After the Downfall

Does she have the right to tell me what to do like that? Hasso wondered. In her own person, she probably didn’t. But that was the point, as he’d realized a moment before. She wasn’t just in her own person, not when she had the goddess for company. And the goddess could tell King Bottero what to do, let alone a newly arrived foreigner like Hasso Pemsel.

Automatically, Hasso’s arm shot out in the salute he was more used to than the one the Lenelli used. “Zu Befehl!” he said, German tasting strange in his mouth. He turned it into Lenello: “At your command!”

“Well, all right,” Velona said. “I didn’t mean it quite like that. But for now, let’s get some sleep.” There was an order Hasso was glad to obey.

IX

“I am your slave,” the Grenye prisoner insisted.

Hasso had never expected to see the warrior he’d captured again. But there the fellow was, helping one of the cooks dole out bowls of porridge flavored with salty, fennel-filled sausage and onions. It wasn’t delicious, but it filled the belly. On campaign, that counted for more.

“Is he yours, sir?” the cook asked. “I didn’t mean to take him if he really belonged to somebody, but you know how it is. We can always use an extra pair of hands.”

“What is the custom?” Hasso asked in return. “He did surrender to me yesterday.”

“Then he’s yours if you want him,” the cook said. “If you don’t, I’ll go on using him – he seems willing enough. Or you can feed him to the water snakes – but if you wanted to do that, you could have done it when he tried to give up.”

The Bucovinan pointed to Hasso. “You spared me. I work for you now. I am Berbec.” He jabbed a thumb at his own chest. “You are a great lord, yes? A great lord, sure, but you never have man like me before.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Hasso said dryly. Berbec laughed louder than the joke deserved … if it was a joke. Was taking a prisoner as a batman, as a valet – hell, as a slave – clasping a water snake to his bosom? The cook didn’t seem to think so. Hasso found himself nodding. “Well, come on, then, Berbec. What can you do for me that I can’t do for myself?”

“All kinds of things.” Berbec bowed to him, then also bowed to the cook for whom he’d been working. The motion was different from the stiffer one the Lenelli – and the Germans – used. It might almost have been a move from a dance. “You don’t have any other slaves?”

“Not right now,” Hasso said.

Berbec clicked his tongue between his teeth. “You poor fellow.” He cocked his head to one side, eyeing Hasso with sparrowish curiosity. “You look like a Lenello, but you don’t talk like. Where you from?”

“A faraway country,” the German replied, which was true but uninformative. He still didn’t trust Berbec not to disappear the minute he turned his back. “Can you take care of a horse?”

“I do that.” Berbec nodded eagerly. He might have picked the next thought out of Hasso’s mind, for he went on, “Not steal him, neither. You could kill me, but you spare. I owe you my life. I pay back.”

Maybe he meant it. Some people, and some peoples, were punctilious about their honor, to the point that looked like stupidity to anyone with a less rigid code. Whether the Grenye of Bucovin were like that, whether Berbec himself was … I just have to find out, Hasso thought. In the meantime, I have to be careful.

“You have funny helmet,” Berbec remarked. His hands shaped the flare of the German Stahlhelm.

“In the style of my country,” Hasso said. The Lenelli wore plain conical helms, more like those of the Normans than any others he knew. So did the Bucovinans, probably in imitation of the blonds from overseas.

“Not bad. Maybe turn sword better.” Berbec might be a little man, but he was a warrior. “But nasal is new. Not have before?” He was a warrior with sharp eyes, too. That nasal was riveted on. The Lenelli couldn’t weld steel, and Hasso didn’t trust solder to hold. Berbec chattered on: “Why you not have before? Keep face from getting split open.”

“War in my land doesn’t usually come down to swordstrokes,” Hasso replied. And wasn’t that the sad and sorry truth? A helmet wouldn’t stop a rifle round, though it would keep out some shell fragments. High-velocity bullets made most body armor more trouble than it was worth. Only if you were fighting with bayonets or entrenching tools would a nasal matter. Once in a blue moon, in other words. German armorers didn’t see the point of adding one, and who was he to say they were wrong … for the kind of war they fought?

Berbec stared at him. Hasso thought the Bucovinan would call him a liar. But then Berbec thrust out a stubby, accusing finger. “You have the thunderflasher,” he said. That wasn’t a word in Lenello, but it was a pretty good description of a firearm. “You point it at someone, and it goes boom, and he falls over. All soldiers in your country carry thunderflashers, then?”

No, he was nobody’s fool. “That’s right,” Hasso said.