After the Downfall

He felt as if he’d been dropped on his head from about five kilometers up. Concussion, he thought dully. He’d had a couple facing the Russians. Those damn Katyushas could pick you up and throw you around like nobody’s business. He didn’t think he’d ever had a headache like this one, though.

He didn’t want to open his eyes. He feared his head would fall off if he did – this was much, much worse than any hangover he’d ever known. And he was afraid to open them for another reason: he feared he might not see anything at all, or might see only hellfire. He wasn’t a hundred percent sure he was alive.

And when he forced himself to pull his eyelids apart, what he did see made him wonder and made him even more afraid: darkness shot through by the flickering flames of torches. If this wasn’t hell, what was it? Were those demons gabbing not nearly far enough away? What language did demons speak? Hebrew, maybe?

That was the scariest thought yet.

But when Hasso sucked in a big breath of air that might have come out as a shriek, he calmed down instead of turning it loose. He smelled blood and shit and horses and unwashed men. That was the smell of a battlefield, not of the infernal regions.

Then he remembered charging forward with the Lenelli. He remembered going into the pit. “Good God!” he said. “Those little bastards did fool us!”

The Bucovinans must have won their battle, too, because those sure weren’t Lenelli prowling through the pits right now. What happened to Orosei, and to Nornat, and to King Bottero?

Sweet suffering Jesus, what happened to Velona?

Sweet suffering Jesus, what’s going to happen to me?

A couple of torches were coming closer. The figures they illuminated weren’t red-faced demons with horns and spiked tails. They were Bucovinans in tunics and baggy trousers and calf-high boots. That wasn’t necessarily reassuring. The little swarthy men carried the torches upraised in their left hands and long knives dripping blood in their right.

One of them stooped to cut a horse’s throat. The beast sighed, almost as a man might have, and died. A moment later, the other one stooped, too, only the throat he cut belonged to a Lenello. The man’s dying sound was on a slightly higher note than the horse’s.

They were getting closer. Hasso thought about fighting them – for about a second and a half. The way he felt, he couldn’t have fought off a puppy that wanted to lick his face. He wasn’t even sure he could twist free of the dead horses that squeezed him – luckily, without quite squashing him.

What would they do if he played dead? Out of barely open eyes, he watched them finish another Lenello. Chances were they’d slit his throat on general principles. That seemed to be what they were here for.

Could he surrender? He hadn’t wanted to give up to the Ivans, for fear of what they did to prisoners – and because of all he knew about what the Wehrmacht

did to Russian POWs. He knew some of the charming things the Lenelli did to Bucovinans they caught. How did Lord Zgomot’s men return the favor? Do I want to find out?

If he wanted to keep breathing, he did. The Bucovinans working their way through the pit killed another Lenello. They weren’t especially malicious about it, which didn’t mean they hesitated. And they were getting awful goddamn close now.

What have I got to lose? Hasso thought. If I just lie here, they’ll cut me a new grin any minute now. The best defense is a good offense … I hope. Please, Jesus.

“Do you speak Lenello?” he asked – croaked, really.

The little men started violently. One of them said something that had to be cussing. They both came toward him. He didn’t like the smiles on their faces. Maybe just getting his throat cut was the best he could have hoped for. At least it was over in a hurry then. So many other interesting possibilities…

Interesting. Right.

“I speak your language, man out of the Western Sea,” answered the native who hadn’t sworn. He spoke it better than Hasso did, which still wasn’t saying much.

“Tell me your name, so my gods can spit on it when they bury you in dung in the world to come.”

He plainly still believed in their old-time religion, even if the Lenello goddess had given some Grenye different ideas. And he wanted to use Hasso’s name to curse him. The Wehrmacht officer might have lied if he’d thought a Grenye curse would bite. He was sure he would have lied to Aderno. But he was also sure the natives couldn’t work that kind of magic.

And so he gave the fellow the truth: “I call myself Hasso Pemsel.”