After the Downfall

hadn’t swept them apart. Later … Hasso shook his head. He’d worry about that later, by God.

“Look for the unicorn,” he told the men with him. “We have a better chance of spotting the animal than we do of spotting the wizard.”

The troopers nodded. Aderno looked surprised, as if that hadn’t occurred to him. Maybe it hadn’t; he didn’t always operate within the restrictive confines of the real world himself. After a moment, he added, “The Grenye may have taken Flegrei away, too. It’s possible that they can get him to do what they want if they hurt him enough. But no Grenye can ride a unicorn. So they’d likely kill it first – they can’t deal with it any other way.”

That made sense to Hasso, who gave the wizard a mental apology. He didn’t waste time on a spoken one. He was too busy trying to look every which way at once. Out away from the Lenello army, he felt the way he had behind the front in the Soviet Union. Every tree, every rock, every bush was liable to be dangerous. And you’d never know which one till too late. How many eyes were watching him and his comrades right now? How many Bucovinan fists tightened on weapons? Hasso couldn’t see anybody, but that didn’t mean nobody could see him. Oh, no.

But would the men of Bucovin have enough soldiers back here to take on so many Lenelli? He could hope not, anyhow.

The farther from the security of Bottero’s main force he got, the more he worried, the more his head swiveled back and forth, back and forth. He watched the Lenelli with him. The big blond knights also seemed to be trying to grow eyes in the backs of their heads.

“I wouldn’t want to do this when the sun was going down, not for all the beer in Bari,” one of them said. Several others nodded. Hasso had no idea where Bari was, but he understood the sentiment just fine.

Not far from the road, a farmhouse was charred wreckage. Had the Lenelli torched it, or did the retreating Bucovinans do it themselves? Whatever the answer was, would that matter to the peasants whose home was only a ruin? Hasso had trouble making himself believe it.

Fire had also run through the fields, which inclined him to believe the incendiarism was Bucovinan work. King Bottero’s men would have taken the nearly ripe millet for themselves … if they had the time, and if flames from the burning buildings hadn’t got loose. So hard to be sure about anything you didn’t see for yourself. Too damned often, it was hard to be sure about things you did see.

A Lenello stabbed out a pointing forefinger. “What’s that behind the barn there? Something white, I think.”

Hasso hadn’t noticed it till the soldier pointed it out. It wasn’t much more than a flash; the barn hid it pretty well. That made him apprehensive. So did the fruit trees within easy bowshot of the barn. All the same, he said, “We have to check it out.” The knights nodded with the air of men who knew they were liable to be sticking their dicks in a meat grinder and also knew they had no choice. Or did they? Hasso turned to Aderno. “Do you sense an ambush?”

After a few passes and a murmured versicle, the wizard shook his head. “I sense no enemies close by,” he said. But he didn’t sound happy about his own judgment, either, for he added, “If we were in Lenello-ruled land, I would be surer.”

It wasn’t magic. The Lenelli swore it wasn’t, anyway. But the countryside of Bucovin liked the Grenye better than it liked their foes. The blonds had been grumbling about that ever since they crossed the border. “We go like we expect an attack,” Hasso said.

Nobody quarreled with him. One knight said, “You may be a foreigner, but you’ve got your head nailed on tight, by the goddess.” That made Hasso feel good.

That good feeling didn’t last long – only till he got a closer look at the flash of white the alert Lenello had spotted. It was a unicorn; it was on the ground; and it was dead. Blood marred the pristine perfection of its coat: blood from at least a score of wounds. Hasso saw some that came from arrows, others from spears, and a few sword cuts as well. The unicorn’s silvered horn wasn’t bloodied; the beast hadn’t had the chance to fight back.

“You hate to see them hurt,” Aderno said. Hasso found himself nodding. Seeing a unicorn brought down that way was like looking at the corpse of a beautiful woman caught in a bomb blast. Hasso had had to do that more often than he cared to remember. In a way, this was even worse. A beautiful woman could be a deadly enemy. The poor unicorn didn’t know anything about the war between Lenelli and Grenye.

Somehow, Hasso didn’t think the Grenye of Bucovin would have appreciated the distinction.

“Here’s the wizard,” a Lenello knight called, pointing into the woods.

Hasso swung down from his horse and tossed the reins to another Lenello. There didn’t seem to be any Bucovinans close by. He drew his sword anyway.

Because of the unicorn, the smell of blood was already thick in his nostrils. It got thicker. He walked around a scrubby oak sapling and got a good look at what the enemy had done to Flegrei.

He swore softly, in Lenello and then in German. He’d seen such things on the Eastern Front, when the Ivans got hold of some Germans. He’d seen his countrymen do the like to Russians they caught. It jolted him here all the same. The men who started seeing how clever they could be with their knives always aimed to make their foes afraid – if they aimed at anything past a little sport and revenge. They commonly made those foes more determined than they would have been otherwise.

The first thing that came out of his mouth was, “Well, now we know.”

“Now we know,” Aderno agreed in a voice like ashes. “I hope he was dead before they did … some of that, anyway.”

“Yes.” Hasso nodded. Flegrei couldn’t have lived through everything the Bucovinans did to him… could he? Hasso didn’t like to think the wizard had been alive when they…. He didn’t cross his hands in front of his crotch, but he had to make himself hold still. “He is a wizard,” he said. “How do they do this? Why doesn’t he hit them with spells?”

“If they tied his hands, he wouldn’t have been able to make passes. Maybe he was stunned when the unicorn went down,” Aderno said. “And then after that, of course…” He pointed to one of the creative things the Grenye had done.

“Yes. After that.” Hasso wanted to look away, but he didn’t. He couldn’t remember the Ivans coming up with that particular mutilation and insult. If the Bucovinans were more inventive than Stalin’s soldiers… He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes. He didn’t like believing it now.

“They aren’t usually this bad,” a knight said. “Of course, I don’t suppose they catch a wizard very often.”

“I wonder what made poor Flegrei ride back of that farmhouse,” Aderno said. “Maybe he just wanted to ease himself away from everybody else. Whatever it was, he should have known better.”

“Do Lenelli do … this to Grenye, too?” Hasso asked.

“To avenge him, we will,” the knight answered. “Those bastards have to know they can’t get away with this crap. We haven’t done anything this bad in a while, and they had it coming then.”

Would they have thought so? Hasso wondered. But that was a pointless question. He found one that wasn’t: “What do we do with him?”

“Two choices I see,” the knight answered. “Either we burn him here or we take back the pieces so the king and the army find out what kind of war we’re fighting.”

Hasso couldn’t see anything else to do, either. He didn’t feel the call was his to make, even if he held the highest rank here. As a foreigner, he would be missing too many nuances. He turned to Aderno. “You follow the same craft,” he said. “What would he want?”

The wizard plucked at his neatly trimmed beard. “I don’t think he would want to be a spectacle, not… the way he is,” he answered. “Better we make a pyre for him here.”

“All right. We do that, then.” Hasso waved at the forest. “Plenty of branches, as long as we cut them. Can we get them dry enough to burn well?”

“I know a spell for that,” Aderno said. “It’s mostly used to get enough wood for campfires, but I can make it bigger.”

Hasso started hacking at branches with his sword. “Let’s get to work, then.” The Lenelli joined in. Maybe they wouldn’t have done it of their own accord; like the knights of medieval Germany or France, they thought a lot of physical labor was beneath their dignity. But seeing the man set over them go to work without hesitation brought them around. If he didn’t hold back, how could they?

They got enough for a pyre in less than an hour. Aderno murmured and swayed in front of the pile. Steam