After the Downfall

He could show the natives this and that. He could show them most of the same things he would have shown to Bottero and Velona. He could, yes, but should he? He knew what he thought of Field Marshal Paulus, who’d surrendered to the Russians at Stalingrad and then got on the radio for them, telling the Germans they couldn’t win and had better give up while they still had the chance. Maybe Paulus did persuade a few Landsers to desert. To Hasso and the rest, though, he was nothing but a goddamn traitor.

Of course, maybe the NKVD held Paulus’ feet to the fire before he started broadcasting. And maybe the Bucovinans will hold my feet to the fire. What do I do then?

Hasso had an Iron Cross First Class. If you’d lived through the whole war, it was hard not to have one. He’d been put up for the Knight’s Cross, but it didn’t go through for some dumb reason or another. He didn’t much care. He’d never thought of himself as heroic. He wanted to live. Would he have plomped his butt down on the Omphalos stone if he were bound and determined to die for the Vaterlandl

He also wanted to be able to go on looking at himself in the mirror, even if mirrors in this world were sorry things of polished bronze. He’d taken service with Bottero, who could have carved a stranger into strips and fed him to his hounds. And he’d fallen in love with Velona, even if the word scared him and her both.

If any place in this world was, Bottero’s kingdom was his country now. I’ll escape if I can, Hasso told himself. Even under the Geneva Convention, that’s my duty.

The Ivans hadn’t signed the Geneva Convention. The Lenelli and the Bucovinans had never heard of it, never even imagined it.

Rautat took out a little knife and started cleaning under his nails with the tip. The watery late-autumn sun flashed off the sharp edge. What else could that knife do? Anything the bastard holding it wanted it to, that was what. The day wasn’t too cold. Hasso shivered anyway.

He wasn’t the only captive heading back to Falticeni. Every so often, he passed other big blond men on the road with large guard contingents. They traveled on foot, in small groups, hands tied behind them and left legs bound one to another. They eyed him as he rode past. Rautat wouldn’t let him talk with them. He didn’t suppose he could blame the Bucovinan, things being as they were.

“What do you do with these men?” he asked after his mounted party went by another group of Lenello prisoners.

“Use them,” Rautat answered. “They work for us. They teach us things. If they settle down and behave, they live better with us than they would in their own kingdom.”

At the price of exile, of course. Still, when the other choice was getting your throat cut or worse … But Hasso also remembered Scanno, who even in Drammen preferred the company of Grenye to his own folk. Scanno wouldn’t be the only Lenello who thought that way, either. There might not be many, but there were bound to be some.

And Hasso also thought about Japan after the Western powers made it open up in the nineteenth century. What did the world look like to the Japanese then? The little yellow men had to acquire all the skills they lacked, and in a hurry, too, or else go under like the Indians and Africans. And they did it. They smashed the Russians in 1905 – which made Hasso jealous – and they were giving the Americans all they wanted now. The Grenye of Bucovin were in the same boat.

But the Japanese could acquire all the tricks the Americans and British and Russians and French and Germans knew. The Grenye found themselves behind the eight-ball in a way the Japanese didn’t. “Have you got any Lenello wizards in Falticeni?” Hasso asked, not least to see if he could make Rautat twitch.

He didn’t. The native just shook his head. “Not right now. For us, wizards are like holding a sword by the blade. We can cut ourselves, not just the enemy. Somebody who can make spells is liable to try to rule us, not to do what we want. It’s happened before.”

Obviously, it hadn’t worked. “How do you – how did you – stop that?” Hasso inquired, genuinely curious.

Rautat shrugged. “We killed them. Not easy, not cheap, but we did it. Even a wizard has to sleep some of the time.”

“Er – right,” Hasso said. The Man Who Would Be King – he’d read the Kipling tale in translation – didn’t have an easy time of it no matter who the natives were. One of you, lots of them. As long as they don’t believe you’re a god, they can get you. And even if they start out thinking you are, pretty soon they’ll change their minds.

“What can you do for us?” Rautat asked.

“Don’t know yet,” Hasso answered uncomfortably. “I need to see what you can already do before I say.”