After the Downfall

oncoming lancers. Did they really believe they could make the Lenelli stop that way? Could they possibly be so stupid? Hasso had trouble believing it.

For a moment, he simply accepted that. All right, he had trouble believing the Bucovinans could be so stupid. Then what? Only at that point did alarm bells start clanging in his mind. The natives had to know the Lenelli thought they were stupid and inept. If they could play on that, take advantage of it…

“Something’s wrong!” Hasso shouted to Nornat. “They’re trying to fool us!”

“What?” Nornat yelled back.

Before Hasso could say it again, the first Lenello horses fell into the lovingly concealed pits the Bucovinans had dug in front of their line.

The horses screamed. So did the men on top of them. Hasso and Nornat weren’t in the very first rank of the charge anymore; men on swifter horses had got a little ways ahead of them. But they were close, too close. Hasso reined in frantically. His horse saw the danger, too, and tried to swerve, but it was too near the edge. In it went, in and down. Hasso wasn’t ashamed to scream, either.

Then another falling horse’s hoof caught him in the side of the head. Blackness swooped down on him. How the fight went from there … he had no idea.

He came back to himself a little at a time. He was hearing things before he realized he was hearing them. He thought he made out words, but he didn’t understand any of them. Had whatever happened to him – he didn’t remember what it was, not yet – scrambled his wits for fair?

Lenello. He had to think of Lenello, not just German. He felt more than a little pride at recalling that. But it didn’t help. He thought he could understand Lenello if he heard it. Whatever this was, it wasn’t Lenello.

He felt as if he’d been dropped on his head from about five kilometers up. Concussion, he thought dully. He’d had a couple facing the Russians. Those damn Katyushas could pick you up and throw you around like nobody’s business. He didn’t think he’d ever had a headache like this one, though.

He didn’t want to open his eyes. He feared his head would fall off if he did – this was much, much worse than any hangover he’d ever known. And he was afraid to open them for another reason: he feared he might not see anything at all, or might see only hellfire. He wasn’t a hundred percent sure he was alive.

And when he forced himself to pull his eyelids apart, what he did see made him wonder and made him even more afraid: darkness shot through by the flickering flames of torches. If this wasn’t hell, what was it? Were those demons gabbing not nearly far enough away? What language did demons speak? Hebrew, maybe?

That was the scariest thought yet.

But when Hasso sucked in a big breath of air that might have come out as a shriek, he calmed down instead of turning it loose. He smelled blood and shit and horses and unwashed men. That was the smell of a battlefield, not of the infernal regions.

Then he remembered charging forward with the Lenelli. He remembered going into the pit. “Good God!” he said. “Those little bastards did fool us!”

The Bucovinans must have won their battle, too, because those sure weren’t Lenelli prowling through the pits right now. What happened to Orosei, and to Nornat, and to King Bottero?

Sweet suffering Jesus, what happened to Velona?

Sweet suffering Jesus, what’s going to happen to me?

A couple of torches were coming closer. The figures they illuminated weren’t red-faced demons with horns and spiked tails. They were Bucovinans in tunics and baggy trousers and calf-high boots. That wasn’t necessarily reassuring. The little swarthy men carried the torches upraised in their left hands and long knives dripping blood in their right.

One of them stooped to cut a horse’s throat. The beast sighed, almost as a man might have, and died. A moment later, the other one stooped, too, only the throat he cut belonged to a Lenello. The man’s dying sound was on a slightly higher note than the horse’s.

They were getting closer. Hasso thought about fighting them – for about a second and a half. The way he felt, he couldn’t have fought off a puppy that wanted to lick his face. He wasn’t even sure he could twist free of the dead horses that squeezed him – luckily, without quite squashing him.

What would they do if he played dead? Out of barely open eyes, he watched them finish another Lenello. Chances were they’d slit his throat on general principles. That seemed to be what they were here for.

Could he surrender? He hadn’t wanted to give up to the Ivans, for fear of what they did to prisoners – and because of all he knew about what the Wehrmacht did to Russian POWs. He knew some of the charming things the Lenelli did to Bucovinans they caught. How did Lord Zgomot’s men return the favor? Do I want to find out?

If he wanted to keep breathing, he did. The Bucovinans working their way through the pit killed another Lenello. They weren’t especially malicious about it, which didn’t mean they hesitated. And they were getting awful goddamn close now.

What have I got to lose? Hasso thought. If I just lie here, they’ll cut me a new grin any minute now. The best defense is a good offense … I hope. Please, Jesus.

“Do you speak Lenello?” he asked – croaked, really.

The little men started violently. One of them said something that had to be cussing. They both came toward him. He didn’t like the smiles on their faces. Maybe just getting his throat cut was the best he could have hoped for. At least it was over in a hurry then. So many other interesting possibilities…

Interesting. Right.

“I speak your language, man out of the Western Sea,” answered the native who hadn’t sworn. He spoke it better than Hasso did, which still wasn’t saying much.

“Tell me your name, so my gods can spit on it when they bury you in dung in the world to come.”

He plainly still believed in their old-time religion, even if the Lenello goddess had given some Grenye different ideas. And he wanted to use Hasso’s name to curse him. The Wehrmacht officer might have lied if he’d thought a Grenye curse would bite. He was sure he would have lied to Aderno. But he was also sure the natives couldn’t work that kind of magic.

And so he gave the fellow the truth: “I call myself Hasso Pemsel.”

It didn’t mean anything to the one who’d asked for his name. The other one, though, said something else incendiary in his own guttural language. The two of them palavered, waving their arms – and those damn snickersnees. Finally, the one who admitted to speaking Lenello came back to that language: “We have orders to take you alive if we can. Do you yield yourself to us?”

“Do I have a choice?” Hasso asked.

“You always have a choice,” the Bucovinan answered. “You can yield, or you can die right now.”

“What happens if I yield?”

“Whatever we want.” The native wasn’t helping. But then, he didn’t have to.

Hasso sighed. “I yield.” His head hurt too much for him to argue. He tried to twist out from between the dead horses, and discovered he couldn’t. He couldn’t have put up a fight even if he’d wanted to. “Help me out, please.”

The Bucovinan laughed, none too pleasantly. “Now I know you are the stranger we want. No Lenello would ever say please, not to the likes of us.” Resentment – hatred? – simmered in his voice. He went back and forth with his buddy in their language. The other man gestured a fierce warning with his knife before going over to Hasso. They didn’t believe in taking chances. In their boots, Hasso wouldn’t have, either.

He took the Grenye’s hand. Grunting, the native put his shoulder against the corpse of the horse pinning Hasso’s legs and shoved. With some help from the native, Hasso managed to wriggle free. He discovered he couldn’t have run, either: his legs were asleep.

Though small, the local was strong. He dragged Hasso out of the pit and laid him on the ground. There he relieved him of his belt knife. The other Bucovinan, the one who spoke Lenello, came over and peered down at him. “You have a holdout weapon?” the fellow asked, adding, “If you say no and we find it, you won’t like that, I promise.”

“My left boot,” Hasso said. “And under my left arm.”

They took the knives. “You’re full of tricks, aren’t you?” the one who spoke Lenello remarked.

“Oh, yes? What am I doing here, then?” Hasso said with a bitter laugh.