“Cursed Grenye are cowardly scuts,” King Bottero said when Hasso asked him what the enemy was up to. “If they can keep from fighting us, chances are they will.”

Not half an hour after the king said that, an excited courier brought word that a Grenye scout had popped up from behind a bush, shot an arrow into the unarmored leg of a Lenello scout, and managed to get away in the confusion that followed. “Miserable skulker!” The man who brought the news sounded furious at the native. “Stinking sneak!”

Remembering how the partisans went about their business in German-occupied Russia, Hasso said, “Teamsters need to be careful. Outriders need to be careful. The Grenye may go after people who don’t expect to fight.”

“Only proves they’re cowards,” the king said.

“If they hurt us, how much does that matter?” Hasso asked. “War is not about being brave. Not all about that, anyway.”

Bottero stared at him, an uncomprehending gape he’d seen too many times. “What is war about, then?” the king demanded.

“Winning.” Hasso’s one-word answer came without the least hesitation. It was the answer of a man who’d seen his comrades show more courage than humanly possible in the grinding retreat across Russia and Poland and Germany itself. It was the answer of a man who’d seen that courage on display in Berlin, where in the end it would do no good at all. “Winning, your Majesty,” the Wehrmacht officer repeated. “In the end, nothing else counts.”

King Bottero still didn’t get it. “Well, of course we’ll win,” he said. “How we do it counts, too.”

Hasso saw only one thing to say to that, and he said it: “Yes, your Majesty.” He didn’t believe it for a minute. A few Lenelli – Orosei sprang to mind – knew better. The rest of them were full of chivalric nonsense … except when they were pillaging Bucovinan farmhouses and firing Bucovinan villages. That was the small change of war, though. In battle, they could show their style.

His deep attacking column let the Lenelli show their style. Bottero had probably said he could try it out for just that reason. After everything Hasso had seen on all the fronts of Europe, he’d given up on style. Only results mattered.

The natives seemed to agree with him. They dug pits in the road ahead of the advancing Lenello army and mounted sharp stakes in the bottom. Those killed one horse and wounded a rider. Then Bottero’s men started to be more careful.

When they saw that the roadway looked suspicious, they pulled off into the fields to either side of the dirt track.

Before long, the Grenye started digging pits in the fields, too. Those were harder to spot than the ones in the road. They killed several horses and a couple of Lenelli. They also infuriated the survivors.

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.

VIII

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.”