If the goddess possessed her some of the time, what was it like when possession ended? In his own world, he would have taken her talk for metaphor. Here? He kept an open mind. He’d seen enough strange things to make him unsure where metaphor left off and magic began. And if magic worked, why couldn’t there be a literal goddess?
No reason he could see, no reason at all.
“What about with King Bottero?” he asked. He hoped he didn’t sound too jealous. He didn’t feel too jealous, but he wasn’t altogether easy about it.
“Oh, with him I am the goddess and me both,” Velona answered matter- of-factly. “The seasons need renewing, and this is how we do it. And he is a man, and I am a woman, and that is how men and women do it. You ought to know.” She poked him in the ribs.
“Well, yes,” he said. She made it sound so reasonable. The only thing wrong was that what happened between men and women wasn’t reasonable. No matter how people tried, they couldn’t make it reasonable, either. They couldn’t in the world he came from, anyhow. He didn’t think the Lenelli and Grenye were much different.
Velona laughed. “In fact…” she said. Sure enough, he’d just bumped her belly. They started all over again. He hadn’t thought a man his age could perform the way he did. But then, he hadn’t had inspiration like this, either.
Afterwards, he wished for a cigarette. Even the ones the German quartermasters doled out, that tasted of hay and horseshit instead of honest tobacco, would have been better than nothing. But he’d had them in the back pocket of his trousers when he landed in the swamp here, and they got ruined. Too damn bad.
“Is it better now?” Velona might have been soothing a little boy. Her methods were different – were they ever! – but not her tone.
“Well, yes,” Hasso said again. And it was, too, and it would stay that way till the summer solstice, or till he thought about the summer solstice, or till he ran into King Bottero, or for a little while, anyhow.
What could he do about it, any which way? Tell the goddess not to do what the goddess did? Velona would laugh in his face. He’d be lucky if Bottero only laughed. He could go from vassal to victim in the time the king took to snap his fingers.
And so… And so what? he wondered. If he couldn’t stand the idea, the only thing he could do was break off with Velona. The king would still keep him around, as a soldier, as an unarmed – combat instructor, and maybe in the hope that he could teach the Lenelli to make firearms. They wouldn’t turn out Schmeissers any time in the next few hundred years. If he could make black powder, though, they might manage cannons and matchlock muskets. And cannons ought to be plenty to win him a field marshal’s baton, or whatever they used here instead of one.
So he could make his way here without Velona if he wanted to. He thought so, anyhow. But did he want to? If he did, he figured he needed to check his brain for working parts. If she had to do what a goddess had to do, he figured he could live through it.
“It’ll be all right,” he told himself.
“What?” Velona asked, and he realized he’d spoken not only out loud but in German.
“All good,” he said in Lenello, and hoped he meant it.
The master-at-arms at Castle Drammen was a fellow named Orosei. He wasn’t particularly big for a Lenello – only a couple of centimeters taller than Hasso – but he was in perfect shape. As they faced each other in the courtyard, stripped to the waist, the German could see as much. He wasn’t bad himself, but Orosei had not a gram of fat and muscles like steel bands.
Soldiers watched the faceoff. Hasso was starting to understand bits of Lenello. They figured he was crazy – nobody in his right mind messed with Orosei. Eyeing his opponent, Hasso thought they had a point.
He’d done this at Castle Svarag, but Orosei looked like a much rougher customer than Sholseth or his buddies. This guy didn’t just have muscle. He had technique, too. Hasso could see that at a glance.
“So you know tricks, do you?” Orosei said. His gaze went here, there, everywhere. He wouldn’t give himself away by eyeing his target before he went after it.
Hasso shrugged. “Maybe a few.”
“Well, let’s get on with it,” Orosei said. “Nothing personal, you understand.” I make my living squashing people. You’re just another one.
“Nothing personal,” Hasso agreed. If I can beat you, I look like a big deal. You’re in the way – like Poland.
They circled warily. Hasso took it on faith that Orosei was good. The master-at-arms didn’t seem inclined to take chances on anybody. Once things started happening, fights could – often did – end in seconds. Someone would make a mistake or just move an instant slower than he should have, and that would be that.
“Did you come here to fight or to dance?” Orosei asked. In the middle of the question, without warning or even raising his voice, he sprang.
The next few seconds were one of those frantic flurries that happened when two pros went at each other without any rules. One of Orosei’s boots thudded into Hasso’s chest – not quite in his solar plexus and not quite hard enough to break ribs. The Lenello’s thumb didn’t quite take out Hasso’s left eye, either – and Hasso didn’t think he quite broke it when he bent it back. He got in some licks of his own, too.
