After the downfall

XXVII

It was a long, restless night. Hasso and Zgomot feared the Lenelli might try to steal the battle under cover of darkness. The Bucovinans slept in shifts and in their armor, with weapons close at hand. Zgomot sent scouts and sentries as far forward as he could, and well out to both flanks as well.

Hasso wouldn't have wanted to try a nighttime cavalry charge. He feared an attack on foot. If Bottero thought that was the best way to cut down the value of gunpowder… well, the Lenello king might well have been right.

And, a little past midnight — so the German judged by the position of the moon — the Lenelli did try something. Bucovinan scouts gave the alarm. Horns blared in the Bucovinan camp. Soldiers who had been sleeping sprang up, clutching swords and spears. Hasso grabbed a smoldering length of punk and ran to the catapults. Lobbing shells at night was one more thing he didn't want to do. He couldn't aim, and they were much too likely to go off before they flew because the catapult men would be clumsy in the dark. He shook his head — not they. It wouldn't happen more than once.

But, to his surprise, the Lenelli drew back instead of striking home. Big fires blazed in and around their camp — maybe they feared Bucovinan raiders. That was a comforting thought. By the light of those fires, Hasso made out tiny figures — in reality, blonds mostly taller than he was — running back and forth and gesticulating at one another.

He wished for Zeiss binoculars. With them, he might have learned something about what was going on over there. As things were, he could only guess. Whatever the Lenelli had planned, it didn't seem to have worked.

"I wonder if they tried to use magic to lull our scouts to sleep so they could get close without our knowing," Drepteaza said when he went back to their tent. He didn't think he would sleep any more, but he hoped he was wrong.

He chewed on that. Slowly, he nodded. "Makes more sense than anything I think of," he said. "And it means our amulets work." He reached up and touched his through his tunic. "The Lenelli can't be happy about that." He imagined Bottero screaming at his wizards and the wizards yelling back. The Bucovinans couldn't have prayed for a prettier picture.

"It only means they'll hit us harder come the dawn," Drepteaza predicted. "They'll think they have to pay us back."

"Pay us back?" Hasso said, puzzled.

"Of course." She sounded surprised he couldn't see what she meant. "We've insulted them. We didn't fall over when they expected us to. And when Grenye insult Lenelli, the Lenelli pay back in blood."

Hasso grunted uneasily. That had the feel of truth to it. The Wehrmacht felt the same way about the Red Army when the Russians didn't roll over and play dead after 22 June 1941. How dare they keep fighting when they're licked? was the thought in German minds all through that summer. The Reich had two years of nothing but victory behind it by then. Its soldiers expected more, as if that were theirs by right.

Well, the Lenelli had generations of victories behind them by now. They too expected more. Drepteaza was right — they were liable to turn mean if they didn't get them. The Germans sure had.

Yes, the Germans had got mean… and then they'd got desperate. If you jumped on a bear's back, all you could do was hang on tight. Sometimes that didn't help, either. Hasso wouldn't have been fighting in the ruins of Berlin if it did.

The Lenelli wouldn't have gone that far down the road yet. But they'd still be angry, affronted. They'd want their revenge, all right. Didn't Bucovin also have some revenge coming, though?

"We see who pays, uh, whom," Hasso said. Drepteaza kissed him.

The sun came up behind the Bucovinans. That would help their archers and slingers and hurt the bowmen of the Lenelli, who would have a harder time aiming. Were the battle different, it would have mattered more. This fight wasn't going to be about archery. It would be about knights and gunpowder.

And it would be about the Hedgehogs. They took their places in front of the catapults, a hundred men wide, ten men deep. As they marched into position, they held their spears high, and they kept on holding them high. The Lenelli would see that they had unusual weapons, but Hasso didn't want them seeing what the Hedgehogs intended to do with those weapons, not till the very last moment.

He rode out in front of the pikemen on the unicorn, just to give Bottero's men one more thing to think about. "You can do it," he told the pikemen again. "If you do it, we win. If you run, Bucovin runs with you. You will fight!"

"Yes!" they shouted. Sure as hell, they thought they could hold the Lenelli out. Hasso was sure of that. And it mattered. If you thought you could win, you were halfway home. Not all the way; Hasso knew that too bitterly well. But halfway was a lot better than going into a fight with your heart in your throat, sure the enemy would do something horrible to you any minute now.

