After the Downfall

“I say, ‘Thank you,’“ Hasso answered, and then, “How do you say that in your language?” Berbec told him. When Hasso pronounced the words, Berbec’s dark eyebrows twitched, so the German judged he’d made a hash of things. “Tell me when I am wrong,” he said. “I want to say it right. Repeat for me, please.” He’d had plenty of practice saying that in Lenello.

“You sure you want me to say you are wrong?” Berbec understood the dangers inherent in that, all right.

But Hasso nodded. “By the goddess, I do. I am angrier if I make mistake than if you tell me I make mistake.”

“Hmm.” The native’s eyebrows were very expressive. Frenchmen had eyebrows like that. So did Jews in Poland and Russia. Their eyebrows hadn’t done them any good. Neither had anything else. Berbec’s … made Hasso smile, anyway. “Well, we see.” The Bucovinan still seemed anything but convinced.

“If you tell me sweet lies and I find out, I make you sorry.” Hasso tried to sound as fierce as … as what? As a Lenello who’d just sacked a town in Bucovin, that was what. Yes, that would do, and then some.

It would if it convinced Berbec, anyhow. “Hmm,” he repeated. Next to the Lenelli, maybe I’m not such a tough guy after all. He’d spent five and a half years in the biggest war in the history of the world, most of the last four on the Russian front – and in spite of everything he’d seen and done, he was still a softie next to Bottero’s knights and foot soldiers. Maybe that said something good about the civilization that had blown itself to smithereens from the Atlantic to the Volga. He smacked Berbec on the back, not too hard. “You listen to me, you hear?”

“You are my master. You could have killed me, and you didn’t. Of course I listen to you,” Berbec said. Something in his deep-set dark eyes added, If I feel like it.

Hasso did him a favor: he pretended not to see that. He just laughed and slapped the Bucovinan on the back again and got ready for another day of warfare, for all the world as if there hadn’t been a sack and a slaughter here the day before. He’d done that kind of thing back in his own world, too.

King Bottero’s artisans started gathering lumber from what was left of Muresh to resurface to bridge across the Oltet. That told Hasso the king’s wizards hadn’t come up with any brilliant ideas on their own. The artisans had to do considerable scrounging, too, because not much was left of Muresh.

Orosei came over to Hasso as the Wehrmacht man watched the artisans at work. “You didn’t have any sneaky schemes for getting across?” the master-at-arms asked.

Hasso shrugged and spread his hands. “No miracles in my pockets. No ford. No boats. I think we have to do it the hard way.”

“Oh, well.” Orosei shrugged, too. “I told the king to ask you. It was worth a try”

“So you’re to blame, eh?” Hasso made a joke of it. Orosei might have been doing him a favor.

“That’s me.” Orosei grinned. Either he wasn’t trying to screw Hasso or he had more guile in him than the German guessed.

“I say to King Bottero, try the wizards.” Hasso shrugged. “They have no miracles in their pockets, either.”

“Too bad,” Orosei said. “They talk big. I’d like ‘em better if they delivered on more of their promises, though. That poor bastard the Bucovinans caught … If he was hot stuff, why didn’t he turn ‘em into a bunch of trout before they got to work on him?”

“Swords are faster than spells,” Hasso said. So everybody had told him. Like a lot of things everybody said, it must have held some truth, or Flegrei would still be around. Hasso suspected it wasn’t the last word, though.

Bottero’s master-at-arms let out a sour chuckle. “Yeah, they are. A good thing, too, or clowns like you and me’d be out of work. When kings wanted to fight wars, they wouldn’t use anybody but those unicorn-riding nancy boys.” He spat in the mud to show what he thought of wizards.

Hasso had seen his share of homos in the Wehrmacht, and maybe more than his share in the Waffen-SS, where they seemed to gravitate. Yeah, sometimes you could blackmail them. But when they fought, they fought at least as well as anybody else. Some of them, in fact, made uncommonly ferocious soldiers, because they didn’t seem to give a damn whether they lived or died.

More boards thudded onto the stone framework of the bridge across the Oltet. The Bucovinans in the keep on the far bank watched the Lenelli work without trying to interfere … till Bottero’s men replanked about half of the bridge. That brought them into archery range, and the Grenye started shooting as if arrows were going to be banned day after tomorrow.

A Lenello shot through the throat clutched at himself and tumbled into the turbid green water five meters below. He wore a heavy mailshirt; he wouldn’t have lasted long even without a mortal wound. Another big blond warrior came back cussing a blue streak, an arrow clean through his forearm.