After the downfall

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.

The tapman held out his hand, palm up. Rautat crossed it with copper. Lenello coins were pretty crude, at least by the standards Hasso was used to. Bucovinan coins, being cruder imitations of crude originals… But as long as the natives didn't fuss, it wasn't his worry.

"Here." Rautat perched on a stool by an empty table. He waved Hasso to another one. A couple of the German's watchdogs also sat down. The rest hovered over him. Like the rest of the men in here, they probably would have been happier to kill him than to guard him. But they followed orders. If they intimidated him while he drank, chances were they didn't mind.

A barmaid brought the beers. She smiled at Rautat and looked at Hasso… yes, as if he were a tiger out of its cage. The rest of the guards ordered beer, too, except for one who chose mead instead. The barmaid seemed glad to get away.

"To your health," Rautat said to Hasso, raising his mug.

"To your health," Hasso echoed, returning the gesture. They both drank. The beer was better than what they'd given him in his cell, but not much. To somebody used to good German beer, what the Lenelli and the Bucovinans made mostly tasted like sour horsepiss. You could drink it if you had to, though, so he did. Drink water here, as in Russia, and you begged for dysentery.

Why didn't the damn wizards do something about that? Hasso's guess was that if they tried they'd be too busy to do anything else.

One of the soldiers already in the tavern came up to Hasso and unloaded a torrent of gibberish on him. "Sorry, not understand," he said, and then, to Rautat, "What does he say?"

"Nothing you want to hear," the underofficer answered in Lenello. "What a rotten dog you are and how he'd like to carve chunks off your liver and eat them raw."

"Tell him I'm insulted," Hasso said in the same language. "Tell him the least he could do is cook them first."

Rautat translated that. Hasso wondered whether he would get a laugh or start a fight. He outweighed the native by close to thirty kilos, so brawling didn't seem fair. But he didn't intend to let the Bucovinan pound on him without hitting back.

The soldier stared at Rautat, then stared at him. "He said that?" the man said; Hasso had no trouble at all following him. Then the fellow started to chuckle, and he said something the Wehrmacht officer didn't understand before going back to his own table.

"What was that?" Hasso asked Rautat.

In Lenello, Rautat answered, "He said you may be a big blond bastard, but you may almost be a human being, too."

"Thank you," Hasso said, deadpan, putting the polite particle at the end. Rautat broke up. Hasso took another pull at his mug of beer. The Grenye were recognizable human beings, too, even if they couldn't work magic — maybe especially because they couldn't.

When Rautat and the rest of the guards brought Hasso back to the palace, he got a surprise. While he was gone, the servants had cleaned up his cell and taken out the nasty straw pallet, replacing it with a wool-stuffed mattress on a wooden frame with leather lashings. They'd given him a stool and a basin and pitcher — and a brazier, to fight the freezing breezes that howled in through the window. Now it was a real room — almost.

He bowed to Rautat. "Thank you," he said again, this time with the polite particle in front to show he was sincere.

"Don't — it wasn't my idea." Rautat repeated himself till Hasso understood, then added, "If you want to thank anybody, thank the priestess. She's in charge of stuff like this." Again, he doubled back till the German got it.

"I do that," Hasso said.

He didn't get a chance till late in the afternoon. He spent some of the time in between asleep on the nice, new mattress. All too soon, it would be full of bugs, as the old one had been. He didn't like that, but after more than five years of war in Europe he didn't think it was the end of the world, either. He'd been lousy and fleabitten and bedbug-bedeviled before. You itched, you scratched, you killed what you could, and you got on with your life.

When Drepteaza came in — accompanied, as usual, by tough little Bucovinan guards — he bowed lower to her than he had to Rautat. "I thank you," he said, the polite particle properly in front, and waved to show why he was thanking her.

The native soldiers laughed at him. Drepteaza smiled, "You say, 'I thank you'" she told him, using the feminine form of the pronoun. Hasso swore in German, which made him feel better and didn't offend anybody here, and thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. Too goddamn much stuff to remember! Drepteaza went on, "And I say that you are welcome. You will be here a while. You may as well be comfortable."