Slowly, the Lenelli formed their battle line. Would they use a strike column? If they did, where would it go in? He knew where he expected it to go: toward the Hedgehogs. Whether he wanted it going there was a different story. If they held, he would blow the Lenelli to kingdom come. If they didn't… Well, shit, if they didn't he'd be too dead to worry about anything else anyway.

As he looked toward the building enemy line of battle, he didn't see a striking column, though. Maybe Bottero's men were disguising it well. Or maybe Bottero thought Hasso knew the perfect counter and so didn't dare use a deep column. Or, again, maybe the Lenello king was just against everything Hasso had ever been for.

Whatever Bottero was thinking, Hasso sure hoped the Lenelli didn't throw a striking column at his army. He had no perfect counter, and getting his line broken scared the crap out of him.

But he saw knights all the way across the Lenello front. Were more of them in one place than in another? He wished again for the Zeiss field glasses. Whatever he wished for from the world in which he was born, he didn't get it. He wondered why that didn't stop him from wishing.

Where was Velona? Somewhere in that line. Somewhere in the middle of it, odds were. If she couldn't kill him by exploding his head from the inside out, she'd be willing to try a more conventional way of getting rid of him. Willing, hell — she'd be eager. And she'd be deadly as a cobra, too.

Horns blared, there in the Lenello line. Lances swept down to point at the Bucovinans, their points sparkling in the sunshine. At the same time, Captain or Colonel or whatever the hell his rank was Meshterul shouted,"Lower!" Down swept the pikes, too. Those of the first five rows stuck out beyond the leading men, creating a fence of spearheads. The back rows of pikemen didn't drop their spears all the way to horizontal, but kept them up at increasing angles. The pikeshafts would deflect a few arrows. As the men moved forward, they would lower their spears more and more.

Hasso went from one catapult to another. Each one had a shell on the casting arm. He wouldn't do all the lighting this time, not with several catapults fighting at the same time. All he could do was fight one catapult and direct the rest. "Are we ready?" he asked. "Is everything the way it should be?"

"Ready!" the crews shouted. He hoped to God they were right. Catapults were complicated machinery for this world, and as liable to break down as panzers were back in the world he came from. Well, he'd done what he could do. Now most of it was up to the natives.

More horns blew. The Lenelli moved forward, slowly at first — they wouldn't boot their horses up to a gallop till they came within missile range of the Bucovinan line. The Bucovinan knights would have to go forward, too, or take the charge with no momentum of their own. That worried Hasso. If something went wrong, the moving wings and the stationary center could come unglued and let the Lenelli in. He didn't know what to do about it. He hadn't seen anything he could do about it — except worry.

There was Bottero's banner, heading straight for him. The king would ride right by his standard-bearer. His lance would be couched, and he would be ready to kill anything that got in his way. Bottero was as tough as any of the men he led, which was saying a good deal.

Before long, Hasso recognized his former sovereign. Zgomot made a better administrator. In a fight, Hasso would have bet on Bottero every goddamn time.

And there was Velona, brandishing a sword. She wore a mailshirt, but her head was bare. Her long, fair hair swept out behind her. But that wasn't what drew his eye to her. The goddess filled her; he could tell. She was beautiful and terrible and terrifying.

He glanced warily toward the sky. The day stayed bright and clear. Hasso allowed himself a sigh of relief. The worst thing the Lenello wizards could have done, as far as he could see, was to start a driving rainstorm. Dragon-bone amulets wouldn't stop that. Trying to set off mines and launch shells with wet fuses would have been a nightmare. But the wizards hadn't thought of it… this time, anyhow.

Off to his left, on the forest flank, a mine exploded too soon, and then another one. A Bucovinan there must have come down with buck fever and lit his fuses too soon. Some of the Lenello knights' horses over there flinched inward, which threw their charge into a little confusion, but not enough, not enough.

And then a mine blew two horses off their feet fifty meters in front of the trees, and blasted another man out of the saddle. More mines went off as the foot archers moving up behind the knights came near. Some of them went down, too, and the rest, like any troops with half a gram of sense, hesitated about going forward. That was good.

