After the Downfall

“Why not?” she answered, which annoyed him more than it helped. Then she said something else, too fast and complicated for him to follow. He shrugged. She tried again, more slowly this time. He caught Aderno’s name and a couple of other words. She was asking if he wanted the wizard to translate.

He shook his head, started to realize how very little he wanted that. “No, dammit. I need to talk to you,” he said in German. He couldn’t put that into her language yet. He pointed at her to get the idea across even without words she could understand.

She grabbed his hand and set it on her breast. It tightened automatically. Her nipple stiffened. Her breath sighed out. She kissed him. Things went on from there. They didn’t talk, which didn’t mean they didn’t communicate. You could say an amazing number of things with touches and caresses and sighs. Maybe the things you said that way mattered more than the ones that needed words.

But Hasso was stubborn. After they gasped their way to a second completion, Velona turned her back on him and started to breathe deeply and regularly. She even fell asleep afterwards like a man. Hasso asked, “Why – this?” again.

She swung toward him again. “Because it feels good. Because I like it. Because I like you,” she said, using gestures to eke out the words. Then she said something else. He wasn’t sure whether it was, “Are you happy?” or, “Are you satisfied?”

He was still too perplexed to be perfectly happy. He couldn’t deny he was satisfied, though. He mimed limp, boneless exhaustion. Velona laughed and poked him in the ribs. Then she rolled back onto her other side. He got the unmistakable impression she wouldn’t be happy if he bothered her again.

So he didn’t. He listened to her fall asleep instead. It didn’t take long. And it didn’t take long for his own eyes to slide shut, either.

When he woke the next morning, his legs ached. He moved like an arthritic chimpanzee. His thighs weren’t hardened to riding. Velona quickly figured out what was wrong with him, and he learned how to say saddlesore in Lenello.

Breakfast was smoked sausage, hard bread, cheese, onions, and sour beer. Hasso missed coffee or tea or even the nasty ersatz products Germany had used since the start of the war. He tried to explain what they were like to Aderno, and ran into a blank wall of incomprehension.

“We make hot infusions from leaves and roots to fight fevers or ease toothache or soothe a sour stomach,” the wizard said. “Is that what you mean?”

“Well, no,” Hasso answered with a mournful sigh. He would have missed his morning jolt of energy even more if he hadn’t had to do without it as shortages squeezed the Reich. Beer was all right in its way, but it didn’t pry his eyelids apart like a big, steaming cup of coffee.

“If you can conjure some out of the world from which you came, we might be able to use the Law of Similarity to make more for you,” Aderno said.

“Fat chance,” Hasso said. “I’m no wizard.”

“You may not have the training, but the power lies within you.” Aderno sketched the sign he’d used when he first came to Castle Svarag. Again, it glowed gold in the air between them. “You saw that?” Aderno asked. Hasso nodded. The wizard set a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “Yes, the power is there. That is what seeing – especially seeing gold – means. You are no mindblind savage like these.” Aderno pointed to a couple of Grenye dumping garbage on the midden. He might have been talking about a yoke of oxen.

“It may be there, but I don’t know how to use it. Even if I did, could I reach back into my old world, like that?” Hasso asked.

“I don’t know,” Aderno admitted. “If your world is so inimical to sorcery, maybe not. Maybe a wizard in the capital will have a better notion than I do.” He shook his head. “He may have a better notion. There aren’t many wizards, even among us. Whether any of them will know of your world and what it is like … well, who can say?”

The commandant at Castle Kalmar gave the travelers fresh horses to speed them on their way. Hasso took that as a mixed blessing; he’d started getting used to the animal he was riding. His new mount seemed more spirited, which was the last thing he wanted. Trucks and cars didn’t vary so much.

He found out that Drammen, the name of the capital, meant something like high and mighty in the Lenello language. Aderno was ready to go on and on about the place, but Hasso didn’t want to listen to him. He tried his few words of Lenello with Velona instead. He might not follow her, but he enjoyed trying.

She used gestures to show him Drammen was big, and opened and closed her hand many times to show him it was populous. “How many people?” he asked. When they stopped, he drew in the dirt with a stick to show her he understood the idea of written numbers. To show one was easy. Five and ten weren’t hard, and fifty and a hundred just took patience.