After the Downfall

“What good does that do?” Meshterul asked.

“It saves gunpowder. It keeps the Lenelli guessing. And we can make fake mines faster than real ones. If the Lenelli don’t know they’re fakes, they might as well be real,” Hasso answered.

The Bucovinan captain started to laugh. “I’m glad you’re on our side, dip me in shit and fry me for a pork chop if I’m not.”

Hasso wasn’t nearly so sure he was glad to be on the Bucovinans’ side. But he wasn’t sure he wasn’t glad, either, which marked a change in the way he looked at this world. And it wasn’t just because he was sleeping with Drepteaza; he was sure of that. He’d lived here long enough now and seen enough to have gained a perspective different from the one he had when he first got here … and different from the one he brought from his own world. Ubermenschen? Untermenschen? No, and no. People were … people, dammit.

So here he was, fighting for the little swarthy bastards, getting ready to go to war against the big blond pricks. He started to laugh, which made Meshterul give him a fu

Several days later than Hasso thought it should have, the Bucovinan army moved west from Falticeni. He used the time as well as he could. He made sure every pot of gunpowder and every metal shell the army was taking with it had a little bit of dragon bone inside or on it. Accidents could still happen: a spark, a fire. You treated gunpowder with the proper respect and made those as unlikely as you could. And now he’d magicproofed the powder, too. Or he hoped like anything he had.

He began to believe the dragon bones would do what he wanted them to do. Aderno and Velona hadn’t come close to troubling him since he started wearing his dragon-fang amulet. He didn’t believe they weren’t trying to bother him anymore. They had every reason to hurt him if they didn’t kill him. If they couldn’t… then the amulet was working the way he had in mind.

By now, almost everybody in Lord Zgomot’s army wore an amulet. Artisans with saws and thongs had turned them out as fast as they could. Hasso knew Zgomot wore one himself: he’d given one to the Lord of Bucovin himself, and watched him put it on under his tunic. Zgomot wore a different tunic today on horseback, but the bulge was still there.

“I tried to shoot you last year,” Hasso said, riding up alongside him.

“Yes, I know,” Zgomot answered. “You killed one of my guards, and wounded two more.”

“You don’t hold it against me?” Hasso asked.

“If you had killed me, I would hold that against you,” Zgomot said. Hasso laughed, as much in surprise as for any other reason – the Lord of Bucovin didn’t make jokes, even wintry ones, very often. Zgomot went on, “As things stand, no. You were on the other side. You were doing what you could for Bottero. I might fault your taste, but not your loyalty. If you tried to shoot me now, I would hold that against you – and I would have good reason to, I think.”

“So do I, Lord,” Hasso said quickly. “I have no reason to do that.”

“Well, I hope not,” Lord Zgomot said. “We are giving you as much as we can. And I hope you stay happy with Drepteaza, and I hope she stays happy with you. I spent a lot of time worrying about that.”

“I know, Lord,” Hasso replied. Zgomot had damn near ordered her to go to bed with him for what the Reich would have called national-security reasons. The only problem was, Drepteaza didn’t take orders like that worth a damn. Hasso thanked whatever gods happened to be in business locally that she’d eventually found reasons of her own. He said, “I am very happy. I hope Drepteaza is, too.”

“She ca

Hasso nodded; it wasn’t as if he hadn’t also noticed that. “She is her own person, yes. I like the person she is.”

“So do I, though not, I daresay, the same way.” Zgomot smiled one of his crooked, knowing smiles. “Since you came to this world, you have been lovers with two women with minds of their own. Well, not all of Velona’s mind is her own, since part of it belongs to the Lenello goddess, but you know what I mean. Attracting two women of that sort is a compliment to you.”

“I would like it better if one of them didn’t keep trying to kill me, Lord,” Hasso said.

“Indeed. I can see how that might be so. But I assure you that you would like it less if they both did. If both of those two went after a man at the same time, I do not think he would last long.”

“Neither do I,” Hasso said, which was the truth. When he was coming back from trying to re-defect to the Lenelli, he’d had similar thoughts about Bottero and Zgomot. He couldn’t make it here without one of them, not unless he aimed to go into the king business himself. And he didn’t. He might like to carry whatever they gave you here instead of a Generalfeldmarschall’s baton, but he had not the slightest desire to wear a crown.

Yes, if Bottero and Zgomot both wanted him dead, dead he would be. If Velona and Drepteaza both wanted him dead, dead he would be, too. He suspected he would enjoy dying a lot less in that case.

Suppose Velona didn’t want him dead. Suppose she wanted him back. What would he do then? If he had any brains, he would stay with Drepteaza even so. If he had any brains … Being with Velona had nothing to do with brains. You went with Velona for the same reason a test pilot climbed into a new fighter plane’s cockpit – to see what kind of thrills it would give you next. And Velona’s thrills were a hell of a lot more exciting than any you could get from a lousy airplane.

Hasso shook his head. It was dead. It would never come back to life. He might miss it – he did miss it. If he spent all his time mooning over what was lost, he would lose sight of what he had. What he had was pretty goddamn special, too.

“The goddess’ rules are different from anyone else’s,” Zgomot said quietly.

“Ja,” Hasso said, and then did a double take. “Are you sure you are not a wizard, Lord?” He didn’t like being so transparent. It was dangerous. And if Zgomot could read him like that, couldn’t Drepteaza do the same thing?

“I am only a man, Hasso Pemsel,” the Lord of Bucovin answered. “But I am a man who knows something of women – as much as a man can, anyhow. And I am a man who has heard a lot about the Lenello goddess. I am jealous of you – maybe only half an hour’s worth of jealous, but jealous even so.”

Half an hour’s worth of jealous … That sounded about right. Would you throw away the chance for happiness for the rest of your life for half an hour? If the half-hour was with Velona, you just might. And for a while afterwards you might think you’d made a good bargain, too. If that wasn’t power, what was it?

With a shiver, Hasso said, “Let’s beat them, Lord.” Zgomot nodded.

XXVI

Drepteaza rode with the army, too. Hasso wasn’t sure she was there to help him translate or just because she couldn’t bear to stay behind. He wouldn’t have wanted to wait back in Falticeni, either. Better to know than to worry about every courier who came into town.

Whatever her reasons, he was glad she was there. She had the same fears as Zgomot. They boiled down to one basic question, which she asked Hasso in the tent they shared the night after they set out from the capital: “Can we really beat the big blond pricks?”

“Can we?” the German echoed. “Yes, of course we can.”

She gave him an exasperated look. “Will we?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. The look got more exasperated. But he went on, “I am not a god, to know things ahead of time. Maybe they ambush us. Maybe their magic works in spite of amulets. Maybe … I don’t know what. All kinds of things can go wrong.” His mouth twisted. “Believe me when I say that. I know what I talk about.”