After the Downfall

happen. Thumping down on thick grass in a meadow hurt less than the rammed-earth floor of the fencing room had.

The more-or-less estate didn’t stink the way Falticeni did – another advantage of moving to the country. Sure, it had a dungheap and some odorous privies. But it didn’t have tens of thousands of people crapping and pissing and not worrying much about how to dispose of the filth. Bucovinans bathed more than Lenelli, but their notions of sanitation were just as rudimentary as those of the blonds.

Once Hasso got the carpenters to understand what he wanted, they had no trouble mounting catapults on wheeled carts. Horses – or even donkeys – could pull them. “Field artillery,” he said happily. Back in the world he’d left behind, you couldn’t live without it … not very long, anyway. The Wehrmacht always used as much as it could. The Red Army had guns in carload lots.

Yes, the field artillery was easy. The ammo wasn’t. Hasso rapidly found earthenware pots wouldn’t do. He couldn’t fuse them precisely enough. If a pot hit the ground before a spark hit the gunpowder, it smashed like a broken plate. That wasted far too much precious gunpowder to work.

“Have to be metal,” he said. “Bronze or iron.”

“Expensive!” Rautat said in dismay. He wasn’t kidding, either. Part of Hasso still took an industrial economy for granted. Where everybody did everything by hand … You didn’t get anywhere near so much, and what you did get cost a lot more.

But he answered, “Not as expensive as losing to the Lenelli, eh?”

“Lord Zgomot will have to say,” Rautat told him. “I can’t order smiths to start making these things, not by myself I can’t.”

“Send to him,” Hasso said. “We find out. If he says no, we go back to Falticeni.”

Zgomot must have said yes, because several bronzesmiths and ironsmiths came out to the estate to find out what Hasso wanted. He explained. One of the smiths tapped his forehead, as if to say this foreigner was out of his mind. Hasso let the short, wide-shouldered men watch an ordinary clay pot full of gunpowder blow up. One of them pissed himself in surprise and fear. After that, they didn’t think he was crazy any more.

“Hollow balls,” one of them said. “Can we make halves and solder them together? That would be a lot faster.”

Hasso shook his head. “Not strong enough, I’m afraid.”

“Can we rivet halves together?” another smith asked. “That should hold them till your magic works.”

“It isn’t magic,” Hasso said wearily. “But yes, try riveting.” It wouldn’t be as fast as soldering, but he could see that it would be a lot faster than making hollow spheres from scratch. The bronzesmiths looked especially pleased. They could cast their hemispheres instead of beating them out. The Bucovinans knew how to make and work wrought iron, but they couldn’t cast it.

Yet another smith asked, “How many do you need, and how soon do you need them?” – the basic questions of war.

As many as you can make and a hundred more besides, and I need them all yesterday. That was any field officer’s automatic answer. Here, though, caution looked like a good idea. “How many do you think you can make? How fast?” he asked in return.

They had to put their heads together before they gave him an answer. Some of them were scratching their heads, too – they weren’t used to thinking in terms of numbers. When they did speak up, he was pleasantly surprised. Even cutting their claims in half, he’d have enough shells to fight a battle soon enough to give the Lenelli a proper greeting.

“You really think you can do that?” he asked.

“We do. By Lavtrig, we do,” answered the man who spoke for them. He had impressive dignity – and scarred, gnarled hands that were even more convincing.

All the same, Hasso pressed: “Lord Zgomot is not happy if you promise one thing and give something else.”

“We will not disappoint the Lord of Bucovin,” said the senior smith, whose name was Unaril.

“Go, then. Do it,” Hasso said. And maybe they would, and maybe they wouldn’t. If they didn’t, Bucovin would fight the Lenelli the same old way, and chances were she’d take it on the chin.

But the big blond bastards would have a harder time if Zgomot’s men got back with the dragon bones. As soon as that went through Hasso’s mind, he wondered, Did I just think of the Lenelli as big blond bastards? He didn’t wonder long. Damned if I didn’t. Maybe he really had switched sides after all, even inside himself.

And wouldn’t that be weird? he thought.

A double handful of bronze shells came to the estate. Field Marshal Manstein would have laughed his ass off as soon as he took one look at them. Hell, so would Frederick the Great, for that matter. When you measured them by the standards of an art that had had some time to grow, they were somewhere between funny and pathetic.

When you measured them against nothing at all, though, they suddenly didn’t seem half bad.

He didn’t load them with gunpowder right away. He had the catapult crews practice flinging them while they were empty. They went somewhere close to 400 meters. He had to hope that would be good enough. He thought it would, for one battle, anyway. The Lenelli would be looking for buried pots of gunpowder – and he intended to use those, too. Artillery would take them by surprise … unless they had better spies than he thought.

Some of the shells dented a little when they came down. A few rivets popped. A smith who’d stayed behind repaired them – and sneered at the workmanship. Hasso only grinned at him. The Wehrmacht officer hadn’t imagined everything would go perfectly. The Bucovinans were doing things they’d never tried before. He was pleased they’d done as well as they had.

He filled a shell with gunpowder and lead balls – the Bucovinans had no trouble making those, because they used slingers as well as archers. He jammed down the stopper: a wooden plug with a hole drilled through for the length of fuse. And then he assembled everybody by the catapult to watch as the shell went downrange on the meadow he’d been bombarding.

“As soon as I light the fuse, you shoot,” he told the catapult crew. “I light, I yell ‘Now!’ and you shoot. No waiting, not even a little. You understand?”

“What happens if we’re slow?” a Bucovinan asked.

“You get a lead ball in the face, that’s what. Or in the nuts.” And so do I, Hasso thought. He wished for an 81mm mortar and a trained crew. Since wishing – surprise! – failed to produce them, he got back to business. “You ready?” The Bucovinans solemnly nodded. Hasso waved a stick of punk to heat up the coal. Then he brought it down on the fuse, which sizzled to life. “Now!” he shouted. He didn’t throw himself flat, not because he trusted the catapult crew but because the natives didn’t know enough to do the same. If something went wrong, the survivors would think he took unfair advantage.

Swoosh! The catapult arm shot forward, hurling the shell far across the meadow – but not so far as a lighter, emptier one. It was just about to hit the ground when fire touched the main charge.

Boom! Hasso whooped. If he could do it that well all the time, he’d make one hell of a gunner. Then he stopped whooping, because a catapult man yelped and grabbed his leg. Blood ran out between his fingers. One of the lead balls had flown all the way back here. Hasso hadn’t dreamt that could happen.

“Lie down,” he said. “Let me see it.”

“Hurts,” the catapult man said as he obeyed.

“I bet it does.” When the German got a good look at the wound, he breathed easier. It was a gash, not a puncture – the ball must have grazed the Bucovinan going by. If he bled freely, chances were he wouldn’t get lockjaw. If he did, neither Hasso nor anybody else in this world could do anything for him.

One of the other catapult men handed Hasso a rag for a bandage. It looked pretty clean. He put it on. One of these days, he would have to talk about boiling bandages. No time now, and he didn’t figure it would matter here.

“Can you walk?” he asked the wounded Bucovinan.

“I… think so.” The fellow got to his feet. He limped, but he managed. “Yeah, it’s not too bad. Thanks, foreigner. You tied it up good.”

“Sure.” Hasso always would be a foreigner. That didn’t mean he enjoyed getting reminded of it.

The catapult man hadn’t meant any offense. “You’ve got a demon of a weapon there. I never figured it could