Harry Turtledove - After the downfall

Orosei bounced to his feet. He saluted again, saying, "You're bloody good. Show me those flips I've heard about."

"We go slow?" Hasso asked, and the master-at-arms nodded. Hasso knew a moment's relief that he'd proved himself without getting maimed and without wrecking the other guy, who was bound to have friends in high places. He said, "Come at me — not very fast."

Orosei did. He made a perfect practice partner. Hasso grabbed his outthrust arm, twisted, got him on his hip, and flipped him over his shoulder. Orosei thudded down on his back with a big grin on his face. He sprang up. "That's good, by the goddess! Do it again!"

Hasso sent him ass over teakettle a couple of more times at half speed, and then at something closer to full speed. Orosei was a glutton for getting things right. If he took some bruises doing it, he didn't care.

"Let me try," he said when he thought he had it.

"Half speed," Hasso said, and the master-at-arms nodded. Hasso approached. He extended his arm. Orosei twisted and flipped him smooth as could be. Hasso hadn't expected anything different — this guy was a pro.

He proved what a pro he was a moment later. After he'd tossed Hasso around three or four times, he said, "That is the move, and it's very fine. What is the counter?"

"Ah!" Now Hasso gave him a German — style salute. "Good question! Right question! I come half speed. You — " He mimed doing the flip. "You see."

Some of the soldiers drifted off when they found that Hasso and Orosei weren't going to ruin each other for their entertainment. Others crowded closer to watch Hasso show the master-at-arms how not to get thrown. A lot of them wanted to try the moves themselves, on one another and on the men who really knew how to do them.

"You're better than I am," Orosei said after a while. "I have to think about it, and you just do it."

"Practice," Hasso said with another shrug. How many times had he done those flips? On the other hand… "Me and sword? Bad." He made a face to show how bad.

"But you've got that fire-spitting pellet crossbow," Orosei said: a pretty good description of a Schmeisser from somebody who'd never heard of the Industrial Revolution. "Do all the soldiers where you come from carry those?" Orosei asked. When Hasso nodded, the master-at-arms winced. "You must kill each other before you get close enough for swords."

"Mostly." Hasso nodded again. Orosei wasn't just a hardnose with quick reflexes. He had brains. That figured. He was more or less a regimental sergeant major, so he'd better not be a dummy — especially right under the king's eye.

The Lenello tossed him a spearshaft with a bundle of rags at the end instead of a point. "You know what to do with this?"

"Some," Hasso answered.

"Let's see." Orosei took a practice pike, too, and did his best to stick Hasso like a pig. When Hasso showed he could handle himself, Orosei whacked him on the back. "Yeah, you're pretty decent. How come, when you don't know what to do with a blade?"

As best Hasso could, he explained about bayonets. Then he said, "Wait, please," and hurried back to his chamber. He returned with his entrenching tool. "Fight with this, too." He demonstrated some of the unkind things you could do with the metal blade.

Orosei watched with interest, then hefted the entrenching tool himself. "Nice little thing," he said with an appreciative nod. "You dig holes so the pellets don't dig holes in you?"

"Yes," Hasso said. Orosei got it, all right.

"And it's a fine close-in weapon, too," the master-at-arms said. "Handy to have both in the same package." He handed the entrenching tool back. Hasso was beaming as he took it. He and Orosei didn't have many words in common, but they spoke the same language anyway.

By the time the summer solstice rolled around, Hasso could read and even write a bit. His progress amazed the lame, white-haired Lenello who taught him. But old Dastel was used to teaching people who'd never met letters before. Hasso understood the idea that each sign stood for one sound just fine. So what if the Lenelli used thirty-four characters? So what if they wrote from right to left like Semitic Untermenschen?. As soon as Hasso memorized which squiggle sounded like what, he could read as well as anybody — and better than most, because people here had a habit of muttering their words as they read them. His biggest problem was his limited vocabulary. Learning to read helped there, too. Words on a page didn't vanish into thin air the way spoken ones did.

Pages were parchment or something like that. Words were written by hand, with reed pens or goose quills. No Gutenberg here, not yet. I could do that, too, Hasso thought. Or would the wizards get mad at me for unfair competition?

As the longest day of the year drew close, anticipation built in Castle Dram — men and in the city surrounding it. In the castle, Grenye servants lugged casks of wine and barrels of beer up from the cellars. The cellarmaster, an immensely fat Lenello, kept a stern eye on things to make sure the casks and barrels didn't get broached too soon.

More Grenye dug trenches in the courtyard and chopped wood to fill them and set up enormous spits to turn roasting carcasses above them. The swarthy little natives seemed as excited about the upcoming holiday as their overlords. Why not? They'd be able to get drunk and make pigs of themselves. They didn't get to do that very often.

As the solstice approached, Hasso got drunk several times. He tried giving Velona hints that he wasn't happy. She had to know why; she was nobody's fool. But she affected not to understand, no doubt thinking that better than a raging brawl. And she showed no sign whatever that she didn't intend to lay King Bottero.

Some of the Lenelli chased Grenye women more as the solstice neared. The big blond men seemed to do a bit of that all the time. The Grenye had a hard time saying no, and their menfolk took their lives in their hands if they presumed to challenge their superiors. The Lenelli had the power of law behind them, and the power of size, and the power of military training.

And a good many Grenye women didn't want to say no. Hasso had seen that before, in France and in Russia. Losers' women were often easy. Sometimes they saw the other side's victorious soldiers as, literally, meal tickets. You could do better for yourself in an occupier's bed than in one where you slept all alone. Occupiers also had a kind of glamour because they were victorious, in stark contrast to your own worthless odds and sods who couldn't defend the country against them.

Sometimes, also, people fell in love, and who'd been on which side to start with hardly seemed to matter. Those were the affairs that turned out best — and worst. They could lead to marriages, despite regulations. Or they could lead to disaster when a soldier got transferred or when somebody decided who was on which side counted after all.

Hasso wondered what would happen if Velona caught him with a little dark Grenye. Actually, he didn't wonder. She would scream. She would break things. She would throw things. She would throw him — out.

To him, her joining Bottero seemed as much a betrayal as that would have been. But she couldn't see it from his point of view. If he tried to tell a Catholic woman not to take communion, she'd spit in his eye. And Velona wasn't just a woman taking communion. She was a priestess giving communion, too. She was the deity for whom communion was given. No wonder she wouldn't listen to him. He could see that.

He hated it anyway.

Much good it did him. Horns and drums woke him at sunrise, welcoming the longest day of the year with a raucous racket. He hadn't got too smashed the night before. His head didn't hurt or anything. But he wasn't thrilled about rising with the birds — and he was, because he could hear them chirping somewhere not far enough away.