After the Downfall

One of the guards yelled some more, and gestured. Rautat and the other Bucovinan soldiers dismounted. A moment later, Hasso did the same. Grooms came out to take charge of the horses. Hasso’s captors escorted him into the palace.

The palace was gloomy. It was drafty. It didn’t smell very good. Of course, you could have said the same things about King Bottero’s establishment. Everything here, though, seemed just a little worse, a little sloppier, than it had back in Drammen.

And Hasso found one danger here that he hadn’t had to worry about there: doorways. Lots of Lenelli were taller than he was. Their lintels were high. The Bucovinans, on the other hand, mostly came up to his chin. And he banged his forehead twice in quick succession before realizing he had to watch – and duck – every goddamn time.

Getting one – no, two – right above the eyes did nothing for the headaches that still plagued him. He wished his head would come off. Inconsiderate thing that it was, it stayed attached and hurt.

Rautat spoke with a court official whose spiffy embroidery probably meant he was a big wheel. The fellow with the gaudy tunic looked Hasso over. Him? his glance said. Well, Hasso didn’t think he cut a very fancy figure just then, either. The palace functionary asked Rautat a couple of questions. Hasso’s captor answered with emphasis, jabbing a forefinger at the other man’s chest.

With a sigh, the official yielded. He said something to Hasso in Bucovinan. “I am sorry. I do not speak your language,” Hasso answered in Lenello.

He wasn’t astonished when the native turned out to know that tongue. “Come with me,” the fellow said. “Your name is on a list. Lord Zgomot wanted to see certain folk if we captured them. Here you are, so he will see you.”

“Here I am,” Hasso agreed, so mournfully that Rautat laughed and the court official smiled a most unpleasant smile.

They led him down a hallway decorated with art of a sort he didn’t think he’d ever seen before. For lack of a better name, he thought of the pieces as feather paintings. Some of them were quite realistic, others bands or swirling lines of color. They must have taken enormous labor to create, first in finding the feathers and then in arranging them.

“Nice work.” Hasso pointed at one – a picture of the palace, done all in feathers. “Very pretty.”

Rautat and the functionary both stared at him, then started to laugh. “By Lavtrig, now I know you’re no ordinary big blond bastard! They all think featherwork is stupid and ugly and foolish because they don’t do it themselves,” Rautat said.

He spoke in Bucovinan to the soldiers escorting the Wehrmacht officer. They gaped at Hasso, too. Hasso couldn’t remember any Lenelli ever talking about featherwork. It really must have been beneath their notice. He wondered why. It sure looked good to him.

Then they led him past what he first took to be a small elephant’s tusk. But it was shaped more like a sword blade, and had a formidable point on the end. “What is that? What beast does it come from?” he asked.

“A dragon,” Rautat answered matter-of-factly. “That is the greatest fang of the Dragon of Mizil, which we slew when Bucovin was young. His bones lie under the walls of Falticeni, and under the palace here.”

“A dragon? What does a dragon look like?” Hasso asked.

They went on a little farther. Then the court functionary pointed to a big featherwork on the wall. “Behold the Dragon of Mizil!” he said.

Hasso beheld it. He wondered from which birds the natives had got those iridescent green and bronze feathers, or the yellow and orange and red ones that showed the fire it breathed. He also wondered whether the artists had actually seen the dragon or limned it from the stories of those who came before them. And he wondered … “How do you kill something like that?”

Together, Rautat and the court official burst into something between verse and song. After a moment, the rest of Hasso’s guards joined in. Germans might have launched into “Deutschland uber Alles” or the “Ode to Joy” with as much ease and as little self-consciousness. Everybody in Falticeni had to know the story of the Dragon of Mizil.

Everybody but me, Hasso thought. And he didn’t understand a word of Bucovinan. “Can you translate, please?” he said.

To his surprise, Rautat shook his head. “Not this,” the soldier answered. “This is ours. This is special. This is not for Lenello dogfeet.” He must have translated one of his own words literally, for he corrected himself a moment later: “Scoundrels.” The palace flunky nodded agreement.

Hasso only shrugged. He was in no position to argue with them. They hadn’t killed him. Except for when he went into the pit, they hadn’t even hurt him. Yet. All things considered, he had to figure he was ahead of the game.