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.”
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.
“Yes, I had to see,” Rautat repeated as he laced up his trousers. “You Lenelli can do all kinds of things we don’t know how to do. You can make all kinds of things we don’t know how to make. I worked for a smith. I wasn’t even a ‘prentice. I pumped the bellows. I carried things. I banged with a hammer. And I watched.
My uncle is a smith, so I knew something about it – the way we do it, anyhow. Now I know a lot of your tricks, too, and I use them, and I teach them to other people who want to learn them. Other Grenye, I mean. My people.” He jabbed a forefinger at his own chest.
You were a spy, Hasso realized, buttoning his own fly. Rautat watched that with interest. He watched everything Hasso did with interest. The Lenelli didn’t use a fly fastening. Hasso had on his old Wehrmacht trousers.
As they stepped away from the trees, the German nodded to himself. Rautat had been just as much a spy as an Abwehr agent who tried to steal the secrets of some fancy new British steel-manufacturing process. The only difference was, the Lenelli didn’t seem to know their processes were worth guarding.
And I didn’t think of it, either, he reminded himself as he swung up onto the scrubby little horse they were letting him ride. He muttered angrily in German. He’d been Bottero’s spymaster, and he’d been better at the job than any Lenello ever born. But he hadn’t been good enough. How many just like Rautat were there, in all the Lenello kingdoms? Hundreds? Thousands?
“What is that tongue you used? It’s not Lenello,” Rautat said. How many of those Grenye were as sharp as he was? Probably very few.
“No. It’s my own language,” Hasso answered. “I’m not a Lenello.”
“You look like one,” Rautat told him. Hasso shrugged. The dark little man plucked at his curly beard. “You don’t sound like one, I will say.” He took a scrap of parchment, a reed pen, and a little clay flask of ink from a belt pouch and scribbled a note to himself. Seeing Hasso’s eyes on him, he said, “I learned your letters when I was in Drammen, too. We mostly use them now.”
“Yes, I know that,” Hasso said. The crude warning the Bucovinans posted had used Lenello characters and, indeed, the Lenello language.
“We had writing of our own before you big blond bastards came.” Rautat sounded like a man anxious to prove he wasn’t a savage and half afraid he was in spite of everything. “Your way is a lot quicker to pick up, though. It’s mostly the priests who still write the old characters. They take years to learn, and who else has the time?”
How had the natives written in the old days? Hieroglyphics? Things like Chinese characters? Some slow, clumsy, cumbersome system, anyhow. One of these days, chances were even the priests wouldn’t use it any more. And then who would be able to read the accumulated wisdom of Bucovin, assuming there was any?