After the Downfall (34 page)

“Are you safe? Should anybody believe that?” Drepteaza asked, and then went back to the language lesson.

XV

Little by little, Hasso learned to speak Bucovinan. He’d started feeling at home in Lenello, which didn’t work too differently from German. Bucovinan was another story. Conjugating verbs with separate masculine and feminine forms was the least of the strangenesses. Bucovinan had long vowels and short vowels. Some words had the one, some the other. None had both - except a few borrowed from Lenello, which Drepteaza called bastard words. Bucovinan didn’t have real past tenses, only tenses that showed whether an action was completed or not. And Bucovinan had more trills and chirps than Lenello and German put together.

“How am I doing?” Hasso asked after a while. It probably came out more like
How I doesing is?
The only thing he was sure he had right was the
evin
at the start of the question: a little word that warned the listener it
was
a question. You could also put
evin
at the end of the sentence. Then it was still a question, but a sarcastic or rhetorical one.

“I’ve heard blonds speak worse.” Drepteaza was relentlessly honest about such things. From everything Hasso had seen, she was relentlessly honest all the time. Maybe it was because she was a priestess. Maybe it was just because she was who she was.

Hasso bowed. “Thank you.” That had a particle that went with it, too. If you put it at the start, it meant
Thank you very much,
and you meant what you were saying. If you put it at the end, it meant
Thanks a
lot,
and you didn’t. Hasso put it at the end.

Drepteaza smiled. “See? Many Lenelli would never know to do that. But your pronunciation is terrible.”

“I am not a Lenello,” Hasso said, for what seemed like the ten millionth time.

“I have seen that,” Drepteaza said, or maybe it was something more like,
I am seeing that.
“You make different mistakes.” The verb form she used wasn’t one for completed actions: Hasso was still making those mistakes.

“Sorry,” he muttered. She was a good teacher. He was trying to learn something that was difficult for him, and he wasn’t having an easy time of it.

At least she understood that, and didn’t get - too - angry at him for his errors. She dropped into Lenello, which she still did sometimes when she wanted to make sure he got what she was saying: “King Bottero has asked Lord Zgomot to send you back to him. He offers a large ransom.”

“Ah?” Hasso tried to keep his voice neutral. “And what does Lord Zgomot say?” He made himself ask the question in Bucovinan.

“He says no.” Drepteaza’s verb form meant Zgomot wasn’t done saying no, and would go right on saying it. The priestess went on, “Lenelli ransom captives from one another. They hardly ever ransom them from us.”

“I see.” Again, Hasso did his best to sound noncommittal. The Bucovinans had to resent not being treated as equals by the Lenelli. And they had to get suspicious when a Lenello king
did
treat them that way. What did Hasso know that Bottero didn’t want them to find out?

“Another message also came from Drammen.” Drepteaza seemed to be working to sound neutral, too. Her voice came out as empty of everything as if it emerged from a machine’s throat.

“Evin?”
Hasso said. By itself, the particle meant
Yes?
or
What is it?

“From the woman in whom the goddess dwells.” Drepteaza said that in Lenello. And, saying it, the priestess didn’t sound noncommittal any more. She couldn’t come close to hiding her scorn - or her fear.

“Evin?”
Hasso said again. How much did Drepteaza know about Velona and him? Some, certainly. Even Rautat knew some, and she would have talked to him. What did she think of what she knew?

Nothing good, from all the signs.

“She wants you back, too,” said the priestess of Lavtrig, a deity who didn’t come to take possession of her, a deity who probably didn’t do any more than all the many gods of the world from which Hasso came. A distinct curl to her lip, Drepteaza went on, “All the more reason to keep you here.”

Hasso had wondered whether she and Lord Zgomot would feel that way. In Lenello, he asked, “You aren’t afraid the goddess is angry if you say no?”

“Why should we be?” Drepteaza asked. “The only reason the blonds’ goddess ever notices us is to hurt us. She will do that anyway. But you - you may teach us things we need to know so she can’t hurt us so badly.”

She was bound to be right about the goddess. About Hasso ... Still using Lenello - he wanted to make sure she followed him - he said, “How can I show you anything if you keep me locked in this cursed cell all the time?”