But he didn't have much time to dwell on the archers. The knights were nearing him with frightening speed. They looked as if they could ride down anything on earth, the way a company of panzers would have looked to foot soldiers in his own world. If the Hedgehogs panicked and broke and ran…

They didn't. The men in the first row went to one knee, the better to receive the charge. Without Hasso's telling them what to do, the Bucovinans in charge of setting off the mines in front of the Hedgehogs lit their fuses at just about the right time. He didn't know whether to cheer or to puddle up — his students were going out into the world on their own, and they were doing well.

The world was also trying to break in on them. Velona shouted something. Hasso couldn't make out what it was, but he shouldn't even have been able to hear it from a range of several hundred meters, not through his own side's yells, those of the other Lenelli, and the rising thunder of the horses' hooves. He shouldn't have been able to, but he did. The goddess, he thought uneasily.

Maybe — probably — the wizards were thwarted. Whatever power Velona had was wilder and stronger than theirs. It scared the bejesus out of him, because he didn't know what its limits were or if it had any.

He didn't know, but he was about to find out. He touched a glowing length of punk to the fuse on the shell in the catapult's hurling arm. As soon as it caught, he jumped back, yelling, "Loose!"

Swoosh! Thump! The arm shot forward and thudded into place against the padded rest. Other swooshes and thumps said the rest of the catapults were shooting, too. Hasso breathed a prayer of thanksgiving to Whomever that no shell went off too soon. Blowing up a catapult crew would have been bad for morale. An air burst right above the Hedgehogs' heads would have been worse.

Boom! Boom! Those were mines, going off a little too soon. Horses reared and snorted in fear, but the Lenelli fought them down and kept on coming. They wouldn't panic the way they did the first time. Experience counted, here as anywhere else. You lived and you learned — if you lived. The Lenelli had nerve, too. Not even their worst enemies, among whom Hasso now counted himself, would have denied that for a moment.

Boom! Boom! More mines. This time, horses went down. Knights crashed to the ground or flew through the air. The charge was disordered, but it came on anyhow. German fifteen-year-olds advancing on Josef Stalin tanks with Panzerfausts couldn't have shown more guts.

Things happened very fast now. Boom! Boom! Boom! Those were the flying shells bursting on and above the Lenelli and spraying lead balls and sharp fragments of bronze and iron through them. More horses fell. More knights got blasted.

Hasso thought they would break then. His catapult crew, like all the rest, worked frantically to reload the weapon and tighten up the ropes of hair that powered it. They grunted and cursed and sweated as they yanked at windlasses. They didn't seem to have cranks. Hasso made a note to himself to do something about that before too long. He wondered if he'd remember.

Off on the wings, where the defense wasn't so tough, the Lenelli engaged the Bucovinans. If the blonds broke through on either side, they might still win no matter what happened to their center. Germany had built up motorized panzer and panzergrenadier divisions, but the rest of the Wehrmacht, the bulk of the Wehrmacht, still relied on horses and shoe leather. Hasso had modernized some of the Bucovinan army, but not all. How well would the rest perform?

For that matter, the Lenelli weren't beaten yet, even in the center. Hasso lit another fuse. "Loose!" Swoosh! Thump! The catapult flung it away. Boom! It blew up and hurt some blonds. In spite of the pounding to which they couldn't reply, they kept on coming.

He'd heard that a charging horse would stop short, and wouldn't impale itself on a picket fence of spearpoints. No doubt that was true — if the horse was left to its own inclinations. But determined riders could make their horses go forward against those long spears. They could, and they did.

Wounded horses shrieked like wounded women. Some of them fouled pikes as they fell. Others pushed forward into the gaps. So did dismounted Lenelli, trying to get within sword reach of the Bucovinans.

The spears held them out. Meshterul and the rest of the Hedgehogs' officers deserved the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords. This was the first time they'd ever used their phalanx, but they performed like ten-year veterans. Every time a pike got fouled, another man stepped forward to get his point into the fight. Hasso just hoped they didn't run out of men. They were only ten deep. Next time, they'd be deeper.

Was that Bottero there, a third of a meter taller than the natives? That was Velona, slashing away as if possessed — and so, no doubt, she was. If even she, if even the goddess, couldn't break through… well, the Bucovinans had a chance, anyhow.

One catapult crew wrestled its unwieldy contraption around so it could shoot at the Lenelli off to the right. Swoosh! Thump!..Boom! One shell bursting where the blonds didn't expect it created far more fear than a whole salvo they were braced to receive.

