After the Downfall

“Suppose it is.” Hasso hoped he sounded more nonchalant and less frightened than he felt. “How do you trust anything you chop out of me?”

“Oh, we have ways.” That wasn’t the Lord of Bucovin. That was Rautat, the practical noncom. He sounded very sure of himself, and probably with good reason. Zgomot said something in Bucovinan. Rautat answered in the same language. Hasso didn’t like it when people hashed out his fate in a tongue he couldn’t understand. Who would have?

“Well, nothing is going to happen right away,” Zgomot said, returning to Lenello. “Maybe we can show you you made a mistake taking service with Bottero. Or maybe, if we decide you’re too dangerous to keep alive, we’ll have to kill you to make sure you don’t go back. We’ll just have to see.”

“Whatever you say, Lord.” At least it’s not the chopper right away!

“Whatever I say?” Zgomot’s laugh was hardly more than a token effort. “Well, stranger, you’ve never ruled, have you?”

Prison. It was about the most Hasso could have expected, but it was nothing to get excited about. He had a room with a window much too narrow to give him any chance to escape through it. He had a cot and a slops bucket. The bucket did boast a cover. For such refinements he was grateful.

The door was too sturdy to break down. The bar was on the outside. Guards always stood in the corridor – he could hear them talking every now and again.

They fed him twice a day. The food wasn’t especially good, but there was plenty of it. He didn’t need to worry about going hungry. And, by the way soldiers with swords and bows glowered at him whenever the door opened to admit the servant with the tray, he didn’t need to worry about escaping, either. He wasn’t going anywhere till Zgomot decided to let him out.

He didn’t have a torch or a lamp. When the sun went down – which it did very early at this time of year – he sat and lay in darkness till at last it rose again.

Grimly, he made the most of the few light hours. He did pushups and situps and other calisthenics. He ran in place. He paced around and around the cell, which was about three meters square. He’d got used to short days and long nights in Russia. This wasn’t as bad as that. They didn’t give him a brazier, but he had plenty of blankets. And it wasn’t as cold here as it had been there – nowhere close.

After he’d been in there for eight days – he thought it was eight, but it could have been seven or nine – the door opened at an unexpected time. Ice ran through him. He knew enough about being a prisoner to suspect any change in routine. Was this the day when they’d sacrifice him to the great god Mumbo-Jumbo, er, Lavtrig?

In walked the usual guards with the usual cutlery. In with them walked someone else. She couldn’t have been much more than a meter and a half tall; she didn’t come up to the top of Hasso’s shoulder. But she carried herself like a queen. No, more like a dancer, with a straight back and long, graceful strides that made her skirt swirl around her ankles as if she belonged to a flamenco troupe.

“You are the man from a far land who took service with Bottero,” she said in a clear contralto. Her accent was much better than Hasso’s. It might even have been better than Lord Zgomot’s; she lacked the fussy precision that informed his speech.

“That’s right.” Hasso nodded. “Who are you?”

“My name is Drepteaza.” She made four syllables of it. She waited. Hasso repeated the name. She corrected him. He tried again. She nodded. “That’s close enough,” she said. “I am here to teach you to talk like a human being.” That was how it came out in Lenello.

In spite of everything, Hasso smiled. “What am I doing now?”

“Talking like a western wolf,” Drepteaza answered seriously. The Bucovinans loved the Lenelli no more than the Lenelli cared for them. Up till now, Hasso hadn’t had to worry about that, any more than he’d worried about what Jews felt about Germans. That would only have mattered to him if he’d got captured by a band of Jewish partisans. Now, in effect, he had been. And what the natives felt about the Lenelli and about one Hasso Pemsel could literally be a matter of life and death.

He bowed to Drepteaza. “I am at your service, my lady. You are a prettier teacher than Rautat would be, that’s for sure.” And so she was. She was probably somewhere between twenty-five and thirty, with strong cheekbones, fine dark eyes, and an elegant blade of a nose. He would have bet she had a nice shape under that baggy tunic and skirt, though maybe her elegant gait was what made him think so.

She looked at him with as much warmth as if he’d got poured out of the slops bucket. So much for flattery, Hasso thought. One of the guards turned out to understand Lenello. Hefting his sword, he growled, “Watch your mouth with the holy priestess.”