He found one more bridge after that, or thought he did. Part of him – a good bit of him – still wondered whether this wasn’t some kind of delusion. But even in his world dowsers could – or claimed they could – find water. Maybe there was something to it.
Velona had no doubts. As soon as the spell was done, she plastered herself against him tighter than a coat of paint and gave him a kiss that curled his ears and made steam come out of his hair. Before he could sling her over his shoulder and carry her off to their tent – the first thing that occurred to him, even if she didn’t weigh that much less than he did – she broke free and called for the artisans. After a moment, regretfully, so did Hasso.
The men came up with astonishing haste. Hasso didn’t flatter himself that his shouts had much to do with it. When your goddess yelled for you, you went to her first and then wondered why she wanted you. (Hasso sometimes wondered why Velona still wanted him, but in a much more pleasant way.)
“Follow these bearings to the river, one by one,” she said, pointing at the lines she’d laid out. “When you get there, probe under the surface. You’ll find hidden bridges in each place. Tear them up.”
They saluted, clenched fists over their hearts. “We’ll do it!” they said, and hurried off. Hasso hoped they weren’t going off for nothing, not least because he would look like a jerk if they were.
They must have found what they were looking for, because that evening King Bottero summoned Hasso to dine with him. He hadn’t done that since Hasso’s striking column slammed through the Bucovinans in the first – and, so far, only – big battle the two sides had fought. Bottero poured wine for Hasso with his own hand. “You see?” he said expansively. “I told you you could do it.”
“Yes, your Majesty,” Hasso said, which was an answer as useful here as Jawohl, mein Fuhrer! had been back in the Reich. And it wasn’t even a lie this time around. Bottero did say so, and he was right.
“Why did you have any doubts?” the king asked. “If Aderno said you had the power, you did. Aderno may be a pain in the fundament sometimes, but he knows the difference between a snake and its cast skin.”
“No magic in the world I come from,” Hasso said. “Hard for me to believe anyone has it.” He jabbed a thumb at his own chest. “Extra hard to believe I have it.”
“Well, you do,” Bottero said. “Get used to it. The artisans came back all excited about how you knew exactly where to send them. They said you made their work easy. One of them asked why our regular wizards couldn’t do so well.”
Hasso winced. “They shouldn’t say that.” He didn’t want the regular wizards angry at him. Maybe he could work a little magic, however crazy that seemed. But he wasn’t a pro, and he knew it. If somebody who was a pro decided to turn him into a prawn, he didn’t know how to defend himself or fight back.
A pretty young Grenye woman brought in a platter of pork ribs and roasted parsnips. The robe she wore was so thin, it wouldn’t have kept her warm long outside. The king ran his hand up her leg. Was her smile forced or real? Was she glad to be getting off as easy as this, or did she hate him for groping her – and, no doubt, for taking her, too? Hasso had no way to know, which might have been – surely was – just as well.
He concentrated on the food. After a while, he asked, “How far to Falticeni, your Majesty?”
“We’re getting there,” Bottero answered. “Pretty soon, the savages will have to fight us again. We’ll whip them, and then we’ll go on and take the place.”
The woman stood by the king, waiting for anything he might want – for anything at all, plainly. “Should you talk with her here?” Hasso asked.
“Why not?” Bottero asked. “She knows how to say, ‘Yes,’ in Lenello, and that’s about it. And she’s not going anywhere anyhow. She’s hot enough to keep around for a while.” He fondled her again, then asked, “You want her to suck you off? She’s good.”
Hasso might have enjoyed that if he’d found the girl himself. With Bottero watching, as he plainly intended to do? “No, thanks, your Majesty. I just came from Velona.”
“Ah.” The king leered. “She can wear anybody out.”
“Yes.” Hasso left it at that, and hoped Bottero would. He wasn’t lying; Velona had helped him celebrate his successful sorcery. He also feared being unfaithful to her. As a woman? No, not so much, though she would be incandescent enough if scorned. But as a woman with the goddess indwelling? The last thing Hasso wanted to do was face an irate deity.
He didn’t say that to King Bottero. It didn’t seem manly. Then Bottero said, “You’re pretty smart. If she found out about you and some chit, she’d fry your nuts off, I bet. Forget I asked you.”
So the king respected – if that was the right word – Velona, too? Well, he would. He really believed in the goddess, believed in his belly and his balls. (Hasso tried not to think of his belly on Velona, his balls slapping the inside of her thighs.) To Hasso, belief like that came much harder, no matter what he’d seen here.
“How do we make the Bucovinans fight us?” Hasso asked. “If they stand, we can beat them, yes?”
“We’d better!” Bottero said. “That’s what I’m trying to do – take a big bite out of them. Instead, they’ve been nibbling on us … and I don’t mean like Sfinti here.” He swatted the Bucovinan woman on the backside. She smiled at him again. Again, Hasso wondered what went on behind her eyes.
But only for a moment – he had other things to think about. The Wehrmacht had wanted to get the Red Army to stand and fight, too. Instead, the Russians traded space for time, drawing the Germans on till they got overextended and then hitting back. The Bucovinans looked to be playing the same game against Bottero.
Would it work here? If the Lenelli took Falticeni, obviously not. Otherwise? Hasso shrugged. He was too much a stranger here to be sure of much. Hell, he hadn’t even been sure he could do magic. He still had trouble believing it.
