After the Downfall

The big blonds in back of the explosions wheeled their mounts and rode off to the west as fast as they could go. The ones in front … They don’t know whether to shit or go blind, Hasso thought happily. They milled about, afraid to advance and even more afraid to retreat.

Then Bucovinans started sliding forward and shooting at them. Normally, Bottero’s men would have driven off the archers annoying them without even breaking a sweat. Here, the bowmen were just enough to tip the Lenelli into panic.

“Magic!” somebody screamed. “The goddess-cursed Grenye do have magic!”

They fled then, with no shame and in no order at all. Had more Bucovinans and better-mounted Bucovinans pursued, they might have bagged most of that leading detachment of the army. Next time, Hasso thought. No matter how much you wanted to, you couldn’t do everything perfectly the first time around.

But he’d done plenty. The way Rautat sprang up and kissed him on both cheeks proved that. So did the way the Lenelli ran. From now on, they’d piss themselves whenever they saw a cord running to some freshly turned earth. Professionally, Hasso was happy. Personally … He’d worry about that later. When he had time. If he ever did.

XXII

Things in western Bucovin were going to be different for a while – maybe for quite a while. Hasso could already see that. The natives had their peckers up. And the Lenelli … The Lenelli had to be wondering what the devil had hit them. They sure would start to sweat whenever they saw string running to what looked like holes in the ground. And they would have to be ten times more worried about bushwhackers than they ever had before.

And all because of black powder, Hasso thought. If I knew how to make nitroglycerine … After a little pondering, he realized he might. Medieval alchemists had used nitric acid, so maybe the Bucovinans knew about it. And you got glycerine from animal fat some kind of way.

Then he shook his head. To make nitro safe to handle, you had to turn it into dynamite, and he knew he didn’t know how to do that. Turning out gunpowder was dangerous. You had to be careful as hell. Turning out nitroglycerine? No, he didn’t even want to try. And he really didn’t want untrained Bucovinans trying. That wasn’t a disaster waiting to happen – it was a goddamn catastrophe.

Rautat nudged him. “Let’s get out of here.”

Plain good sense ended his woolgathering in a hurry. “Right,” he said. Getting away wasn’t hard. King Bottero’s men had either fled back to the west or were hotly engaged with Lord Zgomot’s soldiers. They didn’t have time to worry about a couple of men heading the other way.

Not getting scragged by the Bucovinans was more interesting. Hasso was glad he had Rautat along. The underofficer was able to convince his countrymen that the big blond beside him wasn’t a Lenello and was a friend. Hasso might not have had an easy time doing that on his own.

He felt better when he and Rautat caught up with the wagon that held the rest of the gunpowder jars. Dumnez and Peretsh and Gunoiul and the other Bucovinans on his crew were beside themselves with excitement. “It worked!” they shouted, and, “We heard it blow up!” and other things besides. Once they’d said those first two, though, they’d said everything that mattered.

“What now?” Hasso asked

“Now we go back to Falticeni and find out what new orders Lord Zgomot has for us,” Rautat answered.

“We ought to leave the wagon somewhere closer to the front, so even without us it can go into action fast if it has to,” Hasso said.

“Not too close,” Rautat said. “Can’t let it get captured no matter what.”

He would have been right about that in medieval Europe. He was righter here. Hasso still worried about magic. The longer till Aderno and the other Lenello wizards figured out what gunpowder was and how it worked, the better. How much of a spell would you need to ignite it from a distance? “Where do you want to leave it, then?” the Wehrmacht officer asked.

“How about Muresh?” Rautat said. “Even if the big blond bastards do come that far, it can always go back over the Oltet.”

Hasso found himself nodding. “Muresh should do.” He liked the idea of putting such a potent weapon in a town the enemy had ravaged only the autumn before.

In fact, he needed a moment to remember that he’d been part of the army that ravaged Muresh. It seemed a long time ago – and that despite his trying to rejoin that army only a few days before. King Bottero didn’t want him back? Well, long live Lord Zgomot, then!

He really had turned his coat. He shook his head. No, he’d had it turned for him. If the Lenelli wanted him dead – and they damn well did – how could he think he owed them anything but a good kick in the nuts the first chance he got?

It all made good logical sense. Which proved … what, exactly? If Jews had a country of their own, would Germans feel easy about fighting for it? He had a hard time seeing how. Why would Jews want Germans on their side, anyway?

But that one had an answer. Whatever else you said about Germans, they were better at war than damn near anybody else. They’d shown twice now that they weren’t as good as everybody else put together, but that wasn’t the same thing.

So here I am. I’m good at war, by God. I’m even better here than I would be back home. And I’m fighting for the side that looks like a bunch of fucking Jews. And if that ain’t a kick in the ass, what is?

“Why are you laughing?” Rautat asked.

“Am I?” Hasso said. “Maybe because I am starting to pay the Lenelli back for trying to kill me.” And maybe for other reasons, too.

The one he named satisfied Rautat. “Revenge is good,” the native said seriously. “If anyone wrongs you, pay him back a hundredfold. We say that, and you’re doing it.”

“Yes. I’m doing it. How about that?” Hasso loved How about that? Along with Isn’t that interesting?, it was one of the few things you could say that were almost guaranteed not to get you in trouble.

And I’m already in enough trouble, thank you very much.

He ended up in more trouble when they got to Muresh. His name pursued him through his dreams. He knew what that meant: Aderno and Velona were after him again. He tried to wake himself up, but couldn’t do it. And here in the west of Bucovin, magic worked better than it did farther east.

So Aderno caught up with him in the corridors of sleep. “What did you do?” the Lenello wizard demanded.

“I pay you back for trying to kill me, that’s what,” Hasso said savagely. He found he liked Rautat’s proverb. “You try to kill me three times now. You think I kiss you after that?” He told Aderno where the wizard could kiss him.

“And you pay us back by working magic for the savages?” Aderno said. “You don’t know how filthy that is.”

Lying in these dream quarrels wasn’t easy – Hasso remembered that. So he didn’t say anything at all. He just laughed his ass off. Let Aderno make whatever he wanted out of that. And if he thought Hasso’d routed Bottero’s army with spells, he would only have a harder time figuring out what was really going on.

“Why should I worry?” Aderno said. “If we don’t get you, the Grenye are bound to. They don’t trust renegades, you know.”

“They don’t try to murder me,” Hasso answered. “That’s you.”

“Yes, and we’d do it again in a heartbeat,” Velona said, appearing beside Aderno out of thin air – or, more likely, out of thin dreamstuff. “You deserve it. Anyone who goes over to the savages deserves it. And everyone who goes over to the Grenye will get it. The goddess has told me so.”

“Telling things is easy. Backing up what you say is a lot harder.” How many promises did Hitler make? How many did he keep? “Is the goddess really big enough to swallow all of Bucovin?”

“Of course she is.” Velona had no doubts – when did she ever? “This land will be ours – all of it. So even if