After the downfall

1

Berlin was falling, falling in ruin, falling in fire, falling in blood. Back when the war was new, Goring said you could call him Meyer if a single bomb ever fell on the capital of the Reich. Had anyone held the Reichsmarschall to his promise, he would have changed his name a million times by now.

Goring never said a word about shells or machine — gun bullets. Back in those triumphant days, who could have imagined Germany would go to war with Russia? Not needing to worry about Russia helped make the destruction of France as easy as it was.

And who could have imagined that, if Germany did go to war with Russia, she wouldn't knock down the Slavic Untermenschen in six weeks or so? Who could have imagined that those Red subhumans would fight their way back from the gates of Moscow, back across their own country, across Poland, across eastern Germany, and into Berlin? Who could have imagined the war was over except for the last orgy of killing, and all the Fuhrer's promised secret weapons hadn't done a thing to hold off Germany's inevitable and total defeat?

Captain Hasso Pemsel and what was left of his company crouched in the ruins of the Old Museum. The space between the Spree and the Kupfergraben was Berlin's museum district. These days, the finest antiquities were in G Tower, next to the Tiergarten. People said the massive reinforced — concrete antiaircraft tower could hold out for a year after the rest of Berlin was lost. Maybe soon they would get the chance to find out if they were right.

A Russian submachine gun burped bullets. Behind Hasso, something shattered with a crash. It might have come through two or three thousand years, but a curator had decided it wasn't worth taking to G Tower. Nobody would study it any more — that was for sure.

Where was the Ivan with the burp gun? Pemsel spotted motion behind a pile of rubble. He squeezed off a short burst with his Schmeisser, then ducked away to find fresh cover. A wild scream came from the direction of the heap of bricks and paving stones. It didn't lure him into looking. The Russians were past masters at making you pay if you fell for one of their games.

Like it matters, Hasso thought. You're going to die here any which way. Sooner or later? What difference does it make? But discipline held. So did a perverse pride.

He refused to do less than his best, even now — maybe especially now. If the Russians wanted his carcass, they'd have to pay the butcher's bill for it.

A few meters away, his top sergeant was rolling a cigarette with weeds that might have been tobacco and a strip of paper torn from Der Panzerbar. The Armored Bear was the last German newspaper going in Berlin; even the Nazi Party's Volkischer Beobachter had shut down.

Karl Edelsheim was good at making do. Like Hasso, he'd been in the Wehrmacht since before the war, and he was still here after almost four years on the Eastern Front. How much longer he or any of the German defenders would be here was a question Hasso declined to dwell on.

Instead, he said, "Got any more fixings? I'm out." If you paid attention to what was right in front of you, you could forget about the bigger stuff… till you couldn't any more.

"Sure, Captain." Edelsheim passed him the tobacco pouch and another strip of newspaper. Hasso rolled his own, then leaned close to the Feldwebel for a light. Edelsheim blew out smoke and said, "We're fucked, aren't we?" He might have been talking about the weather for all the excitement or worry he showed.

"Well, now that you mention it, yes." Hasso didn't wail and beat his breast, either. What was the point? What was the use? "Where are we going to go? You want to throw down your Mauser and surrender to the Ivans?"

"I'd sooner make 'em kill me clean," Edelsheim said at once. The Russians were not in a forgiving mood. After some of the things Hasso had seen and done in the east, he knew they had their reasons. Edelsheim had fought there longer. Chances were he knew more.

Another burst of submachine — gun fire made them both flatten out. They might have been ready to die, but neither one was eager. Hasso had seen a few Waffen-SS officers, realizing Germany could not prevail, go out against the Russians looking for death, almost like Japanese suicide pilots. He didn't feel that way. He wanted to live. He just thought his chances were lousy.

Most of the bullets thudded into the wall in back of him. One spanged off something instead. The sound made Hasso turn around.

