After the downfall Read online

  "You think Grenye don't remember everything Lenelli do to them?" Hasso asked.

  "Let 'em remember. They can't do anything about it. They're — "

  "Only Grenye," Hasso finished for him. How many times had he heard that since finding himself here? The Lenelli sure believed it. Did the Grenye? If they did, how come Bucovin stayed on its feet?

  "That's right. That's all they'll ever be." Orosei thumped him on the back. "Come drink some more beer. You look like you could use it. You're kind of green around the gills. You fit in so well here, sometimes I almost forget you're a foreigner with funny notions. Every once in a while it comes out, though — no offense."

  A foreigner with funny notions. Hasso found himself nodding. He was that, all right. Back in the Reich, he'd taken things for granted. Why not? They were what he'd grown up with. Here, unfairness struck him like a poke in the eye.

  Or was it unfairness? What if the Grenye really were… only Grenye? Then wasn't it natural for the Lenelli to ride roughshod over them? Natural or not, it was what the Lenelli were doing. And, with his plan for a striking column of lancers, it was what he was helping them to do.

  He let Orosei steer him back to the buttery. A Grenye servant brought him more beer. The swarthy little curly-haired man stared at him out of eyes as big and wide and dark as a deer's. How much of what went on out in the hallway had he heard? What kind of gossip would wildfire through the servants in Castle Drammen by this time tomorrow? How much trouble would Hasso land in because of it?

  Off in the distance — but not nearly far enough off in the distance — a woman screamed, and went on screaming. Orosei pretended not to hear, the way someone who'd done a lot of interrogations might pretend not to hear a prisoner's screams from the next room. Hasso tried pretending, too, but didn't have much luck. Getting smashed let him forget about the noise — and, eventually, about everything else.

  When he woke up, he had no idea how he'd got to his own bed. Velona made a face at him. "Was she worth it?" the goddess on earth asked, a certain malicious glee in her voice.

  Things came back in a hurry in spite of Hasso's headache. "I don't touch her," he said. "I don't even know her name."

  "Her name is Zadar. And I know you didn't touch her, or" — Velona's eyes flashed — "you'd be roasting over a slow fire right now." Hasso didn't think she was using a figure of speech. She went on, "You were stupid even trying to get in Aderno's way."

  "Aderno is a beast," Hasso said. "He likes hurting people. He does it for fun." He got out of bed, grabbed the chamber pot, and pissed and pissed and pissed. He didn't bother turning his back. The gurgling stream was part of his opinion of Aderno, too.

  Velona understood as much. "If he hurts our enemies, more power to him," she said.

  "If you get in his way, he hurts you, too," Hasso said.

  Those perfect blue eyes widened. Velona's nostrils flared. Then she relaxed and started to laugh. "Oh, I see. You mean Aderno would hurt anyone who got in his way. You didn't mean he'd hurt me." She didn't believe anyone — except the Grenye, who were beyond the pale of civilized behavior — would want to hurt her.

  But Hasso shook his head even though it hurt. "I mean you, sweetheart. Aderno wants what Aderno wants. Anyone who wants something else? Something bad happens to him — or to her."

  "The goddess would not allow it." Velona sounded certain.

  After some of the things Hasso had seen, he wasn't sure she was wrong. But he wasn't sure she was right, either. "The goddess almost lets the Grenye catch you," he pointed out.

  "So she did." Trouble flicked across Velona's face for a moment, but then it blew out like a candle in a hurricane. "Instead of letting them catch me, though, she sent you here. You saved me — or she saved me through you. And now Orosei tells me you've got a fine new scheme for smashing Bucovin."

  Orosei made a pretty fair politician. Hasso supposed that was part of the master-at-arms' job, too. "Smashing? I don't know." He shrugged like a Frenchman, because the Lenelli liked overacting. "I hope we can win some battles with it. King Bottero has to say yes first."

  "Oh, I think we can arrange that." She sounded confident again. How would she go about persuading the king, if that was what she needed to do? Do I want to know? Hasso wondered, and needed no more than a heartbeat to decide he didn't.

  VI

  Hasso used coins on a tabletop to show King Bottero what he had in mind. He didn't do much talking. He didn't have to; Orosei, Nornat, and Sanfrat did it for him. They were more enthusiastic about his idea than he was, seeming filled with converts' zeal.

