After the Downfall

Omphalos stone sent him here of its own volition? Or was it just dumb luck, with nobody responsible one way or the other? The goddess and whatever powered the Omphalos might know. Hasso didn’t believe he ever would.

When Velona decided to do something, she didn’t do it halfway. Beseeching the goddess proved no exception to the rule. She carried a statuette of the deity with her. The bronze – about a quarter of a meter tall – was nothing fancy. Had Hasso seen it in a museum back in Berlin, he would have walked past it without a second glance.

Velona set it up on the muddy floor of the tent with a candle burning to either side: a makeshift altar. Then she stripped herself naked and prostrated herself before it. Hasso’s admiration for her beauty was almost entirely abstract, his pleasure at seeing her long, smooth length esthetic rather than lustful. She seemed as much in the divine world as in the material, which had a lot to do with that.

Or maybe she just intimidates the crap out of me, he thought – not a reflection likely to have crossed his mind for any ordinary woman. Whatever else you said about Velona, ordinary she was not.

“Hear me!” she said, as if the statuette were an equal. “Hear me!” Hasso wondered whether the bronze image would answer, but it didn’t – at least not so he could hear. Velona went on, “Enough of rain! Enough of mud! Enough of barbarism! Time for Bottero’s troopers to storm forward!”

Hasso wanted to go outside and look at the weather. If it wasn’t changing right then … If it wasn’t, then Velona would have to give the goddess another talking-to.

One of the candles flared up. Maybe that was what made the statuette’s eyes flash. The rational part of Hasso could believe it was, anyhow. That way, he didn’t have to believe he was watching the goddess’ response to a petitioner who was fully entitled to treat with her.

He didn’t have to believe that, no, but believing anything else wasn’t easy. And Velona only made it harder when she said, “Well, I should hope so! It’s about time, don’t you think?” She might have been talking to a neighbor woman about reining in the neighbor’s unruly children.

The bronze goddess’ eyes flashed again. This time, Hasso didn’t notice any candle flare to cause it. He tried to convince himself that he didn’t see the statuette nod in response to Velona’s urging. He tried, but he didn’t have much luck. His eyes saw what they saw. What it meant … was probably about what it looked like. If he had trouble believing that, wasn’t it because the God he was used to worshiping was so leery of doling out miracles? Things were different here.

With an athlete’s grace, Velona got to her feet. Hasso had never seen such an… inspiring votary of any god. He tried to imagine her arising, naked and beautiful, from in front of the altar in a Catholic or Lutheran church. The picture didn’t want to form. In a way, that was hardly surprising, however rough her presence would have been on a celibate priest. In another way, though, wasn’t the impossibility of such a scene too damn bad? If Velona didn’t make you want to worship, weren’t you already dead inside?

Beaming, she said, “I think that took care of it. Thank you for giving me a push there.”

“Any time.” Hasso reached out and cupped her left breast in his right hand.

“A push, I said.” Velona tried to sound severe, but didn’t have much luck. “What would happen if your slave walked in here right now?”

“Berbec? He’d be jealous.” Hasso didn’t let go. “And he’d think I was the bravest man in the world, for daring to touch you.”

“I like it when you touch me.” Velona set her hand on his, which made his breath come short. But she went on, “If I didn’t like it and you touched me, then you would be the bravest man in the world. And the stupidest.”

“I believe you,” Hasso said. Men had amused themselves with their enemies’ women since the beginning of time. The Germans had done their share of it in France and in Russia. And now the Ivans were paying the Wehrmacht back with their trousers down around their ankles.

Things in this world were bound to be the same. Not all the halfbreeds here had happened because Grenye women welcomed Lenello men with their legs open. But if anyone tried to force Velona to do anything she didn’t want to do when the goddess was with her… Hasso didn’t know what would happen to a bastard dumb enough to try that. He did know he wouldn’t care to find out.

Instead of drawing him down to the cot with her, she slipped away. “I’d better get dressed,” she said. He must have looked like a man who’d just bitten down hard on a lemon, because she started to laugh. “Not now doesn’t mean never, my dear,” she reminded him, wagging a finger under his nose. “We both have other things to worry about, though. Why don’t you see what the weather’s doing?”

Because I’d rather lay you, he thought grumpily. But, after what he’d been thinking, he couldn’t very well say that. And if a woman decided you only wanted her for her twat, you were in trouble, big trouble. If a woman like Velona decided that…

If that happened, what the two of them had was dead. And if it was dead, Hasso figured his own chances of ending up literally dead got a lot higher. The Lenelli cut him extra slack because he was the goddess’ boyfriend. If anybody picked a fight with him with swords, though, he was in big trouble. He’d got a lot better with a blade since coming here, but he knew enough to understand the difference between better and good.

Since he didn’t want to worry about that, he stepped outside. The rain was gone. A brisk breeze blew the dark clouds across the sky. In the west, the sun poured wet, buttery light across the landscape. A slow smile spread across Hasso’s face. The Lenello wizards had started the rain. Now the goddess had ended it.

And the Bucovinans would have a tough time setting their fields aflame for a while – things would be too wet to catch easily. If the roads dried out enough to keep foot soldiers and horses and wagons from bogging down, King Bottero’s army could press a lot deeper into Bucovin.

Then what? Hasso wondered. The question wouldn’t have occurred to the Lenelli, but the Lenelli had never tried invading the Soviet Union. Hasso looked around their encampment and slowly shook his head. Goddamn lucky bastards.

Bottero’s army did push deeper into the barbarians’ country. A day and a half after Velona and the goddess persuaded the rain to clear out – Hasso had no other explanation for what happened there – Aderno rode up to him and asked, “Have you seen Flegrei?”

“No.” Hasso shook his head, which meant the same thing to the Lenelli as it did in Germany. “Should I see him?”

“Well, I was hoping somebody had.” Aderno didn’t sound happy. “I wanted to ask him something. Nobody’s set eyes on him since not long after we got moving this morning.”

“He’s a wizard. He rides a unicorn. He should be easy to spot,” Hasso said.

“I know,” Aderno answered, and Hasso realized he was working hard not to show how worried he was. “He should be … but he isn’t. I’m afraid something’s happened to him.”

“Scheisse” Hasso muttered. He could swear in Lenello to let the people around him know he was pissed off, but he got no satisfaction from it himself. For that, he still needed his native speech. “Do you think the Grenye used to ambush him?” He muttered to himself again – that was the wrong form of the past tense, and he knew it. Now, too late, he knew it.

Aderno was too rattled to sneer, though. “I’m afraid they did. I’m afraid they must have,” the wizard replied. “We need to take enough men down our trail so we can be sure we don’t get bushwhacked looking for him.”

“Scheisse,” Hasso repeated, louder this time. The word wouldn’t mean anything to Aderno unless he had his translating spell working, but the tone was bound to get through. Hasso added a few more choice opinions auf Deutsch. But Aderno was right. They needed to find out what had happened to Flegrei. If the Grenye suddenly had a wizard working for them – maybe with a knife at his throat, but even so – the Lenelli needed to know about that. And if the knife had gone into Flegrei instead, the invaders needed to know that, too.

Hasso had enough clout to pull a troop of horsemen out of the line of march on his own hook and start them back the wrong way. A couple of captains asked him what the demon he thought he was doing. When he told them he was looking for a missing wizard, they did some swearing of their own.

“You shouldn’t let some of those people run loose,” one Lenello opined. “They just get into trouble.”

Aderno looked highly affronted. He might have had more to say to the soldier if traveling in opposite directions