After the Downfall

The Bucovinans hadn’t given up. They didn’t seem afraid of the Lenelli, either, even if they couldn’t fully match them. The raiding bands they sent out against Bottero’s army got bigger and bolder, and slowed the army’s advance. Several times, the king had to send reinforcements forward to keep his scouts from getting overwhelmed. And, in spite of all of Hasso’s magic, the rain got worse again.

He waited for Bottero to scream at him. To his surprise, the king kept quiet. Velona explained why: “I reminded him how deep inside Bucovin we are. We can’t expect things like that to go our way here. We just have to win anyway.”

Maybe the Grenye didn’t think their rulers were gods any more. King Bottero had no doubt Velona was at least part goddess, and that what she said went. After some of the things Hasso had seen, he didn’t have many doubts along those lines, either.

And then the rain blew away. Hasso would have taken credit for it if he’d worked a spell any time recently. Since he hadn’t, he just accepted it along with the Lenelli. The weather stayed cool – it was November, after all, or something close to it – but it was crisp and sunny: the kind of weather that made having seasons worthwhile. It seemed as if he could see for a thousand kilometers.

One of the things he could see was a smudge of smoke on the horizon ahead, a smudge big enough to mark a good-sized city or a really big camp. “Is that Falticeni?” he asked Velona, pointing. Are we there yet?

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. It looks like the Grenye are going to fight us again after all.”

“It sure does,” Hasso said. It looks like they’re going to throw the whole goddamn world at us, too.

Velona looked at that differently. “We’ll beat them here, and they won’t be able to stop us again.” If the goddess said it, didn’t that make it true?

XIII

No matter what Velona – or maybe the goddess, speaking through her – said, the Bucovinans didn’t think they were bound to lose. King Bottero’s army found that out midway through the next morning, when they came upon their foes drawn up in line of battle ahead of them.

“They pick their ground well, anyhow,” Hasso said to Orosei. Trees protected both sides of the enemy line, and the field in front of them sloped upward toward their position. A few bushes and a lot of calf-high dead grass covered the field. Hasso didn’t think the Grenye could find enough cover there for ambushes.

“Even if they do, they aren’t very smart. It’s like I told you – look a little to the left of their center.” The master-at-arms didn’t point in that direction; he didn’t want to show the foe he’d spotted anything out of the ordinary. “See that, outlander? They’ve left a gap between a couple of knots of horsemen. It’s not a big gap, but – ”

“We can pour through there,” Hasso finished, excitement rising in him. Orosei nodded, a smug grin on his face. He’d spotted it, and Hasso damn well hadn’t. Fine, then: let him take the credit. Hasso said, “We need to tell the king. The striking column goes in there.”

“Just what I was thinking,” Orosei agreed.

“They’re standing there waiting for us to hit them, aren’t they?”

“You bet they are,” the Lenello said. “Whenever they try to take the lead in a big battle, we clobber ‘em even worse than we do this way. They’ve figured that much out. I bet they’re just trying to slow us down, waiting for snow to make even more trouble for us.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Hasso said. Tactics like that didn’t surprise anybody who’d won the Frozen Meat Medal.

Hasso and Orosei rode over to Bottero. Hasso let the master-at-arms take the lead in showing the king the gap in the Bucovinan line. Orosei still didn’t point. King Bottero needed longer to spot the opening than Hasso had, which made the Wehrmacht officer feel good. When Bottero did, a predatory grin spread across his face. “They’re ours!” he cried. “The goddess has delivered them into our hands!”

He sounded like an Old Testament prophet. For a moment, that thought cheered Hasso. Then he frowned, wondering whether it should. After all, what were the Old Testament prophets but a bunch of damn Jews? Hasso hadn’t done anything to Jews himself, not directly. But he had no great use for them, and he’d made sure to look the other way when the SS cleaned them out of Polish and Russian villages. Like the priest and the Levite, he’d passed by on the other side of the road.

Well, he didn’t have to worry about Jews here. Things were simple. There was his side, and there was the other side, and that was it.

The guys on the other side were feeling pretty cocky, too. Even if the Grenye stood on the defensive, they waved their weapons and yelled what had to be insults at the oncoming Lenelli. They wanted Bottero’s men to think they were plenty ready for a fight, anyway.

Orosei turned to the king again. “By your leave, your Majesty?” he murmured.

“Oh, yes,” Bottero said. “By all means.”