The Wehrmacht captain saw… a stone. It was perhaps a meter across, of brownish — gray granite, and looked as if it were dumped there at random. But, like the other exhibits in the museum, it had a sign above it explaining what it was. OMPHALOS, it said, and then, in Greek letters, what was presumably the same thing: OM?A?O?.

"What the devil's an omphalos?" he asked Edelsheim. A couple of Russians scrambled out to drag off a wounded man. He didn't fire. A minute's worth of truce wouldn't matter.

"Beats me," the sergeant answered. "Animal, vegetable, or mineral?"

"Mineral." Hasso jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

Edelsheim looked, then shrugged. "I'd say that honking big rock is. What the hell is it?"

"It's Greek to me," Hasso said. But he was curious enough to crawl over to read the smaller print under the heading. When the world was falling to pieces around you, why not indulge yourself in small ways if you could? He wouldn't get the chance for anything bigger — that seemed much too clear.

"Well?" the Feldwebel asked.

'"The Omphalos Stone, from Zeus' temple at Delphi, was reputed to be the navel of the world,'" Hasso read. '"It was the center and the beginning, according to the ancient Greeks, and also a joining place between this world and others. Brought to Berlin in 1893 by Herr Doktor Professor Maximilian Eugen von Heydekampf, it has rested here ever since. Professor von Heydekampf's unfortunate disappearance during an imperial reception here two years later has never been completely explained.'"

"Ha!" Edelsheim said. "What do you want to bet some pretty girl disappeared about the same time?"

"Wouldn't be surprised." But Hasso's eyes went back to the card. "'And also a joining place between this world and others.' I'll tell you, Karl, this world doesn't look so good right now."

"So plunk your ass down on the rock and see what happens," the sergeant advised. "How could you be worse off, no matter where you end up?"

The shooting picked up again. Someone not far away started screaming on a high, shrill note, like a saw biting into a nail. The shriek went on and on. That was no sham. That was a desperately hurt man, one who would die soon — but not soon enough to suit him.

"Good question," Hasso said. "Another world or this same old fucked — up place? Here goes nothing." The patched seat of his field — gray pants came down on the navelstone.

Sergeant Edelsheim turned his head to jeer at the captain while he was on the rock. The whole goddamn country was on the rocks now. That was pretty funny, when you -

"What the — ?"

One instant, Captain Pemsel was there. The next, he was gone, as if by trick photography in the movies. He might never have been in the museum with Edelsheim.

"Der Herr Gott im Himmel" Sudden mad hope surged through the sergeant. If there was a way out, any way out… What he'd told Pemsel was true for himself, too. Wherever he went, how could he be worse off?

He turned and, half upright, scrambled toward the Omphalos. Half upright turned out to be a little too high. A burst from a Soviet submachine gun slammed home between his shoulder blades. He went down with a groan, blood filling his mouth.

One hand reached for the navelstone: reached, scrabbled, and, just short of its goal, fell quiet forever. And none of the tough Russian troopers who overran the museum cared a kopek for an ugly lump of rock they could neither sell nor screw nor even have any fun breaking.

When the Omphalos seemed to stir beneath him, Hasso Pemsel wondered for a heartbeat if he was losing his mind. He hadn't really expected anything to happen. He hadn't really believed anything could happen. But what he believed didn't matter, not any more. He'd mounted the stone with hope in his heart. That was enough — far more than enough.

He hung suspended for a timeless moment. What did Hamlet say? O God! I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams. That came to Hasso only later. At the time — if time was the word for this flash of existence apart from everything — he knew only that, whatever else it was, it was no dream.

And then he was back in the world again — back in a world, anyhow — and he was falling. He dropped straight down, maybe a meter, maybe two: surely no more than that, or he would have hurt himself when he landed. Or maybe not. He came down in a bog that put him in mind of the Pripet Marshes on the Russo — Polish border.

Training told. As soon as he knew he was hitting water and mud, his hands went up to keep his weapon dry. A Schmeisser was a splendid piece when it was clean, but it couldn't take as much crud in the works as a Soviet PPSh or a British Sten.

