After the Downfall

“Am I big enough to throw you around if I have to?” Drepteaza asked, derailing his train of thought.

“To throw someone my size, anyway. I throw Lenelli much bigger than me. Maybe throwing me is harder, because I know what you do before you do it,” Hasso answered.

“I see.” She nodded. “How does someone small throw someone larger, though?”

“Size is not the trick. The trick is knowing what to do.” Hasso muttered to himself. He wanted to say leverage, but he had no idea how, either in Bucovinan or in Lenello.

“I hope you’re right. Let me go change into breeches, so I can get thrown around without embarrassing myself.”

Hasso laughed in surprise. “What about the baths?”

“The baths are the baths. This is different,” Drepteaza said.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I never thought about it, but it is. Doesn’t your country have customs that wouldn’t make any sense to an outsider? The gods know the Lenelli do.”

“Maybe we do. I’m sure we do.” Hasso sketched a salute. “All right. Go change, then. I meet you in the fencing practice room.”

“See you there.” Drepteaza got up and left the table.

As Hasso walked down the corridor, he almost ran into Dumnez. His driver said, “Hello. I’m going to be one of the people getting dragon bones. We set out tomorrow.”

“No!” The Wehrmacht officer clapped a hand to his forehead. “You can’t! You mustn’t! Somebody screws up to let you.”

“Why shouldn’t I? I want to give the Lenelli one in the teeth, same as everybody else does,” Dumnez said. “This has to do that some kind of way. It’s too important not to.”

“But you know about gunpowder. You shouldn’t go where they might catch you.” Security! Hasso was sure Lord Zgomot would see it when it got pointed out to him. He’d worried about Scanno, who could tell the Lenelli just why Bucovin wanted their dragon bones. The people who were going didn’t know that, which was all to the good. But Zgomot hadn’t thought about other security worries.

Dumnez looked mutinous. “They won’t catch me.”

“True. You don’t go, so they don’t catch you,” Hasso said. Dumnez tried to slip past him, but Hasso grabbed his arm. For a moment, he wondered if he would need his dirty-fighting talents. Taking on somebody he outweighed by more than thirty kilos wasn’t close to fair, but if Dumnez grabbed a knife. . To forestall him, Hasso added, “We talk to Lord Zgomot. If you don’t listen to me, you listen to him, right?”

“He won’t waste time on the likes of me,” Dumnez said.

“He does – he will – for this,” Hasso said. “Come on.”

He had to talk his way past the stewards and chamberlains who shielded any ruler from the slings and arrows of outrageous reality. But, even though gunpowder wasn’t magic, it was a magic word. It got Hasso and Dumnez through to the Lord of Bucovin in short order. Zgomot listened, pondered, and spoke: “The foreigner is right, Dumnez. You stay here. Is anyone else who knows about gunpowder going?”

“I don’t think so, Lord,” Dumnez replied.

“Go find out. If anybody is, pull him off,” Zgomot said. “Good thing you bumped into Hasso. We don’t want to take chances we don’t have to.” Dumnez gave the Wehrmacht officer a sour look, but he didn’t argue with his sovereign.

And Hasso wasn’t very late to the fencing room. He apologized to Drepteaza, explaining what had happened. “That wouldn’t have been good,” she agreed, and then got down to business. “So. You’re going to throw me around, are you?”

“Yes. You know how to land soft?”

“I think so.”

“All right. We go slow at first.”

He showed her how to flip a man. He didn’t take any undue liberties with her person when he flipped her. He was sure he bruised her, though she did land well. She was strong for her size, and well coordinated. He’d thought she would catch on fast, and he was right. It wasn’t hard – grab, turn, duck, twist, heave.

“Now I come at you,” he said, and he did. When she flipped him, he didn’t do anything to try to stop her. He went over on his back, and got a bruise or two of his own.

“You let me do that.” Her voice was accusing. “You even helped.”

“Well, sure,” he said as he climbed to his feet. “You have to learn.” He tried not to think about the feel of her against him. “I went easy with King Bottero’s master-at-arms at first, too.”

“So he knows these flips?” Drepteaza said.

“Not any more. He’s dead.”

“Oh.” That seemed to satisfy her. “Let’s try it again. Faster this time?”

“A little,” Hasso agreed. He went over her shoulder and thudded down. “Oof! That’s good.”

Drepteaza smiled. “It is! Again!”

Hasso picked up more bruises. He couldn’t have cared less. “You will be sudden death on two legs,” he said. Drepteaza positively beamed.

XXIV

When Hasso started working with gunpowder and catapults, Lord Zgomot changed his mind and suggested that he move away from Falticeni for a while. Hasso didn’t say no. The Lord of Bucovin had two excellent reasons on his side. One was not showing everybody in a good-sized city what Bucovin was up to. The other was not unnerving everybody in a good-sized city with strange booms and blasts.