After the Downfall (47 page)

“Velona?” one of the Bucovinans asked.

“She was my woman.” Hasso would have left it there. Rautat, who knew more, shared the gossip with his countrymen. They all muttered back and forth, too low for Hasso to make out what they were saying. Finally, the driver of the powder wagon, a stocky fellow named Dumnez, said, “The big blonds’ goddess is strong.”

“Yes,” Hasso said. Nobody who’d ever come within a kilometer and a half of Velona would have dreamt of saying no.

“That woman the goddess lives in is strong, too,” Rautat said, so maybe Dumnez hadn’t been talking about Velona after all. Rautat went on, “I saw her in both battles last fall. I’m glad I didn’t get within reach of her sword.”

One of the other Bucovinans pointed at Hasso. “He must be pretty strong, too, then, if she was his woman.”

“He is pretty strong - not the best swordsman, but pretty strong,” Rautat said. “Pretty tricky, too. Lord Zgomot thinks well of him.”

He does?
Hasso almost blurted it out in surprise. If the Lord of Bucovin did think well of him, he kept it to himself mighty well. But if Zgomot didn’t think well of Hasso, all he had to do was say the word and the German was a dead man.

The native who’d pointed said, “The priestess likes him pretty well, too, even if he is a blond.”

Hasso stiffened. Rautat hissed like a snake. The other Bucovinan winced, though plainly he wasn’t sure how he’d stuck his foot in it. Hasso was, worse luck. Maybe Drepteaza did like him, but she didn’t like him enough, or didn’t like him the right way. Rautat obviously knew as much. If the other fellow didn’t, he had to be out of the loop.

Sure enough, Rautat said, “Don’t pay any attention of Peretsh. He doesn’t know what the demon he’s talking about.”

“I can see that for myself,” Hasso said.

They traveled west in silence for some little while.

When they started running into parties of Bucovinan soldiers, Hasso knew they had to be getting close to the marchlands Bottero’s men were trying to occupy. Lord Zgomot wasn’t going to give up his territory without a fight. In a way, seeing the soldiers made Hasso feel better - he wasn’t out here by himself against everything the Lenelli could throw at Bucovin.

In another way...

Well, my life gets more complicated,
he thought. He hadn’t expected things to be simple. Every so often, he caught Rautat watching him when there was no earthly need for it. The underofficer always looked away in a hurry when he noticed Hasso’s eye on him, but Hasso had a pretty good idea of what was going on in his head. The native had to be wondering what the big blond would do when it came time to fight the folk who looked so much like him.

Who could blame Rautat for wondering that? Who could blame him, especially when Hasso was wondering the same thing himself?

Hasso stared into the setting sun, shielding his eyes from the glare with the palm of his hand. The village in the distance was only blackened ruins. He didn’t see any Lenelli moving around there, but they wouldn’t be far off. He wished he’d had a pair of field glasses around his neck when he splashed down into the swamp. He knew something about gunpowder, but he’d never worried his head about optics. The Lenelli up ahead - whether he could see them or not, they were there - couldn’t see him. He and Rautat crouched side by side in thick bushes. The rest of the Bucovinan escort and the powder wagon waited behind the crest of a rise half a kilometer farther east.

“Somewhere around here, you’ll start planting them, right?” Rautat said.

“
Ja
,” Hasso answered absently. The Bucovinan accepted it; that was one word of German he’d learned. Hasso went on, “Run a fuse from here over to the road, wait, and watch for Bottero’s men to ride forward ...”

Rautat laughed in eager anticipation. “Then they’ll find out they aren’t so cursed smart!”

“
Ja
,” Hasso said again, and then, “Let’s go back. Plenty to do before we start to dig and to hide.”

“Like eat, for instance.” Rautat rubbed his belly. As if on cue, it growled like an angry dog. The Bucovinan laughed. So did Hasso.

They scooted back through the bushes. Hasso had learned his forest-fighting techniques in Russia, where any mistake was worth your life. Rautat was as good at moving silently as he was, maybe better. Of course, Rautat had been hunting in the woods since he got big enough to carry a bow. He’d had more practice than Hasso had.

A tiny, almost smokeless fire crackled ten meters or so away from the wagon with the jars of gunpowder. The Bucovinans understood that they couldn’t get careless with fire around it. Hasso hadn’t let anybody who didn’t understand that come along with him. Dumnez was toasting a hare above the flames. Three more lay by the fire, already gutted and skinned and ready to cook. Yes, the Bucovinans could hunt, all right.