He doubted he would ever be comfortable in this world. The twentieth century had too much that simply didn't exist here. Electricity, hot and cold running water, refrigeration, glazed windows, phonographs and photographs, radios, cars… But, again, he'd done without most of that stuff for years. You didn't have to have it, the way so many people thought you did. Life was nicer with it, sure, but you could manage without.

"And you'll earn these things," the priestess said. "We do expect to learn from you, you know." She repeated herself in Lenello so he could have no doubt about what she meant.

"I understand," he answered, which wasn't the same as promising to deliver. Whatever he gave the Bucovinans would hurt the Lenelli. The hope that he would give them things that would hurt the Lenelli was the only reason the natives hadn't murdered him instead of taking him prisoner.

Drepteaza eyed him shrewdly. "You understand, but you don't want to do it. Plenty of real Lenelli do, and you aren't one."

You're just as foreign there as you are here, so why not help us? That was what she meant, all right. She wasn't quite right, though. Hasso felt more at home among the Lenelli than he did here, and he doubted things would have been different had he landed here first. The Lenelli came closer to thinking the way he did. They were conquerors. They were winners. Bucovin was a land trying to figure out how not to lose. It wasn't the same.

He couldn't say that to Drepteaza without insulting her. So he said something simpler: "I swear — swore — an oath to King Bottero."

"I've heard about it." The swarthy little priestess looked at him. "How much would your oath matter if you weren't sleeping with that blond cow?"

"Velona's no cow!" Hasso exclaimed: the first thought that sprang into his head. You could call her all kinds of things, but cow? If you called her a cow, you'd never met her and you had no notion, no notion at all, what she was like.

Drepteaza gave him the native equivalent of a curtsy; it looked more like a dance step. "Excuse me," she said with wintry politeness. "That blond serpent, should I call her? That blond wolf-bitch?"

Those both came closer. Still, Hasso said, "I don't insult you or your folk."

This time, Drepteaza looked through him. "The Lenelli are not your folk. You said so yourself."

And he had, again and again. "But — " he began.

"But what?" The priestess sounded genuinely confused. Then her eyes widened. She said something in Bucovinan that he didn't get. She must have seen he didn't, for she went back to Lenello: "You really love her!" She couldn't have seemed more appalled had she accused him of breakfasting on Grenye babies.

He remembered that Velona had sounded just as horrified herself when she realized the same thing. "Well, what if I do?" he said roughly, doing his best to forget that.

"Moths fly into torch flames because they must. Do they love them when they do?" Drepteaza said — the exact figure Velona had used.

Hasso's ears heated. "I don't know. I'm not a moth," he said.

"No, you're not, which only makes it worse. You have a choice, and you choose to be a fool," Drepteaza told him.

The more she argued with him, the more she put his back up. "What am I supposed to do? Tell my heart no?" he asked.

"You would if you had any sense. If you had any sense — " Drepteaza broke off and threw her hands in the air. "Oh, what's the use? If you could show a fool his folly, he wouldn't be a fool anymore." She turned and spoke to the guards in Bucovinan: "Come on. It's hopeless. He's hopeless."

Hasso understood that just fine. Yes, she was a good teacher. She just didn't want to teach him anymore. The closing door and the thud of the bar on the outside falling back into place had a dreadfully final sound.

He wondered whether the Bucovinans would take away his small comforts again and remind him he was a prisoner. For that matter, he wondered whether he would find out how ingenious the local torturer was. If you told your captors things they didn't want to hear, you had to expect to pay the price.

Drepteaza really hadn't wanted to hear that he loved Velona. For that matter, neither had Velona. It would have been funny if it hadn't put his ass in a sling. Hell, it was pretty funny anyhow.

They went on feeding him, and the food stayed better than the prison slop he'd had before. Somebody — maybe Drepteaza, maybe Lord Zgomot, maybe just Rautat — was in a merciful mood, at least as far as that went. Not expecting any mercies, Hasso was grateful even for small ones.

He spent the next several days wondering whether small ones were the only ones he'd get. The natives who brought him food didn't speak to him, and didn't answer when he tried to speak to them. Neither did the ones who emptied his chamber pot.

And nobody else showed up. Drepteaza didn't come in to teach him more Bucovinan. Rautat didn't come in with guards to escort him around Falticeni. They let him stew in his own juices instead.

