After the Downfall

“Then she will come to you again,” Drepteaza said briskly. And Leneshul did, two or three nights a week. On those nights, Hasso never had any of the dreams that disturbed him. He had them less often on other nights, too.

But when they did come on other nights, they seemed more urgent, as if whatever was behind them felt itself thwarted and so tried harder than ever to break through. That alarmed him; he felt pursued. He used the solace of Leneshul’s compliant body as often as he could.

No matter what he did, he couldn’t get it up every single night. He wished he were ten years younger; then he might have. But when he was ten years younger, the future stretched out before him with a broad and shining path. The Fuhrer was turning the tiny Reichswehr into the Wehrmacht, restoring German pride, restoring German power. What could stand in the way of a proud, resurgent nation?

Well, he’d found out what could, all right. And here he was in a strange world, older and more scarred and screwing his head off not for love or even lust but out of fear.

That helped wear him out, too. One night, he fell asleep right after supper. If Leneshul came to his room that evening, she quietly left again, and he never knew it. And so … he dreamt. And whatever had chased him for so long finally caught up with him.

“Hasso!” He heard his own name echoing, as if down a long, windy corridor. “Hasso Pemsel!”

He didn’t want to answer. He didn’t want to acknowledge. The harder he fled, though, the more his name pursued him. Names had power. So the wizards said, and here he was a wizard – of sorts.

At last, hounded, he stood and turned at bay. “What?” he shouted back into the void.

Time passed. A minute? An hour? It was a dream – he couldn’t be sure. Time: that was all he knew. Then, dimly, a face appeared in the void, a face he knew. Aderno’s face, he realized. “By the goddess, I’ve had a demon of a time raising you!” the wizard said.

When he named the goddess, Hasso seemed to see the cult statue floating beside him. The German also seemed to see Velona’s face instead, or perhaps as well. He had trouble being sure which, but what difference did it make? It was only a dream … wasn’t it? “Well, here I am,” Hasso said.

Aderno nodded. “We heard you’d lived,” he said. “We weren’t sure, but it seems to be true. That was why Bottero tried to ransom you.”

“Yes, I’m still around. They take me to Falticeni,” Hasso said. Even in a dream, he stuck to the present tense as much as he could when speaking Lenello.

“You’re not – telling them anything, are you?” Aderno sounded more anxious than perhaps he thought he did. Maybe covering up was harder in a dream. Or was Aderno dreaming? So much Hasso didn’t know.

“No, I don’t say anything,” he replied. “You are well? Bottero is well? Velona is well? Mertois is well?” He asked after people he knew. He didn’t waste time asking after Orosei – he knew the master-at-arms was dead.

“Mertois has a broken leg. He will limp ever after,” Aderno said. “The rest of us are well enough. Bottero and Velona are wild for revenge against the savages. The Grenye can’t do that to real men and expect to get away with it.”

The first few times the Ivans gave the Wehrmacht a good clout, German soldiers felt the same way. Poland and the West and the Balkans had been easy. Nothing came easy in Russia, not even the victories. And, as year followed year, those got harder and harder to find. Sorry, Aderno. You don’t get walkovers forever, no matter how much you wish you did.

Or maybe you did with magic. The Lenelli sure thought so. They’d stripped themselves thin of wizards before the latest battle. What they’d had was Hasso, in fact. But nobody’d suggested that he try a spell to see if the Bucovinans were up to any funny business. Nobody’d imagined they could be. So much for understanding the enemy!

When Hasso didn’t answer right away, Aderno said, “We can do it! By the goddess, outlander, we can!”

When he called on the goddess again, the cult statue grew more distinct. So did Velona’s face. Were they two sides of the same coin? Hasso was no damn good at such things. The doctrine of the Trinity and the notion of transubstantiation only made his head ache. It wasn’t the goddess’ voice that called to him, though. It was Velona’s: “Are you all right, Hasso Pemsel?”

“Hello, sweetheart. Yes, I’m doing well enough, I guess,” Hasso answered. “I hope you are.”

“I miss you,” she said. “I didn’t think I would, but I do. I want to get you back. If I have to burn down all of Bucovin to do it and kill all the stinking Grenye savages in the way, I will.”

Not even the Fuhrer was that blunt. Hasso didn’t doubt she meant every word of it. Whatever else you said about Velona, she’d never once made the acquaintance of hypocrisy.

“Have they tried to trick you into doing things for them? Have they given you sluts to try to make you forget me?” she asked.