He expected her to say no, or to say she couldn’t decide anything by herself. Asking her sovereign would let her stall for a couple of days, keep Hasso’s hopes up, and let him down easy when Lord Zgomot told him he had to stay locked up. But Drepteaza asked, “Will you give your parole not to try to escape?”

“You believe me if I do that?”

“Yes,” she answered, switching from her tongue to Lenello to add, “You may even swear by the goddess if you like.”

Hasso considered that. He needed no more than a heartbeat to decide it was a bad idea. “I will give it. If saying isn’t good enough for you, why should swearing be better?” he asked, also in Lenello: he wanted to be as sure as he could of saying just what he meant.

And he judged Drepteaza - and, presumably, Lord Zgomot as well - aright. The priestess looked pleased, which didn’t happen every day; most of the time, she was all business. “Well said,” she told him in Bucovinan. “Come, then, if you care to.”

“May I please wash first?” he asked, still in Lenello.

She nodded. “Yes, you should be fit to go out in public. We will take you to the baths.”

The baths were public and mixed, partly like ancient Rome and partly like Japan. You rubbed yourself in a small hot pool with a root that smelled something like licorice; it did a pretty good job of getting rid of dirt and grease. Then you rinsed off in a larger, cooler communal pool. Perhaps a dozen little pools surrounded the big one.

Communal meant what it said: men and women bathed together. Their relaxed attitude among themselves showed the difference between nudity and nakedness. Hasso, by contrast, drew startled stares and whispers. He understood why, too - a swan couldn’t have been more conspicuous at a conclave of crows.

Even the tallest natives hardly came up to the bottom of his chin. He wasn’t a shrimp any more, as he had been among the Lenelli. That felt good. The hair on his body, like that on his head, was yellow, not dark or grizzled. His skin was pink rather than olive. Even his battle marks were strange. Bullets left round, puckered scars, not the long, thin traces of knife and sword wounds. Some of his guards had stripped with him. Others wore mailshirts and helms and kept weapons. Parole or no parole, they were being careful. One of the bathing guards pointed to a bullet wound on Hasso’s leg and asked, “What did this? An arrow?” He sounded as if he didn’t believe it. And it wasn’t true. Shaking his head, Hasso answered, “No.” They were speaking Bucovinan, so he kept things as simple as he could. He imitated the noise of the submachine gun. He got back a blank look. The guard must not have been at the battle where he used up the last of his Schmeisser ammo. From the next pool over, Drepteaza spoke too fast for Hasso to follow. She’d also taken off her clothes and started bathing. Her figure was even sweeter and riper than Hasso had guessed. He looked at her only in glances out of the corner of his eye. He’d gone a long time without a woman, and didn’t think the natives would appreciate a bathhouse hard-on.

Whatever she said, it seemed to ease the guard’s mind. “So you are a warrior, then, and not a - ” he said.

“Don’t understand last word,” Hasso said.

“A wizard,” Drepteaza told him in Lenello.

“Yes, warrior,” Hasso said hastily. “Not... what is word?” The guard repeated it. Hasso added it to his vocabulary. “No, not wizard,” he repeated. “Only warrior.” He didn’t want the Grenye to think he could work magic. That would only make what was already bad worse. And he didn’t much want to think he was a wizard, either.

Did he protest too much? Was that what Drepteaza’s raised eyebrow meant? Well, better a raised eyebrow than a raised ... Hasso managed to walk from the warm pool to the cooler one without embarrassing himself worse than he was already.

He felt like a new man once he’d bathed. The new man was chilly. The natives heated the pools, yeah, but the building that housed them was drafty, and it was winter outside. And he wrinkled his nose when he redonned the outfit he’d been wearing since he was captured. “Can wash clothes, too?” he asked Drepteaza.

First she corrected his grammar and pronunciation. Then she put on her own clothes. He sighed mentally - when those dark-tipped breasts vanished under her tunic. They’d given him something to think about during lessons besides grammar and pronunciation. Then she said, “Yes. Why not? You can wear ours while we wash yours.”

Hasso didn’t think the Bucovinans would be able to find anything to fit him. But they gave him breeches and an embroidered tunic that were, if anything, on the big side. Then he remembered they had Lenello prisoners - and also Lenello renegades. Those people had to wear something, too. When he remarked to Drepteaza that he hadn’t met any of them, she said, “No, and you won’t, either, not for a while. We don’t know how far we can trust you. We don’t know how far we can trust all of them, either. Some we know we can’t trust too far.” Her face clouded. “Some Lenelli here want to rule us, not help us.”

