the other way when the SS cleaned them out of Polish and Russian villages. Like the priest and the Levite, he’d passed by on the other side of the road.
Well, he didn’t have to worry about Jews here. Things were simple. There was his side, and there was the other side, and that was it.
The guys on the other side were feeling pretty cocky, too. Even if the Grenye stood on the defensive, they waved their weapons and yelled what had to be insults at the oncoming Lenelli. They wanted Bottero’s men to think they were plenty ready for a fight, anyway.
Orosei turned to the king again. “By your leave, your Majesty?” he murmured.
“Oh, yes,” Bottero said. “By all means.”
Orosei didn’t leave him in the dark for long. The master-at-arms rode out into the open space between the two armies. He brandished his lance and shouted in the direction of the Bucovinans, challenging their champion to come out and meet him in single combat.
Hasso whistled softly. There was a grand madness to this. War in his own world had lost that personal touch; you seldom saw the men you fought. You didn’t want them to see you, either. If they did, they’d shoot you before you knew they were around. This was a different kind of warfare. It was personal.
Would any of the Bucovinans dare to meet Orosei? If they were smart – from Hasso’s point of view – they’d send out half a dozen guys at once and try to finish him off. Nothing degraded the idea of military honor like years on the Russian front.
But a single lancer rode out from the line waiting ahead. The natives cheered him like men possessed. He stopped a few meters out in front of them, turned in the saddle to wave, and then turned back and gave Orosei a formal salute. Damned if the master-at-arms didn’t return it. Then they spurred their horses straight at each other.
Riding downhill give the Bucovinan a little edge: he could go faster and build more momentum. If that bothered Orosei, he didn’t let on. He bent low over his horse’s neck, his lance aimed straight for his opponent’s short ribs. The other guy was aiming at his, too, but that didn’t faze him a bit. From what Hasso had seen, nothing that had to do with battle fazed Orosei.
As lancers, the two champions proved evenly matched. As swordsmen Orosei towered head and shoulders above his foe, who was good-sized for a Grenye but nothing much against a big Lenello. Orosei’s arm was longer, and so was his blade. If the Bucovinan turned out to be fast as a striking cobra, he might have a chance. Otherwise, Hasso guessed he was in over his head, literally and figuratively.
And he was. He had no quit in him. He ran straight at Orosei, probably figuring his best chance was to get in close and see what he could do. Iron belled on iron as they hacked away at each other. Orosei had no trouble holding off the Bucovinan champion. They were both well armored, so getting through with wounds that mattered took a while. The one that did the Grenye in never got through his mailshirt. It didn’t matter. That stroke had to break ribs even through chainmail and padding. The Bucovinan staggered back and sagged to one knee.
He kept on trying to fight, though he must have known it was hopeless. Orosei approached him like a stalking tiger. The master-at-arms was a professional; he didn’t take anything for granted. Sure as hell, the Grenye jumped up for a last charge. With his side so battered, though, he couldn’t use the sword the way he wanted to. After a sharp exchange, it flew from his hand.
“Ha!” Orosei’s shout of triumph echoed over the field.
The Bucovinan went to both knees this time, and bowed his head. How much chivalry was there here? Would Orosei send him back to his own side, especially since he couldn’t fight in the battle ahead? The Lenello’s sword rose, then fell with a flash of sunlight on the blade. Blood spouted. The body convulsed. Orosei picked up the head by the hair and turned to show it to the enemy.
Still carrying his trophy, he went over to his horse, which was cropping dead grass not far away. The stink of blood made the beast snort and sidestep, but he grabbed the reins and swung up into the saddle. He rode back toward the Lenello line. Bottero’s men cheered wildly. The Bucovinans stood silent as the tomb.
“Toss me another lance, somebody,” Orosei called as he drew near. “Mine cracked when I hit this bastard.” He held up the head again.
“Use mine,” King Bottero said. “I’ll take another one. Now they’ve seen: victory will belong to us.”
“So may it be!” Velona shouted.
“So may it be!” the Lenelli echoed. If the embodiment of their goddess said so, they thought it had to be true.
Hasso peered up the slight slope toward the Bucovinan line. “I don’t see any striking column there,” he said to Nornat, who rode beside him at the head of the one King Bottero would hurl against his foes.
“Neither do I,” Nornat said. “They haven’t put one together yet, I guess. They copy things from us all the time, but they need a while to work out what to do with them and how they go. They aren’t real big, and they aren’t real bright.”
Bottero rode out in front of his army, not to challenge the enemy as Orosei had done but to harangue his own soldiers. “One more fight, boys!” he said. “One more fight, and then it’s on to Falticeni. Then
The soldiers cheered like maniacs. Hasso yelled along with everybody else. No German officer’s speech had ever been so direct. But this was what war was all about, wasn’t it? You killed the other guys and you took away what they had. Whether you talked about estates and slaves and women or about
“All right, then!” King Bottero yelled. “Let’s go get ‘em! The goddess is with us!”
“The goddess is with us!” the Lenelli shouted. Hasso looked over to Velona. She blew him a kiss. He sent one back to her.
Bottero waved to the trumpeters. They blared out the charge. The Lenelli – and Hasso – set spur to their horses. They thundered forward. The striking column aimed straight for the little gap Orosei had noted in the Bucovinan line. Break through there and they’d cut the enemy army in half.
While Bottero heartened his men, some Bucovinan bigwig or another was doing the same with the small, swarthy natives. They’d shouted, too, but the lusty cheers of the Lenelli all but drowned them out. As Hasso galloped toward the Bucovinans’ battle line, he knew the same feeling of invincibility, of playing on the winning team, he’d felt in France in 1940 and in Russia in the summer of 1941.
Once he’d been dead right to feel that way. Once…
To his surprise, the waiting Bucovinans just held their ground. They didn’t gallop forward to meet the Lenelli with impetus of their own, the way they had the first time the armies met. That went dead against everything he thought he’d learned about cavalry. “Are they going to stand there and take a charge?” he shouted to Nornat, trying to pitch his voice to carry through the drumroll of hoofbeats all around them.
“Looks that way, the cursed fools,” the Lenello answered. “They should have found out they couldn’t do that a hundred years ago. Well, if they need a fresh lesson, we’ll give ‘em one.” Below the bar nasal of his helmet, his lips skinned back in a predatory grin.
Closer … Closer … Along with the thuds of the horses’ hooves, the Lenelli were howling like wolves, both to nerve themselves for the collision and to scare the living piss out of the Bucovinans. Would the natives break and run? If this kind of charge were bearing down on Hasso, he knew damn well he would think hard about running himself.
Here and there along the enemy line, archers started shooting at Bottero’s soldiers. Beside Hasso, Nornat laughed what had to be the most scornful laugh the German had ever heard. “Do they think they’ll even slow us down like that?” he said.
One or two riders clutched at themselves and slid from the saddle. One or two horses crashed to the ground. One or two more fell over them, spilling their riders. The rest of the charge rolled on.
Bucovinan foot soldiers set themselves, spears thrust forward in a forest of iron points to withstand the