He floundered toward the higher ground ahead. The setting sun — or was it rising? — flooded the unprepossessing landscape with blood — red light. And that was one more impossibility, because it had been the middle of the day in Berlin.

Hasso shrugged and squelched on. Maybe he'd got shot the moment he plopped his can down on the Omphalos. Maybe this was nothing but a mad hallucination before the lights went out for good. But he had to act as if it was real. He'd spent too many years fighting to quit now. He'd been wounded three times. He was damned if he'd throw in the sponge for no good reason.

"Maybe I'm damned anyway," he muttered. He shrugged again. If he was, he couldn't do anything about that, either.

He hauled himself up onto dry land. As he did, he realized it was artificial, not a natural feature of the swamp at all. It was a causeway, long and straight and not very wide, with a well — kept dirt road atop it. Somebody needed to go from Here to There in a hurry, and the swamp happened to lie athwart the shortest way.

Somebody badly needed to get from Here to There in a hurry. This causeway would have taken a devil of a lot of work to build.

He stooped to examine the road. The long shadows the sun cast (it was setting, definitely setting) showed no trace of tire tracks or tread marks from panzers or assault guns. They did show footprints and hoofprints, some shod, others not. And there were unmistakable lumps of horse dung.

Hand tools, then, almost certainly. Which meant…

Hasso Pemsel shrugged one more time. He had no idea what the hell it meant. It meant he wasn't in Kansas anymore. He'd seen The Wizard of Oz when it got to Germany, just before the war started.

A flash of motion on the road, off to the east. Before Hasso consciously realized he needed to do it, he slid into cover, sprawling on the steeply sloping side of the causeway. All the time he'd spent fighting the Ivans had driven one lesson home, down at a level far below thought: unexpected motion spelled trouble, big trouble.

Ever so cautiously, Schmeisser at the ready, he raised his head for a better look. As he did, he wondered how many magazines for the machine pistol he had left. Four or five, he thought. And what would he do once he used them up? He grunted out a syllable's worth of mirthless laughter. He'd damn well do without, that was what.

Somebody was running up the road toward him. No, not somebody. Several somebodies, one in the lead, the rest between fifty and a hundred meters behind. The leader ran with an athlete's long, loping strides. The others pounded along, showing not much form but great determination. The dying sun flashed off sharpened metal in their hands. They were armed, then. The man in the lead didn't seem to be.

A few seconds later, as the leader drew closer, Hasso sucked in a short, sharp, startled breath. That was no man running for his life. It was a woman, running for hers! She was tall and blond and slim, and the rags she wore covered enough of her to keep her technically decent, but no more.

If she hadn't been very weary, weary unto death, she would have left her pursuers in the dust. Her build and her gait said she was used to running in a way they weren't and never would. But her sides heaved; sweat plastered her fair hair to her face. Plainly, she was at the end of her tether. How many kilometers had she run already, knowing it would be the end if she faltered even once?

Hasso's hackles rose when he got a good look at the men who thudded after her. They were short and squat and dark, with curly black hair and the shadows of stubble on their cheeks and chins. One of them carried a hatchet, one a pitchfork, and the third what Hasso at first took to be a sword but then realized was a stout kitchen carving knife.

The woman glided past him. Her head didn't turn his way; she must not have seen him dive for cover. Not surprising, not with the sun in her face the way it was. She didn't look back to see how close her enemies were. All her attention was on the way ahead. He admired that even more than he admired her elegantly chiseled features. She would go on as long as she could — so she proclaimed with every line of her body. But her harsh panting said she couldn't go on much longer.

Her pursuers were worn, too, but not so worn as she. They could still talk to one another as they ran. Their harsh, guttural language meant nothing to Hasso. He didn't think it was Russian… but then, he hadn't really believed these were the Pripet Marshes, either.

Deciding what to do and doing it were quick, easy, almost automatic. Just before the three shambling men came abreast of him, he rose up a little and gave the leader — the one with the pitchfork — a short burst in the chest. As the fellow crumpled, Hasso shot the man with the carving knife.

