After the Downfall

Aderno did some more staring, this time at his own index finger. He tried the spell with Hasso, who saw the same golden star he had before. After Aderno made sure he had, the wizard shook his head. “The magic seems to be in order. But – “

“It doesn’t work,” Hasso finished for him.

“It doesn’t work,” Aderno agreed. “And I don’t know why not. This miserable sot has no magic, used no magic. And yet my spell would not bite. And I don’t know why.” A German engineer couldn’t have sounded any more upset if he’d watched a book fall up instead of down.

“Told you so, know-it-all,” Scanno jeered.

Lenello magic, from what Hasso had heard, grew weak and erratic in Bucovin. Scanno was right here, but Aderno’s magic didn’t want to work against him, either. What did that mean? Hasso had no idea. Plainly, neither did Aderno.

V

Aderno wanted to take Scanno back to Castle Drammen to experiment on him. The wizard didn’t put it in quite those words, but that was what it boiled down to. Scanno, not surprisingly, didn’t want to go. “You aren’t going to play games with me,” he said.

“It’s for the good of the Lenelli,” Aderno said.

Scanno blew beer fumes in his face as he laughed. “Like I care!”

“Come on,” Aderno said to Hasso. “We can get him there.”

Hasso didn’t feel like fighting a drunk who was unlikely even to notice if he got hurt. He also didn’t want to wreck whatever chance they had of getting voluntary cooperation from Scanno. “Forget it,” he said – in Lenello, so Scanno could follow. “We come back a different time.”

“I wouldn’t come back here for half the gold in the treasury!” the wizard exclaimed.

“Fine,” Hasso said. ‘I come back a different time.”

“You’re a peculiar one,” Scanno said. “You belong with me, not with this tight-arsed twit.”

“No.” Hasso let it go there. He didn’t want to tell the renegade that he’d killed Grenye. He didn’t want to tell him he was sleeping with the goddess on earth, either. If Scanno asked around, he could hear it for himself. Hasso got to his feet. “Come on. We go.”

The tapman gave him a polite nod as he left. He nodded back, which seemed to surprise the Grenye again.

Out on the street, Aderno lost his temper. “What do you think you’re doing, taking that lout’s side? Are you crazy? Are you a traitor, too?”

“Shut up,” Hasso said in Lenello, an officer’s snap in his voice. He went on in German, knowing the wizard would understand and the Grenye all around wouldn’t: “Let him think I’m on his side, or I might be. Let him think that, and who knows how much we may learn from him? Get rough now, and we end up with nothing.”

Aderno gaped. “Maybe you’re playing your own game. Maybe you think all of us are children.”

“You act like it sometimes.” Hasso said that in Lenello. Aderno flushed, for he used the second-person singular, not plural.

A Grenye with a pheasant feather stuck in his cap said something about his nice, clean sister and pointed to the brothel across the street. Hasso shook his head. The Grenye didn’t want to take no for an answer. He reached out to tug at Hasso’s arm. Aderno said something too fast for the Wehrmacht officer to follow. The Grenye got it, though. He disappeared in a hurry.

“If our magic fails against the Grenye, how are we supposed to conquer Bucovin?” Aderno said.

“Maybe you do it one bite at a time,” Hasso answered. “Maybe you go on to Falticeni and take it away from their king.”

“Their chief, you mean,” the Lenello said scornfully.

“Whatever he is.” It didn’t matter to Hasso. “Or maybe you decide it’s too much trouble and you leave them alone. We had a big neighbor who we thought would be a pushover, too. That’s why I was fighting in what was left of my own capital.” If the Fuhrer had gone after England instead of trying to knock out Russia … Well, things could hardly have turned out worse.

“This whole land is ours. It is our destiny. If the savages don’t bend the knee to us, we’ll push them aside like the dirt they are.” Aderno didn’t care who was listening to him.

Sometimes disasters followed talk like that. Hasso had seen as much at first hand. But sometimes they didn’t. The Americans hadn’t worried about Indian raids for a lifetime. The aborigines in Australia had even less left to them than the redskins in the New World. Europeans ruled India and Africa. Conquest could work.

“Come on,” Hasso said. “Let’s get back to the castle.”

Aderno went off to commune with a fellow wizard and try to figure out why his magic failed. Hasso thought about telling King Bottero what he’d done, but decided not to. This kingdom was tiny by the standards of the Reich, but not so tiny that the man at the top would want to hear every little detail. Chances were he’d listen politely – once. Hasso didn’t care to burn up his credit like that.