After the Downfall

Zgomot’s men stood in line of battle, ready to fight. A Lenello rode forward, waving green branches as a sign of truce. He came straight toward the center of the line – right where the charge would likely go in. He was scouting the ground, but what could you do? When he got close, he shouted, “Tomorrow, you die!” in Lenello and rode away without waiting for an answer.

XXVII

It was a long, restless night. Hasso and Zgomot feared the Lenelli might try to steal the battle under cover of darkness. The Bucovinans slept in shifts and in their armor, with weapons close at hand. Zgomot sent scouts and sentries as far forward as he could, and well out to both flanks as well.

Hasso wouldn’t have wanted to try a nighttime cavalry charge. He feared an attack on foot. If Bottero thought that was the best way to cut down the value of gunpowder … well, the Lenello king might well have been right.

And, a little past midnight – so the German judged by the position of the moon – the Lenelli did try something. Bucovinan scouts gave the alarm. Horns blared in the Bucovinan camp. Soldiers who had been sleeping sprang up, clutching swords and spears. Hasso grabbed a smoldering length of punk and ran to the catapults. Lobbing shells at night was one more thing he didn’t want to do. He couldn’t aim, and they were much too likely to go off before they flew because the catapult men would be clumsy in the dark. He shook his head – not they. It wouldn’t happen more than once.

But, to his surprise, the Lenelli drew back instead of striking home. Big fires blazed in and around their camp – maybe they feared Bucovinan raiders. That was a comforting thought. By the light of those fires, Hasso made out tiny figures – in reality, blonds mostly taller than he was – running back and forth and gesticulating at one another.

He wished for Zeiss binoculars. With them, he might have learned something about what was going on over there. As things were, he could only guess. Whatever the Lenelli had planned, it didn’t seem to have worked.

“I wonder if they tried to use magic to lull our scouts to sleep so they could get close without our knowing,” Drepteaza said when he went back to their tent. He didn’t think he would sleep any more, but he hoped he was wrong.

He chewed on that. Slowly, he nodded. “Makes more sense than anything I think of,” he said. “And it means our amulets work.” He reached up and touched his through his tunic. “The Lenelli can’t be happy about that.” He imagined Bottero screaming at his wizards and the wizards yelling back. The Bucovinans couldn’t have prayed for a prettier picture.

“It only means they’ll hit us harder come the dawn,” Drepteaza predicted. “They’ll think they have to pay us back.”

“Pay us back?” Hasso said, puzzled.

“Of course.” She sounded surprised he couldn’t see what she meant. “We’ve insulted them. We didn’t fall over when they expected us to. And when Grenye insult Lenelli, the Lenelli pay back in blood.”

Hasso grunted uneasily. That had the feel of truth to it. The Wehrmacht felt the same way about the Red Army when the Russians didn’t roll over and play dead after 22 June 1941. How dare they keep fighting when they’re licked? was the thought in German minds all through that summer. The Reich had two years of nothing but victory behind it by then. Its soldiers expected more, as if that were theirs by right.

Well, the Lenelli had generations of victories behind them by now. They too expected more. Drepteaza was right – they were liable to turn mean if they didn’t get them. The Germans sure had.

Yes, the Germans had got mean … and then they’d got desperate. If you jumped on a bear’s back, all you could do was hang on tight. Sometimes that didn’t help, either. Hasso wouldn’t have been fighting in the ruins of Berlin if it did.

The Lenelli wouldn’t have gone that far down the road yet. But they’d still be angry, affronted. They’d want their revenge, all right. Didn’t Bucovin also have some revenge coming, though?

“We see who pays, uh, whom,” Hasso said. Drepteaza kissed him.

The sun came up behind the Bucovinans. That would help their archers and slingers and hurt the bowmen of the Lenelli, who would have a harder time aiming. Were the battle different, it would have mattered more. This fight wasn’t going to be about archery. It would be about knights and gunpowder.

And it would be about the Hedgehogs. They took their places in front of the catapults, a hundred men wide, ten men deep. As they marched into position, they held their spears high, and they kept on holding them high. The Lenelli would see that they had unusual weapons, but Hasso didn’t want them seeing what the Hedgehogs intended to do with those weapons, not till the very last moment.

He rode out in front of the pikemen on the unicorn, just to give Bottero’s men one more thing to think about. “You can do it,” he told the pikemen again. “If you do it, we win. If you run, Bucovin runs with you. You will fight!”