  Marshal Lugo stood by Bottero, listening to the cavalry officers bragging about what they'd do to Bucovin if the king turned them loose to fight the way they wanted to. The marshal looked like a man who'd just taken a big bite out of a horse-manure sandwich.

  "You can do this?" Bottero asked when the officers finished their excited exposition.

  "Yes, your Majesty!" Nornat and Sanfrat chorused. Carsoli wasn't there. Maybe he'd go along if the king ordered it, but he was no convert.

  King Bottero turned to Orosei. "What do you think?"

  "It's something we haven't tried before, anyhow," the master-at-arms answered. "What we have tried against Bucovin hasn't worked real well, so why not trot out something different for a change?"

  "We can use this against Lenelli, too," Nornat said. "Once the lancers break the enemy line, it's like breaking a turtle's shell. What's inside is meat. Our meat."

  "Mm." The king plucked at his beard. "How about you, Lugo? You haven't had much to say."

  "Everything sounds wonderful when you're drinking beer," the marshal said. "How well it'll work when we really try it out… That's liable to be a different story, and not such a pretty one."

  The crack held just enough truth to sting. Hasso gnawed on his lower lip. Perhaps noticing him look unhappy, Bottero asked, "What do you have to say to that, outlander?"

  "Nothing is perfect, your Majesty. Some things is — uh, are — better, some worse," Hasso said. "How good is what you do now? Bucovin is still here, so maybe not so good. Maybe try something different, something new."

  "A good answer," King Bottero replied.

  "No, not so good!" Lugo cried. "The foreigner will risk our men, risk good Lenelli. But where will he be? Someplace safe, that's where. Someplace where he doesn't need to take chances."

  "I am no lancer," Hasso said. The marshal sneered. Hasso held up a hand. "Not done yet. I am no lancer, but I ride at the front, when the column charges." He bowed to Lugo and clicked his heels. The Lenelli didn't do that, but they recognized the formality of the gesture. "I ride there, yes. You ride beside me?"

  Nornat and Sanfrat sucked in their breath together. Orosei chuckled and then politely tried to pretend he hadn't. I'll put my money where my mouth is, Hasso might have said. Have you got the balls to ride along?

  Lugo looked as if he hated him. He likely did. But he was ruined if he looked like a coward in front of his sovereign. "If the king orders this foolish scheme to go forward, you will not see me hang back," he said. "No miserable outlander will ever say he dares to go where a Lenello dares not come with him."

  "Good." Hasso ignored the insult. "We ride together. Together, we crush the Grenye. Nothing else matters. You do not have to love me, Marshal. You only have to want to win. That is all I want."

  "Ha!" Lugo said. "You want to make a big name for yourself, to show everyone how smart you are. Be careful you don't outsmart yourself."

  He wasn't wrong there, either, no matter how little Hasso felt like admitting it. The German only shrugged. "What can I do? Where can I go? This is my land now. I want to see King Bottero win. If the king wins, I win. If the king loses, I lose. Better for everyone if the king wins."

  That last should have been a subjunctive. Hasso realized as much after the easier, more common indicative came out of his mouth. The grammatical error wasn't all bad, though. It made King Bottero's triumph sound more nearly inevitable, less
doubtful, than the subjunctive, a mood made for showing uncertainty, ever could have.

  Orosei winked at him. Maybe the master-at-arms thought he'd made the mistake on purpose. Or maybe Orosei thought he'd said the right thing, even if his grammar was bad. He could hope so, anyhow.

  By the way Bottero's eyes lit up, Hasso had said the right thing. "I am going to win," the king boomed. "The kingdom is going to win. We will drive the Grenye before us like chaff on the breeze." But that seemed to remind him of something else. "You got silly about some Grenye wench not long ago, didn't you, Hasso Pemsel?"

  Except for Velona, the Lenelli mostly used his full name when they weren't happy with him, the way a parent might have. Hearing it used that way put his back up. "Silly? I don't think so, your Majesty. Does Aderno treat a horse or a dog bad on purpose? Not likely. Why treat a Grenye bad on purpose, then? Just make trouble with no need. Plenty of trouble already, yes? Why make more if you don't have to?"

  "This will help our folk," Bottero said in that-settles-it tones.