Hasso got his share of the tender meat. You couldn’t keep going forever on hare and rabbit - not enough fat in them. But they made a good supper every so often.

As the sun set and darkness deepened, Hasso looked westward again. He didn’t think the Lenelli would be able to spot the fire’s glare over the rise ahead. Even if they did, odds were they wouldn’t make much of it. They had to know the Bucovinans were keeping an eye on them. That wouldn’t impress them, not for beans. Nothing the Bucovinans did impressed them. Bucovinans were only Grenye, after all. Softly, Hasso began to chant. Some of the charm was in German, some in Lenello. He faced away from Rautat and the rest. They wouldn’t hear his spell, or make anything of it if they did. He snorted - in rhythm with the spell. He wasn’t sure there would be anything to make of it if they did. For one thing, he was an altogether untrained wizard. For another, he was still in Bucovin, even if he’d come back close to the border with Bottero’s kingdom. If it didn’t work ... then it didn’t, that was all. He would take a different tack in that case.

But it worked, all right. When he turned around, Rautat and Dumnez and Peretsh and the rest lay sprawled close to the little fire, all of them snoring softly.
I really
can
do this!
he thought, excitement surging in him. Along with the excitement went a little bit of shame. Bucovinans
were
only Grenye, after all - they couldn’t work magic, and had no defense against it.

His knees clicked when he got to his feet. He wondered if he ought to cut the natives’ throats before he went west. He couldn’t make himself do it. They could have killed him, but they hadn’t. He also wondered whether to take the powder wagon with him. They’d already unhitched the horses, though. He doubted he could harness them by dim firelight. He also feared that the noise would wake the Bucovinans, spell or no spell.

“By myself,” he murmured in German. And wasn’t that the sad and sorry truth? Wherever he went in this world, he was irrevocably by himself. Joining with Velona the way he had disguised the truth for a while, but it was there. Still and all, he came closer and closer to fitting in among the Lenelli than with the Bucovinans. And so ...
“Auf wiedersehen”
He started west - by himself He went up the road till he got close to the crest of that rise - no point making things hard on himself. Then he ducked into the undergrowth, for he didn’t want any Lenello sentries to spot him coming up to the top of the high ground. Back in Russia, a sniper would make you pay if you did something stupid like that. The Lenelli didn’t have scope-sighted rifles or machine guns, but he didn’t want them thinking somebody was sneaking up on them in the dark. They could lay a trap for him before they realized he wasn’t a Bucovinan.

He leaned against the trunk of a scrubby oak.
Just for a second,
he told himself.
Or maybe a little
longer
-
why not?
He didn’t want to sneak through the bushes toward King Bottero’s men in pitch darkness. Maybe an Indian could do that in a movie and not make a godawful racket. Or maybe a Bucovinan hunter - or a Lenello poacher - could do it for real. Hasso knew damn well he couldn’t. And he didn’t just want to tramp up the road in the dark, either. That was asking to get killed. And so ... He yawned. He slumped down against that tree trunk. As he yawned again, he wondered if he was getting caught in the backwash of his own sorcery. He also wondered if he could do anything about it. As his eyes slid shut, he was - sleepily - doubting it.

The next thing he knew, it wasn’t altogether dark. And the light filtering through the bushes was coming from the east, from behind him. “Christ!” he said. He was awake now, awake and sweating bullets. If Rautat and the rest had come after him, they could have gutted him like a trout. Were they still sleeping? Hasso nodded to himself. They just about had to be. Otherwise, they damn well
would
have come after him, and he would have woke up with his innards ventilated one way or another. So his magic still had to be holding back there.

“Oh, yeah, I’m one hell of a wizard, I am,” he muttered as he got to his feet. “I’m so good, I put a goddamn spell on me.”

It might work out for the best,
he thought, and tried to make himself believe it. Now he could approach the Lenelli in broad daylight. They would see he was no dark little Grenye. That would let him get close enough to explain what he was and who he was and how he’d escaped the barbarians. From then on, everything ought to go smooth as motor oil on a camshaft.

His stomach rumbled, almost as loud as Rautat’s had the day before. He had a length of garlicky pork sausage in a belt pouch. The Lenelli would know he was coming out of Bucovin just by the smell. They ate onions, but to them garlic was fit only for Grenye. Hasso wasn’t wild about it himself, but eating it made him feel like an Italian, not a savage.

