After the Downfall

“Your conscience troubles you.” Drepteaza didn’t make it a question.

He could have denied it – by lying to her, and to himself. “Some,” he said. “I did a lot of fighting, the last four years against our worst enemies. Maybe we were not always good. I know we weren’t. Not them, either.”

“Few people would choose war,” Drepteaza said, and then qualified that by adding, “Few Bucovinans would, anyhow. I am not so sure about the Lenelli.”

Hasso wasn’t so sure about the Lenelli, either. They thought they had a goddess-given mission to civilize – that is, to conquer – the Grenye. The Germans had thought the same thing about their Slavic neighbors. They’d tried conquering them again and again … and now the Russian Slavs had turned things upside down. The Germans had usually had an edge, but not one big enough to make up for the numbers against them.

The British made it work in India and North America, the Spaniards farther south. So it could, if the gap between attackers and attacked was wide enough. Would it have been here? Hasso didn’t know. All he knew was that he was doing his damnedest to throw a spa

“Maybe,” he said slowly, “maybe I owe somebody something.”

When a Bucovinan messenger ran up to Lord Zgomot’s palace, Hasso took no special notice. That happened all the time. He did notice when a messenger rode up to the palace. The natives didn’t have that many horses. They saved the ones they did have for important business. And since he was waiting to hear about some important business …

A messenger – on foot – summoned him to Zgomot’s throne room. “What is it about?” Hasso asked, his hopes rising.

“I don’t know. The Lord of Bucovin didn’t tell me,” the palace flunky answered. “If you go, though, he will tell you.”

So there, Hasso thought. He made himself nod and smile and not give the messenger the satisfaction of knowing he’d irked him. “I go, then,” he said, and he did.

When he got to the throne room, he found Lord Zgomot in animated conversation with the man who’d come in on horseback. Zgomot in animated conversation with anybody was a prodigy; the native ruler wasn’t long on personality. But the Lord of Bucovin looked up and actually smiled as Hasso approached.

“Good day, Hasso Pemsel,” he said. “I owe that drunken Lenello a large reward. I am slow to spend my gold and silver without need, but I gladly do it here.”

“We have dragon bones?” Hasso asked.

“We have dragon bones,” Zgomot agreed. He gestured toward the messenger. “I learn that they are in our lands, and they passed by Bottero’s men without suspicion. The Lenelli thought we might grind them up to manure our soil. We did not discourage them from thinking this.”

He sounded pleased with himself – and well he might. He sounded very pleased with himself, in fact. “A nice touch, Lord,” Hasso said. “Your idea?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” Zgomot answered. “Things you said about keeping the Lenelli from knowing what we are up to came to mind. A story like that will also let the blonds think we are stupid barbarians who could not get bones closer to home. They think we are stupid barbarians anyway, of course.”

“Yes, they do.” Hasso had, too, when he was in Drammen. Now he was glad to get the chance to speak of the folk he resembled as they. Compared to the Lenelli, the Bucovinans were on the barbarous side. But, as he’d seen, that didn’t make them stupid. The Lenelli just knew some tricks of the trade that they didn’t. Well, no, not just: the Lenelli could also work magic.

Lord Zgomot pursed his lips. “Wheels inside of wheels, eh?”

“Always,” Hasso said. “When do bones get to Falticeni?”

“I do not know.” The Lord of Bucovin turned to the messenger. “Yurgam?”

“Ten days or so,” Yurgam answered. “Once they made it over the border, they got horses instead of donkeys, but they are still pulling a heavy wagon.”

Hasso shrugged. “It has to do.” He would have wanted the bones here sooner, but he couldn’t turn a horse-drawn wagon into an Opel truck or, better yet, a captured American Studebaker. That wouldn’t have been magic; it would have been a bigger miracle than the one that brought him here. He nodded to Zgomot. “We need saws to cut bone. We need drills to put holes in pieces. We need cord or thongs to hold them in place.”

“What are the bones for, if not manuring?” Yurgam asked.

Before Hasso could speak, Zgomot did: “I do not want to tell you, not yet. The fewer people who know, the better. The more things we learn, it seems, the more secrets we need to keep.”

Hasso beamed. Sure as hell, Zgomot was starting to see what security was all about. He might be a mindblind Grenye, but he was one damn sly mindblind Grenye. There’d almost been some security hiccups about gunpowder and dragon bones. If the Lord of Bucovin had anything to do with it, there would be no more. He learned from his mistakes.

That’s more than Hitler ever did, Hasso thought.

And, if the dragon-bone amulets worked, how much would being mindblind matter in a few years? Oh, some. Magic would still be able to do things to the world, if not directly to people. Wizards would still be able to ride unicorns. Hasso gri

Yeah, magic would matter some. But it wouldn’t mark enormous distinctions between one folk and another, the way it did now.

Equality. This is equality. Hasso hadn’t had much use for it when he saw it in action – and in inaction – during the Weimar Republic. But he’d also seen that the Fuhrerprinzip had some flaws in practice. The Fuhrer led, the people followed – right over a goddamn cliff. Maybe making everybody as good as everybody else worked better.

He could hope so. In fact, he had to hope so. If the Lenelli had magic and the Grenye didn’t, and if that magic stayed important, he feared the big blonds would win in the end no matter what he did.

Someone called his name through the echoing corridors of dreams: “Hasso! Hasso Pemsel!”

He tried to shape the ward spell again, this time in his sleep. He had some luck with that, anyhow: enough to let him wake up without waking up screaming. Once awake, he went to the door of his room and told one of the guards, “Ask Drepteaza to come here, please.”

The winter before, a Bucovinan guardsman would have laughed in his face at the idea of bothering her in the middle of the night. This fellow nodded and said, “All right. If she chooses not to come, though, don’t blame me.”

“Fair enough,” Hasso said. The guard set off down the corridor.

Drepteaza was yawning and rubbing her eyes when she came back with the soldier. “What is it?” she asked blurrily, around another yawn. “Something important, I expect.” It had better be. She didn’t say that – or need to.

“Maybe. I hope you are not angry at me.” He led her into the room and shut the door behind them. “The Lenello wizard and the goddess are hunting me in dreams again.”

“And so? What has that got to do with me?” No, Drepteaza wasn’t awake yet, or thinking very fast. Then she remembered. The dim lamplight shadowing her face only made her smile look more crooked. “Oh. A woman will hold that away from you, for a night at least. A new way to tell me you care, eh?”

“Sorry,” Hasso said. “Should I get someone like Leneshul? I don’t much want her, but if you want me to use her for medicine and not bother you, I can do that.”

Drepteaza started to laugh. “The really fu

Hasso feared he wasn’t at his best, either. Maybe they matched each other, because it turned out all right, or better than all right. “You are the best medicine,” he said afterwards, stroking her cheek. “They should make you into syrup and put you in bottles.”