After the Downfall

“I tell her how things are in my world,” Hasso answered uneasily.

“How the broads rule the roost? How nobody there ever gets knocked up, and they find babies under the cabbage leaves?” Rautat was exaggerating – but, if you listened to Drepteaza for a while, you wouldn’t think he was exaggerating by much. He eyed Hasso. “If half of what she says is so, you’re lucky you got out of that place. It’s a demon of a lot better here.”

Hasso was lucky he’d got out of his own world, but not for the reasons Rautat imagined. “You may be right,” he said, and let it go at that.

He swung up onto his horse easily enough. He’d ridden on the Eastern Front, too. You couldn’t always find a halftrack or a VW going where you needed to. If you didn’t want to walk, you went on horseback.

And he was heading back towards a capital that hadn’t fallen, unlike the one from which the Omphalos stone had hurled him. A capital more like Moscow than Berlin, he thought uncomfortably. In some ways, the Lenelli did remind him of the Germans he would never see again. In others, they made him think of the Teutonic Knights, who’d gone east against the Slavs in days gone by – and also eventually ended up losing to them. In still others, they might have been Spaniards or Anglo-Saxons bumping up against Indians.

They weren’t just like any of those groups. However you looked at it, though, Hasso wasn’t on the side he would have chosen for himself. Well, sometimes you got your sides chosen for you, that was all. The Bucovinans were people, too. Drepteaza was a very sweet person. Hasso smiled in the saddle.

The Ivans he’d fought were also people. He supposed their pagan ancestors who’d faced the Teutonic Knights were people as well. The Red Indians? No doubt about it.

He let out a startled grunt. Maybe even the Jews were people. He hadn’t thought so for years – it wasn’t safe or easy to think so, not in the Reich. But he’d known a few back in Weimar days – not well or anything, but he had. They hadn’t seemed… so bad.

If they hated Germans now, hadn’t Germany given them reason to? He didn’t know what all had happened during the war. You didn’t want to know stuff like that, not officially. But what if it was all a big fuckup? Wouldn’t that be a kick in the ass?

XXV

Except for the stinks, Hasso was glad to get back to Falticeni. And Lord Zgomot seemed as glad to have him back as he was ever glad about anything – which is to say, not very. The Lord of Bucovin said, “So the gunpowder shells work the way you want them to, do they?”

“Close enough, Lord,” Hasso answered.

Zgomot plucked a white hair from his beard. He twirled it between his fingers and let it fall. “Close enough is as much as you can expect in life most of the time, isn’t it?”

“I don’t argue with that, Lord,” the Wehrmacht officer said.

“You’d better not,” Zgomot told him. “You’re old enough to know. So tell me, Hasso Pemsel – are you happy now that Drepteaza’s finally sleeping with you?”

“Close enough, Lord,” Hasso repeated, deadpan.

The Lord of Zgomot grunted. “Well, I’ll forgive that from you – you had the Lenello goddess on earth in your bed for a while. That must have been something. Wearing, I’d guess, but something all the same. But tell me this: is Drepteaza happy, now that she’s finally sleeping with you?”

She’d better be, or I’ll make you sorry, his tone warned. Drepteaza mattered to him. Carefully, Hasso answered, “I think she is also close enough. If you don’t believe me, you can ask her.”

“Oh, I did,” Zgomot said. “I summoned her before I called you. I think you are right, pretty much. I did want to find out how big a braggart you are, now that you finally got something you wanted for a long time.”

“And?” Hasso said.

“And no doubt about it – you are no Lenello. If you were, I would have heard about every thrust, every gasp, every wiggle.” Zgomot raised an eyebrow. “You lived among the blonds. You know they are vain that way.”

From what Hasso had seen, the Bucovinans were blunter about screwing than the Lenelli. Lord Zgomot had a point, though: the Lenelli did invest more vanity in it. Since Hasso didn’t much want to talk about it, he changed the subject, “Are the men back with the dragon bones?”

“No,” the Lord of Bucovin replied, which answered what Hasso’d asked but left him wanting more.

More involved another question: “Is Bottero moving yet?”

“Also no, for which I thank Lavtrig and the other gods,” Zgomot said.

“Yes,” Hasso said, though he believed in none of the Bucovinan gods. He wouldn’t have believed in the Lenello goddess, either, if he hadn’t been compelled to believe there was something there. “The border isn’t closed, then.”