After the Downfall

He swore softly, in Lenello and then in German. He’d seen such things on the Eastern Front, when the Ivans got hold of some Germans. He’d seen his countrymen do the like to Russians they caught. It jolted him here all the same. The men who started seeing how clever they could be with their knives always aimed to make their foes afraid – if they aimed at anything past a little sport and revenge. They commonly made those foes more determined than they would have been otherwise.

The first thing that came out of his mouth was, “Well, now we know.”

“Now we know,” Aderno agreed in a voice like ashes. “I hope he was dead before they did … some of that, anyway.”

“Yes.” Hasso nodded. Flegrei couldn’t have lived through everything the Bucovinans did to him… could he? Hasso didn’t like to think the wizard had been alive when they…. He didn’t cross his hands in front of his crotch, but he had to make himself hold still. “He is a wizard,” he said. “How do they do this? Why doesn’t he hit them with spells?”

“If they tied his hands, he wouldn’t have been able to make passes. Maybe he was stunned when the unicorn went down,” Aderno said. “And then after that, of course…” He pointed to one of the creative things the Grenye had done.

“Yes. After that.” Hasso wanted to look away, but he didn’t. He couldn’t remember the Ivans coming up with that particular mutilation and insult. If the Bucovinans were more inventive than Stalin’s soldiers… He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes. He didn’t like believing it now.

“They aren’t usually this bad,” a knight said. “Of course, I don’t suppose they catch a wizard very often.”

“I wonder what made poor Flegrei ride back of that farmhouse,” Aderno said. “Maybe he just wanted to ease himself away from everybody else. Whatever it was, he should have known better.”

“Do Lenelli do … this to Grenye, too?” Hasso asked.

“To avenge him, we will,” the knight answered. “Those bastards have to know they can’t get away with this crap. We haven’t done anything this bad in a while, and they had it coming then.”

Would they have thought so? Hasso wondered. But that was a pointless question. He found one that wasn’t: “What do we do with him?”

“Two choices I see,” the knight answered. “Either we burn him here or we take back the pieces so the king and the army find out what kind of war we’re fighting.”

Hasso couldn’t see anything else to do, either. He didn’t feel the call was his to make, even if he held the highest rank here. As a foreigner, he would be missing too many nuances. He turned to Aderno. “You follow the same craft,” he said. “What would he want?”

The wizard plucked at his neatly trimmed beard. “I don’t think he would want to be a spectacle, not… the way he is,” he answered. “Better we make a pyre for him here.”

“All right. We do that, then.” Hasso waved at the forest. “Plenty of branches, as long as we cut them. Can we get them dry enough to burn well?”

“I know a spell for that,” Aderno said. “It’s mostly used to get enough wood for campfires, but I can make it bigger.”

Hasso started hacking at branches with his sword. “Let’s get to work, then.” The Lenelli joined in. Maybe they wouldn’t have done it of their own accord; like the knights of medieval Germany or France, they thought a lot of physical labor was beneath their dignity. But seeing the man set over them go to work without hesitation brought them around. If he didn’t hold back, how could they?

They got enough for a pyre in less than an hour. Aderno murmured and swayed in front of the pile. Steam rose from the rain-soaked wood. When it stopped, the wizard nodded to Hasso. “This magic worked, anyhow. We can burn him now. Lay him on the pyre.”

“Me?” Hasso hoped he didn’t squeak too much.

“Of course,” Aderno said. “You command here. Who else?”

Hasso had dealt with enough corpses that one more didn’t really faze him, but it wasn’t a duty he would have wanted. He had to make sure he had all of Flegrei; the Lenelli wouldn’t have liked it had he left any of the cut-off bits behind. After he finished, he scrubbed his hands on wet grass. That got most of the blood off, but not all of it. The knights gathered around the pyre nodded to one another. They would have done the same thing. Then they would have forgotten about it. Hasso still wanted to get his hands really clean, which showed he came from a different world.

“May the life to come prove kinder to Flegrei than this one did,” Aderno said.

“So may it be,” the knights intoned.

“May he have joy of all his friends to come, and overcome all his foes,” the wizard went on.

“So may it be.” This time, Hasso joined the chorus. It wasn’t the funeral service a German chaplain would have read, but it wasn’t so very different, either.

“May the goddess avenge him against the barbarians who wickedly stole his life.”

“So may it be.”

“As the smoke of the pyre rises to the sky, so may Flegrei’s spirit rise to the heavens beyond the sky.”

“So may it be.”