  Marshal Lugo was no fool — or, at least, was not the kind of fool who made a bad courtier. "Yes, your Majesty," he intoned. If his tone suggested he would sooner go on the rack than do anything Hasso proposed… well, how could you prove that? You couldn't, and Hasso knew it too bloody well.

  If King Bottero found anything wrong with the way his marshal agreed, he didn't let on. He made a fist and slammed it into his other hand. "We march against Bucovin," he declared, and that was that. The Fuhrer could have been no more decisive.

  As Bottero's realm readied itself for war, Hasso found himself wondering whether the king might not be too decisive. It struck him as late in the year to start a major campaign. Germany had moved against the Ivans on 22 June after delaying six weeks to squash Yugoslavia and Greece. That delay probably kept the Wehrmacht from taking Moscow. And 22 June was right at the summer solstice. They were well past it here; Hasso grimaced when he remembered how they'd celebrated it.

  So much he didn't know about the way things worked here. How big exactly was Bucovin? Bottero's maps had no reliable scale of distances. And how bad were the local winters? Hasso had no idea. He'd never been through one.

  He could find out. Velona's eyes got wide when he asked whether rivers or lakes froze over. "No," she said. "Farther north, maybe, but not around here. Do they do that where you come from?"

  "Sometimes." Too damned often, in Russia, Hasso thought. Then he asked, "Does it snow here?" Only trouble was, he didn't know how to say snow in Lenello. The question came out as, "Does ice fall from the sky?" He used fluttering fingers to show snowflakes dancing on the breeze.

  Velona laughed after she understood what he meant. "Oh, yes," she said, and taught him the words he needed to ask the question the right way. She kissed him when he showed he remembered them and could pronounce them. If he'd got rewards like that in school, he figured he would have grown up to be a genius.

  "How often does it snow in the winter?" he asked.

  "Sometimes," Velona said with an enchanting shrug. Don't get too distracted, Hasso reminded himself. She went on, "It snows every winter — sometimes more, sometimes less."

  "You make war in the wintertime?" Hasso persisted.

  "Not so much as in the summer, but we do," Velona answered. "We aren't peasants, the way the Grenye are. Fighting in the winter is harder for them. It takes them away from their farms."

  Maybe there was method in Bottero's madness after all, then. Hasso could hope so, anyhow. "Your harvests the past few years are good?" he asked.

  "Good enough." Velona started laughing again, this time at him. "Good heavens, darling, are you going to count every ear of wheat in the granary and every arrow in every horse-archer's quiver?"

  "Someone should," Hasso said stubbornly. Man for man, panzer for panzer, the Wehrmacht was better than the Red Army. Everybody knew that, even the Ivans. But when they could mass five times the men, eight times the panzers, twenty times the guns, quantity took on a quality of its own. Bucovin wouldn't have that big an edge — or he hoped it wouldn't. Even so… "Lots of Grenye."

  "Too many. That's why we're going to war." It all seemed simple to Velona. "The goddess wants us to rule them."

  "She tells you that?" In Hasso's world, the question would have floated on a sea of sarcasm. Not here. He'd seen enough to make him shove sarcasm aside. If Velona told him the goddess possessed her now and then, he couldn't very well argue. He had no better name for what happened.

  Velona nodded now. "She wouldn't have led us here if she didn't."

  God wills it! The Spaniards had believed the same thing, and conquered most of two continents before they paused to wonder. And the Lenelli had a lot more evidence going for them than the Spaniards ever had. "The goddess says Bottero beats Bucovin this time?" By now, Hasso recognized the future and the various past tenses when he heard them. Before long, he would have to start using them himself. People understood him when he stayed in the present, but he was starting to sound stupid in his own ears.

  "She hasn't said one way or the other," Velona answered. "But why would she let us go forward if something bad would happen when we did?"

  One more question Hasso couldn't answer. Not having been devout back in Germany put him at a disadvantage here. You could argue about religion in the world he came from. Not in this one, not the same way. Spiritual things were as real here as Wednesday or a poke in the eye.

