After the downfall

XXIII

Hasso had had his share of rocky mornings since splashing down into the marsh by the causeway. This one was a rock like Gibraltar. He staggered down to the buttery for a little porridge and some beer. With luck, no one would talk to him, and he would have the chance to forget how badly he'd hurt himself.

As soon as he saw Scanno, he feared luck wouldn't be with him. As soon as Scanno saw him, he knew all his fears would be realized. "You look like something the cat threw up," the renegade remarked.

His loud, cheerful voice reverberated between Hasso's ears. Anything loud and cheerful inclined Hasso toward suicide, or possibly homicide. "I've been better," he said — quietly.

Scanno couldn't take a hint. "Tied one on, yesterday, didn't you?" he boomed. He wasn't quite so loud as King Bottero would have been, but not from lack of effort.

"How did you guess?" The less Hasso said, the less he gave Scanno to grab on to, the better the chance the other man would shut up and go away. He could dream, couldn't he?

But Scanno wasn't going anywhere. "You're a hero," he said. "What do you need to go out and get plowed for? I mean plowed bad, not plowed happy — you hurt yourself, pal."

"No kidding," Hasso said, and then, "You ought to know. You get drunk all the time yourself."

"Yeah, sure." Scanno didn't waste time telling him he was talking through his hat. "But I like getting drunk and sloppy. You mostly don't. So what did you go and do it for yesterday?"

"None of your business," Hasso said sweetly.

"Gotta be a broad," Scanno said, which was much too perceptive for that early in the morning — and for how bad Hasso felt. "So which broad is it, and how come she won't give you a tumble?"

"Shut up and piss off," Hasso said, more sweetly still. Scanno laughed. Hasso started to get to his feet. He would have relished a fight just then, which went a long way toward saying how hung over he was.

"Take it easy. If I pull out my sword, you're dead," Scanno said.

"If you pull out your sword, I shove it up your ass," Hasso told him.

Scanno might have been a renegade, but he was a Lenello, with a Lenello's prickly pride. Telling him not to do something only made him want to do it more. "You asked for it," he said, and started to draw.

Hasso's hand clamped down on his wrist. Scanno swore and tried to break free. He was a better swordsman than Hasso ever would be. As a wrestler, though, he might as well have been a child. Hasso threw him to the rammed-earth floor of the buttery.

"I'll kill you for that!" Scanno shouted.

As his hand flashed to the hilt of his sword again, Hasso kicked him in the wrist. He didn't know whether he broke it or not. He didn't much care, either, though he wouldn't have been surprised. Scanno howled and clutched at himself. If he was going to do any swordfighting, he would have to do it lefthanded.

"Don't mess with me." Hasso stood over him, breathing hard. "Don't even think about messing with me. You mess with me, I make you sorry you were ever born. Then I set a spell on you and make you wish you were dead."

Scanno plainly weighed knocking his feet out from under him. Hasso would have stomped his hand if he tried. The German's eagerness to do just that must have shown on his face, because Scanno tried no such thing. He kept his defiance to words: "That puke of an Aderno couldn't magic me, and you can't, either."

"Ha!" Hasso laughed harshly. "I tear off your stupid dragon-bone amulet, and then I cast my spell."

His mouth was running a good ten meters ahead of his brain. He had no idea what he would say till it popped out. But when he heard himself, his jaw dropped. He forgot all about Scanno. The renegade could have upended him and pounded him to powder. Hasso might not even have noticed.

"Fuck me," he said in German. "Oh, son of a bitch. Fuck me."

"What are those funny noises?" Scanno asked, still cradling his injured wrist with his other arm.

"Never mind." Hasso stepped away from him. If Scanno wanted to get up, the Wehrmacht officer had stopped caring. He grabbed his mug of beer off the table, emptied it at a gulp, and hurried out of the buttery.

Scanno stared after him. "I think he's gone out of his tree," he said. None of the staring Bucovinans in there argued with him.

