After the Downfall

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