  In his own world, he would have asked if the ambassador from Bucovin had been sent packing. Things worked the same here… to a point. The Lenello kingdoms exchanged envoys among themselves, and gave them safe-conduct home when they went to war. But no Lenello kingdom exchanged ambassadors with Bucovin. Recognizing the Grenye as equals would have been beneath the Lenelli's dignity. They talked with Bucovin when they had to, but always unofficially, so they could pretend to themselves that it didn't really count.

  He found a different question instead: "Is the eastern border sealed?"

  Velona looked blank. "What do you mean?"

  Hasso wanted to bang his head against the stone outwall of Castle Drammen. Being security minister in a kingdom that didn't know anything about security gave him unending frustration. Things he took for granted had never yet crossed the Lenelli's minds. As patiently as he could, he explained: "Grenye go out of Drammen. They go out of Bottero's kingdom. They go into Bucovin. They tell the Grenye what the king does. If we seal the border, they can't cross and tell."

  "That wouldn't be easy," Velona said with a frown.

  "No, not easy," Hasso agreed. "But worth trying, yes? Stop some of them from going to Bucovin, Grenye there know less. The more we stop, the less Bucovin finds out." I hope.

  Velona couldn't issue the orders. Neither could Hasso, not by himself. The Lenelli who knew him personally took him seriously. To the ones who didn't, he would never be anything but a jumped-up outlander. So he took the idea to King Bottero. The King got it faster than Velona had. When he did, he kissed Hasso on both cheeks. He'd been eating onions, so Hasso appreciated the sentiment more than the kisses themselves.

  "Who would have imagined such a thing?" Bottero boomed after releasing Hasso from his embrace. "The goddess knew what she was doing when she sent you to us, all right."

  To Hasso's way of thinking, anyone who didn't take those elementary precautions was asking to have his head handed to him. Were his own fourteenth-century ancestors this naive? If they were, it was a miracle any of them lived long enough to reproduce. Of course, the soldiers on both sides must have been equally inept, or somebody would have wiped the floor with somebody else.

  "I'll send the order out to the east by sorcery, so we don't waste any more time," Bottero said — yes, he did get it.

  "Not just to the east. To the north and south and west, too," Hasso said. "Seal the whole border." Now the king looked blank. "Grenye can go up or down to another Lenello kingdom, one without a closed border. Then they go to Bucovin," Hasso pointed out.

&
nbsp; That got him kissed again. "You are as slippery as a slug, as sneaky as a serpent!" Bottero said. Hasso supposed those were compliments. The king went on, "I never would have thought of that — never, I tell you!"

  Suppose Heinrich Himmler came from the Philippine Islands. That would probably make him more valuable to the Fuhrer, not less. He would still make a dandy security chief. But, as a manifest foreigner, he could never think of grabbing the topmost job for himself.

  In Bottero's kingdom, Hasso was far more foreign than a Filipino in Berlin. Another country? He was from another world! He would never be king, not even with the goddess at his side and at his back. Security minister and technical adviser was as high as he could rise. He had the post. Now he needed to deliver the goods.

  "Can magic help to find Grenye who want to go east?" he asked. "Grenye who go through the swamp, say, not by the built-up road?"

  "Grenye who sneak through the swamp." Bottero tiptoed with his fingers on a tabletop to show what sneak meant. Hasso nodded his thanks; that was a useful verb for a security man to know. The king went on, "I'm no wizard myself, so I can't really tell you. Aderno could."

  "Aderno and I, we are not happy with each other." Sometimes Hasso came out with phrases he'd read. They often made people smile. In Lenello as in German, the written language wasn't just the same as the spoken one.

  Bottero smiled now… for a moment. Then he looked severe — and a man as large and tough as he was could look very severe indeed. "You serve the kingdom. You serve it well. Aderno was doing the same thing with that Grenye wench."

  "Aderno serves Aderno with that Grenye wench," Hasso said stubbornly. "Aderno likes to hurt people. Fight with Grenye gives him a reason." He shook his head. That wasn't the word he wanted. "Gives him an excuse." That was what he wanted to say.

  "He serves the kingdom." Bottero couldn't see anything else.

  Hasso shrugged, seeing no point in arguing with his sovereign. National Socialist doctrine shouted that that psychiatrist in Vienna was nothing but a crazy damn Jew. All the same, Hasso would have bet Deutschmarks against dung that Aderno had a big old bulge in his pants when he dragged Zadar off to what might literally have been a fate worse than death.