I'm not going to stop feeling what I feel about Velona, he thought. I'm not going to forget my oath to Bottero. Some more time went by. I hope I'm not, anyway.

He did what he'd done before: he slept as much as he could. The long, cold winter nights lent themselves to that. To sleep, perchance to dream… If he wasn't too hungry and he wasn't too cold, why not? He couldn't turn on the radio or even curl up with a good book.

At first, he didn't dream much, or didn't remember what he dreamt if he did. He'd never paid a whole lot of attention to his dreams, so that didn't worry him. And even if he had been, the clout in the head he'd taken might have scrambled his brains worse than he knew.

When he did start noticing what he dreamt, that was enough to make him sit up and wonder what the hell was going on. All the dreams had the same theme: somebody was looking for him, trying to talk to him. He had no idea who or why. The dreams didn't seem threatening. That was as much as he was willing to say about them, even to himself.

When, after a couple of weeks, Drepteaza did start giving him lessons again, he mentioned them to her. He tried first in his very basic, very bad Bucovinan. When that failed, he switched to Lenello. She heard him out with her usual thoughtful air. Once he finished, she said, "I will pray, and see if that does anything."

It didn't, not as far as Hasso could tell. She listened gravely when he told her so, then promised to speak to Rautat about it. The veteran underofficer came up to Hasso and winked at him. "I know what you need," he said.

"Do you?" Hasso said. "I don't." Rautat thought that was the funniest thing he'd ever heard.

Hasso found out why a couple of nights later, when a reasonably good-looking Bucovinan woman came into his room without any guards escorting her. "My name is Leneshul," she said in fair Lenello. "They say you have been without pleasure too long. I can give you some." As matter-of-factly as if she were going to wash dishes, she pulled her top off over her head and tugged her skirt and drawers down to the floor. "Do I suit you?" she asked, standing naked — and she was naked, not nude — before him. "You can have someone else if I don't."

Part of him wanted to tell her to leave and not to ask anyone else to come in her place. But he was almost painfully aware of how very long he'd gone without. It didn't have to mean anything — just relief and, as she'd said, some momentary pleasure. "You'll do," he told her, and got out of his own clothes.

He wasn't sure she enjoyed it, but he wasn't sure she didn't. She was certainly limber and uninhibited. He rode her the first time. After they finished, she sucked him hard again and straddled him. He squeezed her small, firm breasts as she bucked up and down. She threw back her head and groaned. If she came, it was right then. He knew he did a moment later.

"There," she said, leaning down to brush her lips across his. "Is that better?"

"Oh, yes," he said. She laughed throatily.

He slept without dreams that night. Drepteaza asked him about it at their language lesson the next morning. She seemed pleased at his answer. "Rautat was clever," she said. "More clever than I was. You may have Leneshul any night you please — or another woman, if you'd rather."

What about you? Hasso wondered. Drepteaza was cool, almost cold, as if she had no idea how pretty she was. That made the prospect of heating her all the more exciting. But she looked at him as if he were a side of beef. If he offended her, she could do anything she wanted to him. He kept his big mouth shut… about that, anyway.

"Leneshul is all right," he told her.

"Then she will come to you again," Drepteaza said briskly. And Leneshul did, two or three nights a week. On those nights, Hasso never had any of the dreams that disturbed him. He had them less often on other nights, too.

But when they did come on other nights, they seemed more urgent, as if whatever was behind them felt itself thwarted and so tried harder than ever to break through. That alarmed him; he felt pursued. He used the solace of Leneshul's compliant body as often as he could.

No matter what he did, he couldn't get it up every single night. He wished he were ten years younger; then he might have. But when he was ten years younger, the future stretched out before him with a broad and shining path. The Fuhrer was turning the tiny Reichswehr into the Wehrmacht, restoring German pride, restoring German power. What could stand in the way of a proud, resurgent nation?

Well, he'd found out what could, all right. And here he was in a strange world, older and more scarred and screwing his head off not for love or even lust but out of fear.

That helped wear him out, too. One night, he fell asleep right after supper. If Leneshul came to his room that evening, she quietly left again, and he never knew it. And so… he dreamt. And whatever had chased him for so long finally caught up with him.