"Good job!" Hasso yelled. "Good job!"

And then Meshterul yelled a command the natives might never have given on the battlefield before: "Forward!"

Hasso wondered if the Hedgehogs' commander had lost his mind. The pike-men had stopped the Lenello cavalry charge in its tracks. That was all they had to do. Hasso had been far from sure they could do even so much. Could they drive the blond horsemen back?

Damned if they couldn't. They thrust their long pikes at the unarmored horses, not at the knights on their backs. The wounded horses shrieked. Some reared. Some fell. Their riders had a devil of a time keeping them under control. The Bucovinans speared the Lenello knights who went down with their mounts — speared them and then trampled them underfoot as they surged ahead.

The Lenello line wavered. The knights had never met infantry like this. As Hasso knew too well from bitter experience, if you couldn't go forward, all too often you couldn't hold your ground, either. In what seemed like no time at all, there was no line in front of the Hedgehogs. There were only frightened knights riding away as fast as they could.

Swoosh! Thump!.. Boom! More shells sped the Lenelli fleeing the center on their way. Then, at Hasso's shouted orders, all the catapult crews swung their weapons to one side or the other and started bombarding the Lenelli on the wings.

A bigger force of Hedgehogs could have rolled up the Lenelli to either side of them. By what struck Hasso as a miracle, Meshterul realized he didn't have that kind of force, and halted his men before they advanced too far and got cut off. Such intrepid, brainless heroism had cost the Saxons dear at Hastings.

Swoosh! Thump…Boom! The catapults couldn't fling shells anywhere near so fast as a battery of 105s. They didn't have so many shells to fling, either. Hasso was painfully aware that they wouldn't have any more for weeks once they ran dry here. Everything rode on this battle.

Swoosh! Thump!..Boom! That was a good one. It burst just above the Lenelli on the left, and knocked down four of them. A 105 round couldn't have done much more. And it panicked the knights who were still fighting. They decided all at once that they'd had enough. Going up against Grenye savages was one thing. Facing death from out of the air? That was something else. They rode off, too.

Seeing them retreat, the knights on the right also pulled back. The Lenello archers who'd come up behind them now screened their withdrawal. Well, the archers tried. The catapults outranged them, though. Three or four shells bursting among them sent them on their way.

"You know what we just did?" Rautat said as the archers withdrew.

"We beat 'em." Hasso knew it damn well.

But Rautat was going to make his joke whether Hasso gave him a straight line or not. "We just circumcised the big blond pricks, that's what," he said, and went off in gales of laughter. All the natives who heard him broke up, too. And Hasso laughed along. Why the hell not? To a winner, everything was funny.

Along with the Bucovinans, Hasso tramped the field after the battle. They were looking for loot, and to finish off or capture surviving Lenelli. He was looking for faces he knew. He soon found one, too: there lay Mertois, castellan of Castle Svarag. A pike had punched through his thigh, and he must have bled to death.

"So many dead horses," Rautat said sadly. "What a waste." At least a hundred of them lay twisted right in front of the Hedgehogs' position. They'd done what their riders told them to do, and they'd paid for it. So had a lot of the men who spurred them forward. The Lenelli didn't know what they were up against till too late.

There lay King Bottero. Bucovinans had already stolen his fine sword, his helm with the gold circlet, his gilded mailshirt. Despite the byrnie, he'd taken a lot of wounds. He didn't have a son. The succession in Drammen was liable to get messy. That was good news for Bucovin, too.

And there lay Velona, her golden hair all sodden with blood. None of the Bucovinans had taken the sword from her hand. They knew who she was, and they knew what she was, and they didn't want anything to do with her.

They weren't so dumb.

Even Rautat hung back a couple of steps as Hasso knelt beside her. "So that's what she looks like up close," the underofficer said. "If you like great big blondes, I guess she's pretty."

Hasso hardly heard him. He eased the sword from his one-time beloved's grip, then reached out to touch her hand. When he did, he frowned. She should have been cooler than that if she were dead. His index and middle fingers found that spot on her wrist by the thumb side of the tendons. Her pulse was slow, but it was there. "Jesus!" he muttered: another deity missing in action here.

"What?" Rautat said.

"She's not dead," Hasso said. "She's just knocked out."