Hasso knew the way to Lavtrig's chapel. It boasted more fancy decoration than the one in Castle Drammen dedicated to the goddess. That only made him surer he'd got it right before: the less a deity actually did, the more ornament he or she needed to disguise that laziness.

Drepteaza was lighting a silver lamp in front of a gilded statue of the chief Bucovinan god when Hasso walked in. (He thought the statue was gilded, anyhow; it might have been solid gold.) What burned in the lamp smelled of perfume and, under that, hot lard. The priestess glanced up in surprise. "Good morning, Hasso. What is it?" After a moment, she added, "By the look on your face, it must be something important."

"You might say so. Yes, you just might." Hasso nodded emphatically. "We need to talk — right now."

Her mouth tightened. "Are you sure? Or will it only cause more trouble and pain than it eases?"

"It will cause trouble and pain, all right — for the Lenelli," Hasso answered.

"Then I will listen," Drepteaza said at once. "Can we talk here, or do you need to go someplace where no one else can listen?"

He looked around. A couple of other Bucovinan priests, of rank lower than hers, were puttering around in there. "It doesn't matter. They can hear. I think I know why magic doesn't work so well around Falticeni. I think I can make it so Lenello magic doesn't bite on Grenye most of the time. Not always, I suspect, but most of the time."

Her eyes widened. The way she looked at him… It might almost have been the way a lover eyed her beloved. Almost, but not quite. Hasso made himself not think about that. It didn't matter, not for this. "Well, you've got me interested," Drepteaza said. "Tell me more."

"I do that," Hasso said. "In this palace, you have the tooth of a dragon."

"Yes. It is a treasure. And so?"

"Under the walls here, you have more bones of this dragon, right?"

"Of course we do. We are proud that we managed to kill it. We are lucky that we killed it, too. If we hadn't, it could have wrecked Falticeni worse than the Lenelli might."

"Ja." All Hasso had seen of the late, unlamented dragon was that one fang, but it was plenty to convince him. "You know that magic does not bite on Scanno the renegade?"

"I have heard it, yes," Drepteaza said. "I don't know for myself that it's true, but I have no reason to doubt it."

"It's true. I see — I saw — it for myself. It drove Aderno crazy, trying to figure out why his spell wouldn't work." Hasso remembered how the wizard had experimented on a Grenye woman to find out, too. He didn't say anything about that to Drepteaza. Instead, he went on, "Scanno wears a little piece of dragon bone on a thong around his neck for an amulet."

He wondered if she would make the connection. It seemed obvious to him. But lots of things that seemed obvious to him didn't to the locals, Lenelli and Grenye alike. Sometimes, in this world, they weren't. Sometimes he just had a different way of looking at them. They didn't think as logically as he did. Barring a few clerics, the folk in medieval Germany wouldn't have, either.

By the standards of this world, Drepteaza was an educated woman. By the standards of any world, she was a bright woman. All the same, the frown that crossed her face said she didn't get it right away. And then, all at once, she did.

It was like watching the sun come out from behind clouds. "You think dragon bones block spells," she whispered.

"That's right," Hasso said. "That's just what I think. If all of Lord Zgomot's soldiers have amulets, if their horses have them, if my pots of gunpowder have them, too… If that happens, the Lenelli have to fight fair."

"Fight fair." Drepteaza went on whispering while she echoed him. "That's all we ever dreamt of, since they first came across the ocean and landed on our shores. It would be so wonderful."

"Would be?" Now Hasso echoed her.

As she nodded, the sunshine that blazed from her face faded once more. "We are missing only one thing: dragon bones enough to make the amulets we need. There aren't many dragons, and the ones there are live far to the north. They're hard to find, and even harder to kill. Men don't just hunt dragons. Dragons hunt men, too, and they win more often than we do."

"Somewhere in Bottero's realm lies skeleton of a dead dragon," Hasso said. "Scanno knows where."

Drepteaza stared at him. He watched the sun come out on her face again. "If you are right," she said, "you know what this will do to the Lenelli?"

