the hard way. If Zgomot couldn't pick 'em, Hasso would still be fighting for the other side. Falticeni might have fallen. If it hadn't, it would this time around for sure. And he would still be bedding Velona. Details, details…

Details here looked good. A small river anchored the Bucovinan right — the Lenelli wouldn't turn that flank. On the left, a forest made it hard for the enemy to get through. Zgomot would have to post some soldiers in there, but not many. If Bottero wanted to get past the Bucovinans, he'd have to come right at them.

And he would. Hasso knew the Lenello king well enough to be sure of that. Down in his gut, Bottero wouldn't believe a bunch of Grenye savages could stop his knights. Yes, they'd done it the autumn before, but with a trick. He'd have his wizards looking for pitfalls this time. He wouldn't get fooled the same way twice, and he wouldn't think the natives could come up with two new things in a row.

By now he would know about gunpowder, of course. Bucovinans swarmed over the field in front of where they would post their line. At Hasso's direction, they dug dummy mines and planted real ones. A lot of the real ones were nearer the trees, where soldiers could light the fuses without risking their lives… too much. Minefields weren't made to stop enemies, though. They were made to channel them. These would aim the Lenelli right at the catapults.

That would be great — if the Hedgehogs did their job. Could they really hold off horsemen? Could they, say, hold off a deep striking column? If they couldn't, Lord Zgomot's strong position was, in a word, fucked. If they can't, I am, in a word, dead, Hasso thought.

He spoke to them: "You have to stand fast. No matter what, you have to. If you do, we win. Bucovin wins. If you don't, you screw us all. Have you got that?"

"Yes!" they shouted. They seemed eager enough. How eager they'd be when Lenello knights on big horses couched lances and thundered down on them, Hasso would just have to see. Even in the fight the Bucovinans lost the autumn before, he'd thought they were plenty brave. Now they had better tools to be brave with. Maybe that would turn the trick. He had to hope so.

Scouts rode out of the west, pointing over their shoulder as they came. Most of them rode donkeys, not horses; the greater part of the horses Bucovin had were under Bucovin's knights. The shouts the natives let out gradually turned into words, and the words were, "They're coming!"

The Lenelli reached the field late that afternoon. Bottero's banner fluttered, big and bright and red in the distance. Velona would be somewhere over there. Hasso spotted several unicorns. The wizards had come in force. Well, he hadn't expected anything else.

Zgomot's men stood in line of battle, ready to fight. A Lenello rode forward, waving green branches as a sign of truce. He came straight toward the center of the line — right where the charge would likely go in. He was scouting the ground, but what could you do? When he got close, he shouted, "Tomorrow, you die!" in Lenello and rode away without waiting for an answer.