Rautat started to draw his belt knife to remedy that. Then he jammed it back into the sheath. "I don't dare," he said, "not against the goddess." He took off on the dead run.

Hasso would have stopped him if he had tried to kill Velona. He wondered why, when she'd come so close to killing him. He also wondered what the hell he was going to do with her — to her? — when she came to. He didn't fear the goddess the way Rautat did, which probably meant he didn't understand the situation as well as the native did.

Cautiously feeling, he found a knot on the side of her head. He nodded to himself. Going into battle without a helmet was great for heartening your friends and frightening your foes. When it came to actually fighting… not so good. He probed a little harder. If she had a fractured skull, she might not wake up — which might prove a relief for everybody but her.

She grimaced and tried to twist away from him. She wasn't deeply out, then. That was a good sign, or maybe a bad one, depending on how you looked at things. Then her eyes opened. For a moment, she had no idea who he was, who she was herself, or what the hell was going on. Hasso sympathized. He'd been down that road himself the autumn before. A concussion was not your friend.

She blinked, and blinked again. Her mouth set. Reason was coming back. Those blue, blue eyes found his. "You!" she said, her voice a hoarse croak.

"Afraid so." Lenello came rustily from his lips. He wasn't used to hearing it without a rough Bucovinan accent any more, either. "Want some water?"

"Please."

He had a jug on his belt. He took it off and held it to her lips. She drank and drank. "Better?" he asked when she'd almost emptied it.

"A little, maybe." She needed two tries to sit up. When she looked around and saw Bucovinans roaming the field and Lenelli and their chargers down and dead in windrows, she looked first humanly astonished and then more than humanly outraged. "What did you do to us? What did we do to you to deserve… this?"

"Well, trying to kill me makes a pretty good start." Hasso worked hard to remember the past tenses that had given him so much trouble; he needed them here. "I loved you, and you tried to cook my brains for me."

He watched her gaze sharpen. If she could have slain him right there, she would have done it. But she couldn't even start; it was like watching an archer try to shoot in a driving rainstorm. "My wits are all scrambled," she muttered.

"I believe it," Hasso said. "You are going to have headaches like you don't believe. Takes days, maybe weeks, to get over." He tapped the side of his own head. "I know."

"What did you do?" Velona repeated. "The flying thunder… That forest of spears…" She shuddered, then winced, plainly wishing she hadn't. "And none of our magic worked. We've had to deal with renegades, but this…! How the goddess must hate you!"

"I take my chances," Hasso said, which shocked her. Well, too bad. It was too bad, in too many ways, but he couldn't do anything about any of them now. He continued, "I tell you something else, too. You need to remember it. All Lenelli need to remember it."

"Go on," she said. "I'm listening. Right now, I don't have much choice."

"Simple. Easy. Four words — Grenye are people, too." In Bucovinan, it would have been one word. "People," Hasso said again. "Strong enough to stand against Lenelli. Isn't that a big part of what makes people?"

Velona's chin came up. "Little black-haired mindblind savages." Cutting through a couple of hundred years' worth of Lenello arrogance wouldn't be easy or quick.

Hasso was about to remind her that King Zgomot's so-called savages had whipped the living snot out of her kingdom twice running. Before he could, someone behind him said, "I didn't know she would be so beautiful."

He whirled. There stood Drepteaza and, several paces behind her and looking scared, Rautat. Hasso felt almost as if she'd caught him being unfaithful with Velona. He glanced at the goddess on earth. She looked like hell: haggard, battered, bruised, and filthy, her hair all matted with blood. All the same, the essence remained, and Drepteaza saw down to it.

Velona was looking from one of them to the other, too. And she also knew what she saw. "Who is this… person?" she asked Hasso, and if the last word of the question held a certain mocking edge, what could he do about it? It was the word he'd used himself.

"I am Drepteaza, priestess of Lavtrig in Falticeni." She spoke for herself, in her own excellent Lenello. "And…" She stepped forward and took Hasso's hand in hers.

"Yes. And." He squeezed hers.

Velona's eyes flashed. "Disgusting," she said.

"As a matter of fact, no," Hasso told her. This time, Drepteaza squeezed him. But he had to speak to Velona again: "You warn me not to love you. How do you blame me if I love someone else?"

