After the Downfall (38 page)

Velona didn’t want to listen, any more than Hitler would have. Hasso might have known - hell, he had known - she wouldn’t. People obviously weren’t in the habit of telling the goddess no. “Insolent mortal!

If you would sooner live among swine than men, you deserve the choice you made.”

She hit him with something that made what Aderno and Velona did the last time seem a love tap by comparison. It wasn’t quite enough to do him in, though, because he woke up screaming again. Drepteaza eyed Hasso, God only knew what in her eyes. “This could grow tedious,” she said in stern Lenello, and then yawned.

“I don’t like it any better than you do,” the
Wehrmacht
officer mumbled. “Less, I bet.”

He’d already summarized his latest encounter with Velona and Aderno. The Bucovinan priestess sighed.

“Well, Leneshul can come back to your bed, if that makes you any happier. She may do you some good, anyhow.”

Hasso inclined his head. “I thank you,” he said in Bucovinan, thinking,
I’d rather go to bed with you.
Not for the first time, he wondered how smart - no, how dumb - he was. His goddess-filled lover had just tried to do him in twice, so now he wanted to sleep with a priestess instead. Maybe he ought to have his head examined to see if it held any working parts.

Drepteaza nodded absently. “I do this more for us than for you,” she said. “Whatever you know, the Lenelli don’t want you showing it to us. That seems plain enough, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose so.” Hasso figured that was part of it, too. But he would have bet marks against mud pies that Velona’s rage weighed more in the scales.

“But, of course, you don’t want to show it to us, either, whatever it is,” Drepteaza said. “You have sworn an oath to the people who want to kill you, and it counts for more than anything else.”

That was irony honed to a point sharp enough to slip between the ribs, pierce the heart, and leave behind hardly a drop of blood. Hasso’s ears heated. “I try to be loyal,” he said.

“Loyalty is a wonderful thing. It is also a road people travel in both directions - or it should be,”

Drepteaza said. “If you are loyal and your lord is not...”

What had Bottero promised when Hasso swore homage to him? He’d vowed he would do nothing that made him not deserve it. Had he kept his half of the oath? When you got right down to it, no.
He’s forsworn, all right. I can do whatever I want, and do it with a clear conscience.
The thought made Hasso no happier. He didn’t want to take service with the Grenye, to pledge allegiance to Lord Zgomot of Bucovin. It reminded him too much of
Wehrmacht
men joining the Red Army and going to war against their old comrades. Some few had done it, he knew. And great swarms of Russians fought for the swastika and against the hammer and sickle. Yes, they did. And Hasso knew what he thought of them. “You can use a turncoat,” he said miserably.

“You can use him, but you can never like him or trust him or respect him.”

“You do have honor.” Drepteaza sounded surprised when she said it. Somehow, that seemed the most unkindest cut of all. After a moment, she went on, “Tell me this, Hasso Pemsel: do the Lenelli like you or trust you or respect you?”

“They ... did.” Hasso made himself pause and use the past tense. The present wasn’t true, however much he wished it were.

“They did, yes, when you were useful to them. Then they threw you away like a bone with the meat gnawed off it,” Drepteaza said. “So why hold back now? Don’t you want your revenge? Don’t you deserve it?”

Hasso didn’t answer right away. He had to look inside himself to find where the truth lay. When he did, it only made him even more uneasy, and here he hadn’t thought he could be. Joining Bucovin, joining the Grenye, wasn’t like going over to the Slavic
Untermenschen.
No, it was worse than that. Every time he looked at them, he thought of Jews, a whole great country full of grasping, swarthy Jews. And he slept with Leneshul. And he wanted to sleep with Drepteaza. But that was
his
sport. Helping this folk against the Aryan-seeming warriors from across the sea...

“I don’t know,” he whispered. “I just don’t know.”

“Well, you had better make up your mind, Hasso Pemsel.” Drepteaza didn’t know what was bothering him. He didn’t think he could explain it, either, not so it made sense to her. “You’d better make up your mind,” she repeated. “And you’d better hurry up about it, too. You don’t have much time left.” And away she went, taking with her the captor’s privilege of the last word. Somebody pounded on Hasso’s door, much too early in the morning. Next to the
Wehrmacht
officer, Leneshul groaned. “Who’s that?” she muttered. “Why doesn’t he go away?”

