After the Downfall

It didn’t mean anything to the one who’d asked for his name. The other one, though, said something else incendiary in his own guttural language. The two of them palavered, waving their arms – and those damn snickersnees. Finally, the one who admitted to speaking Lenello came back to that language: “We have orders to take you alive if we can. Do you yield yourself to us?”

“Do I have a choice?” Hasso asked.

“You always have a choice,” the Bucovinan answered. “You can yield, or you can die right now.”

“What happens if I yield?”

“Whatever we want.” The native wasn’t helping. But then, he didn’t have to.

Hasso sighed. “I yield.” His head hurt too much for him to argue. He tried to twist out from between the dead horses, and discovered he couldn’t. He couldn’t have put up a fight even if he’d wanted to. “Help me out, please.”

The Bucovinan laughed, none too pleasantly. “Now I know you are the stranger we want. No Lenello would ever say please, not to the likes of us.” Resentment – hatred? – simmered in his voice. He went back and forth with his buddy in their language. The other man gestured a fierce warning with his knife before going over to Hasso. They didn’t believe in taking chances. In their boots, Hasso wouldn’t have, either.

He took the Grenye’s hand. Grunting, the native put his shoulder against the corpse of the horse pinning Hasso’s legs and shoved. With some help from the native, Hasso managed to wriggle free. He discovered he couldn’t have run, either: his legs were asleep.

Though small, the local was strong. He dragged Hasso out of the pit and laid him on the ground. There he relieved him of his belt knife. The other Bucovinan, the one who spoke Lenello, came over and peered down at him. “You have a holdout weapon?” the fellow asked, adding, “If you say no and we find it, you won’t like that, I promise.”

“My left boot,” Hasso said. “And under my left arm.”

They took the knives. “You’re full of tricks, aren’t you?” the one who spoke Lenello remarked.

“Oh, yes? What am I doing here, then?” Hasso said with a bitter laugh.

“Breathing,” the Bucovinan replied, which echoed Hasso’s own thoughts much too closely. “You want to keep doing it?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but nudged Hasso in the ribs with a boot. “Can you stand up now?”

“I … think so.” The German sandbagged a little. He wanted to seem weaker and more harmless than he was. But he would have swayed on his pins any which way. The Bucovinans didn’t instantly shove him into motion. More teams of little swarthy men with torches were moving over the battlefield, in the pits they’d dug and around them. Every so often, a native would stoop – and that, presumably, would be that for some luckless Lenello. “Do you – uh, did you – get the king?” Hasso asked.

“No, curse it.” The Grenye sounded unmistakably disgusted. “He fought his way clear. But he won’t be going forward any more, by Lavtrig.” He and the other Bucovinan swirled their torches clockwise when he named the deity. “The rest of you big blond bastards won’t, either.”

I’m not one of those big blond bastards, Hasso thought. But he was blond and he was big by Grenye standards – and he’d fought for King Bottero. Keeping his mouth shut looked like a real good idea.

Keeping his mouth shut about that did, anyhow. He couldn’t help asking, “What about Velona?”

“Who?” The native who spoke Lenello gave him a blank look.

“The goddess,” Hasso said.

“Oh. Her? The Bucovinan spoke to his buddy. They both swirled their torches again, this time counterclockwise. What was that supposed to mean? Reverence? Fear? Warding? All of the above? The native went on, “No, we weren’t too sorry when she got away. If we could have killed her, fine. But how would we keep her prisoner? It would be like keeping the sun in a roomful of kindling.”

He wasn’t far wrong, not from what Hasso knew of Velona. No god or goddess possessed him, but he was a wizard … of sorts. Maybe that would do him some good. Maybe the land here wouldn’t let him work magic. He’d have to see.

“Come on.” The native shoved him. “Move.” Hasso moved – slowly, but he moved.

They fed him. They gave him something that tasted like beer brewed from rye, which was just about as bad as that sounded. The native who spoke Lenello stuck with him as they took him to Falticeni. Hasso found out the fellow’s name was Rautat, and that he’d worked in Drammen for several years before going home to Bucovin.

“Why did you go?” Hasso asked. “Why did you come back?”

“I had to see,” the Bucovinan answered.

They were standing next to a couple of trees by the side of the road, easing themselves. Three soldiers in leather jerkins aimed arrows at Hasso’s kidneys in case he tried to get away. The persuasion worked remarkably well.