Velona stared at him. So did Drepteaza. Had he said anything to her about love? He didn't think so. His timing was less than ideal. He'd have to fix that later. Now… Now Velona spoke to him as if he were an idiot — and she doubtless thought he was. As if spelling out what he should have known already, she said, "I meant a Lenello, not a Grenye."

"Too bad," Hasso said. "Grenye are people, too." He underscored that by switching to Bucovinan to ask Drepteaza, "What do we do with her?"

"I don't know," the priestess answered in the same language. No, Velona didn't speak it — Hasso hadn't thought she would stoop to learning. Drepteaza went on, "We could do two things, I suppose. We could kill her or let her go."

"Not keep her prisoner, the way you do — uh, did — with me?" Hasso asked.

"If she were only Velona, I would say yes, we could do that," Drepteaza said. "With the goddess in her…" She shook her head. "I don't know how much power she can pull through that connection. I don't want to find out. It could be worse than keeping all your gunpowder prisoner in one place."

Hasso grunted and nodded. He'd always thought Velona was so much female dynamite. Here was his own thought come back to him transmuted. "How much bad luck goes with killing her?" he wondered aloud.

"I don't know the answer to that, either," Drepteaza said. "Even with an amulet that works, I'm not sure I want to find out. Do you?"

"She would kill me in a heartbeat." Hasso's eyes kept sliding to Velona. Beat-up as she was, she still looked damn good to him. Drepteaza had to know it, too. He would likely end up paying for that later. He sighed. "I haven't got the heart to do it, regardless of bad luck."

"I told you you were a fool. But then, if you love me, you already know that." Drepteaza turned to Rautat, who was hovering in the background. "Go fetch Lord Zgomot. This should be his choice."

"Yes, priestess." The underofficer seemed relieved to have an excuse to beat it.

"What are you barking and mooing about?" Velona asked Hasso: so much for her opinion of Bucovinan.

"Whether to kill you or not," he answered.

Her nostrils flared. It wasn't fear. It was more the reaction a cat would have if it heard the mice were planning to bell it. "The curse of the goddess would fall on the guilty," she warned.

"We know," Drepteaza said.

"That didn't worry the three guys chasing you when I first came to this world." Hasso used two Lenello past tenses in one sentence. He impressed himself, if not Velona.

She looked at him as if a donkey had just lifted its tail and left him lying in the roadway. "When you did, I thought you would be a blessing for my folk, not a curse."

"He is a blessing for this world," Drepteaza said quietly.

"Not if he helps Grenye." Velona had the courage — and the blindness — of her convictions.

"We are not your beasts of burden." Drepteaza's voice had an edge to it. Hasso could have told her she was wasting her breath. Odds were she already knew. A thousand-kilo bomb wouldn't change Velona's mind.

"Well, well," Lord Zgomot said — courteously, in Lenello. "I did not expect this."

Velona eyed him with a certain caution if not respect — he'd caused the Lenelli a lot of trouble over the years. "Neither did I," she said bitterly.

"What do we do with her, Lord?" Hasso asked, also in Lenello. Drepteaza filled in the alternatives — in Bucovinan. If Velona didn't like it, too bad — that was her attitude. Hasso didn't see how he could blame her.

Zgomot seldom looked happy. Maybe he had right after his army's smashing victory. Contemplating what to do with Velona gave him a good excuse for his chronic dyspepsia. "She hurts us if we keep her, if we kill her, or if we let her go," he said, which summed things up pretty well. "Best to let her go… I think. At least she won't hurt us in the realm if we do that — not right away, anyhow."

"King Bottero will thank you," Velona said in unwontedly quiet tones.

"No, he won't," Zgomot replied. "He's dead."

"Dead? Bottero?" The full magnitude of the disaster Velona's kingdom had suffered seemed to sink in for the first time. Goddess. Her lips shaped the word without a sound. But she got no help from the goddess then. Was she too badly hurt to sustain such aid? Did all the amulets around her block it? Hasso had no idea.

"I will give you one of the horses we captured," the Lord of Bucovin told her. "You may ride away on it. If you are wise, you will not set foot in my lands again."

"I doubt I am wise, if that is wisdom," she said. "But I thank you for the gift all the same." By the way she spoke, it was no less than her due.