He didn’t want to think about that now. He gnawed on ribs and drank beer and tried not to watch Bottero pawing Sfinti. It wasn’t that he hadn’t seen plenty worse, most recently at Muresh. But the way she just stood there and let the king do what he wanted raised Hasso’s hackles. He wouldn’t have wanted to sleep with her, not literally, even if she kept on smiling. Wouldn’t you be much too likely to wake up slightly dead the next morning?
King Bottero didn’t seem to worry about it. Bottero didn’t seem to worry about much of anything. “The rest of the Lenello kingdoms will be so jealous of us once we’ve cut off Bucovin’s head,” he boasted.
“Jealous enough to gang up on you?” Hasso asked. That would be all Bottero needed: getting through one war only to end up in another that was worse. Against other Lenelli, he wouldn’t have any special edge.
“Don’t think so.” No, the king didn’t worry about much. “What it will do, though, is it’ll draw us more people from across the sea. They’ll know we’ll have lands to hand out, lands with plenty of Grenye on ‘em to work and to have fun with.” He pulled Sfinti down onto his lap.
Hasso got to his feet. “Maybe I’d better go, your Majesty,” he said. King Bottero didn’t tell him no. He bowed his way out of the tent. As the flap fell, Bottero laughed and the Bucovinan woman giggled. The guards outside grinned and nudged one another. One of them winked at Hasso. He had to make himself grin and wink back.
He also had to make himself hope Bottero knew what he was doing in there. The king pretty obviously thought so. Were the Bucovinans smart enough to leave a pretty assassin behind to be captured? Or would an ordinary Grenye woman pull out a knife if she saw the chance?
And even if the answer to both those questions was no, what would happen to Bottero’s kingdom after this campaign? Hitler’s biggest mistake was thinking he could take on almost the entire rest of the world. Was the local king doing the same stupid thing? Again, Hasso had to shrug. He didn’t know enough to judge – just enough to worry.
“You’re back sooner than I expected,” Velona remarked when he ducked into the tent they shared.
“His Majesty has other things on his mind.” Hasso shaped an hourglass in the air with his hands.
The Lenelli didn’t use that gesture, and Velona needed a moment to realize what it meant. When she did, she laughed … for a moment. “He didn’t want to share with you?” she asked ominously.
He could, to his own relief, answer with the exact truth: “I don’t want to share with him. I have better here.”
He wasn’t afraid of facing the Bucovinans in battle. He wasn’t afraid of trying to work magic, either – though maybe he needed to be, now that he’d discovered he could do it. But facing an angry Velona … That scared him green. He would rather have jumped on a Russian grenade.
Her eyes flashed as she inspected him. It wasn’t just a figure of speech; the spark in them seemed to light up the gloom inside the tent. Maybe he was imagining things, but he didn’t think so. Her gaze didn’t probe him the same way a wizard’s would have, which was not to say it didn’t probe him.
At last, grudgingly, she nodded. “All right. I believe you. But if you ever waste your seed with a Grenye woman…” She didn’t go on, not with words. She did create the strong impression that that wouldn’t be a good idea. And Captain Hasso Pemsel, veteran of five and a half years of war in Europe and a campaign season’s worth in this strange new world, shivered in his boots.
He didn’t shiver only because Velona intimidated him. (He tried not to admit to himself that she did – he tried for a good second and a half, and then gave it up as a bad job.) It was bloody cold in there. Winter was coming on, and the tent walls were about as good at keeping the chill out as they would have been on the Eastern Front. He threw more charcoal on the brazier, which might have raised the temperature half a degree: from arctic all the way up to frigid.
He breathed easier when Velona relented enough to ask, “Does the king think he can make the Bucovinans stand and fight?”
“He wants to.” Hasso was glad to talk about the campaign instead of anything that had to do with Sfmti’s charms. “Can’t conquer them unless they stand – or unless they let us walk into Falticeni.”
“They won’t,” Velona said flatly, and Hasso nodded. He didn’t think the Bucovinans would, either; they were fighting the Lenelli every way they knew how. And they had sense enough to see that pitched battles weren’t the best way to do it. Her gaze went far away. “It won’t be easy.” Her voice might have been coming from Beyond, too.
Was that prophecy? Could there be such a thing in this world? Once more, Hasso didn’t know. He did know his shiver, this time, had nothing to do with the cold outside.
XII
Two mornings later, a Bucovinan – noble? – approached the army to parley. He did it formally, with an escort of a dozen or so horsemen with armor as good as any Hasso had seen on a Bucovinan. As usual, they carried greenery in lieu of the white flags that served as truce signs in Hasso’s world.
Some of the Lenelli muttered at that. “Who do they think they are, acting like civilized men?” Marshal Lugo grumbled. “We ought to run this beggar off just to teach him proper manners.”
“Better to hear him,” Hasso said. “Let us find out what he and his master have in mind.” Hortatory subjunctive, he thought, pleased with himself. He hadn’t needed to come out with one of those since he was taking Latin a hell of a long time ago.
“Bring him here,” Bottero decided. “Listening to him doesn’t cost us anything, and we can always run him off later if we don’t like what he says.”
The Bucovinan envoy bowed in the saddle to the king. “I am Otset, your Majesty,” he said in excellent Lenello. “I bring you the words of Zgomot, Lord of Bucovin.” He didn’t claim Zgomot was a king; any Lenello sovereign would have either laughed or got furious at such presumption. “Hear my lord’s words and marvel at how generous and full of forbearance he is.”