After the Downfall (20 page)

Crystal balls, now ... They had crystal balls, or something like them. “Wizards can talk back and forth from far away, right?” he asked, an idea starting to sprout in his mind.

“Yes, that’s true.” Velona nodded. She laid her hand on his in what was, he realized a moment later, a gesture of sympathy. “I can guess how strange that must be to you, coming from a world with so little magic in it.”

Hasso didn’t laugh. If he started, he feared he wouldn’t be able to stop.
Stick to business,
he told himself. And so he did: “All right. If we split our army in two, the Grenye would also have to split their army in two, wouldn’t they?”

“I’d think so, but I’m no Grenye general, goddess be praised,” Velona said. “Where are you going with this?”

All at once, the sprouted idea flowered and fruited. “We can keep track of our two armies with magic, always know where they are, move together thanks to magic. We can come back together when we need to, and defeat the Grenye in detail.” For once, he found the technical term he needed right on the tip of his tongue. If that wasn’t a good omen, what would be?

Would Velona get it? Was it, in fact, a thought worth getting? Or was he misunderstanding the way things worked here? He waited to see how she responded.

He started to worry when she didn’t answer right away. Her brow creased in serious thought. Seeing those tiny wrinkles reminded him she was human as well as divine. Were these human, normal moments the ones Jesus’ followers had cherished most? Hasso wouldn’t have been surprised, though none of the Gospels talked about anything so completely mundane.

“It could work,” Velona said at last. “It could well work. We didn’t need such tricks when we fought the Grenye after we first came across the sea. We knew so much more than they did, the fights were walkovers. A ploy like that wouldn’t work when Lenelli fight Lenelli, because there’s magic on both sides then. But against Bucovin ... Yes, it might be just the thing.” A slow smile spread across her face. “And how fitting to turn their mindblindness against them, to use it as one of our weapons of war.”

She kissed him. It didn’t go any further than that, not then. They were both weary from the fighting. Hasso stank even in his own nostrils: of horse, of sweat, of fear, and of the blood that splashed his mailshirt and his skin. He didn’t think Velona smelled of fear. That was a pretty good sign she had the goddess dwelling in her. After a battle, few people could avoid the sour stink of terror.

“You will tell the king tomorrow,” she said, as if she were an officer giving a common soldier his orders.
Does she have the right to tell me what to do like that?
Hasso wondered. In her own person, she probably didn’t. But that was the point, as he’d realized a moment before. She wasn’t just in her own person, not when she had the goddess for company. And the goddess could tell King Bottero what to do, let alone a newly arrived foreigner like Hasso Pemsel.

Automatically, Hasso’s arm shot out in the salute he was more used to than the one the Lenelli used. “
Z

u Befehl!”
he said, German tasting strange in his mouth. He turned it into Lenello: “At your command!”

“Well, all right,” Velona said. “I didn’t mean it quite like that. But for now, let’s get some sleep.” There was an order Hasso was glad to obey.

IX

“I
am
your slave,” the Grenye prisoner insisted.

Hasso had never expected to see the warrior he’d captured again. But there the fellow was, helping one of the cooks dole out bowls of porridge flavored with salty, fennel-filled sausage and onions. It wasn’t delicious, but it filled the belly. On campaign, that counted for more.

“Is he yours, sir?” the cook asked. “I didn’t mean to take him if he really belonged to somebody, but you know how it is. We can always use an extra pair of hands.”

“What is the custom?” Hasso asked in return. “He did surrender to me yesterday.”

“Then he’s yours if you want him,” the cook said. “If you don’t, I’ll go on using him - he seems willing enough. Or you can feed him to the water snakes - but if you wanted to do that, you could have done it when he tried to give up.”

The Bucovinan pointed to Hasso. “You spared me. I work for you now. I am Berbec.” He jabbed a thumb at his own chest. “You are a great lord, yes? A great lord, sure, but you never have man like me before.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Hasso said dryly. Berbec laughed louder than the joke deserved ... if it was a joke. Was taking a prisoner as a batman, as a valet - hell, as a slave - clasping a water snake to his bosom? The cook didn’t seem to think so. Hasso found himself nodding. “Well, come on, then, Berbec. What can you do for me that I can’t do for myself?”