"I hope I do," Hasso answered. "I want dragon-bone amulet, too." So far, his own little spell was holding its own against Aderno and Velona. Here in Falticeni — which also had dragon-bone amulets of a sort — he could believe it would go on holding. If he headed west again? He wasn't sure what would happen then. He wasn't anxious to find out, either.

"Does Scanno know why the dragon bone is so important?" Drepteaza asked.

"He… may." Hasso explained how he'd brawled with the renegade, and the thoughts the brawl called to mind.

"Riskier to send him back into Bottero's kingdom, then," she said. "If he can tell us where the skeleton lies, we can have people who don't know why they're doing it collect the bones and bring them back to Bucovin."

"You should be a marshal," Hasso said. If the people getting the bones didn't know what they were good for, the Lenelli could torture them or cast spells at them till everything turned blue without finding out. The Wehrmacht officer did hold up a warning hand. "Not sure skeleton is still there. Scanno says he's had his amulet for years now."

"Well, if it's gone, we'll think of something else, that's all," Drepteaza said with a shrug. "This is the best chance we have, and we need to grab it." She dropped Hasso a curtsy. "Bucovin is in you debt. I'm sure Lord Zgomot will reward you as you deserve."

"What about you?" Hasso asked.

"It is not my place," Drepteaza said primly. "He is the Lord of Bucovin."

"Too bad. He is not too young and not too pretty," Hasso said.

He wondered if he would make her angry, but she smiled. "And I am too young and too pretty?" she asked.

"You are not too young. You are just right. And there is no such thing as too pretty," Hasso answered.

"You don't think so? You might be surprised," Drepteaza said. Sure as hell, Velona came up in Hasso's mind. Was it the goddess dwelling within her that sometimes made her beauty like a blow in the face? Or was it just that she was what she was?

What she was… was gone. Hasso didn't know how many times she had to try to kill him to get the message across. However many times it was, she'd finally crossed the threshold. He truly believed she didn't want him back. He didn't like it, but he believed it.

Drepteaza wasn't in that class — but who was? She was more than pretty enough. Hasso bowed, returning the curtsy. "I would like you to surprise me," he said.

"I bet you would." She wagged a finger at him. "You cooked up this whole scheme against the Lenelli for no better reason than to get me into bed with you."

"How could there be a better reason?" Hasso asked, as innocently as if he didn't mean every word of it.

"Go pour a bucket of cold water on yourself," Drepteaza said. "Then go talk to Lord Zgomot. He is the one who has to set things moving."

"And after that?"

"After that, go pour another bucket of cold water on yourself," Drepteaza answered. But she was still smiling. Hasso clung to that, as a drowning man would cling to… to an anvil, if he's dumb enough, and odds are you qualify, the German thought. He went off to see Lord Zgomot.

Zgomot was none too young and none too pretty. But he was plenty smart. "If this works," he told Hasso, "it will be the most important weapon we've ever found against the Lenelli."

"Not perfect," Hasso said. "If your army is in a pass and they magic up a landslide, amulets don't stop falling rocks. I am sure of it."

"So am I." The Lord of Bucovin's voice was dry. "We have tried all sorts of things to block their magic. I am not surprised no one thought of dragon bones till now, though. Dragons are just too hard to come by." He spoke to one of his attendants: "Fetch the blond named Scanno here."

"Yes, Lord." The man bobbed his head and hurried away.

When Scanno came in, he had his right arm in a makeshift sling. He took one look at Hasso and stopped dead. "Is this miserable bastard complaining about me, Lord? I ought to complain about him, the — " What followed was a colorful mix of Bucovinan and Lenello.

"He is not complaining of you. He says you know of a dragon's skeleton in Bottero's kingdom. Is that so?"

"I ought to break him in half. I will, too, first chance I get." Scanno didn't shift gears easily.

"That will be later. Answer my question now," Zgomot said. "Do you know where there is a dragon's skeleton in King Bottero's lands?"

