After the Downfall

off to take a leak behind a tree.

“Somewhere over that rise,” Hasso and Rautat answered together.

“Then we don’t have to worry about them right away,” Peretsh said. “Let’s eat breakfast.” That was such a good idea, nobody said a word against it. Hasso ate hard bread and an onion – a funny breakfast, but any food was better than none, as he’d found out too often in Russia. He washed it down with lousy Bucovinan beer. If he knew anything at all about brewing, he could have made a fortune among the Lenelli or a bigger fortune in Bucovin.

He started digging holes in the road, filling them in, and running lengths of fuse off to the side. Yeah, he’d tried to desert, but his magic seemed to have covered his tracks. The other side didn’t want him. This side did. Even if he didn’t much want it, it looked like his best bet – his only bet – right now.

“What are you doing?” Rautat asked. “You aren’t putting any gunpowder in those holes.”

“I know.” Hasso started digging another one.

“A hole in the ground won’t hurt anybody, even with a fuse running off from it.”

“I know,” Hasso said again.

“I should have cut your throat in the pit and saved myself the aggravation,” Rautat opined. “Do you have some kind of reason for doing this the way you are?”

“Ja.” Hasso went on digging without another word.

The air Rautat blew out through his lips made a whuffling noise. “Will you tell a poor dumb Grenye savage what your brilliant reason is?”

Hasso realized he’d pushed it as far as he could. When Bucovinans talked like that, they were only half kidding. The other half was all pain and rage. They didn’t want to think they were as stupid and backward as the Lenelli made them out to be. They didn’t want to, but they had trouble thinking anything else. When they made those jokes about themselves, you’d better not agree, not if you were big and blond.

So Hasso said, “You aren’t dumb. But the Lenelli think Grenye are. You know that. I saw that.” He wanted to remind Rautat he wasn’t what he looked like.

“Well, sure,” the underofficer said. “But what’s the point of the holes?”

“I want the Lenelli to see dug-up places in the road. I want them to see fuses, even burning fuses,” Hasso answered. “I want them to see that none of that does anything. Then they forget about it. They think, Stupid Grenye try to make magic, and of course it doesn’t work. Then they don’t worry about dug-up places or fuses any more. You follow?”

He wasn’t just kissing Rautat’s ass – the Bucovinan was plenty smart. And, after frowning for a few seconds, Rautat started to laugh. “Yeah, I get it! Bugger me blind if I don’t! One of these times, they won’t be just dug-up places. They’ll be jars of gunpowder. And the Lenelli won’t even care – till too late!”

“That’s it,” Hasso agreed.

Rautat came over to him, pulled him down so their faces were on a level, and kissed him on both cheeks like a Frenchman. Rautat had been eating onions, too, and hadn’t cleaned his teeth any more recently than Hasso had. They were odorous kisses. Hasso didn’t care. He was glad to get them. But if he’d kissed the Bucovinan, he would have felt like Judas.

“So we don’t drive forward, then?” Dumnez had the wagon ready to go. “We drive back instead?”

“That’s right,” Hasso said.

“They’ll think we were scouts or something, or maybe a crazy merchant because of the wagon,” Rautat said.

One of the other Bucovinans pointed west, toward the rise. “Here come some of the bastards!” he called.

“Let’s get out of here!” Rautat said.

That was a wonderful order. Hasso was sure he couldn’t have put it better himself. “When we get over the next rise, we can make some more fake holes,” he said. “Someone ought to stay behind to light fuses for them. I do it if you want – there are bushes to hide in.”

“No, I’ll let Gunoiul take care of it.” Rautat pointed to one of the Bucovinan escorts. “We can’t afford to lose you if anything goes wrong.”

We can’t afford to have you go back to the Lenelli, either. Rautat didn’t say that. Hasso thought he heard it even so. Rautat was right to worry, too; Hasso would have gone back to Bottero’s men if only they would have taken him. Since they wouldn’t, he was stuck on this side.

He was, he feared, stuck on the losing side. No matter what he showed the Bucovinans, there was only one of him. All the Lenelli had several hundred years’ worth of technology the natives didn’t – no matter how hard they were working to get it.

And the Lenelli had magic, and the Grenye couldn’t match that no matter what they did. So the big blonds insisted, and Hasso hadn’t seen anything to make him think they were wrong.

“Well? So what?” he muttered in German. Rautat gave him a quizzical look. He pretended he didn’t notice. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t fought in a losing war before. Any German who’d been on the Eastern Front knew all about a losing war: knew more about it than anybody in this world was likely to. Hell, any German who’d lived under a rain of Allied bombs that only got worse and worse knew all about a losing war.

Maybe the Bucovinans were doomed to go under. The Reich had turned out to be. But, like the Reich, they could sure make their foes remember they’d been in a fight.

All of his escorts joined him in digging holes in the road east of the next rise. They had fun running lengths of fuse into the undergrowth off to either side of the dirt track. Gunoiul grinned because he was the one who got to stay behind and light some of those fuses.

“Don’t let ‘em catch you, now,” Rautat warned him. “We don’t want them knowing what we know.” Hasso beamed at him in pleased surprise. Somebody who understood what security was all about!

“Don’t worry about me,” Gunoiul said. “I don’t want those whoresons nabbing me, either – and they won’t. I’ll catch up with you tonight if I can’t do it any quicker than that.”

The wagon and the riders with it retreated farther east still. Hasso kept looking back over his shoulder. His companions and he were moving faster than the Lenelli. The filled-in holes in the road and the lengths of cord that ran from them confused the invaders out of the west, anyhow. Maybe they made them wary. Hasso could hope so. He and the natives had done all that digging to give the Lenelli the willies.

To give them the willies for a little while, anyhow. Then the big blonds would decide it was all a big bluff, one more weird, useless thing the barbarians did to try to scare them. And they would stop paying attention to filled-in holes and to cords that ran from them, even if the cords sizzled and smoked. Once they stopped paying attention – well, that was the time to show them they shouldn’t have.

And once a bunch of Lenelli went sky-high, they would never be able to trust any filled-in hole in the ground with a cord again. They would have to treat all of them as real, even if most of them wouldn’t be. Dummy minefields served the same purpose in Hasso’s world. A few lying signs could slow down a whole armored division. He’d seen it happen.

“Grenye peasants back in the Lenello kingdoms can make these holes, too,” he remarked to Rautat. “The Lenelli cannot – will not – trust their own roads.”

Rautat laughed. “You’re full of evil notions, aren’t you?”

“I try,” Hasso said modestly.

“Yes, you do.” Rautat eyed him again. “If you aren’t careful, you know, you’ll have us trusting you in spite of everything.”

“No! You wouldn’t do that!” Hasso exclaimed, as if it were the worst thing he could think of. All the Bucovinans thought he was a funny fellow. How much would they be laughing if they knew he’d tried to bail out the night before? Not so very much, he feared.

Rautat ordered a halt after they made it over the next low swell of ground. “If the blonds come after us, we’ll go on,” he said. “But if they don’t, we’ll wait here for Gunoiul.”

None of the Bucovinans argued. “Sounds good,” Hasso said. Rautat gave him a hooded look that he understood too late. His position in the chain of command was ambiguous, to put it mildly. What kind of rank badge did an important collaborator wear? When it came to gunpowder, Rautat had to listen to him – he was the expert. When it came to tactics, the way it did here, the native could choose for himself. He didn’t need Hasso butting in.