After the Downfall

“A little, maybe.” She needed two tries to sit up. When she looked around and saw Bucovinans roaming the field and Lenelli and their chargers down and dead in windrows, she looked first humanly astonished and then more than humanly outraged. “What did you do to us? What did we do to you to deserve … this?”

“Well, trying to kill me makes a pretty good start.” Hasso worked hard to remember the past tenses that had given him so much trouble; he needed them here. “I loved you, and you tried to cook my brains for me.”

He watched her gaze sharpen. If she could have slain him right there, she would have done it. But she couldn’t even start; it was like watching an archer try to shoot in a driving rainstorm. “My wits are all scrambled,” she muttered.

“I believe it,” Hasso said. “You are going to have headaches like you don’t believe. Takes days, maybe weeks, to get over.” He tapped the side of his own head. “I know.”

“What did you do?” Velona repeated. “The flying thunder … That forest of spears …” She shuddered, then winced, plainly wishing she hadn’t. “And none of our magic worked. We’ve had to deal with renegades, but this …! How the goddess must hate you!”

“I take my chances,” Hasso said, which shocked her. Well, too bad. It was too bad, in too many ways, but he couldn’t do anything about any of them now. He continued, “I tell you something else, too. You need to remember it. All Lenelli need to remember it.”

“Go on,” she said. “I’m listening. Right now, I don’t have much choice.”

“Simple. Easy. Four words – Grenye are people, too.” In Bucovinan, it would have been one word. “People,” Hasso said again. “Strong enough to stand against Lenelli. Isn’t that a big part of what makes people?”

Velona’s chin came up. “Little black-haired mindblind savages.” Cutting through a couple of hundred years’ worth of Lenello arrogance wouldn’t be easy or quick.

Hasso was about to remind her that King Zgomot’s so-called savages had whipped the living snot out of her kingdom twice running. Before he could, someone behind him said, “I didn’t know she would be so beautiful.”

He whirled. There stood Drepteaza and, several paces behind her and looking scared, Rautat. Hasso felt almost as if she’d caught him being unfaithful with Velona. He glanced at the goddess on earth. She looked like hell: haggard, battered, bruised, and filthy, her hair all matted with blood. All the same, the essence remained, and Drepteaza saw down to it.

Velona was looking from one of them to the other, too. And she also knew what she saw. “Who is this … person?” she asked Hasso, and if the last word of the question held a certain mocking edge, what could he do about it? It was the word he’d used himself.

“I am Drepteaza, priestess of Lavtrig in Falticeni.” She spoke for herself, in her own excellent Lenello. “And…” She stepped forward and took Hasso’s hand in hers.

“Yes. And.” He squeezed hers.

Velona’s eyes flashed. “Disgusting,” she said.

“As a matter of fact, no,” Hasso told her. This time, Drepteaza squeezed him. But he had to speak to Velona again: “You warn me not to love you. How do you blame me if I love someone else?”

Velona stared at him. So did Drepteaza. Had he said anything to her about love? He didn’t think so. His timing was less than ideal. He’d have to fix that later. Now… Now Velona spoke to him as if he were an idiot – and she doubtless thought he was. As if spelling out what he should have known already, she said, “I meant a Lenello, not a Grenye.”

“Too bad,” Hasso said. “Grenye are people, too.” He underscored that by switching to Bucovinan to ask Drepteaza, “What do we do with her?”

“I don’t know,” the priestess answered in the same language. No, Velona didn’t speak it – Hasso hadn’t thought she would stoop to learning. Drepteaza went on, “We could do two things, I suppose. We could kill her or let her go.”

“Not keep her prisoner, the way you do – uh, did – with me?” Hasso asked.

“If she were only Velona, I would say yes, we could do that,” Drepteaza said. “With the goddess in her…” She shook her head. “I don’t know how much power she can pull through that connection. I don’t want to find out. It could be worse than keeping all your gunpowder prisoner in one place.”