Scanno shook his good fist at Hasso. "You were just lucky, you — " The Lord of Bucovin coughed sharply. That seemed to recall Scanno to himself. "Uh, yeah. I know where there is one — or where there was one, anyway, once upon a time. What about it? Why does it matter?"

"You will set down directions for reaching this place. You will do so as exactly as you know how to do. If we succeed in bringing back dragon bones, you will be rewarded as handsomely as we know how. If you lead us astray… That would be unfortunate. For you."

"Hey, I wouldn't do that, Lord. You know me. I hate Bottero more'n you do, that blowhard pile of pig shit." Scanno's voice took on a certain whine Hasso had heard before — not here, but in Europe during the war. It was the whine of collaborators who knew they had to keep reminding their bosses that they were useful and that they really had switched sides. It was a whine Hasso hoped he would never hear in his own voice.

"You can do what I ask of you, then?" Zgomot pressed.

"Sure. Only I don't know if the bones'll still be there, y'know? I haven't had anything to do with 'em for years and years, so you can't scrag me — well, you shouldn't scrag me — if they aren't, like. It's at the butt end of nowhere, too."

"If my men believe you have led them to the right spot, no harm will come to you — by Lavtrig I swear it," Zgomot said. "There should be some evidence of that, whether the bones remain or not. Is that fair?"

"I guess." But Scanno's whine got stronger. "What's all this about, anyhow? How come you need dragon bones all of a sudden?"

Lord Zgomot looked at Hasso. Hasso looked back at the Lord of Bucovin. He didn't think Zgomot would say anything. But the native did: "What you don't know, Scanno, no one can drag out of you if misfortune comes."

"You've got some kind of fancy reason for not telling me," Scanno said, which was nothing but the truth. His red-tracked eyes swung to Hasso. "And fry my balls if it doesn't have to do with magic." He made as if to touch the amulet he wore, but dropped his hand before it got where it was going. "So you think the dragon bone really does have something to do with blocking spells, eh?"

Hasso and Zgomot looked at each other again. Scanno might have been — was — a renegade with a hollow leg, but that didn't make him a jerk. With a weary sigh, Zgomot said, "Well, you have made sure you will not leave Falticeni until the bone hunters return with their quarry. We cannot have the Lenelli pulling this out of you."

"I wasn't going anywhere, Lord." There was that whine again, this time thick enough to slice. Hasso eyed Scanno with imperfect trust. If Scanno brought word about dragon bones to King Bottero and his wizards, chances were the news would buy his way back into their good graces. And Hasso knew all about the impulse to switch sides. Fortunately, Zgomot didn't know how well he knew it. Scanno went on, "I'll let your people know where they can find the bones. My head will answer if they don't bring back a cartload of 'em, or at least find out where they were."

"That is what I want. Go talk to the scribes. Tell them where the place is. Draw them a map. Do that now, while the thought is fresh in your mind," Zgomot said.

"Whatever you want, Lord." Scanno sketched a salute and hurried off.

As soon as he was out of earshot, Hasso said, "Keep an eye on him, Lord. Keep an eye on his wife, too. Watch them the same way you watch me."

"I intend to keep an eye on him, and an eye on Nechemat as well," Zgomot answered placidly. "And you have an interesting way of putting that."

Shrugging, Hasso said, "I know you keep an eye on me. You need to. I hope I know the difference between what I like and what is. And now you really need to keep an eye on Scanno, too. He knows too much."

"Yes. And he likes to talk, too. You do not have that vice, anyhow," Zgomot said.

"In my world, I know how important keeping secrets is," Hasso said. "Now some secrets to keep here, too."

The Lord of Bucovin nodded. "Yes. I would not have thought that, but yes. And you realize you will not be leaving Falticeni, either, or not without guards, not until the bonehunters have returned."

As steadily as he could, Hasso nodded back. "No one is ever going to trust me again. That is part of what is, too. Not what I like, but what is."

"We will see what we can do about what you like." Zgomot sent Hasso away without explaining himself — he had the ruler's privilege of the last word.