They broke apart again. Orosei would sport a mouse under one eye, and he definitely had hurt that hand. He saluted Hasso Lenello – style, clenched fist over his heart. “You’re good, all right,” he said. “We can use you.”
“You are good, too.” Hasso didn’t like plodding through a language he barely spoke, but he had no choice.
They circled some more. Hasso fired a kick at Orosei’s knee. Orosei grabbed his foot and launched him, then jumped on him like a starving tiger. But Hasso had expected to get thrown, and greeted him with a boot in the belly. It was like kicking planks, but it got the master-at-arms off him.
Orosei bounced to his feet. He saluted again, saying, “You’re bloody good. Show me those flips I’ve heard about.”
“We go slow?” Hasso asked, and the master-at-arms nodded. Hasso knew a moment’s relief that he’d proved himself without getting maimed and without wrecking the other guy, who was bound to have friends in high places. He said, “Come at me – not very fast.”
Orosei did. He made a perfect practice partner. Hasso grabbed his outthrust arm, twisted, got him on his hip, and flipped him over his shoulder. Orosei thudded down on his back with a big grin on his face. He sprang up. “That’s good, by the goddess! Do it again!”
Hasso sent him ass over teakettle a couple of more times at half speed, and then at something closer to full speed. Orosei was a glutton for getting things right. If he took some bruises doing it, he didn’t care.
“Let me try,” he said when he thought he had it.
“Half speed,” Hasso said, and the master-at-arms nodded. Hasso approached. He extended his arm. Orosei twisted and flipped him smooth as could be. Hasso hadn’t expected anything different – this guy was a pro.
He proved what a pro he was a moment later. After he’d tossed Hasso around three or four times, he said, “That is the move, and it’s very fine. What is the counter?”
“Ah!” Now Hasso gave him a German – style salute. “Good question! Right question! I come half speed. You – “ He mimed doing the flip. “You see.”
Some of the soldiers drifted off when they found that Hasso and Orosei weren’t going to ruin each other for their entertainment. Others crowded closer to watch Hasso show the master-at-arms how not to get thrown. A lot of them wanted to try the moves themselves, on one another and on the men who really knew how to do them.
“You’re better than I am,” Orosei said after a while. “I have to think about it, and you just do it.”
“Practice,” Hasso said with another shrug. How many times had he done those flips? On the other hand… “Me and sword? Bad.” He made a face to show how bad.
“But you’ve got that fire-spitting pellet crossbow,” Orosei said: a pretty good description of a Schmeisser from somebody who’d never heard of the Industrial Revolution. “Do all the soldiers where you come from carry those?” Orosei asked. When Hasso nodded, the master-at-arms winced. “You must kill each other before you get close enough for swords.”
“Mostly.” Hasso nodded again. Orosei wasn’t just a hardnose with quick reflexes. He had brains. That figured. He was more or less a regimental sergeant major, so he’d better not be a dummy – especially right under the king’s eye.
The Lenello tossed him a spearshaft with a bundle of rags at the end instead of a point. “You know what to do with this?”
“Some,” Hasso answered.
“Let’s see.” Orosei took a practice pike, too, and did his best to stick Hasso like a pig. When Hasso showed he could handle himself, Orosei whacked him on the back. “Yeah, you’re pretty decent. How come, when you don’t know what to do with a blade?”
As best Hasso could, he explained about bayonets. Then he said, “Wait, please,” and hurried back to his chamber. He returned with his entrenching tool. “Fight with this, too.” He demonstrated some of the unkind things you could do with the metal blade.
Orosei watched with interest, then hefted the entrenching tool himself. “Nice little thing,” he said with an appreciative nod. “You dig holes so the pellets don’t dig holes in you?”
“Yes,” Hasso said. Orosei got it, all right.
“And it’s a fine close-in weapon, too,” the master-at-arms said. “Handy to have both in the same package.” He handed the entrenching tool back. Hasso was beaming as he took it. He and Orosei didn’t have many words in common, but they spoke the same language anyway.
By the time the summer solstice rolled around, Hasso could read and even write a bit. His progress amazed the lame, white-haired Lenello who taught him. But old Dastel was used to teaching people who’d never met letters before. Hasso understood the idea that each sign stood for one sound just fine. So what if the Lenelli used thirty-four characters? So what if they wrote from right to left like Semitic Untermenschen?. As soon as Hasso memorized which squiggle sounded like what, he could read as well as anybody – and better than most, because people here had a habit of muttering their words as they read them. His biggest problem was his limited vocabulary. Learning to read helped there, too. Words on a page didn’t vanish into thin air the way spoken ones did.