The natives were in a bind. They needed help from the Lenelli, who knew too many things they didn’t. But the Lenelli, even the ones here, were imperfectly disinterested. How much were they out to help Bucovin, and how much themselves? How often had the Grenye - not just in Bucovin, but farther west, too - got burned?

Quite a few times, by Drepteaza’s tone.

How do I look innocent? How do I sound innocent?
Am
I innocent?
Hasso wondered. Those were all damn good questions. He wished he knew the answers.

Once the Bucovinans decided he wouldn’t sprout feathers and fly away, they let him out of his cell more often. He always had an escort, though: several unsmiling soldiers - swordsmen, pikemen, and archers and Drepteaza. The priestess went with him most of the time, anyhow. When she couldn’t for whatever reason, Rautat did.

“You ought to thank me,” Hasso told the veteran underofficer one day. “If not for me, you wouldn’t have soft duty at the palace.”

“I’d thank you more if you hadn’t scragged so many of my buddies,” Rautat answered: he sounded like a sergeant even speaking Lenello. Aiming a blunt forefinger at Hasso’s middle, he continued, “Now go back to Bucovinan. You’re supposed to be learning my language, remember?”

“Right,” Hasso said ... in Bucovinan. Rautat grinned. Hasso came to attention and clicked his heels.

“What’s that nonsense all about?” Rautat also fell back into his own tongue.

“Shows...” Hasso had no idea how to say
respect
or anything like it. “Like this,” he said, and saluted.

“My people do.”

“Pretty silly, if you ask me.” Rautat was short - all Grenye were short next to Hasso - but he was feisty. He gestured with his thumb. “C’mon.”

They actually left the palace, the first time they’d let Hasso do that since he came to Falticeni. He wore a heavy sheepskin jacket, but the cold wind still started to freeze his nose. It wasn’t Leningrad or Moscow winter, but it sure as hell wasn’t a holiday on the Riviera, either.

Bundled-up Bucovinans gaped at him the way he’d eyed tigers in the zoo when he was a kid: fascination mixed with dread. But he wasn’t behind stout iron bars, even if he did have guards along.
See? The
monster is loose!
What else were the natives going to think after everything that had happened since the Lenelli landed on their shores?

Somebody yelled something at him. He didn’t understand all of it, but he heard something about his mother and something about his dog. Englishmen called somebody they didn’t like a son of a bitch. Whatever this endearment was, it seemed based on the same principle.

Hasso pointed to a tavern. “A mug of beer to me, please?” he said.

“For
me, you mean,” Rautat said. He spoke to the troopers with them. A pike-man went over and stuck his head into the tavern.

“No,” he said when he came back. “One of those big blond buggers is already in there swilling.”

“Drepteaza would - ” Rautat spook too fast for Hasso to follow. When he said so, the underofficer slowed down: “She would murder me if I let you gab with another Lenello. There. You got that?”

“Yes, but I am no Lenello,” Hasso said - one more time.

Rautat looked up at him - up and up. “Close enough, buddy.”

Hasso didn’t find any answer for that. The Ivans wouldn’t care that a man they captured from the
Wiking
SS panzer division was born in Norway rather than Germany. They’d knock the poor bastard over the head anyhow. He reminded himself again that he ought to thank God, or maybe the goddess, the Bucovinans hadn’t done that to him.

“Am another tavern not far from?” he asked. “I have thirsty.”

“You talk as bad as a Lenello would, too,” Rautat said, laughing. But he knew where the next closest tavern stood. Hasso hadn’t expected anything else. Rautat struck him as the sort who
would
know such things. Like any old soldier, the native had the knack for making himself at home wherever he went. Ducking to get through the low door, Hasso found himself in what was plainly a soldiers’ dive. A considerable silence fell when he went in. Again, Rautat talked too fast for Hasso to follow. Whatever he said, it must have worked, because the men in there didn’t leap up and go for the
Wehrmacht
officer, and a good many of them had plainly wanted to do just that.

Then Rautat talked to the tapman: “Beer for him, and beer for me, too.” That Hasso understood - it was important, after all.