"Hasso!" He heard his own name echoing, as if down a long, windy corridor. "Hasso Pemsel!"

He didn't want to answer. He didn't want to acknowledge. The harder he fled, though, the more his name pursued him. Names had power. So the wizards said, and here he was a wizard — of sorts.

At last, hounded, he stood and turned at bay. "What?" he shouted back into the void.

Time passed. A minute? An hour? It was a dream — he couldn't be sure. Time: that was all he knew. Then, dimly, a face appeared in the void, a face he knew. Aderno's face, he realized. "By the goddess, I've had a demon of a time raising you!" the wizard said.

When he named the goddess, Hasso seemed to see the cult statue floating beside him. The German also seemed to see Velona's face instead, or perhaps as well. He had trouble being sure which, but what difference did it make? It was only a dream… wasn't it? "Well, here I am," Hasso said.

Aderno nodded. "We heard you'd lived," he said. "We weren't sure, but it seems to be true. That was why Bottero tried to ransom you."

"Yes, I'm still around. They take me to Falticeni," Hasso said. Even in a dream, he stuck to the present tense as much as he could when speaking Lenello.

"You're not — telling them anything, are you?" Aderno sounded more anxious than perhaps he thought he did. Maybe covering up was harder in a dream. Or was Aderno dreaming? So much Hasso didn't know.

"No, I don't say anything," he replied. "You are well? Bottero is well? Velona is well? Mertois is well?" He asked after people he knew. He didn't waste time asking after Orosei — he knew the master-at-arms was dead.

"Mertois has a broken leg. He will limp ever after," Aderno said. "The rest of us are well enough. Bottero and Velona are wild for revenge against the savages. The Grenye can't do that to real men and expect to get away with it."

The first few times the Ivans gave the Wehrmacht a good clout, German soldiers felt the same way. Poland and the West and the Balkans had been easy. Nothing came easy in Russia, not even the victories. And, as year followed year, those got harder and harder to find. Sorry, Aderno. You don't get walkovers forever, no matter how much you wish you did.

Or maybe you did with magic. The Lenelli sure thought so. They'd stripped themselves thin of wizards before the latest battle. What they'd had was Hasso, in fact. But nobody'd suggested that he try a spell to see if the Bucovinans were up to any funny business. Nobody'd imagined they could be. So much for understanding the enemy!

When Hasso didn't answer right away, Aderno said, "We can do it! By the goddess, outlander, we can!"

When he called on the goddess again, the cult statue grew more distinct. So did Velona's face. Were they two sides of the same coin? Hasso was no damn good at such things. The doctrine of the Trinity and the notion of transubstantiation only made his head ache. It wasn't the goddess' voice that called to him, though. It was Velona's: "Are you all right, Hasso Pemsel?"

"Hello, sweetheart. Yes, I'm doing well enough, I guess," Hasso answered. "I hope you are."

"I miss you," she said. "I didn't think I would, but I do. I want to get you back. If I have to burn down all of Bucovin to do it and kill all the stinking Grenye savages in the way, I will."

Not even the Fuhrer was that blunt. Hasso didn't doubt she meant every word of it. Whatever else you said about Velona, she'd never once made the acquaintance of hypocrisy.

"Have they tried to trick you into doing things for them? Have they given you sluts to try to make you forget me?" she asked.

"I don't do anything for them. And I can never forget you. You know that." Hasso didn't answer all of the last question. He had to share Velona with the king. How could she get mad at him for somebody like Leneshul?

Maybe you couldn't keep secrets in a dream. Whether he told her or not, she knew. And she didn't like it for beans. "I am a goddess! I do what I have to do!" she cried. "You — you're only a man! How dare you take some smelly little black-haired twat? How dare you?"

Much too late, he remembered she hadn't wanted him sniffing around Grenye serving girls back in Drammen, either. What could he say? That he had no idea whether he'd ever get away from Falticeni? She should have been able to see it for herself. If she could, she didn't care — she was playing the woman scorned right up to the hilt.

"Aderno!" she cried. "Center my power while I smite this wretch!"

Hasso was a wizard of sorts. An ordinary man might well not have escaped the goddess' wrath. He could feel it building like heat lightning on a hot summer day in the southern Ukraine. How to flee? How to get away?

He screamed himself awake.