A Lenello stabbed out a pointing forefinger. “What’s that behind the barn there? Something white, I think.”

Hasso hadn’t noticed it till the soldier pointed it out. It wasn’t much more than a flash; the barn hid it pretty well. That made him apprehensive. So did the fruit trees within easy bowshot of the barn. All the same, he said, “We have to check it out.” The knights nodded with the air of men who knew they were liable to be sticking their dicks in a meat grinder and also knew they had no choice. Or did they? Hasso turned to Aderno. “Do you sense an ambush?”

After a few passes and a murmured versicle, the wizard shook his head. “I sense no enemies close by,” he said. But he didn’t sound happy about his own judgment, either, for he added, “If we were in Lenello-ruled land, I would be surer.”

It wasn’t magic. The Lenelli swore it wasn’t, anyway. But the countryside of Bucovin liked the Grenye better than it liked their foes. The blonds had been grumbling about that ever since they crossed the border. “We go like we expect an attack,” Hasso said.

Nobody quarreled with him. One knight said, “You may be a foreigner, but you’ve got your head nailed on tight, by the goddess.” That made Hasso feel good.

That good feeling didn’t last long – only till he got a closer look at the flash of white the alert Lenello had spotted. It was a unicorn; it was on the ground; and it was dead. Blood marred the pristine perfection of its coat: blood from at least a score of wounds. Hasso saw some that came from arrows, others from spears, and a few sword cuts as well. The unicorn’s silvered horn wasn’t bloodied; the beast hadn’t had the chance to fight back.

“You hate to see them hurt,” Aderno said. Hasso found himself nodding. Seeing a unicorn brought down that way was like looking at the corpse of a beautiful woman caught in a bomb blast. Hasso had had to do that more often than he cared to remember. In a way, this was even worse. A beautiful woman could be a deadly enemy. The poor unicorn didn’t know anything about the war between Lenelli and Grenye.

Somehow, Hasso didn’t think the Grenye of Bucovin would have appreciated the distinction.

“Here’s the wizard,” a Lenello knight called, pointing into the woods.

Hasso swung down from his horse and tossed the reins to another Lenello. There didn’t seem to be any Bucovinans close by. He drew his sword anyway.

Because of the unicorn, the smell of blood was already thick in his nostrils. It got thicker. He walked around a scrubby oak sapling and got a good look at what the enemy had done to Flegrei.

He swore softly, in Lenello and then in German. He’d seen such things on the Eastern Front, when the Ivans got hold of some Germans. He’d seen his countrymen do the like to Russians they caught. It jolted him here all the same. The men who started seeing how clever they could be with their knives always aimed to make their foes afraid – if they aimed at anything past a little sport and revenge. They commonly made those foes more determined than they would have been otherwise.

The first thing that came out of his mouth was, “Well, now we know.”

“Now we know,” Aderno agreed in a voice like ashes. “I hope he was dead before they did … some of that, anyway.”

“Yes.” Hasso nodded. Flegrei couldn’t have lived through everything the Bucovinans did to him… could he? Hasso didn’t like to think the wizard had been alive when they…. He didn’t cross his hands in front of his crotch, but he had to make himself hold still. “He is a wizard,” he said. “How do they do this? Why doesn’t he hit them with spells?”

“If they tied his hands, he wouldn’t have been able to make passes. Maybe he was stunned when the unicorn went down,” Aderno said. “And then after that, of course…” He pointed to one of the creative things the Grenye had done.

“Yes. After that.” Hasso wanted to look away, but he didn’t. He couldn’t remember the Ivans coming up with that particular mutilation and insult. If the Bucovinans were more inventive than Stalin’s soldiers… He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes. He didn’t like believing it now.

“They aren’t usually this bad,” a knight said. “Of course, I don’t suppose they catch a wizard very often.”

“I wonder what made poor Flegrei ride back of that farmhouse,” Aderno said. “Maybe he just wanted to ease himself away from everybody else. Whatever it was, he should have known better.”

“Do Lenelli do … this to Grenye, too?” Hasso asked.

“To avenge him, we will,” the knight answered. “Those bastards have to know they can’t get away with this crap. We haven’t done anything this bad in a while, and they had it coming then.”

Would they have thought so? Hasso wondered. But that was a pointless question. He found one that wasn’t: “What do we do with him?”

“Two choices I see,” the knight answered. “Either we burn him here or we take back the pieces so the king and the army find out what kind of war we’re fighting.”

Hasso couldn’t see anything else to do, either. He didn’t feel the call was his to make, even if he held the highest rank here. As a foreigner, he would be missing too many nuances. He turned to Aderno. “You follow the same craft,” he said. “What would he want?”

The wizard plucked at his neatly trimmed beard. “I don’t think he would want to be a spectacle, not… the way he is,” he answered. “Better we make a pyre for him here.”

“All right. We do that, then.” Hasso waved at the forest. “Plenty of branches, as long as we cut them. Can we get them dry enough to burn well?”

“I know a spell for that,” Aderno said. “It’s mostly used to get enough wood for campfires, but I can make it bigger.”

Hasso started hacking at branches with his sword. “Let’s get to work, then.” The Lenelli joined in. Maybe they wouldn’t have done it of their own accord; like the knights of medieval Germany or France, they thought a lot of physical labor was beneath their dignity. But seeing the man set over them go to work without hesitation brought them around. If he didn’t hold back, how could they?

They got enough for a pyre in less than an hour. Aderno murmured and swayed in front of the pile. Steam rose from the rain-soaked wood. When it stopped, the wizard nodded to Hasso. “This magic worked, anyhow. We can burn him now. Lay him on the pyre.”

“Me?” Hasso hoped he didn’t squeak too much.

“Of course,” Aderno said. “You command here. Who else?”

Hasso had dealt with enough corpses that one more didn’t really faze him, but it wasn’t a duty he would have wanted. He had to make sure he had all of Flegrei; the Lenelli wouldn’t have liked it had he left any of the cut-off bits behind. After he finished, he scrubbed his hands on wet grass. That got most of the blood off, but not all of it. The knights gathered around the pyre nodded to one another. They would have done the same thing. Then they would have forgotten about it. Hasso still wanted to get his hands really clean, which showed he came from a different world.

“May the life to come prove kinder to Flegrei than this one did,” Aderno said.

“So may it be,” the knights intoned.

“May he have joy of all his friends to come, and overcome all his foes,” the wizard went on.

“So may it be.” This time, Hasso joined the chorus. It wasn’t the funeral service a German chaplain would have read, but it wasn’t so very different, either.

“May the goddess avenge him against the barbarians who wickedly stole his life.”

“So may it be.”

“As the smoke of the pyre rises to the sky, so may Flegrei’s spirit rise to the heavens beyond the sky.”

“So may it be.”

One of the knights had used flint and steel to get a small fire going. The Lenelli carried their firestarters the way Wehrmacht men carried matches and cigarette lighters. Aderno lit a small branch and used it to touch off the pyre. His magic had done what it needed to do; the flames took hold with no trouble. Hasso smelled wood smoke, and then the stink of burning meat. Flegrei might have been – was – a bastard, but they were on the same side. You never wanted to see one of your guys get it. That reminded you your number might come up next. You knew anyway, sure, but who needed reminding?