After the Downfall

Hasso might have enjoyed that if he’d found the girl himself. With Bottero watching, as he plainly intended to do? “No, thanks, your Majesty. I just came from Velona.”

“Ah.” The king leered. “She can wear anybody out.”

“Yes.” Hasso left it at that, and hoped Bottero would. He wasn’t lying; Velona had helped him celebrate his successful sorcery. He also feared being unfaithful to her. As a woman? No, not so much, though she would be incandescent enough if scorned. But as a woman with the goddess indwelling? The last thing Hasso wanted to do was face an irate deity.

He didn’t say that to King Bottero. It didn’t seem manly. Then Bottero said, “You’re pretty smart. If she found out about you and some chit, she’d fry your nuts off, I bet. Forget I asked you.”

So the king respected – if that was the right word – Velona, too? Well, he would. He really believed in the goddess, believed in his belly and his balls. (Hasso tried not to think of his belly on Velona, his balls slapping the inside of her thighs.) To Hasso, belief like that came much harder, no matter what he’d seen here.

“How do we make the Bucovinans fight us?” Hasso asked. “If they stand, we can beat them, yes?”

“We’d better!” Bottero said. “That’s what I’m trying to do – take a big bite out of them. Instead, they’ve been nibbling on us … and I don’t mean like Sfinti here.” He swatted the Bucovinan woman on the backside. She smiled at him again. Again, Hasso wondered what went on behind her eyes.

But only for a moment – he had other things to think about. The Wehrmacht had wanted to get the Red Army to stand and fight, too. Instead, the Russians traded space for time, drawing the Germans on till they got overextended and then hitting back. The Bucovinans looked to be playing the same game against Bottero.

Would it work here? If the Lenelli took Falticeni, obviously not. Otherwise? Hasso shrugged. He was too much a stranger here to be sure of much. Hell, he hadn’t even been sure he could do magic. He still had trouble believing it.

He didn’t want to think about that now. He gnawed on ribs and drank beer and tried not to watch Bottero pawing Sfinti. It wasn’t that he hadn’t seen plenty worse, most recently at Muresh. But the way she just stood there and let the king do what he wanted raised Hasso’s hackles. He wouldn’t have wanted to sleep with her, not literally, even if she kept on smiling. Wouldn’t you be much too likely to wake up slightly dead the next morning?

King Bottero didn’t seem to worry about it. Bottero didn’t seem to worry about much of anything. “The rest of the Lenello kingdoms will be so jealous of us once we’ve cut off Bucovin’s head,” he boasted.

“Jealous enough to gang up on you?” Hasso asked. That would be all Bottero needed: getting through one war only to end up in another that was worse. Against other Lenelli, he wouldn’t have any special edge.

“Don’t think so.” No, the king didn’t worry about much. “What it will do, though, is it’ll draw us more people from across the sea. They’ll know we’ll have lands to hand out, lands with plenty of Grenye on ‘em to work and to have fun with.” He pulled Sfinti down onto his lap.

Hasso got to his feet. “Maybe I’d better go, your Majesty,” he said. King Bottero didn’t tell him no. He bowed his way out of the tent. As the flap fell, Bottero laughed and the Bucovinan woman giggled. The guards outside grinned and nudged one another. One of them winked at Hasso. He had to make himself grin and wink back.

He also had to make himself hope Bottero knew what he was doing in there. The king pretty obviously thought so. Were the Bucovinans smart enough to leave a pretty assassin behind to be captured? Or would an ordinary Grenye woman pull out a knife if she saw the chance?

And even if the answer to both those questions was no, what would happen to Bottero’s kingdom after this campaign? Hitler’s biggest mistake was thinking he could take on almost the entire rest of the world. Was the local king doing the same stupid thing? Again, Hasso had to shrug. He didn’t know enough to judge – just enough to worry.

“You’re back sooner than I expected,” Velona remarked when he ducked into the tent they shared.

“His Majesty has other things on his mind.” Hasso shaped an hourglass in the air with his hands.

The Lenelli didn’t use that gesture, and Velona needed a moment to realize what it meant. When she did, she laughed … for a moment. “He didn’t want to share with you?” she asked ominously.

He could, to his own relief, answer with the exact truth: “I don’t want to share with him. I have better here.”

He wasn’t afraid of facing the Bucovinans in battle. He wasn’t afraid of trying to work magic, either – though maybe he needed to be, now that he’d discovered he could do it. But facing an angry Velona … That scared him green. He would rather have jumped on a Russian grenade.