After the Downfall

The troopers nodded. Aderno looked surprised, as if that hadn’t occurred to him. Maybe it hadn’t; he didn’t always operate within the restrictive confines of the real world himself. After a moment, he added, “The Grenye may have taken Flegrei away, too. It’s possible that they can get him to do what they want if they hurt him enough. But no Grenye can ride a unicorn. So they’d likely kill it first – they can’t deal with it any other way.”

That made sense to Hasso, who gave the wizard a mental apology. He didn’t waste time on a spoken one. He was too busy trying to look every which way at once. Out away from the Lenello army, he felt the way he had behind the front in the Soviet Union. Every tree, every rock, every bush was liable to be dangerous. And you’d never know which one till too late. How many eyes were watching him and his comrades right now? How many Bucovinan fists tightened on weapons? Hasso couldn’t see anybody, but that didn’t mean nobody could see him. Oh, no.

But would the men of Bucovin have enough soldiers back here to take on so many Lenelli? He could hope not, anyhow.

The farther from the security of Bottero’s main force he got, the more he worried, the more his head swiveled back and forth, back and forth. He watched the Lenelli with him. The big blond knights also seemed to be trying to grow eyes in the backs of their heads.

“I wouldn’t want to do this when the sun was going down, not for all the beer in Bari,” one of them said. Several others nodded. Hasso had no idea where Bari was, but he understood the sentiment just fine.

Not far from the road, a farmhouse was charred wreckage. Had the Lenelli torched it, or did the retreating Bucovinans do it themselves? Whatever the answer was, would that matter to the peasants whose home was only a ruin? Hasso had trouble making himself believe it.

Fire had also run through the fields, which inclined him to believe the incendiarism was Bucovinan work. King Bottero’s men would have taken the nearly ripe millet for themselves … if they had the time, and if flames from the burning buildings hadn’t got loose. So hard to be sure about anything you didn’t see for yourself. Too damned often, it was hard to be sure about things you did see.

A Lenello stabbed out a pointing forefinger. “What’s that behind the barn there? Something white, I think.”

Hasso hadn’t noticed it till the soldier pointed it out. It wasn’t much more than a flash; the barn hid it pretty well. That made him apprehensive. So did the fruit trees within easy bowshot of the barn. All the same, he said, “We have to check it out.” The knights nodded with the air of men who knew they were liable to be sticking their dicks in a meat grinder and also knew they had no choice. Or did they? Hasso turned to Aderno. “Do you sense an ambush?”

After a few passes and a murmured versicle, the wizard shook his head. “I sense no enemies close by,” he said. But he didn’t sound happy about his own judgment, either, for he added, “If we were in Lenello-ruled land, I would be surer.”

It wasn’t magic. The Lenelli swore it wasn’t, anyway. But the countryside of Bucovin liked the Grenye better than it liked their foes. The blonds had been grumbling about that ever since they crossed the border. “We go like we expect an attack,” Hasso said.

Nobody quarreled with him. One knight said, “You may be a foreigner, but you’ve got your head nailed on tight, by the goddess.” That made Hasso feel good.

That good feeling didn’t last long – only till he got a closer look at the flash of white the alert Lenello had spotted. It was a unicorn; it was on the ground; and it was dead. Blood marred the pristine perfection of its coat: blood from at least a score of wounds. Hasso saw some that came from arrows, others from spears, and a few sword cuts as well. The unicorn’s silvered horn wasn’t bloodied; the beast hadn’t had the chance to fight back.

“You hate to see them hurt,” Aderno said. Hasso found himself nodding. Seeing a unicorn brought down that way was like looking at the corpse of a beautiful woman caught in a bomb blast. Hasso had had to do that more often than he cared to remember. In a way, this was even worse. A beautiful woman could be a deadly enemy. The poor unicorn didn’t know anything about the war between Lenelli and Grenye.

Somehow, Hasso didn’t think the Grenye of Bucovin would have appreciated the distinction.

“Here’s the wizard,” a Lenello knight called, pointing into the woods.

Hasso swung down from his horse and tossed the reins to another Lenello. There didn’t seem to be any Bucovinans close by. He drew his sword anyway.

Because of the unicorn, the smell of blood was already thick in his nostrils. It got thicker. He walked around a scrubby oak sapling and got a good look at what the enemy had done to Flegrei.