“All kinds of things.” Berbec bowed to him, then also bowed to the cook for whom he’d been working. The motion was different from the stiffer one the Lenelli - and the Germans - used. It might almost have been a move from a dance. “You don’t have any other slaves?”

“Not right now,” Hasso said.

Berbec clicked his tongue between his teeth. “You poor fellow.” He cocked his head to one side, eyeing Hasso with sparrowish curiosity. “You look like a Lenello, but you don’t talk like. Where you from?”

“A faraway country,” the German replied, which was true but uninformative. He still didn’t trust Berbec not to disappear the minute he turned his back. “Can you take care of a horse?”

“I do that.” Berbec nodded eagerly. He might have picked the next thought out of Hasso’s mind, for he went on, “Not steal him, neither. You could kill me, but you spare. I owe you my life. I pay back.”

Maybe he meant it. Some people, and some peoples, were punctilious about their honor, to the point that looked like stupidity to anyone with a less rigid code. Whether the Grenye of Bucovin were like that, whether Berbec himself was ...
I just have to find out,
Hasso thought.
In the meantime, I have to be
careful.

“You have funny helmet,” Berbec remarked. His hands shaped the flare of the German
Stahlhelm.

“In the style of my country,” Hasso said. The Lenelli wore plain conical helms, more like those of the Normans than any others he knew. So did the Bucovinans, probably in imitation of the blonds from overseas.

“Not bad. Maybe turn sword better.” Berbec might be a little man, but he was a warrior. “But nasal is new. Not have before?” He was a warrior with sharp eyes, too. That nasal was riveted on. The Lenelli couldn’t weld steel, and Hasso didn’t trust solder to hold. Berbec chattered on: “Why you not have before? Keep face from getting split open.”

“War in my land doesn’t usually come down to swordstrokes,” Hasso replied. And wasn’t that the sad and sorry truth? A helmet wouldn’t stop a rifle round, though it would keep out some shell fragments. High-velocity bullets made most body armor more trouble than it was worth. Only if you were fighting with bayonets or entrenching tools would a nasal matter. Once in a blue moon, in other words. German armorers didn’t see the point of adding one, and who was he to say they were wrong ... for the kind of war they fought?

Berbec stared at him. Hasso thought the Bucovinan would call him a liar. But then Berbec thrust out a stubby, accusing finger. “You have the thunderflasher,” he said. That wasn’t a word in Lenello, but it was a pretty good description of a firearm. “You point it at someone, and it goes boom, and he falls over. All soldiers in your country carry thunderflashers, then?”

No, he was nobody’s fool. “That’s right,” Hasso said.

“The Lenelli have all kinds of things. They are clever, the Lenelli.” Maybe Berbec felt he could talk freely about them because Hasso wasn’t one. “But they don’t have thunderflashers.” He eyed Hasso again, this time, the
Wehrmacht
officer judged, apprehensively. And why not? If the Lenelli all carried Schmeissers, Bucovinan resistance would last a minute and a half, tops.

“Can’t make them here.” Hasso wanted the words back as soon as they came out. Some Intelligence officer he was, blabbing like a fool!

Velona came up to the two of them. As soon as she saw Berbec, she understood what was going on.

“He’s one you caught yourself?” she asked. When Hasso nodded, she went on, “Good. You’ve been doing too much for yourself.” She brushed her lips across his and walked on. Berbec stared after her - not as a man will watch a good-looking woman, but more as anyone might stare at a lightning bolt smashing down close by. “That was - the goddess - the woman who, uh, carries the goddess.” He might be a slave, but this was the first time Hasso had seen him without his self-possession.

“Yeah.” Hasso nodded.

“She doesn’t need a thunderflasher to cut through us,” Berbec said sadly. “Only a sword - and herself.”

Hasso nodded again, not without sympathy. What was it like for the Grenye, without magic of their own, to try to stand against Velona when the goddess was strong in her? Like a lone rifleman against a King Tiger panzer? Worse, probably, because the panzer and the infantryman belonged to the same world. The Grenye had to feel the very heavens were fighting against them - and they wouldn’t be so far wrong, would they?

Berbec’s stare swung back to Hasso. It was as if he could still see the mark of her kiss glowing on the
Wehrmacht
officer’s face. “She is ... your woman?” He sounded like someone afraid to be right.