He worked his way forward through the woods for a while, then stepped out into the road. He hadn’t gone more than about a hundred meters before a Lenello stepped out from behind some thick bushes, sword in hand. Hasso’s right hand fell automatically to the hilt of his own blade. He stopped where he was, perhaps twenty meters from the blond, who overtopped him by five or six centimeters.

“Who the demon are you? Where’d you sprout from?” the Lenello demanded.

“My name’s Hasso Pemsel. I just escape - escaped - from the Bucovinans.”

Hasso hadn’t spoken much Lenello lately. It felt awkward on his tongue. Well, so did Bucovinan.

“Funny handle you’ve got. You talk weird, too,” the big blond said. “Where are you from, anyway?”

“Another world,” Hasso answered. “I am the fellow who comes - uh, came - here by magic. I am the goddess’ lover for a while.”
And I want to be again, too. Whether Velona wants me to ... Well, I’ll
just have to see, that’s all.

The Lenello picket’s eyes almost bugged out of his head. “It’s the traitor! It’s the goddess-cursed renegade!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. Then he swung up his sword and charged Hasso. For a second, the German just stood there like an idiot. A millimeter from too late, he drew his own sword. He managed to turn a stroke that would have cut him in half from crown to crotch. Then he dropped the sword. The Lenello was still caught in his aborted follow-through. Hasso jumped in close. He grabbed the big blond’s wrist and twisted. The Lenello dropped the blade.

“You can’t do that!” he gasped.

“Says who?” Hasso twisted once more, cruelly this time. The Lenello gasped again, on a different note, above the sound of breaking bone. As he went white, Hasso brought a knee up into his crotch. He folded up on himself like a straight razor. Hasso kicked him in the face while he was falling. If you got into a fight like this, you didn’t dick around.

Shouts came from the west. So did the thumps of men running in heavy boots. Hasso didn’t wait to find out whether they had crossbows. Wherever he was going, it wasn’t back to Bottero’s kingdom. He grabbed his sword, dashed for the bushes, and did his unmagical best to vanish.
XXI

They did have crossbows, the bastards. Quarrels rustled through the leaves and branches and thudded into - sometimes right through - trunks. The Lenelli wanted to put them right through Hasso. He couldn’t go as quietly as he wanted because they were pushing hard after him. The more noise he made, the more foliage he disturbed, the better the target he handed the archers.

He had to give the Lenelli something to think about, or they’d catch him and kill him. He picked up a rock and flung it off to one side. Luck was with him - it crashed off a trunk or a thick branch.

“There he goes!” Bottero’s men yelled to one another. “After him! Don’t let him get away!”

They crashed toward whatever the rock had hit. Hasso moved that way, too. Now he was trying to be quiet. The Lenello behind whom he suddenly appeared had no idea he was there till a callused hand covered his mouth and jerked his head back. The blond did no more than gurgle as a knife sliced across his throat.

Hasso slipped off. The other Lenelli took longer than they should have to realize they were following a trail that led nowhere. “Sondrio!” one of them called as they regathered. “Where’d you go, Sondrio?”

If Sondrio was who Hasso thought he was, he wouldn’t answer till Judgment Day. The Lenelli all started calling for him. “He was over this way, wasn’t he?” somebody said.

By then, Hasso wasn’t over that way anymore. Now he’d gained a little separation from his pursuers, and he could use all the skill at skulking he had. If they were going to catch him, they would have to earn it. They weren’t such hot stuff in the woods themselves. He was glad he wasn’t up against the trackers and poachers Orosei had given him by the Aryesh.

At last, one of these guys stumbled over Sondrio, perhaps literally. “Dead!” the Lenello yelled, horror in his voice. “He’s dead! Bled like a goddess-cursed hog!”

All the soldiers started shouting and carrying on then, which was just what Hasso had hoped for. “He must have Grenye in the woods with him,” one of them said. “Sondrio ran across them, and look what they did to him!” They didn’t imagine that Hasso might have doubled back. That must have seemed too crazy even to contemplate. Maybe it was, too. Hasso wondered how dumb he’d been. Dumb or not, he got what he wanted - they quit chasing him. If they thought the undergrowth was full of lurking little swarthy men with knives ... well, they could do that. They could do whatever they damn well wanted, as long as they didn’t mess with him.