Free After the Downfall by Harry Turtledove

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