After the Downfall

He must have decided that Hasso could see that he could see the possibility. It was, in the mildest possible way, a compliment. It was one Hasso could have done without. “If you don’t trust me to fight, why do you trust me to make gunpowder for you?” he asked. “Maybe I blow the palace to the sky.” He’d thought about it.

“Maybe you will,” Zgomot said steadily. “My thinking is, you are less likely to do that if you stay inside the palace yourself.”

Hasso gave him a crooked grin. “My thinking is, you’re right.” He remembered Russians who’d killed without caring for their own lives. Before things really fell to pieces in the Reich, the papers had stories about Japanese pilots who flew their airplanes into American warships. Hasso admired their courage without wanting to emulate it. He liked living. Dying at the age of 103, shot by an outraged husband, struck him as a good way to go.

“This also strikes me as one more reason to keep you where you are,” Zgomot said.

Damn! Hasso thought. He could see why it would strike the Lord of Bucovin that way. “How do I persuade you that you can trust me?” he asked.

Zgomot gave him the courtesy of taking the question seriously. He didn’t answer right away, but plucked at his beard as he thought things over. “If you fight well against Bottero’s men,” he said at last, “that may convince me.”

“If you don’t let me fight against Bottero’s men, how am I supposed to fight well?” Hasso inquired, less acidulously than he might have.

Zgomot stroked his chin again. His eyes twinkled – or maybe it was just a trick of the light. “It is,” he admitted, “a puzzlement.”

Iesi didn’t move. Bottero kept moving. He worked more methodically than he had during the autumn. That invasion had been a blow aimed at Bucovin’s heart. When it failed to reach Falticeni – when it failed, period – the Lenelli pulled back to their own border.

Now Bottero was trying something different. He was taking one town, making sure he had it, and then going on to the next. Making sure he had a town involved either massacring the local Grenye or chasing them off to the east with no more than the clothes on their backs. Some of the women didn’t even get those.

As news of what the Lenelli were doing and how they were doing it came to Falticeni, Lord Zgomot’s face got longer and longer. His own people had to be screaming at him to do something. How long would he stay Lord of Bucovin if he didn’t?

What’ll happen to me if Bucovin gets a new lord? Hasso wondered. He feared it wouldn’t be good. He also feared Zgomot would order him to use gunpowder against the Lenelli, and he didn’t think the time was ripe.

If you have trouble, attack from an unexpected direction. That maxim had served the Germans – especially Manstein – well in Russia.

So Hasso decided he’d better take the initiative with Zgomot before Zgomot took it with him. “Lord, you are in touch with a lot of Grenye inside Bottero’s kingdom, is it not so?” he asked.

“Yes, of course it is so,” Zgomot answered impatiently – his temper was fraying round the edges, something Hasso hadn’t seen from him before. “You ought to know it is so, outlander. If what you told me is true, you did your best to keep them from doing Bucovin any good, and your best was better than I wish it were. So why do you want to know now?”

“Can you touch them off?” Now that Hasso had gunpowder, he could use figures of speech based on it. He hadn’t realized how many of those there were till he had to do without them. “If the peasants blow up behind Bottero’s line, he’ll need to leave Bucovin alone to deal with them.”

“Gods help them when he does,” Zgomot said. Hasso only shrugged. The Lord of Bucovin sent him a measuring stare. “You’re as cold-blooded as a serpent, aren’t you, Hasso Pemsel?”

With another shrug, Hasso said, “If I serve Bucovin, I have to think of Bucovin first, yes?”

“Yes … if you serve Bucovin.” Zgomot didn’t mean it the same way Hasso had.

Well, he had his reasons for doubting the German. His biggest reason likely was that Hasso looked like a Lenello. Besides, Hasso was fighting on King Bottero’s side when the Bucovinans captured him. The Lord of Bucovin wouldn’t forget it, or that Hasso had been boffing the goddess on earth. None of that would inspire confidence, not from Zgomot’s point of view. All right, maybe my looks aren’t the biggest reason, Hasso thought. But they sure aren’t the smallest one, either.

Back to business now. “What I tell you to do probably does hurt King Bottero,” Hasso said. “I don’t see how it can hurt Bucovin. A lot of Grenye in Bottero’s kingdom aren’t even Bucovinans.”