After the Downfall

“And well you should, your Majesty,” Marshal Lugo said. “He offered you intolerable insult.” He didn’t seem to notice that the king had insulted the herald first. The Lenelli weren’t good about noticing such things. The Germans hadn’t been good about noticing them in Russia, either. Why bother? The Ivans were nothing but Untermenschen, weren’t they?

Four years earlier, the answer to that question would have seemed obvious. As a matter of fact, it still did. But the obvious answer now wasn’t the same as it had been in 1941.

To keep from thinking about that, Hasso watched Trandafir ride back to his line. Bucovin used banners of dark blue and ocher. The Wehrmacht officer wasn’t surprised to see their envoy ride over to where those banners clustered thickest. The Grenye king or general or whatever he was would be there.

Passing on Bottero’s reply took only a moment. The natives couldn’t have expected anything else. The Lenelli wouldn’t have come here in arms intending to turn around and go home again. But here as in the world from which Hasso came, the forms had to be observed.

Horns blared along the Bucovinan battle line, first in that center group of banners and then up and down its whole length. The timbre wasn’t quite the same as that of the Lenelli horns; even summoning men to imminent battle, it sounded mournful in Hasso’s ears. The horns themselves looked different. They had a strange curve to them, one that didn’t look quite right to the German.

Regardless of whether the horn calls seemed strange to him, they did what they were supposed to do: they roused the enemy army to defiance. The Bucovinans shouted their hatred and derision at the oncoming Lenelli. When they brandished their weapons, sunlight and fire seemed to ripple up and down their ranks. They might be barbarians, but they looked and sounded ready to fight.

And so were the Lenelli. Their trumpets roared forth familiar notes. These tunes weren’t the ones the Wehrmacht used, but they were ones the Wehrmacht might have used. They did the same thing German trumpets would have done: they got Hasso ready to fight. Bottero’s men were ready, too. The threats they shouted at the Grenye would have horrified the men who framed the Geneva Convention.

Velona rode out ahead of the Lenello battle line. She pointed toward the Grenye. “Forward!” she bugled. “Forward to victory!” Was she talking, or was the goddess speaking through her? Hasso thought he heard the goddess, but he wasn’t sure.

As soon as Velona gave the war cry, she galloped straight at the Bucovinan line. The rest of the Lenelli – and Hasso – thundered after her.

A cavalry charge! There’d been a few even in the war from which Hasso had contrived to extract himself. He’d never imagined he would take part in one, though. He looked back over his shoulder at the striking column. Could he really translate panzer tactics into ones knights and swordsmen could use? He was going to find out.

He’d hoped the Bucovinans would stand there and receive the charge. No such luck – they knew better. They’d been fighting the Lenelli for a long time now. They’d learned a lot from the invaders from overseas. They had armored men on horseback, too – not a lot, but some – and sent them forward to blunt the big blonds’ onslaught.

And they had a devil of a lot of infantry waiting there behind their horsemen. Some of the foot soldiers had spears. Some had swords. Quite a few carried what looked like scythes and pitchforks. Most of the men with real weapons wore helmets and carried shields. The rest had no more than they would have worn in the fields. Maybe that would have been enough against other Grenye. Against Bottero’s hard-bitten professionals? Hasso didn’t think so.

The Bucovinan knights were a different story. They were pros themselves. Their horses were smaller than the ones the Lenelli rode, but they knew what to do with them. They handled their lances as well as the Lenelli did. Seeing a three-meter toothpick aimed straight at his chest gave Hasso the cold horrors.

He rose in the stirrups and gave the enemy knight a short burst from his submachine gun. The Grenye’s lance went flying. He threw up his hands and pitched from the saddle. He was probably dead before he hit the ground.

Hasso almost got pitched from the saddle, too. Staid gelding or not, his horse didn’t like a gun going off right behind its ears. But the German had expected that. He hadn’t ridden much, but he knew enough to fight the horse back down onto all fours when it tried to rear. He wished he’d had enough ammunition to familiarize the beast to the dreadful noise, but he didn’t. Once his cartridges were gone, they were gone forever.