Hasso wondered if she could even stand, let along ride, but she was one tough cookie. When the horse came, the groom who brought it promptly took a powder. "Do you want help getting up into the saddle?" Hasso asked.

"Not from you," she said coldly. "You beat me. You beat my kingdom. You beat my folk. You have not stolen my pride." She swayed, but she mounted without help from Hasso or from anyone else. And he was convinced nothing but that enormous — maybe monstrous — pride kept her on the horse as she rode west at a slow walk.

"Whew!" Hasso's shoulders slumped, as they might have had the Bucovinans lost.

"You… loved her? You loved… that?" Drepteaza asked.

"Yeah, well, you already knew I was stupid."

"There are degrees to everything."

"You must be right. You usually are." Hasso bent down and kissed her, right there on the battlefield. You probably weren't supposed to do things like that. But when he came up for air, he saw Lord Zgomot smiling at them. Zgomot pulled his face straight in a hurry, but not quite fast enough.

Drepteaza saw the Lord of Bucovin smiling, too. She sent him a severe look, then turned up the voltage when she aimed it at Hasso. "You are impossible," she said.

"Jawohl!" He stiffened to attention and clicked his heels, which nobody from this world did. His arm shot out in a salute nobody from this world used. "At your service, fair lady!"

"Impossible," Drepteaza repeated, but without the iron that had been in her voice before. She turned to Zgomot. "What are we going to do with him, Lord?"

"Well, as for me, I aim to keep him as long as I possibly can," Zgomot answered. "What you do with him is up to you, of course, but he does not seem to want to go away in spite of, ah, everything."

In spite of Velona, he meant. Was he right? As things worked out, yes. Would he be right if Velona wanted me back? Hasso wondered. Damned if I know. Never a dull moment with her — no, not even close — but one day, sure as hell, she'd detonate and blow you to bits. Drepteaza was quieter but safer, definitely better for the long haul.

And he had something he needed to say straight to her, not just let her hear in passing: "I do love you, you know."

She nodded. "Yes, I do. Nice of you to tell me, though." As his ears heated, she went on, "And if you loved her, too, I have to wonder about your taste."

"Maybe not." Lord Zgomot threw the drowning Hasso a line. "Men don't judge women the same way women judge men."

"A pretty face, a nice shape, a tight snatch… I know," Drepteaza said, and Hasso's ears got hotter yet. She went on, "Plenty for a good-time girl, but for love7. You ought to look for more there."

This time, Hasso spoke for himself: "Well, I did. I found you, yes?"

"Who knows what you were looking for when you found me?" she said.

"A pretty face, a nice shape… The other I don't know about, but I wouldn't be surprised," Zgomot said. Yes, Bucovinans could be very blunt. Drepteaza squeaked. Hasso might have if she didn't beat him to the punch.

Since she did, he added, "And more."

"Impossible," Drepteaza repeated. He nodded, not without pride of his own. She made a face at him and said, "If I can forgive you for being big and blond, I must love you."

"Good," Hasso said, and kissed her again. He found Zgomot smiling once more when he broke the clinch. If Bless you, my children wasn't written all over the Lord of Bucovin's canny face…

If it wasn't, then maybe Hasso was seeing sheer relief. All across the field, Zgomot's men were slitting the throats of Lenelli or leading them off into captivity. Some would make useful laborers. Others would know things the Bucovinans didn't, and that Hasso didn't, either. Bucovin was still behind its neighbors most ways. Now Zgomot's realm had more of a chance to catch up, and now the Bucovinans knew a few things the Lenelli didn't, too.

I did that. For better or worse, I did, Hasso thought. Now he'd seen from both sides what happened when technically superior enemies who thought themselves the lords of creation came at you. It was great fun when the panzers rolled forward or the assault column of knights struck home. Being on the receiving end was a different story — yeah, just a little.

No wonder the Russians fought back so hard. No wonder they hated the German invaders so much. Hasso hadn't got it then. Even the Red Army's counterattacks hadn't made him understand — he'd only understood that there were way too many Ivans. If the other guy aimed to take your land and wipe you out or enslave you forever… Nothing like putting the shoe on the other foot.

It would have happened here. It would have, but it hadn't, and he had a lot to do with that. Maybe Velona was right after all when she said the goddess brought him here for a reason. It just wasn't the reason she thought. He kissed Drepteaza one more time. Good-bye, Velona.