After the Downfall

Yes, the mud slowed down the Ivans. But they weren’t trying to go forward, not that first autumn, anyhow. They were just trying to hold back the Germans, to keep the Wehrmacht out of Moscow. And they did, and blitzkrieg turned to grapple and slugging match … and Hasso found a magical way to escape from burning, pulverized Berlin, but not one the rest of the city would ever be able to use.

And so he was here in western Bucovin, listening to the rain patter down. Soldiers greased their mailshirts every morning and night and draped themselves with cloaks. They swore when they found tiny tumors of rust anyhow – as of course they did. The horses that squelched through the deepening ooze couldn’t swear, but the men on their backs made up for that. And the teamsters who fought to keep supply wagons moving cursed even harder than the knights.

By the time it had rained for a couple of days, Hasso began to think the wizards’ spell might be worse than the scorched-earth disease. By the time the rain had poured down for a week, he was sure of it. He rode up alongside Aderno, whose unicorn was so splotched and spattered with mud that it looked to have a giraffe’s hide.

Hasso waved his arms up toward the weeping sky. “Enough!” he said. He waved again, like a conductor in white tie and tails pulling a crescendo from a symphony orchestra. “Too much, in fact! Call off your storm!”

Aderno’s answering glance would have looked even hotter than it did had water not dripped from the end of the wizard’s long, pointed nose. “It’s not our storm any more,” he said. “It’s just… weather now.”

“Well, work another spell and turn it into good weather, then,” Hasso said.

Were there any justice in the world, the water on Aderno’s nose would have started to steam. “What do you think we’ve been trying to do?” he said pointedly.

“I don’t know,” Hasso answered. “All I know is, it’s still raining.”

Aderno’s gesture was as extravagant as the ones the German had used not long before. “Weather magic is never easy. We’d do a lot more of it if it were,” he said. “And trying it here in Bucovin was worse. We were glad when we got what we wanted. Now – ”

He broke off when a raindrop hit him in the eye. “Now you’ve got too much of what you want,” Hasso finished for him. The wizard nodded unhappily. “And you can’t close the sluice, either,” Hasso said. In German, it would have been something like, And you can’t turn it off, either. The Lenelli didn’t have enough machinery to make phrases like that a natural part of their language.

“Air and sky and land in Bucovin don’t want to listen to us,” Aderno said. Hasso would have thought he was making excuses if Velona hadn’t said the same thing.

Thinking of Velona, though, inspired him, as it often did – though not in the same direction as usual. Instead of erotic excess, his mind swung toward military pragmatism. “Do the air and sky and land here listen to the goddess?” he asked.

“Sometimes.” Aderno’s attention sharpened. “Sometimes, yes. And if the goddess’ person begs her…”

Did Velona beg the goddess the last time she went into Bucovin? What did the goddess do for her then? Anything? Hasso’s first, rational, inclination was to say no. But he realized Velona didn’t see things that way herself. As far as she was concerned, the goddess gave her just what she asked for: a rescuer from another world, one Hasso Pemsel.

“I speak to her of this,” Hasso said. He didn’t think of himself as anybody’s answered prayer, but in this crazy world he might be wrong, and he knew it.

As he made his way through the mud to the tent he shared with Velona, he reminded himself that he would have to grease his boots. If he didn’t, the leather would turn hard as stone when it dried … if it ever dried. It would also start to rot. The Lenelli made boots at least as good as the ones he’d worn when he got here, but he’d got used to the idea of not wasting anything.

He wondered if he would be wasting his time talking to Velona. Try as he would, he didn’t have a real feel yet for how things worked here. Maybe he was only suggesting the obvious. Maybe his idea wasn’t obvious but was stupid.

Or maybe you’re a goddamn genius, he told himself. That made him laugh. He sure as hell didn’t feel like a genius. Back in Germany, he bloody well wasn’t. But the things he knew from there often made him seem smarter than the locals here. Don’t believe your own press clippings, he thought. Wasn’t that one of Hitler’s big mistakes? He was so convinced the Ivans were bums, he went after them without thinking about what a big bunch of bums they were.

Here heading toward the middle of Bucovin, Hasso could have done without that thought.