After the Downfall

And what did Germany end up doing? Destroying itself instead. So much for all the glorious triumphs of the Reich.

“What were you thinking?” Drepteaza asked. “For a moment there, you looked over the mountains.”

To the Bucovinans, that meant a long way off. Most of the time, it made an effective figure of speech. Not here. Not now. “I was thinking about my old land,” Hasso answered. “Farther away than over the mountains.”

“What about it?”

“I begin to understand why we lost our war. We wanted to treat our enemies the way the Lenelli treat Grenye,” Hasso said. “But the Lenelli know more tricks than the Grenye. We didn’t know more tricks – not enough more.”

“Will you be angry if I say it does not sound as though your land was on a good path?” Drepteaza asked.

Hasso shook his head. “No. It does not sound that way to me, either, not now. But in the middle of a war, who worries about such things? You have enemies. You fight them. You try to beat them. You try to keep them from beating you. You don’t think past that. To think past that is your, uh, king’s job.”

“If your king orders you to do something you know is wicked, should you do it?”

He frowned. “If you know it is wicked, no. But mostly, for a soldier, much simpler. You fight the other side’s army. You try to beat it. What happens in the land you take – that’s not your worry.”

No. That wasn’t the Wehrmacht’s worry. That was up to the SS, to the Gestapo, to people like that. They didn’t think Hitler could order them to do anything wicked. If he ordered it, it had to be all right.

“Your conscience troubles you.” Drepteaza didn’t make it a question.

He could have denied it – by lying to her, and to himself. “Some,” he said. “I did a lot of fighting, the last four years against our worst enemies. Maybe we were not always good. I know we weren’t. Not them, either.”

“Few people would choose war,” Drepteaza said, and then qualified that by adding, “Few Bucovinans would, anyhow. I am not so sure about the Lenelli.”

Hasso wasn’t so sure about the Lenelli, either. They thought they had a goddess-given mission to civilize – that is, to conquer – the Grenye. The Germans had thought the same thing about their Slavic neighbors. They’d tried conquering them again and again … and now the Russian Slavs had turned things upside down. The Germans had usually had an edge, but not one big enough to make up for the numbers against them.

The British made it work in India and North America, the Spaniards farther south. So it could, if the gap between attackers and attacked was wide enough. Would it have been here? Hasso didn’t know. All he knew was that he was doing his damnedest to throw a spanner into the works.

“Maybe,” he said slowly, “maybe I owe somebody something.”

When a Bucovinan messenger ran up to Lord Zgomot’s palace, Hasso took no special notice. That happened all the time. He did notice when a messenger rode up to the palace. The natives didn’t have that many horses. They saved the ones they did have for important business. And since he was waiting to hear about some important business …

A messenger – on foot – summoned him to Zgomot’s throne room. “What is it about?” Hasso asked, his hopes rising.

“I don’t know. The Lord of Bucovin didn’t tell me,” the palace flunky answered. “If you go, though, he will tell you.”

So there, Hasso thought. He made himself nod and smile and not give the messenger the satisfaction of knowing he’d irked him. “I go, then,” he said, and he did.

When he got to the throne room, he found Lord Zgomot in animated conversation with the man who’d come in on horseback. Zgomot in animated conversation with anybody was a prodigy; the native ruler wasn’t long on personality. But the Lord of Bucovin looked up and actually smiled as Hasso approached.

“Good day, Hasso Pemsel,” he said. “I owe that drunken Lenello a large reward. I am slow to spend my gold and silver without need, but I gladly do it here.”

“We have dragon bones?” Hasso asked.

“We have dragon bones,” Zgomot agreed. He gestured toward the messenger. “I learn that they are in our lands, and they passed by Bottero’s men without suspicion. The Lenelli thought we might grind them up to manure our soil. We did not discourage them from thinking this.”

He sounded pleased with himself – and well he might. He sounded very pleased with himself, in fact. “A nice touch, Lord,” Hasso said. “Your idea?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” Zgomot answered. “Things you said about keeping the Lenelli from knowing what we are up to came to mind. A story like that will also let the blonds think we are stupid barbarians who could not get bones closer to home. They think we are stupid barbarians anyway, of course.”