After the Downfall

The Lenelli didn’t understand why they had trouble beating Bucovin when so many other Grenye kingdoms fell at the first shove. Hasso wondered whether Zgomot’s father and grandfather were as clever as he was. That might go a long way towards explaining things.

And why did magic have more trouble the closer you got to Falticeni? Hasso didn’t know. Neither did the Lenelli. Obviously, neither did the Bucovinans. There had to be a reason. How would you go about finding out? A real wizard might know. Hasso hadn’t the faintest idea.

Maybe he was lucky such things didn’t work so well here. Maybe that had helped keep Velona and Aderno from cooking his brains in his dream. He had no idea how to go about learning whether that was so, either.

Lord Zgomot seemed to remember he was there. “You may go, Hasso Pemsel. For better or worse, you persuaded me. You persuaded me you aren’t deliberately lying to help Bottero’s men, anyhow. I am not sure you are right, but I am not sure you are wrong, either, so I will take your advice.”

King Bottero might or might not have listened to him. Whether he did or not, he wouldn’t have analyzed things so carefully. Hitler … Telling Hitler no wasn’t a good idea. Of course, telling him yes might not be a good idea, either, because he often demanded the impossible.

Hasso got out of the throne room as inconspicuously as he could. When you were a big blond in a land full of squat brunets, that wasn’t very. Lord Zgomot’s guards and his courtiers all followed him with their eyes till he was gone.

One thing Zgomot hadn’t asked him to do once gunpowder was out of the picture: he hadn’t asked him to go to Bucovin’s western marches and either fight against the Lenelli or use his magic against them. Why not? An obvious question with an only too obvious answer. He doesn’t trust me that far. He said so himself.

He almost turned back and volunteered to go fight the Lenelli, with bare hands if need be. But he knew Zgomot would turn him down, and for reasons other than mistrust. The Wehrmacht wouldn’t have handed a top panzer engineer a Schmeisser and sent him out against the Ivans. He was more useful making better panzers, and no corporal plucked from the ranks could replace him at that. Here, Hasso might be able to stand in for a Bucovinan horseman, but no native could stand in for him.

No Lenello wizard could stand in for him, either. I’m unique, he thought. If he’d known he would be so alone after he sat down on the Omphalos … he would have damn well done it anyway. Whatever his troubles were in this new world, they beat the hell out of getting shot in Berlin or enduring the Red Army’s not so tender mercies. Whenever he felt bad about the way things were going, he needed to remember that. And he needed to remember that the difference between bad and worse was a lot bigger than the difference between good and better.

Rautat ran into him in the hallway, surely not by accident. “Well?” the underofficer asked. “Did you talk the lord out of using gunpowder?”

“Yes, I do that. Did that,” Hasso answered. His Lenello wouldn’t get any better in Falticeni. Pretty soon he’d have a Bucovinan accent to go with the German accent he’d never be able to help. Then he’d sound really funny to somebody from Drammen.

“Well, well!” Rautat didn’t even try to hide his surprise. “You don’t change Zgomot’s mind every day.” He laughed at himself. “I never change his mind. If not for you, he wouldn’t know who the demon I am. Life would be easier that way, too.”

“Life is never easy. It has teeth.” Hasso pointed to the dragon’s fang that had been here since before the Lenelli crossed the ocean and found this new land for themselves.

Rautat eyed the formidable fang. “Most of the time, I hope, not such sharp ones.”

Hasso wouldn’t have wanted anything with teeth like that crunching down on him, either. “Dragons live in the north?” he asked, pointing in that direction.

“Yes, of course. Everybody knows that.” Rautat caught himself. “Everybody but you, I guess. No dragons in the place you come from?”

“Only mothers-in-law,” Hasso answered.

It wasn’t much of a joke – he didn’t think so, anyhow. Rautat blushed like a scandalized schoolgirl, though, and giggled like one, too. “We … don’t usually talk about those people,” he said. “You startled me when you did. Like dragons? Oh, my!” He started giggling again.

He not only didn’t like to talk about mothers-in-law, he wouldn’t even name them. Hasso wondered how big a taboo he’d just violated. Not a small one, not by Rautat’s reaction.

“How often do dragons come down here?” Hasso asked. Maybe he could find out more about the mother-in-law business from Drepteaza. It might give him something to talk about with her that wasn’t too dangerously intimate, anyhow. “Can you make them go one way or another?” he persisted. Vague thoughts of siccing a dragon on the Lenelli flitted through his mind.