“How the broads rule the roost? How nobody there ever gets knocked up, and they find babies under the cabbage leaves?” Rautat was exaggerating – but, if you listened to Drepteaza for a while, you wouldn’t think he was exaggerating by much. He eyed Hasso. “If half of what she says is so, you’re lucky you got out of that place. It’s a demon of a lot better here.”
Hasso was lucky he’d got out of his own world, but not for the reasons Rautat imagined. “You may be right,” he said, and let it go at that.
He swung up onto his horse easily enough. He’d ridden on the Eastern Front, too. You couldn’t always find a halftrack or a VW going where you needed to. If you didn’t want to walk, you went on horseback.
And he was heading back towards a capital that hadn’t fallen, unlike the one from which the Omphalos stone had hurled him. A capital more like Moscow than Berlin, he thought uncomfortably. In some ways, the Lenelli did remind him of the Germans he would never see again. In others, they made him think of the Teutonic Knights, who’d gone east against the Slavs in days gone by – and also eventually ended up losing to them. In still others, they might have been Spaniards or Anglo-Saxons bumping up against Indians.
They weren’t just like any of those groups. However you looked at it, though, Hasso wasn’t on the side he would have chosen for himself. Well, sometimes you got your sides chosen for you, that was all. The Bucovinans were people, too. Drepteaza was a very sweet person. Hasso smiled in the saddle.
The Ivans he’d fought were also people. He supposed their pagan ancestors who’d faced the Teutonic Knights were people as well. The Red Indians? No doubt about it.
He let out a startled grunt. Maybe even the Jews were people. He hadn’t thought so for years – it wasn’t safe or easy to think so, not in the Reich. But he’d known a few back in Weimar days – not well or anything, but he had. They hadn’t seemed… so bad.
If they hated Germans now, hadn’t Germany given them reason to? He didn’t know what all had happened during the war. You didn’t want to know stuff like that, not officially. But what if it was all a big fuckup? Wouldn’t that be a kick in the ass?
XXV
Except for the stinks, Hasso was glad to get back to Falticeni. And Lord Zgomot seemed as glad to have him back as he was ever glad about anything – which is to say, not very. The Lord of Bucovin said, “So the gunpowder shells work the way you want them to, do they?”
“Close enough, Lord,” Hasso answered.
Zgomot plucked a white hair from his beard. He twirled it between his fingers and let it fall. “Close enough is as much as you can expect in life most of the time, isn’t it?”
“I don’t argue with that, Lord,” the Wehrmacht officer said.
“You’d better not,” Zgomot told him. “You’re old enough to know. So tell me, Hasso Pemsel – are you happy now that Drepteaza’s finally sleeping with you?”
“Close enough, Lord,” Hasso repeated, deadpan.
The Lord of Zgomot grunted. “Well, I’ll forgive that from you – you had the Lenello goddess on earth in your bed for a while. That must have been something. Wearing, I’d guess, but something all the same. But tell me this: is Drepteaza happy, now that she’s finally sleeping with you?”
She’d better be, or I’ll make you sorry, his tone warned. Drepteaza mattered to him. Carefully, Hasso answered, “I think she is also close enough. If you don’t believe me, you can ask her.”
“Oh, I did,” Zgomot said. “I summoned her before I called you. I think you are right, pretty much. I did want to find out how big a braggart you are, now that you finally got something you wanted for a long time.”
“And?” Hasso said.
“And no doubt about it – you are no Lenello. If you were, I would have heard about every thrust, every gasp, every wiggle.” Zgomot raised an eyebrow. “You lived among the blonds. You know they are vain that way.”
From what Hasso had seen, the Bucovinans were blunter about screwing than the Lenelli. Lord Zgomot had a point, though: the Lenelli did invest more vanity in it. Since Hasso didn’t much want to talk about it, he changed the subject, “Are the men back with the dragon bones?”
“No,” the Lord of Bucovin replied, which answered what Hasso’d asked but left him wanting more.
More involved another question: “Is Bottero moving yet?”
“Also no, for which I thank Lavtrig and the other gods,” Zgomot said.
“Yes,” Hasso said, though he believed in none of the Bucovinan gods. He wouldn’t have believed in the Lenello goddess, either, if he hadn’t been compelled to believe there was something there. “The border isn’t closed, then.”