“Yes, she’s my woman.” Hasso felt the irony in his voice. Berbec might not understand, but, to the Lenello way of thinking, Hasso was Velona’s man and not the other way around. He succeeded in impressing his new servant, anyway. “I knew you were a great lord. I already told you that,” Berbec said. “But I didn’t know you were
such
a great lord.” He bowed himself almost double. “I cry pardon. Forgive me.”

He wouldn’t straighten till Hasso touched him on the back. “It’s all right. Forget it. I still put on trousers like anybody else. I still shit. I still piss. I still need you to see to my horse. That’s what you say you do.”

He was getting better with past tenses, but he still wasn’t good enough to feel comfortable using them.

“I do it,” Berbec said. He seemed mostly stuck in the present indicative, too. For no sensible reason, that made Hasso feel better.

King Bottero’s army pressed deeper into Bucovin. The natives didn’t stand and fight again. They didn’t go away, either. Raiders picked off Lenello scouts. Horsemen attacked the wagons that brought supplies forward. And, to Hasso’s dismay if not to his surprise, flames and clouds of smoke rose up in front of the invaders.

“They burn their own crops,” he said. The Russians had scorched the earth in front of the oncoming
Wehrmacht.
Later, moving from east to west instead of from west to east, the Germans used the same ploy to slow down the Red Army. The Ivans screamed about war crimes. They hadn’t said a word when they used those tactics. Winners said what they pleased. Who could call a winner a liar?

King Bottero eyed the smoke and sniffed the breeze. Hasso couldn’t smell the burning, not yet. Maybe the enormous Lenello could. “They think they’ll make us too hungry to go on,” the king said.

“Are they right?” Hasso asked.

“Not yet,” Bottero said, an answer that struck the German as reasonable. Aderno and the other wizards put their heads together. They worked a spell that might have come straight out of
Macbeth.
They danced; they chanted; they incanted. Dark clouds filled the sky. Rain came down - rain poured down, in fact. It drenched the fires. Whether it did the Lenelli any good was a different question, and one harder to answer. The roads got soaked, too, and turned to mud. Hasso remembered the first Russian
rasputitsa,
the time of rain and muck. He remembered motorcycle drivers, their mechanized steeds hub-deep - sometimes headlight-deep - in muck, their rubberized greatcoats ten or twenty kilos heavier than they should have been, their goggles so splashed that they were almost useless (or, sometimes, worse than useless), the eyes behind those goggles gradually growing alarmed as one rider after another began to see it wouldn’t be as easy as the High Command claimed. He remembered bogged-down panzers and artillery pieces, half-drowned horses, the sucking goo trying to pull the marching boots off his feet with every step. He remembered bone-crushing exhaustion at the end of every day - and well before the end, too.

Yes, the mud slowed down the Ivans. But they weren’t trying to go forward, not that first autumn, anyhow. They were just trying to hold back the Germans, to keep the
Wehrmacht
out of Moscow. And they did, and blitzkrieg turned to grapple and slugging match ... and Hasso found a magical way to escape from burning, pulverized Berlin, but not one the rest of the city would ever be able to use. And so he was here in western Bucovin, listening to the rain patter down. Soldiers greased their mailshirts every morning and night and draped themselves with cloaks. They swore when they found tiny tumors of rust anyhow - as of course they did. The horses that squelched through the deepening ooze couldn’t swear, but the men on their backs made up for that. And the teamsters who fought to keep supply wagons moving cursed even harder than the knights.

By the time it had rained for a couple of days, Hasso began to think the wizards’ spell might be worse than the scorched-earth disease. By the time the rain had poured down for a week, he was sure of it. He rode up alongside Aderno, whose unicorn was so splotched and spattered with mud that it looked to have a giraffe’s hide.

Hasso waved his arms up toward the weeping sky. “Enough!” he said. He waved again, like a conductor in white tie and tails pulling a crescendo from a symphony orchestra. “Too much, in fact! Call off your storm!”

Aderno’s answering glance would have looked even hotter than it did had water not dripped from the end of the wizard’s long, pointed nose. “It’s not our storm any more,” he said. “It’s just... weather now.”

“Well, work another spell and turn it into
good
weather, then,” Hasso said. Were there any justice in the world, the water on Aderno’s nose would have started to steam. “What do you think we’ve been trying to do?” he said pointedly.