After the Downfall

Velona took him seriously. That a woman like her might take him seriously was just about enough to make him believe in her goddess, or at least in miracles. When he finished, she said, “I will do what I can. I don’t know how much that will be. The goddess didn’t seem to hear me when I was in Bucovin before. I feared she’d abandoned me … and then there you were, on the causeway.”

“There I was,” Hasso agreed. Was he the answer to Velona’s prayer? Or had the Omphalos stone sent him here of its own volition? Or was it just dumb luck, with nobody responsible one way or the other? The goddess and whatever powered the Omphalos might know. Hasso didn’t believe he ever would.

When Velona decided to do something, she didn’t do it halfway. Beseeching the goddess proved no exception to the rule. She carried a statuette of the deity with her. The bronze – about a quarter of a meter tall – was nothing fancy. Had Hasso seen it in a museum back in Berlin, he would have walked past it without a second glance.

Velona set it up on the muddy floor of the tent with a candle burning to either side: a makeshift altar. Then she stripped herself naked and prostrated herself before it. Hasso’s admiration for her beauty was almost entirely abstract, his pleasure at seeing her long, smooth length esthetic rather than lustful. She seemed as much in the divine world as in the material, which had a lot to do with that.

Or maybe she just intimidates the crap out of me, he thought – not a reflection likely to have crossed his mind for any ordinary woman. Whatever else you said about Velona, ordinary she was not.

“Hear me!” she said, as if the statuette were an equal. “Hear me!” Hasso wondered whether the bronze image would answer, but it didn’t – at least not so he could hear. Velona went on, “Enough of rain! Enough of mud! Enough of barbarism! Time for Bottero’s troopers to storm forward!”

Hasso wanted to go outside and look at the weather. If it wasn’t changing right then … If it wasn’t, then Velona would have to give the goddess another talking-to.

One of the candles flared up. Maybe that was what made the statuette’s eyes flash. The rational part of Hasso could believe it was, anyhow. That way, he didn’t have to believe he was watching the goddess’ response to a petitioner who was fully entitled to treat with her.

He didn’t have to believe that, no, but believing anything else wasn’t easy. And Velona only made it harder when she said, “Well, I should hope so! It’s about time, don’t you think?” She might have been talking to a neighbor woman about reining in the neighbor’s unruly children.

The bronze goddess’ eyes flashed again. This time, Hasso didn’t notice any candle flare to cause it. He tried to convince himself that he didn’t see the statuette nod in response to Velona’s urging. He tried, but he didn’t have much luck. His eyes saw what they saw. What it meant … was probably about what it looked like. If he had trouble believing that, wasn’t it because the God he was used to worshiping was so leery of doling out miracles? Things were different here.

With an athlete’s grace, Velona got to her feet. Hasso had never seen such an… inspiring votary of any god. He tried to imagine her arising, naked and beautiful, from in front of the altar in a Catholic or Lutheran church. The picture didn’t want to form. In a way, that was hardly surprising, however rough her presence would have been on a celibate priest. In another way, though, wasn’t the impossibility of such a scene too damn bad? If Velona didn’t make you want to worship, weren’t you already dead inside?

Beaming, she said, “I think that took care of it. Thank you for giving me a push there.”

“Any time.” Hasso reached out and cupped her left breast in his right hand.

“A push, I said.” Velona tried to sound severe, but didn’t have much luck. “What would happen if your slave walked in here right now?”

“Berbec? He’d be jealous.” Hasso didn’t let go. “And he’d think I was the bravest man in the world, for daring to touch you.”

“I like it when you touch me.” Velona set her hand on his, which made his breath come short. But she went on, “If I didn’t like it and you touched me, then you would be the bravest man in the world. And the stupidest.”

“I believe you,” Hasso said. Men had amused themselves with their enemies’ women since the beginning of time. The Germans had done their share of it in France and in Russia. And now the Ivans were paying the Wehrmacht back with their trousers down around their ankles.

Things in this world were bound to be the same. Not all the halfbreeds here had happened because Grenye women welcomed Lenello men with their legs open. But if anyone tried to force Velona to do anything she didn’t want to do when the goddess was with her… Hasso didn’t know what would happen to a bastard dumb enough to try that. He did know he wouldn’t care to find out.