“Shall I find out?” Hasso asked. Leneshul only shrugged and pulled the blankets over her head, not that that did any good against the racket. Whoever was out there was bound and determined to come in. Yawning and cursing in German, Hasso pulled on his trousers and walked to the door. He threw it open, then stopped in surprise. That wasn’t a dark little Bucovinan out there, but a blond taller than himself. And, he realized a heartbeat later, someone he knew, too.

“Scanno!” he exclaimed. “What the demon are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same question, buddy,” the Lenello from Drammen answered. “They wanted me to come here and talk some sense into your pointed head, that’s why I’m here. Nechemat’s cursed glad to get away from all the Lenelli, too.”

Nechemat, Hasso gathered, was Scanno’s Grenye wife or lover. The German had seen her but never met her. “But you’re a Lenello,” he pointed out.

“On the outside, sure.” Scanno breathed beer fumes into Hasso’s face. Whether in Drammen or Falticeni, he liked to drink. He liked to talk, too. “I don’t act like those dumb buggers, though. You think Grenye aren’t people just on account of they’re mindblind? Shit,
I’m
mindblind. Most Lenelli are. What’s the big deal?” He eyed Hasso with more shrewdness than the
Wehrmacht
officer would have thought he owned. “I hear you’re not.
That
could be a big deal. And you know other stuff, whatever the demon it is. So could that.”

“They tell you everything?” Hasso asked. “Back in Drammen, they tell you everything?”

“All kinds of crap goes on under Bottero’s big, pointy beak,” said Scanno, who had a big, pointy beak himself. “A little harder to slip away than it used to be - I bet that’s your fault, huh?”

“I suppose so.” Hasso hadn’t had time to do a really good job of training the Lenelli in security and counterespionage. If the likes of Scanno could beat his setup ... He knew what that meant. Bottero’s men hadn’t had time to figure it all out and make it their own yet. They were doing it because he’d told them to, not because they saw all the benefits and ins and outs for themselves. Hasso made himself ask, “How is the king?”

Scanno laughed, a big, booming laugh that made the Bucovinan guards stare. “Well, it’s not like he invites me to the palace for roast duck and wine with sugar in it,” the Lenello renegade said. “If he knows who I am at all, he figures I’m that drunken stumblebum who’d sooner slum it with the Grenye than stick to my own kind. And he’s right, too.”

He said that even as the same thought formed in Hasso’s mind. If Scanno could see himself so clearly, the rest of what he said carried more weight.

“But anyway, Bottero’s not happy right now. I don’t need to eat his duck and drink his sugarwine to know that,” Scanno went on. “Any time one of the kings loses to Bucovin, he’s ready to spit nails. It’s
embarrassing,
that’s what it is. And he’s got to worry that his loving neighbors will jump on his back. He took a real licking this time.
You
took a licking. What’s this strike column I heard about?” Briefly, Hasso explained. Scanno grunted. “That’s pretty sly, all right. But it didn’t work this time.”

“No, it didn’t,” Hasso agreed. “So why do you throw in with the Grenye and not your own folk?”

“I like ‘em better,” Scanno answered. “I mean, pussy’s pussy - who cares if the hair on it’s yellow or brown? And the Grenye, they don’t brag and strut and carry on all the stinking time. They’re people you can get along with. Besides, isn’t it about time somebody gave the poor sorry cocksuckers a fair shake?”

Scanno bragged and strutted and carried on as much as any Lenello Hasso had ever known. Maybe he didn’t know himself so well as the German had thought he did. Or maybe his size and his noise - and his yellow hair - made him stand out more among the natives than he ever would among his own people. Maybe he liked that. If he did, well, so what? What did it mean? That he was human. Who wasn’t?

But that question had another answer, one it wouldn’t have had in Hasso’s old world. Scanno, plainly, had never gone to bed with Velona or anybody like her. True, the difference wasn’t that she was a blonde, not a brunette. The difference was the goddess.

Yes, and the other difference is that she wants you dead now,
Hasso reminded himself.
Details,
details.

“Here - I’ve got another question for you,” Scanno said. “Were you at that place called - what the demon was the name of it? Muresh, that was it. The one where Bottero’s boys went hog wild?”

“Yes, I was there.”

“Did you play their games?”

“No.” Hasso didn’t say he’d seen such things before in Russia. He’d played those games then - the Ivans were enemies he hated, unlike the Bucovinans, who were foes merely in a professional sense. And the Russians had taken their revenge once the Red Army crossed the
Reich’s
borders. Oh, hadn’t they just?