“No, it is not,” Zgomot agreed. Hasso nodded to himself. Since he’d gone over to the other side, the Lenelli were liable to have decided all his security worries and precautions were nothing but a load of crap. He hoped they did. That would make defending against them a hell of a lot easier. With a sigh, Zgomot went on, “But when Bottero does move, we are going to have to get through another invasion. Another year’s crops ruined in the west. Another year of burning and murder and rape.”
“That is what war is,” Hasso said. “Only one thing worse than to go through it.”
“Oh?” The Lord of Bucovin raised an eyebrow. “I would not have thought anything was worse. I do not think anything is worse.”
“One thing is,” Hasso insisted. “To go through a war and lose – that is worse. That is what happens – happened – to my land, in my world. That is why I am here.” To try so much, to suffer so much, to go through so much death and devastation, to do that twice in less than half a lifetime and have nothing at all to show for it… was the lot of Germany. How might things have turned out worse? He couldn’t begin to imagine.
“We managed not to lose last year,” Zgomot said. “Then, Bottero started late in the campaigning season. He will not make the same mistake twice – say what you will about the Lenelli, but they do not make the same mistake twice in a row. That is my people’s failing, I fear. Our imaginations spin more slowly than theirs.”
“Not with you ruling, Lord.” Hasso wasn’t throwing out flattery to butter Zgomot up. The Lord of Bucovin was doing as well as he could against long odds.
“I think Bottero made a bigger mistake last year, too,” he said now. Hasso made a questioning noise. Zgomot eyed him. “He let me get my hands on you. He will regret that to his dying day – and may it come soon.”
“You give me too much credit,” Hasso said.
“I’d better not,” Lord Zgomot replied.
After Hasso and Velona became lovers, they moved in together and never separated till he got left for dead on the battlefield and she had to withdraw. Drepteaza didn’t take up residence with him in Zgomot’s castle, no matter how much he wished she would have. She moved more slowly than Velona in almost every way.
But she didn’t stay away from his chamber, either. Sometimes he could talk her into coming by on a particular night. Sometimes she would knock on her own. Most of the time, she would make love with him. Once in a while, she only wanted to talk. He quickly decided getting annoyed about that was a bad idea.
One evening, when she was leaving after talking with him for a couple of hours, he gave her a crooked smile and asked, “Do I pass the test?”
Even in the lamplight, even with her olive skin, he could see her turn red. It took him by surprise; he hadn’t meant to embarrass her. But she answered as frankly as usual: “As a matter of fact, you do. A woman wants to think a man wants her for something more than just this.” She touched herself between the legs for a moment. “And I think you do. And I think that is good.”
“I can talk with you better than with anyone else – except maybe Rautat.” Hasso barked laughter. “And that is not the same.”
“No, it isn’t,” Drepteaza agreed. “Not that Rautat is stupid – I’ve seen he’s not. But there are times when he would rather not think.”
“Yes!” Hasso nodded vigorously. Rautat made a good underofficer: he liked routine. He would have made a wonderful friend for another underofficer whose mind worked the same way. Hell, he was friends with other sergeants like that. Hasso’s mind ranged further. In this world, it damn well had to. “You can go places with me where he doesn’t want to – and not just in bed.”
“You may end up changing us more than the Lenelli have,” Drepteaza said. “For better? For worse? How can we know ahead of time? But you change us.”
He thought again about the printing press. One of these days. When he had time. If he ever did. If the Bucovinans ever started printing books, that would change them even more than gunpowder did. But that lay in the future, a future that might never be born. “If I don’t, the Lenelli do,” he said.
“We know it,” Drepteaza answered. “If you change us, maybe we stay ourselves, too. If the Lenelli change us, we lose ourselves forever. There used to be lots of little kingdoms in the western part of the land. They’re gone now. Even the Grenye who still live in them don’t know much about how they used to be. That could happen to us, too.”
Hasso had seen those Grenye peasants. They had nothing but work and drink. Some of them had nothing but drink. As far as the Lenelli were concerned, that was fine.
The Germans would have run the Ukraine and Russia the same way if they’d won. Hasso hadn’t thought much about that while he was fighting the Ivans. Now he did. His country had aimed to destroy another one – not just to beat it, but to destroy it. No wonder the Russians fought back so ferociously.
And what did Germany end up doing? Destroying itself instead. So much for all the glorious triumphs of the Reich.
“What were you thinking?” Drepteaza asked. “For a moment there, you looked over the mountains.”
To the Bucovinans, that meant a long way off. Most of the time, it made an effective figure of speech. Not here. Not now. “I was thinking about my old land,” Hasso answered. “Farther away than over the mountains.”
“What about it?”