After the Downfall

Before long, Hasso saw something else, too: the first armed Grenye he’d spotted in the field. They weren’t an army, only scouts – a handful of men on horseback who kept their eye on King Bottero’s army but stayed as far away from it as they could while still doing their job. Every so often, one of them would ride off; no doubt to report to their superiors, while another took his place.

“We should catch some of them,” Hasso said. “We should find out what they know. We should find out what they think.”

“We should find out if they think,” Aderno said scornfully. “Besides, they’ll just scurry off into the woods if we chase them. You see how close to the trees they stay?”

“Yes.” Hasso had noticed that. “Can’t you bring them in by magic, though?”

He’d rarely seen any Lenello at a loss. He did now with Aderno. “By the goddess, I don’t know,” the wizard said. “It would be child’s play on the other side of the border. Here? Well, I can find out.”

Back in his own world, Hasso might have asked a radio technician to find the direction from which a Soviet signal was coming. Aderno set to work with that same kind of unflustered competence. He rummaged first in his belt pouches and then in his saddlebags for what he needed. He found a chunk of amber, a small stone that showed different colors depending on how the sun struck it – an opal, Hasso realized – and a smooth, rounded pebble that looked thoroughly ordinary.

“What is that?” Hasso asked, pointing at it.

“A capon’s gizzard stone. A five-year-old capon’s gizzard stone,” Aderno answered with relentless precision. “It aids in gaining one’s desire from any man. The other two, taken together, will make you victorious against your adversaries.”

Oh, yeah? Hasso thought. Back home, he wouldn’t have believed it, though he knew plenty of high-ranking Nazis were gaga for the occult and the supernatural. Much good that had done them, or the Reich. The way Germany was collapsing seemed to him the best argument in the world – in that world – against sorcery.

But things were different here. On the back of his unicorn, Aderno started juggling the three stones. Hasso Pemsel thought that was the funniest thing he’d ever seen, especially when the wizard thrust out his right index finger at a Grenye rider while all three stones were in the air at the same time.

It might have looked ridiculous. Hell, it did look ridiculous. That didn’t mean it didn’t work. The Grenye from Bucovin – the wild Grenye, the Lenelli would have called him – didn’t want to ride up to King Bottero’s army. He didn’t want to approach the wizard on the unicorn. Hasso could see that more and more plainly as the fellow rode closer and closer. No matter how unwilling he was, he did what Aderno required of him, not what he wanted to do.

“Well, well.” Aderno sounded pleased with himself. “Isn’t that nice. Isn’t that something?”

“Something, yes.” Hasso wasn’t sure what. He was sure it made his hackles rise. But as long as it worked, how much did that matter?

“Here you are, Grenye,” Aderno said as the horseman came up alongside him and Hasso. “Do you speak Lenello?”

“Yes, I speak it.” The Grenye’s accent was thicker than Hasso’s, but he made himself understood.

“Tell me your name,” Aderno said, and then, in an aside to Hasso, “One more sorcerous hold on him.”

Again, the Grenye didn’t want to but found he had no choice. “I am called Nebun,” he said.

Instead of a Lenello-style conical helm, he wore a leather cap strengthened with iron strips. His mailshirt showed less skill than the elegant armor Lenelli wore.

His sword, though … Hasso would have guessed a Lenello smith forged it, for it seemed the same as the ones Bottero’s soldiers carried. What had Lenin said about capitalists selling the Soviet Union the rope it would use to hang them? No, some things didn’t change a bit from one world to another.

“What are your orders, Nebun?” Aderno asked, and twisted his fingers in a certain sign. Again to Hasso, he added, “Keeps him docile.”

So it did – or it seemed to, anyhow. Nebun answered readily enough: “To spy out your force. To see how strong you are.”

“Tell your superiors we have twice the numbers you really see,” Hasso put in. “Tell them you fear for your land. Do not let them persuade you of anything else no matter what they say. Do you follow me?”

“Yes, sir.” Nebun might have been talking to a superior. “I will obey you as I would obey my own father.”

Hasso glanced over to Aderno. “Can I rely on that?” he asked – in German, so the Grenye wouldn’t understand.

Aderno’s magic let him follow the alien tongue. He nodded. “I think so. You might almost have set a spell on him.” He glanced over at Nebun. “For all I know, you did. You are not without power, as my lost goldpiece reminds me.”