After the Downfall

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 bite from so far off. You weren’t kidding when you said close would be worse.”