Hasso didn't think the Bucovinans had beauty contests. If they did, the girl who came to his room that night would have finished no worse than third runner-up. Her name, she told him, was Tsiam. Seriously, she added, "Lord Zgomot says I am to do anything you want."

"Anything?" Hasso said.

"Anything." Tsiam nodded, but she couldn't keep a touch of fear from her voice. Who could guess what big blond foreigners might like?

"What would you do if it were up to you?" Hasso asked.

"Why, whatever Lord Zgomot told me to do, of course," Tsiam answered.

"Let me say it a different way. Where would you be if Lord Zgomot didn't tell you to be here?"

"With Otset. But he's starting to get tired of me. That's why Zgomot sent me to you."

Otset was the Bucovinan who'd warned King Bottero to turn back not long before the natives laid their trap and captured Hasso. Up till now, Hasso had thought he was pretty smart. But if he was, why would he get tired of a girl as pretty as Tsiam? One more try: "Do you want to be here? If you don't, you don't have to be. You can go."

"You don't want me?" Tsiam seemed — affronted?

"Not unless you want me."

She frowned. "How do we really know till we try?"

And what am I supposed to say to that? Hasso wondered. He found only one thing, and he said it: "Come on, then, and we try."

Try they did. When it was over, neither one of them would have called it a success. Tsiam said, "You were thinking about someone else, weren't you?"

"Afraid so," Hasso answered. "I'm sorry. Don't mean for it to show so much."

She shrugged. "Nothing much to do about it. Do you want me to bother coming back?"

"No. It's all right. Tell Lord Zgomot I am not angry at you — that is the truth. I thank you for your kindness. Tell Lord Zgomot I thank him for his. But this is not what I am after."

"All right. I hope you find it, whatever it is." Tsiam quickly dressed and slipped out of the room. Hasso made a fist and slammed it down onto the mattress. That didn't do him any good, either.

He was eating a glum breakfast the next morning when Drepteaza set her bowl of mush down by his. "By Lavtrig, why doesn't Tsiam suit you?" she asked. "She's much prettier than I ever will be. And after spending a couple of years learning to please Otset, she's bound to be better in bed, too."

"Then why doesn't he want her anymore?" Hasso asked.

"He's had time to get bored with her. You gave her one night."

Hasso shrugged. "She isn't what I want." He paused to spoon up some more of the mush, and to wash it down with bad Bucovinan beer. None of that changed his mind, so he went on, "You are. You know that."

"Yes. I do know that. It only makes things harder for both of us." Drepteaza looked down at the rough planks of the tabletop.

"I'm sorry. Not sorry, but — you know." Again, Hasso hated stumbling through a language he didn't speak well. "Curse it, do you fall in love just where you are supposed to?"

"I haven't fallen in love at all, so I can't really answer that," Drepteaza answered. "But you, Hasso Pemsel — it seems to me that you look for the worst places to fall in love, and then go and do that."

If she'd mocked him, he would have gone up like jellied gasoline. But she didn't. She simply sounded as if she was telling him how things looked to her. And maybe she wasn't so far wrong. He doubted he would have had a happy ending with Velona even if the Bucovinans didn't capture him. Something else would have gone wrong, or she would have found somebody new. And then… No, that wouldn't have been pretty. It might have been lethal. Velona herself had warned him.

He didn't want to think about Velona. It still hurt. So did thinking about Drepteaza, but not the same way. Stubbornly, he said, "You are not a bad place to fall in love. You are the best place I know."

"Here," she said: one quiet word that hit him the way a Panzerfaust blew the turret off a Soviet T-34. His face must have shown as much, for she softened it a little: "Maybe I would not be such a bad place for you if I felt for you what you feel for me. But I don't. I almost wish I did. It would make things easier for Bucovin."

"This is not about Bucovin. I do plenty for Bucovin."

"I know you've done plenty for Bucovin — more than I could," Drepteaza said quickly. "But you're right. This has nothing to do with that. This is just about us.

"No us to be about," Hasso said, which held more truth than grammar.

Drepteaza understood it anyway, and nodded to show she did. "That is what this is about — why there is no us," she said.

