After the Downfall

right now.

“Thanks a lot,” he told her, as sardonically as he could.

He watched Aderno’s dream-projection of her blush. She got the message, all right – unless Aderno was playing with her image to fool him. The only thing Hasso was sure of was that he couldn’t trust anybody. He had no one to watch his back. He had had the Lenelli, but no more. Now he was … what?

The loneliest man in the world, that was what. Lots of people said that; for him, in this world, it was literally true. No doubt it had been ever since he got here, but he hadn’t wanted to look at it. For quite a while, he hadn’t had to. Now he saw no other choice.

“We worried about you,” Velona said. “For a while, we didn’t know if you were alive or dead. Then we got word the savages had you in Falticeni. We didn’t know what they were doing to you, so – ”

“You decide to do it yourself, in case they don’t do a good enough job,” Hasso broke in.

“No!” Velona said. But, Hasso noted, she didn’t say, By the goddess, no! She took swearing by the goddess seriously; she wouldn’t do it if she didn’t mean it. Since the goddess, as it were, kept a flat inside her head, that made sense. The absence of the oath saddened Hasso without much surprising him. Velona went on, “We think we can bring you out of there, bring you back to Drammen, by magic.”

“Oh?” Was that hope inside Hasso, or suspicion? “Why don’t you do that before, instead of trying to boil my brain?”

“I was angry,” Velona said simply – the first thing Hasso heard from her he was sure he believed. “I thought the Grenye would use their sluts to seduce you away from the cause of civilization. And I wanted you all for myself. By the goddess, I still do.” She meant that, then. It was flattering, no doubt about it. She was one hell of a woman. She was one hell of a hellcat, too.

“I think we can do it, Hasso,” Aderno said before the Wehrmacht officer could answer her. “If you open your will to mine – ”

“No,” Hasso said at once. If he opened himself to Aderno, he left himself vulnerable to the Lenello sorcerer. He might be a half-assed wizard, but he could see that much. And if you left yourself vulnerable to somebody who’d just tried to do you in – well, how big a fool were you if you did that? A bigger fool than I am, Hasso thought.

“You don’t trust me.” Aderno sounded affronted.

“Bet your balls I don’t,” Hasso said. The Fuhrer had got an awful lot of mileage out of making promises he didn’t mean to keep. Anyone who watched him in action had to wonder about promises forever after. Words, after all, were worth their weight in gold.

“Would you trust me, sweetheart?” Velona’s dream-image looked almost, or maybe not just almost, supernaturally beautiful. Was she calling the goddess into herself to overwhelm his senses? But for what she’d done a few nights earlier, it likely would have worked. Now … He was inoculated against such things.

“I don’t trust anybody any more,” he said. “How can I?”

Even in the dream, he saw he startled her. Would anybody from this world have been able to resist her when she did something like that? He wouldn’t have been surprised if the answer was no. But he wasn’t from here. He knew there was something to the goddess – he’d seen as much – but he didn’t automatically accept her as his deity.

After Velona’s amazement, anger came back. And it wasn’t just hers: it was also the goddess’. “Would you turn your face against me, Hasso Pemsel?” Velona asked, only something more rang in her voice.

“I don’t want to turn against anybody,” he said. “I just want people to leave me alone for a while.”

He might as well not have spoken. “You will pay,” Velona intoned – or rather, the goddess intoned through her. “You will pay, and Bucovin will pay for harboring you. Do you think you can thwart my will?”

“Well, the Bucovinans are still doing it,” Hasso said. If anyone had talked to Hitler that way after Operation Barbarossa failed, the Fuhrer would have handed him his head. But it might have done the Reich some good.

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.”