Scanno grunted again. “Didn’t think so. Bucovin doesn’t massacre for the fun of it, either.”
Bucovin
isn’t strong enough to,
Hasso thought.
The guys chasing Velona sure weren’t out to play skat with
her.
Scanno went on, “Why
don’t
you throw in with the Bucovinans? They’re a better mob than the ones out west.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of Drammen.

That ... might or might not be true. Hasso sighed. He really didn’t have an answer, not one Scanno would get.
They look like a bunch of filthy kikes, dammit.
He sighed again. “I don’t know. Why don’t I?”

XVII

Scanno seemed to be an important fellow in Falticeni. The Bucovinans respected him even if his own folk didn’t. When he told Lord Zgomot that Hasso might play along, Zgomot summoned the
Wehrmacht
officer in nothing flat.

Hasso bowed to the dark little man. From some things the natives had said, a lot of Lenelli, even renegades, had trouble bringing themselves to do that. Hasso didn’t - why should he? Hitler was a dark little man, too, even if he did have blue eyes. And plenty of Germans these days were bowing down before Stalin, who by all accounts was even smaller and darker than Zgomot. Among the Lord of Bucovin’s courtiers stood Scanno and Drepteaza and Rautat. They all looked expectant. Scanno also looked almost indecently pleased with himself. He was a rogue - no doubt about it. But he likely did Bucovin more good than half a dozen more staid fellows would have. Zgomot came straight to the point, asking in Lenello, “So you will show us what you know?”

“I try to show you some of it, yes, Lord.” Hasso picked his words with care. He wasn’t sure he could make gunpowder. Even if he could, he wasn’t sure it would work in this world. And even if it did, he was a long way from sure he wanted it to work for the Bucovinans.

“If you do what we hope you can do, you will not lack for anything we can give you,” Zgomot said. “If things turn out otherwise ... If things turn out otherwise, we will treat you the way you deserve. Do you understand me?”

“I do, Lord,” Hasso answered. If he performed, he would get anything he wanted - except Velona. If he didn’t, he would get the chopper. That seemed fair enough ... to someone whose neck wasn’t on the line. Hasso had to fight the impulse to rub at his nape.

Zgomot’s eyes might be dark and pouchy, but they were also uncommonly shrewd. “I understand that you do not love us, Hasso Pemsel. This is not a bargain about love. We have treated you well when we did not need to. We hope you will repay us for our kindness.”

“I hope you do, too, Lord.” Hasso had to fight even harder to keep that hand away from the back of his neck.

He hoped this would be it, and he could see if he could get his hands on saltpeter and charcoal and sulfur. If he couldn’t, he was, not to put too fine a point on it, screwed. But the Lord of Bucovin wasn’t quite done with him yet. “The holy priestess” - he pointed toward Drepteaza with his chin - “tells me you have somewhat of the wizards’ blood in you.”

Hasso nodded to Zgomot. “So it would seem, Lord, though I am not trained in magic.”

“I will give you a piece of advice some Lenelli” - Zgomot didn’t say
some other Lenelli,
which was a kindness of sorts - “would have done well to heed. We have no magic. You know that. But if you use it against us here in Falticeni, it will do you less good than you think. Do you hear me?”

“Some Lenelli tell me the same thing, Lord,” Hasso answered. Even Velona’s goddess-given powers had weakened, though they hadn’t failed, as she neared the capital of Bucovin. She didn’t know why but she knew it was so.

“The Lenelli don’t like it when we have a wizard in our midst. They think he makes us more dangerous to them,” Zgomot said. “But we don’t always like it, either, because a wizard in our midst is dangerous to us. So far, though, no Lenello wizard has managed to hold on to Bucovin longer than a month or so. Even wizards, we find, can’t watch everyone all the time.”

He was small and swarthy and dumpy. He was also clever and cynical, and probably made a damn good king. If he was considerate enough to warn Hasso, the German decided he ought to take that as a compliment. Bowing, he said, “I understand, Lord. I never want to be a king - or even a lord - myself.”

“Few men do - at the beginning. They find the ambition grows on them after a while, though.” Zgomot had a formidable deadpan. Hasso wouldn’t have cared to play cards against him. He went on, “It’s sad, but most of those men don’t come to a good end. You wouldn’t want to see that happen to yourself, would you?”