After the Downfall

He waved to the natives. “To victory!” he called. If he could have figured out how to say In hoc signo vinces! in Bucovinan, he would have done that.

To victory! seemed to do the trick. In a heartbeat, everybody was yelling it.

The unicorn sidestepped nervously, but calmed down when he patted it again. He didn’t plan on leading a wild cavalry charge – his place was back with the artillery – but he had one hell of a mount under him.

Of course, he’d thought the very same thing with Velona, too.

When Rautat came over to congratulate him on bringing back the unicorn, the beast snorted angrily, lowered its head, and aimed its horn at the underofiicer’s midriff. “Hey!” Hasso said.

“I wasn’t going to do anything,” Rautat said. He also backed off in a hurry, which made the unicorn relax.

“Cut that out, you,” Hasso told the animal. It turned its head and looked back at him as if to say, Who’s the boss here, anyway? And it knew the answer, too – it was. Could you train a unicorn? Could you convince it that you were the boss? If you could, Hasso hadn’t started doing it yet – and he didn’t know how, anyway.

He did know he wasn’t about to put up with the unicorn’s doing anything like that to Drepteaza. To his surprise, it didn’t even start. It stood quietly and let her come close.

“Boy, I like that!” Rautat said. “What’s she got that I don’t?” He snickered, coming up with his own obvious answer to that. Drepteaza bent down, picked up a pebble, and threw it at him. The unicorn let out a snuffling noise and bobbed its head, as if to say he had it coming.

“Go get some more honeycomb,” Hasso told the underofficer. “I promised, and maybe that makes it put up with you.” Rautat nodded and scurried away.

“Do you – do you think I could touch it?” Drepteaza asked.

“I don’t know,” Hasso answered. “You can try – but be ready to get out of the way in a hurry if it doesn’t want you to.” Without bit, reins, and stirrups, he had next to no control over the unicorn. If it decided to rear, for instance, all he could do was grab its mane and hang on for – literally – dear life.

Eyes wide and shining, Drepteaza stepped up alongside the unicorn. She reached out and set her palm on the side of its neck. “Oh,” she whispered. “It’s like … I don’t know what it’s like. But it’s wonderful. It’s – more finely woven than a horse, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” That was a better way of putting it than Hasso had found for himself.

“Thank you,” she told him, and moved away. Had Velona been standing there, she would have been wild to ride the animal. Drepteaza was sure she couldn’t, and didn’t try.

Hasso suddenly wasn’t so sure himself. He slid down from the unicorn’s back. “Wait!” he called to Drepteaza. She stopped. A few quick strides brought him over to her. She let out a startled squawk when he picked her up. It was easy – she couldn’t have weighed more than forty-five kilos.

“What are you doing?” she said. But she needed only a moment to realize exactly what he was doing. “No! Stop! You can’t! The unicorn won’t let you! The unicorn won’t let me -”

And, sure enough, the unicorn looked extremely dubious when Hasso started to put Drepteaza on its back. “Cut that out!” he said again. “She’s not going to hurt you. Nobody’s going to hurt you.” He still didn’t think the unicorn could understand him, but he wasn’t a hundred percent sure it couldn’t.

Rautat chose that exact moment to come back with the honeycomb, which didn’t hurt. Hasso set Drepteaza down for a moment and kept his promise to the unicorn. Then he picked her up again.

She had the sense not to kick and flail. She alighted on the unicorn’s back as smoothly as she could, and sat very still once she got there. The animal snorted and rolled its eyes, but it didn’t try to buck her off.

Hasso patted its flank. “Walk,” he told it, and damned if it didn’t take a couple of steps.

“It can’t do that,” Drepteaza said. “I’m not magic!”

“You are to me, babe,” Hasso said. She gave him a look that warned she would have a lot to say to him later, but this wasn’t the time or place. Pretending he didn’t notice, he went on, “Maybe it just needs someone who can do magic close by. Or maybe the Lenelli are full of shit. Who knows?”

“We could never ride them,” Drepteaza said. “If we caught them and tried to tame them, they starved themselves to death. But I’m really on it, aren’t I?”

“You really are. And everything is good, yes?”

“Yes!” she said, but then, “Maybe you’d better get me down. I don’t think I want to push my luck.”

“All right.” Hasso took her in his arms again. He wanted to give her a quick kiss before he set her on the ground, but he didn’t. He didn’t want to look like a big blond taking advantage of her in front of her people. As her feet touched the ground, she patted him on the hand, as if to tell him he’d done that right.

“I’m a Grenye,” she said. “I’m a Grenye, and I’ve ridden a unicorn. Who could have imagined that?”

“Will it carry other people?” someone asked.