After the Downfall

“It says the amulets really do keep Lenello wizards from spotting gunpowder. This is good news.” Hasso wondered whether Shugmeshte had blown Aderno to hell and gone. That would be very good news. He could hope, anyhow.

“Ah.” The Lord of Bucovin nodded. “I see. Yes, what you say makes good sense. You seem to have a way of doing that.”

“Thank you, Lord,” Hasso said. Coming from a resolutely sensible fellow like Zgomot, that praise meant something.

Zgomot turned back to Shugmeshte. “Are you ready to do this to the Lenelli again?”

“Lavtrig, yes!” the gunpowderman exclaimed.”We can hurt them. We can scare them. We’ve never been able to scare them before. I like it.”

“Go, then,” Zgomot said. Shugmeshte saluted: clenched fist over his heart, the same gesture the Lenelli used. How long ago had the Bucovinans adopted it? Did anyone here even remember? Hasso wouldn’t have bet on it. Zgomot nodded to Hasso. “We have kept security as well as we could. None of the gunpowdermen knows how to make the stuff. Not many folk besides us and the men who get them – oh, and Scanno – know our amulets are made from dragon bone.”

“This is how you should do things, Lord,” Hasso said. “Sooner or later, secrets get out, but you always want it to be later, not sooner.”

“You do make sense,” Zgomot told him. “One of the first things a ruler learns is that secrets always get out.”

Hasso thought of the American bazooka. It was a wonderful weapon – it let a foot soldier wreck a panzer without needing to creep suicidally close. As soon as the Germans saw it, they knew they wanted something like it. They made capturing one a top priority. Once they had one, the Panzerschreck got into production in a few months. And it was better than the bazooka that spawned it. With a larger-caliber rocket, it had a longer range and could pierce thicker armor.

“Later is better,” Hasso said again.

Once the Lenelli got their hands on some gunpowder – and they would, because his fuses were imperfectly reliable – how long would they need to figure out what went into it? Not too long, odds were: none of the ingredients was especially rare. How long would they need to start making their own? That could take a while. They would need to work out the right proportions. Then they would have to figure out how to mix them without blowing themselves a mile beyond the moon. So it wouldn’t be a few months. But it might be only a few years.

Cannon! Can I build a cannon? Hasso got the same answer he always did – maybe, but not right now.

And how long would the Lenelli take to realize dragon bone was thwarting their spells? Getting their hands on an amulet wouldn’t be hard, but how could you sorcerously analyze something that didn’t let you work magic? Damn good question, he thought.

Even if they did know, what could they do about it? Even if you knew what water was, could you get something to burn in it?

He wished he hadn’t thought of it that way, because you could if you were sly enough and smart enough. Magnesium would burn even underwater. If you tossed a lump of metallic sodium into water, it would start burning all by itself.

So … did the Lenelli have the sorcerous equivalent of sodium? Hasso shrugged. How was he supposed to know? He was a stranger here himself.

The Lenelli – the Lenelli of Bottero’s kingdom, anyhow – had Velona. If she wasn’t sodium, Hasso couldn’t imagine what would be. Did they know how to use her, or perhaps the goddess, to best advantage? He shrugged again. One more thing he couldn’t be sure of.

Well find out, he thought, a little – or maybe more than a little – uneasily.

Zgomot knew where he wanted to make his fight. Hasso hadn’t been there before, so he couldn’t judge the position firsthand. When he listened to Zgomot and Rautat talk about it, it sounded good. Sometimes you had to assume the other guys on your side knew what the hell they were doing.

Sometimes you got royally screwed making assumptions like that, too. Hasso had to hope this wasn’t one of those times.

Knowing where his own force would stand let Zgomot chivvy Bottero in the direction he wanted him to go. Bucovinan raiding parties shoved the Lenello line of march a little farther south than it might have gone otherwise. With a little luck, the invaders wouldn’t even notice they were getting shoved.

Peasants fled before the Lenelli. They clogged the roads. In the Low Countries and France, fleeing civilians had worked to the Wehrmacht’s advantage. They slowed up the enemy. Then, years later, German civilians fled before the Ivans and made life difficult for the army. What went around came around.

At Hasso’s suggestion, Zgomot tried channeling the refugees down some roads, with luck leaving others clear so his soldiers could move on them. It didn’t work as well as Hasso hoped. The Bucovinan traffic cops were trying something they’d never done before, and the peasants didn’t want to listen to them.