After the Downfall

More involved another question: “Is Bottero moving yet?”

“Also no, for which I thank Lavtrig and the other gods,” Zgomot said.

“Yes,” Hasso said, though he believed in none of the Bucovinan gods. He wouldn’t have believed in the Lenello goddess, either, if he hadn’t been compelled to believe there was something there. “The border isn’t closed, then.”

“No, it is not,” Zgomot agreed. Hasso nodded to himself. Since he’d gone over to the other side, the Lenelli were liable to have decided all his security worries and precautions were nothing but a load of crap. He hoped they did. That would make defending against them a hell of a lot easier. With a sigh, Zgomot went on, “But when Bottero does move, we are going to have to get through another invasion. Another year’s crops ruined in the west. Another year of burning and murder and rape.”

“That is what war is,” Hasso said. “Only one thing worse than to go through it.”

“Oh?” The Lord of Bucovin raised an eyebrow. “I would not have thought anything was worse. I do not think anything is worse.”

“One thing is,” Hasso insisted. “To go through a war and lose – that is worse. That is what happens – happened – to my land, in my world. That is why I am here.” To try so much, to suffer so much, to go through so much death and devastation, to do that twice in less than half a lifetime and have nothing at all to show for it… was the lot of Germany. How might things have turned out worse? He couldn’t begin to imagine.

“We managed not to lose last year,” Zgomot said. “Then, Bottero started late in the campaigning season. He will not make the same mistake twice – say what you will about the Lenelli, but they do not make the same mistake twice in a row. That is my people’s failing, I fear. Our imaginations spin more slowly than theirs.”

“Not with you ruling, Lord.” Hasso wasn’t throwing out flattery to butter Zgomot up. The Lord of Bucovin was doing as well as he could against long odds.

“I think Bottero made a bigger mistake last year, too,” he said now. Hasso made a questioning noise. Zgomot eyed him. “He let me get my hands on you. He will regret that to his dying day – and may it come soon.”

“You give me too much credit,” Hasso said.

“I’d better not,” Lord Zgomot replied.

After Hasso and Velona became lovers, they moved in together and never separated till he got left for dead on the battlefield and she had to withdraw. Drepteaza didn’t take up residence with him in Zgomot’s castle, no matter how much he wished she would have. She moved more slowly than Velona in almost every way.

But she didn’t stay away from his chamber, either. Sometimes he could talk her into coming by on a particular night. Sometimes she would knock on her own. Most of the time, she would make love with him. Once in a while, she only wanted to talk. He quickly decided getting annoyed about that was a bad idea.

One evening, when she was leaving after talking with him for a couple of hours, he gave her a crooked smile and asked, “Do I pass the test?”

Even in the lamplight, even with her olive skin, he could see her turn red. It took him by surprise; he hadn’t meant to embarrass her. But she answered as frankly as usual: “As a matter of fact, you do. A woman wants to think a man wants her for something more than just this.” She touched herself between the legs for a moment. “And I think you do. And I think that is good.”

“I can talk with you better than with anyone else – except maybe Rautat.” Hasso barked laughter. “And that is not the same.”

“No, it isn’t,” Drepteaza agreed. “Not that Rautat is stupid – I’ve seen he’s not. But there are times when he would rather not think.”

“Yes!” Hasso nodded vigorously. Rautat made a good underofficer: he liked routine. He would have made a wonderful friend for another underofficer whose mind worked the same way. Hell, he was friends with other sergeants like that. Hasso’s mind ranged further. In this world, it damn well had to. “You can go places with me where he doesn’t want to – and not just in bed.”

“You may end up changing us more than the Lenelli have,” Drepteaza said. “For better? For worse? How can we know ahead of time? But you change us.”

He thought again about the printing press. One of these days. When he had time. If he ever did. If the Bucovinans ever started printing books, that would change them even more than gunpowder did. But that lay in the future, a future that might never be born. “If I don’t, the Lenelli do,” he said.

“We know it,” Drepteaza answered. “If you change us, maybe we stay ourselves, too. If the Lenelli change us, we lose ourselves forever. There used to be lots of little kingdoms in the western part of the land. They’re gone now. Even the Grenye who still live in them don’t know much about how they used to be. That could happen to us, too.”

Hasso had seen those Grenye peasants. They had nothing but work and drink. Some of them had nothing but drink. As far as the Lenelli were concerned, that was fine.

The Germans would have run the Ukraine and Russia the same way if they’d won. Hasso hadn’t thought much about that while he was fighting the Ivans. Now he did. His country had aimed to destroy another one – not just to beat it, but to destroy it. No wonder the Russians fought back so ferociously.

And what did Germany end up doing? Destroying itself instead. So much for all the glorious triumphs of the Reich.

“What were you thinking?” Drepteaza asked. “For a moment there, you looked over the mountains.”

To the Bucovinans, that meant a long way off. Most of the time, it made an effective figure of speech. Not here. Not now. “I was thinking about my old land,” Hasso answered. “Farther away than over the mountains.”

“What about it?”

“I begin to understand why we lost our war. We wanted to treat our enemies the way the Lenelli treat Grenye,” Hasso said. “But the Lenelli know more tricks than the Grenye. We didn’t know more tricks – not enough more.”

“Will you be angry if I say it does not sound as though your land was on a good path?” Drepteaza asked.

Hasso shook his head. “No. It does not sound that way to me, either, not now. But in the middle of a war, who worries about such things? You have enemies. You fight them. You try to beat them. You try to keep them from beating you. You don’t think past that. To think past that is your, uh, king’s job.”

“If your king orders you to do something you know is wicked, should you do it?”

He frowned. “If you know it is wicked, no. But mostly, for a soldier, much simpler. You fight the other side’s army. You try to beat it. What happens in the land you take – that’s not your worry.”

No. That wasn’t the Wehrmacht’s worry. That was up to the SS, to the Gestapo, to people like that. They didn’t think Hitler could order them to do anything wicked. If he ordered it, it had to be all right.

“Your conscience troubles you.” Drepteaza didn’t make it a question.

He could have denied it – by lying to her, and to himself. “Some,” he said. “I did a lot of fighting, the last four years against our worst enemies. Maybe we were not always good. I know we weren’t. Not them, either.”

“Few people would choose war,” Drepteaza said, and then qualified that by adding, “Few Bucovinans would, anyhow. I am not so sure about the Lenelli.”

Hasso wasn’t so sure about the Lenelli, either. They thought they had a goddess-given mission to civilize – that is, to conquer – the Grenye. The Germans had thought the same thing about their Slavic neighbors. They’d tried conquering them again and again … and now the Russian Slavs had turned things upside down. The Germans had usually had an edge, but not one big enough to make up for the numbers against them.

The British made it work in India and North America, the Spaniards farther south. So it could, if the gap between attackers and attacked was wide enough. Would it have been here? Hasso didn’t know. All he knew was that he was doing his damnedest to throw a spanner into the works.

“Maybe,” he said slowly, “maybe I owe somebody something.”

When a Bucovinan messenger ran up to Lord Zgomot’s palace, Hasso took no special notice. That happened all the time. He did notice when a messenger rode up to the palace. The natives didn’t have that many horses. They saved the ones they did have for important business. And since he was waiting to hear about some important business …

A messenger – on foot – summoned him to Zgomot’s throne room. “What is it about?” Hasso asked, his hopes rising.