"Us takes two," Hasso said. "Without two, forget it. If you don't like me — "

"It's not even that," she broke in. "By now, I know you as well as anyone in Falticeni is likely to." She was bound to be right, especially with the qualification. A couple of people back in Drammen, or wherever they were these days… But that was another story, and looked as if it always would be. The priestess went on, "You are brave. You are not stupid — anything but stupid. You are not a bad man. If only — "

"If only I don't look the way I do," he broke in.

She nodded. "Yes, that might do it," she said.

"Maybe I should wear a mask. Maybe I should walk on my knees." Hasso was joking, and yet he wasn't.

Drepteaza understood that, too. "You are trying to be as difficult as you can," she said, her voice full of mock severity — or maybe it wasn't mock at all.

Hasso bowed. "At your service," he said. "Or I would be, only.

"Yes. Only," Drepteaza said. "I am sorry. If I could do anything about it, I would, and that is the truth."

He thought about telling her he was such a wonderful lover he would make her forget all about the way he looked. If he were speaking German, he might have tried it. In Bucovinan, it was bound to come out wrong. He didn't even want to imagine it in Lenello. Lenello was what he was doing his best to stay away from.

Much better not to try a line like that than to botch it. So he said, "No mask and knees, eh? Maybe I make a magic to look like one of your folk instead." He remembered, too late, that Velona had done something like that. He waited for Drepteaza to throw it in his face.

She didn't — not directly, anyhow. She said, "A spell like that might not work in Falticeni. And even if you did use magic, that would remind me of what you… what you look like. I know it is not what you are. But what you look like matters, too. What a woman looks like matters to you, doesn't it?"

"Yes." He wished he could have said no, but he knew damn well he wasn't that good a liar. He could add, "A woman doesn't have to be big and blond to be pretty for me. This is the truth." He held up his right hand with first two fingers upraised, as if taking an oath back in Germany.

"I believe you," Drepteaza said; he couldn't tell if she understood the gesture. "But most men are less fussy than most women when it comes to such things. Often enough, even a Grenye will do."

"You talk about the Lenelli. I am no Lenello, no matter what I look like."

"You look like one, no matter what you are." The old impasse. You're ugly. Go away.

"I can't help what I am," he muttered.

"And I can't help what I feel," Drepteaza said. "I almost wish — "

"What?"

"Nothing. Let it go."

"When you start to say something like that, you should finish."

She sighed. "I suppose you're right. I almost wish I could help what I feel. It would keep you from mooning around the way you do. At least you don't paw me all the time, the way a real Lenello would. If you did, I would have to learn to throw you over my shoulder. And who could I learn that from but you? You see what a problem it would be."

He couldn't help smiling. She had a barbed wit when she felt like turning it loose. "If you want to learn to throw people, even people my size, I can teach you."

He thought she would say no, not wanting to give him any excuse to get his hands on her. But she nodded. "That might be useful. Lenelli aren't the only troublemakers around here. We have thieves and robbers of our own."

"Sometimes, if someone comes with a sword or knife, better to give what he wants," Hasso said. "Don't be stupid. You can get killed for no good reason if you are stupid."

"I understand," Drepteaza answered. "Is there ever a good reason to get killed?"

"You ask a soldier, remember. Sometimes it's worse for everyone else — and for you, too — if you run away instead." How many men, friends and enemies alike, had Hasso seen making that same unhappy choice? A lot of soldiers — most of them — died from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But some chose their time and place, and died trying to keep the bastards on the other side from doing something nasty. And sometimes it made a difference, and sometimes it didn't. You couldn't know ahead of time. You did what you did, that was all.

"Am I big enough to throw you around if I have to?" Drepteaza asked, derailing his train of thought.

"To throw someone my size, anyway. I throw Lenelli much bigger than me. Maybe throwing me is harder, because I know what you do before you do it," Hasso answered.

"I see." She nodded. "How does someone small throw someone larger, though?"