Hasso grunted and nodded. He’d always thought Velona was so much female dynamite. Here was his own thought come back to him transmuted. “How much bad luck goes with killing her?” he wondered aloud.

“I don’t know the answer to that, either,” Drepteaza said. “Even with an amulet that works, I’m not sure I want to find out. Do you?”

“She would kill me in a heartbeat.” Hasso’s eyes kept sliding to Velona. Beat-up as she was, she still looked damn good to him. Drepteaza had to know it, too. He would likely end up paying for that later. He sighed. “I haven’t got the heart to do it, regardless of bad luck.”

“I told you you were a fool. But then, if you love me, you already know that.” Drepteaza turned to Rautat, who was hovering in the background. “Go fetch Lord Zgomot. This should be his choice.”

“Yes, priestess.” The underofficer seemed relieved to have an excuse to beat it.

“What are you barking and mooing about?” Velona asked Hasso: so much for her opinion of Bucovinan.

“Whether to kill you or not,” he answered.

Her nostrils flared. It wasn’t fear. It was more the reaction a cat would have if it heard the mice were planning to bell it. “The curse of the goddess would fall on the guilty,” she warned.

“We know,” Drepteaza said.

“That didn’t worry the three guys chasing you when I first came to this world.” Hasso used two Lenello past tenses in one sentence. He impressed himself, if not Velona.

She looked at him as if a donkey had just lifted its tail and left him lying in the roadway. “When you did, I thought you would be a blessing for my folk, not a curse.”

“He is a blessing for this world,” Drepteaza said quietly.

“Not if he helps Grenye.” Velona had the courage – and the blindness – of her convictions.

“We are not your beasts of burden.” Drepteaza’s voice had an edge to it. Hasso could have told her she was wasting her breath. Odds were she already knew. A thousand-kilo bomb wouldn’t change Velona’s mind.

“Well, well,” Lord Zgomot said – courteously, in Lenello. “I did not expect this.”

Velona eyed him with a certain caution if not respect – he’d caused the Lenelli a lot of trouble over the years. “Neither did I,” she said bitterly.

“What do we do with her, Lord?” Hasso asked, also in Lenello. Drepteaza filled in the alternatives – in Bucovinan. If Velona didn’t like it, too bad – that was her attitude. Hasso didn’t see how he could blame her.

Zgomot seldom looked happy. Maybe he had right after his army’s smashing victory. Contemplating what to do with Velona gave him a good excuse for his chronic dyspepsia. “She hurts us if we keep her, if we kill her, or if we let her go,” he said, which summed things up pretty well. “Best to let her go … I think. At least she won’t hurt us in the realm if we do that – not right away, anyhow.”

“King Bottero will thank you,” Velona said in unwontedly quiet tones.

“No, he won’t,” Zgomot replied. “He’s dead.”

“Dead? Bottero?” The full magnitude of the disaster Velona’s kingdom had suffered seemed to sink in for the first time. Goddess. Her lips shaped the word without a sound. But she got no help from the goddess then. Was she too badly hurt to sustain such aid? Did all the amulets around her block it? Hasso had no idea.

“I will give you one of the horses we captured,” the Lord of Bucovin told her. “You may ride away on it. If you are wise, you will not set foot in my lands again.”

“I doubt I am wise, if that is wisdom,” she said. “But I thank you for the gift all the same.” By the way she spoke, it was no less than her due.

Hasso wondered if she could even stand, let along ride, but she was one tough cookie. When the horse came, the groom who brought it promptly took a powder. “Do you want help getting up into the saddle?” Hasso asked.

“Not from you,” she said coldly. “You beat me. You beat my kingdom. You beat my folk. You have not stolen my pride.” She swayed, but she mounted without help from Hasso or from anyone else. And he was convinced nothing but that enormous – maybe monstrous – pride kept her on the horse as she rode west at a slow walk.

“Whew!” Hasso’s shoulders slumped, as they might have had the Bucovinans lost.