After the Downfall

He could hold his own with spears. That made him feel better about himself and his place here. Moral – don’t get caught with just a sword, he thought. Though the day was chilly, he and Scanno worked up a good sweat thrusting and parrying.

Scanno swigged from a big mug of beer. “Can’t sweat all the good stuff out of me,” he said, wiping his forehead on his sleeve. He took another pull at the mug. “Now I suppose you’ll want to thump my sorry ass.”

“You give me fencing lessons. Shouldn’t I give you wrestling lessons?” Hasso hoped he sounded more innocent than he felt – he did want some of his own back. “If you’re going to be a warrior, you need to be a warrior. Who says – said – that? Somebody who looks a lot like you.”

“Me and my big mouth.” Scanno gave a crooked – and rather slack-lipped – grin. “All right. Let’s get it over with. You can throw me around like a sack of beans.”

Hasso did, too. He also got thrown around some himself, even if Scanno wasn’t so quick learning the new moves as Orosei had been. But then, Orosei was the king’s master-at-arms, and Scanno never more than middling good. He might have learned faster had he stayed sober more, but he might have done all kinds of things had he stayed sober more.

At one point in the proceedings, he landed on his head. He didn’t move for close to a minute afterwards. Hasso eyed him in some alarm – he hadn’t intended to throw him that hard. You didn’t want to hurt anybody while you trained, but accidents happened every now and then.

Just when the German was about to see whether artificial respiration would do any good, Scanno rolled over, sat up, shook his head, and winced. “Got to make my eyes uncross there,” he said.

“Sorry,” Hasso told him. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

“Shit happens.” Scanno shrugged, then winced again. “Don’t think I got hit so hard since I ran into a dragon’s skull.”

“Right,” Hasso said. Scanno was full of figures of speech for a hangover. He hadn’t heard that one before, but he liked it.

“Wait. Wait.” Scanno shook his head once more, despite the horrible face he pulled as soon as he did it. “You think I’m talking about being drunk, don’t you? I really did run into a dragon’s skull. Came cursed close to killing myself doing it, too.” He got to his feet. It took some effort, but he managed.

Hasso steadied him. “Well, all right. That sounds like a story worth hearing.”

“I know what you mean. You mean you won’t believe a bloody word of it,” the renegade said. That was exactly what Hasso meant, but he didn’t feel like admitting it. Scanno went over to his mug of beer and upended it. Hasso didn’t think he could have drunk so much at a single draught, but he hadn’t had Scanno’s practice. “This was probably about twenty years ago, you understand.”

“Sure,” Hasso said. A lot of things could change in twenty years. Twenty years ago, Hitler was probably just about getting out of jail and publishing Mein Kampf. The Weimar Republic still ruled Germany, whose army was just big enough to blow its own nose, and maybe to sneeze if it got permission from France and Poland first. The shackles of the Treaty of Versailles still held the country down. Hitler’d thrown them off, all right, just the way he promised he would … and started down the path that would wreck the Reich far more completely than Versailles did.

“I was hunting deer in a noble’s forest – you know how it is,” Scanno said.

“Poaching.” Hasso knew just how it was.

“Yeah. You better believe it, buddy.” Scanno’s grin was utterly without self-consciousness – or guilt. “I needed the venison a demon of a lot more than that rich bastard did, too. My backbone was rubbing against my belly, and there aren’t many feelings worse’n that one.”

“Tell me about it.” Hasso had been hungry more than he cared to remember on the Eastern Front. Who hadn’t?

“Uh-huh.” Scanno took hunger for granted, too. In this world, one bad harvest meant people went hungry. Two bad harvests in a row meant famine. Scanno continued, “So there I was, where the law said I wasn’t supposed to be. Right at the beginning of summer, you know, when everything’s all green and grown and luscious – me and my bow, sneaking through the woods.” He grinned again, relishing the memory.

“So you run into a dragon then?” Hasso said. “I hear about one in King Cherso’s realm – what was it, three years gone by now?”

“I heard about that one, too. Never saw it, ‘cause it never came this far south, goddess be praised.” Scanno still swore by the Lenello divinity, then. That was interesting, or might be. “Yeah, I ran into a dragon, all right, only not quite the way you think.”

“Tell me more,” Hasso urged. Scanno could spin a yarn, all right. How much of it to believe … Well, you could always figure that out later.