"Size is not the trick. The trick is knowing what to do." Hasso muttered to himself. He wanted to say leverage, but he had no idea how, either in Bucovinan or in Lenello.

"I hope you're right. Let me go change into breeches, so I can get thrown around without embarrassing myself."

Hasso laughed in surprise. "What about the baths?"

"The baths are the baths. This is different," Drepteaza said.

"Why?"

"I don't know. I never thought about it, but it is. Doesn't your country have customs that wouldn't make any sense to an outsider? The gods know the Lenelli do."

"Maybe we do. I'm sure we do." Hasso sketched a salute. "All right. Go change, then. I meet you in the fencing practice room."

"See you there." Drepteaza got up and left the table.

As Hasso walked down the corridor, he almost ran into Dumnez. His driver said, "Hello. I'm going to be one of the people getting dragon bones. We set out tomorrow."

"No!" The Wehrmacht officer clapped a hand to his forehead. "You can't! You mustn't! Somebody screws up to let you."

"Why shouldn't I? I want to give the Lenelli one in the teeth, same as everybody else does," Dumnez said. "This has to do that some kind of way. It's too important not to."

"But you know about gunpowder. You shouldn't go where they might catch you." Security! Hasso was sure Lord Zgomot would see it when it got pointed out to him. He'd worried about Scanno, who could tell the Lenelli just why Bucovin wanted their dragon bones. The people who were going didn't know that, which was all to the good. But Zgomot hadn't thought about other security worries.

Dumnez looked mutinous. "They won't catch me."

"True. You don't go, so they don't catch you," Hasso said. Dumnez tried to slip past him, but Hasso grabbed his arm. For a moment, he wondered if he would need his dirty-fighting talents. Taking on somebody he outweighed by more than thirty kilos wasn't close to fair, but if Dumnez grabbed a knife.. To forestall him, Hasso added, "We talk to Lord Zgomot. If you don't listen to me, you listen to him, right?"

"He won't waste time on the likes of me," Dumnez said.

"He does — he will — for this," Hasso said. "Come on."

He had to talk his way past the stewards and chamberlains who shielded any ruler from the slings and arrows of outrageous reality. But, even though gunpowder wasn't magic, it was a magic word. It got Hasso and Dumnez through to the Lord of Bucovin in short order. Zgomot listened, pondered, and spoke: "The foreigner is right, Dumnez. You stay here. Is anyone else who knows about gunpowder going?"

"I don't think so, Lord," Dumnez replied.

"Go find out. If anybody is, pull him off," Zgomot said. "Good thing you bumped into Hasso. We don't want to take chances we don't have to." Dumnez gave the Wehrmacht officer a sour look, but he didn't argue with his sovereign.

And Hasso wasn't very late to the fencing room. He apologized to Drepteaza, explaining what had happened. "That wouldn't have been good," she agreed, and then got down to business. "So. You're going to throw me around, are you?"

"Yes. You know how to land soft?"

"I think so."

"All right. We go slow at first."

He showed her how to flip a man. He didn't take any undue liberties with her person when he flipped her. He was sure he bruised her, though she did land well. She was strong for her size, and well coordinated. He'd thought she would catch on fast, and he was right. It wasn't hard — grab, turn, duck, twist, heave.

"Now I come at you," he said, and he did. When she flipped him, he didn't do anything to try to stop her. He went over on his back, and got a bruise or two of his own.

"You let me do that." Her voice was accusing. "You even helped."

"Well, sure," he said as he climbed to his feet. "You have to learn." He tried not to think about the feel of her against him. "I went easy with King Bottero's master-at-arms at first, too."

"So he knows these flips?" Drepteaza said.

"Not any more. He's dead."

"Oh." That seemed to satisfy her. "Let's try it again. Faster this time?"

"A little," Hasso agreed. He went over her shoulder and thudded down. "Oof! That's good."

Drepteaza smiled. "It is! Again!"

Hasso picked up more bruises. He couldn't have cared less. "You will be sudden death on two legs," he said. Drepteaza positively beamed.