Harry Turtledove - After the downfall

Some of the Lenelli wanted to kill all the Bucovinans they found from then on to warn the others not to do such things. Velona was in that camp, which worried Hasso. She did make it plain she was speaking for herself, not for the goddess. That being so, Bottero had the nerve to say no. "After we conquer this country, who will till the land if we use up all the peasants?" he demanded, and no one had an answer for him.

Frightfulness… Hasso had mixed feelings about it. The Germans had used it widely, of course. Sometimes it intimidated people into behaving. Other times the hatred it stirred up only made occupied areas boil with resistance. You couldn't know which ahead of time.

Frustration and anger built up in Bottero's army because there were no enemy soldiers to attack. And then, all at once, there were. Lenello scouts reported a large force of Grenye ahead, blocking Bottero's advance deeper into Bucovin.

When the news came back, the Lenelli burst into cheers. "Now they'll pay for screwing around with us!" a horseman yelled.

"Now we'll see how well your famous attacking column works," Marshal Lugo told Hasso. The German had no trouble understanding the words behind the words. Now we'll see how smart you really are, the marshal meant.

Battle came early the next morning. The Lenelli eagerly pushed forward. King Bottero didn't have to harangue them to get them moving. They wanted to hit the Grenye. They were champing at the bit for the chance. They seemed more enthusiastic about fighting than any Wehrmacht or even Waffen-SS troops Hasso had ever seen.

He wondered why. Arrows and swords weren't bullets and shell fragments, but they could still dish out some pretty horrendous wounds. But nobody in this world looked forward to dying at a ripe old age. Dying, however you did it, was commonly slow and painful here, the way it had been in Europe up until not long before Hasso's time. If you died on the battlefield, at least it was over in a hurry. That was bound to have something to do with things.

Hasso got a glimpse of the rest when the Bucovinan battle line came into sight. The natives didn't seem eager for battle. They hadn't rushed forward the way the Lenelli had. They aimed to defend, not to attack.

Just seeing them infuriated Bottero's men. It was as if the Germans had faced an army of chimpanzees or Jews. "Think they can stand against us, do they?" Aderno growled. "Well, they'd better think twice, that's all."

Velona didn't say anything at all. She stared out toward the assembled Grenye, stared and stared and stared. Her eyes showed white all around the iris. Her breath rasped in her throat; each inhalation made her chest heave, and not in any erotically exciting way. She looked like a woman about to have, or maybe in the throes of, an epileptic fit.

She looks like a woman the goddess is about to possess, Hasso thought, and gooseflesh prickled up on his arms.

Then — anticlimax — the Bucovinans sent a rider forward under sign of truce. They didn't use a white flag here. Instead, the horseman carried a leafy branch, which he waved over his head. He paused right at the edge of bowshot.

King Bottero leaned over to speak to a herald: a man who'd got his job with leather lungs. "Come ahead and say your say!" the herald bawled. "We won't kill you… yet."

The Bucovinan envoy rode closer. Was he here to get a good look at the Lenello line of battle? Hasso had disguised the assault column as well as he could; lancers were deployed all along the line, and the ones at the front rode with lances raised. The men farther back in the column kept their lances down so they would be harder to notice from a distance.

"Why have you invaded our land?" the native asked in good Lenello. "We are not at war. Go back to your own homes. Leave us alone. Leave us at peace."

How many nations that found themselves suddenly at war made the same agonized request? Almost all of them, chances were. Hasso had heard that, when German invaded Russia on 22 June 1941, a Soviet diplomat plaintively asked, "What did we do to deserve this?" The Ivans had done plenty; no doubt about it. But Hasso's wry amusement lasted no longer than a heartbeat. How could it last, when things turned out so disastrously different from what the Fuhrer had in mind? If anyone in his own world asked that question these days, it was the Germans themselves.

King Bottero had never had to worry about godless Russian hordes killing and raping their way through his country. Because he hadn't, he laughed in the Bucovinan herald's face. "This is not your land, little man," he said. "It is ours, and we have come to take it."

The native's mouth tightened. A flush further darkened his already-swarthy cheeks. By the standards of the Lenelli, he was a little man; he was at least twenty centimeters shorter than Hasso, and Hasso was a shrimp next to Bottero and a lot of his warriors. But the Grenye's voice remained calm as he answered, "It is not yours till you take it, your Majesty… if you do."

Bottero laughed again. "Oh, we will, little man. We will. Tell me your name, so that after the fight I can claim you for my personal slave."

"I am called Trandafir, your Majesty," the Bucovinan replied. "You need not tell me your name — I already know it. I will take your words back to my lord." He turned his pony and rode off toward his own line.

Bottero stared after him — stared and then glared. The king needed longer than he should have to realize the native had given him the glove. Maybe he had trouble believing a Grenye would have the nerve to imply he'd take Bottero as his personal slave.

"By the goddess, that wretch will be no bondsman," Bottero snarled. "I will make sure he is dead, the way I would with any snapping dog."

"And well you should, your Majesty," Marshal Lugo said. "He offered you intolerable insult." He didn't seem to notice that the king had insulted the herald first. The Lenelli weren't good about noticing such things. The Germans hadn't been good about noticing them in Russia, either. Why bother? The Ivans were nothing but Untermenschen, weren't they?

Four years earlier, the answer to that question would have seemed obvious. As a matter of fact, it still did. But the obvious answer now wasn't the same as it had been in 1941.

To keep from thinking about that, Hasso watched Trandafir ride back to his line. Bucovin used banners of dark blue and ocher. The Wehrmacht officer wasn't surprised to see their envoy ride over to where those banners clustered thickest. The Grenye king or general or whatever he was would be there.

Passing on Bottero's reply took only a moment. The natives couldn't have expected anything else. The Lenelli wouldn't have come here in arms intending to turn around and go home again. But here as in the world from which Hasso came, the forms had to be observed.

Horns blared along the Bucovinan battle line, first in that center group of banners and then up and down its whole length. The timbre wasn't quite the same as that of the Lenelli horns; even summoning men to imminent battle, it sounded mournful in Hasso's ears. The horns themselves looked different. They had a strange curve to them, one that didn't look quite right to the German.

Regardless of whether the horn calls seemed strange to him, they did what they were supposed to do: they roused the enemy army to defiance. The Bucovinans shouted their hatred and derision at the oncoming Lenelli. When they brandished their weapons, sunlight and fire seemed to ripple up and down their ranks. They might be barbarians, but they looked and sounded ready to fight.

And so were the Lenelli. Their trumpets roared forth familiar notes. These tunes weren't the ones the Wehrmacht used, but they were ones the Wehrmacht might have used. They did the same thing German trumpets would have done: they got Hasso ready to fight. Bottero's men were ready, too. The threats they shouted at the Grenye would have horrified the men who framed the Geneva Convention.