The swarthy man with the hatchet showed admirable presence of mind. He flung the weapon at Hasso just before one more burst from the Schmeisser caught him in the midsection. The Wehrmacht captain ducked. The hatchet spun past, less than half a meter above his head. It splashed into the swamp.

He scrambled to his feet, ready to finish off any of the three who still showed fight. But they were all dead or dying fast. He looked down the road in the direction from which they'd come. Were more like them trotting along in their wake? He didn't see anybody else, not for a couple of kilometers.

Slowly, he turned toward the woman. She'd stopped when she heard the gunfire. Now she was trying to catch her breath, her head down, her hands on her knees. After most of a minute, she straightened, looking at him with as much curiosity as he felt about her.

Curiosity wasn't the only thing he felt. She'd seemed striking as she ran past. Now he saw that striking was much too mild a word. She was improbably, outrageously, beautiful. If she was only a product of his wild imaginings in the split second before the pain of a mortal wound seized him, he had more imagination than he'd ever imagined.

She said something. Whatever tongue it was, he didn't understand a word of it. He didn't care. He could have listened to her forever, no matter what she said. Her voice was a honeyed caress.

But she stopped and waited expectantly. He realized he needed to answer. "I'm sorry — I don't understand," he said in German. A tiny frown creased the perfect skin between her eyebrows — she didn't follow him, either. He said the same thing in French, remembered from school, and then in bad Russian acquired at the front. She shook her head each time.

She slowly walked toward him. Little by little, he realized what a mess he was: filthy, unshaven, in a wet, muddy, shabby uniform. He would have apologized if only he knew how.

She pointed to the dead men, then to his machine pistol, and said something that had to be a question. You killed them? With that?'What else could she be asking?

He nodded. "Ja. I did for 'em, all right." He stuck to German from then on. Why not? At least he'd be sure of what he was saying. He jabbed a thumb at his own chest and told her what his name was.

"Pemsel. Hasso Pemsel," she repeated thoughtfully. His name had never sounded so good as it did in her mouth. She laid an index finger between her small, upstanding breasts. "Velona," she said.

He touched the brim of his coal — scuttle helmet, echoing, "Velona." He couldn't make her name seem nearly so wonderful as she did his.

"Pemsel. Hasso Pemsel," she said again, and then something else that had his name in it. When he just stood there, she laughed at herself. She must have forgotten he couldn't follow what she was saying.

What she did next didn't need any words. She pulled off the torn and tattered shift — Hasso couldn't come up with a better name for it — she was wearing, spread it out in the middle of the road, and, naked, lay down on it. She beckoned to him to join her.

His jaw fell. He almost dropped the Schmeisser. What went through his mind was, You're a hero, pal. Here's your reward. Beats the hell out of the Knight's Cross, doesn't it? Even with Swords and Oak Leaves.

No, his imagination definitely didn't work this well. He'd saved a couple of German women from death or a fate worse than or both together. They didn't want to screw him afterwards to say thank — you. They wanted to go off somewhere and have hysterics. That seemed reasonable enough to him.

But Velona was plainly different all kinds of ways. She played by way different rules. When she spoke again, it was with a touch of impatience. What are you waiting for, big boy? Come and get it. In case he was a congenital idiot, she twitched her hips and opened her legs a little.

He looked up the road again. Nobody. He looked down the road. Also still nobody. The two of them were the only live people for quite a ways. It was lay her or jump in the swamp.

"If you're sure…" He stopped, feeling dumb. If she wasn't sure, she was auditioning for a stag film. She'd get the part, too.

Awkwardly, still wary, he got down beside her. She nodded, as if to say, It's about time. When he took off his clothes, he was careful to keep himself between her and them — and between her and the Schmeisser. But she wasn't interested in the uniform or the weapon, not then.

Her hands roamed him, soft and knowing at the same time. He stroked her, too. This all felt more surreal than a Max Ernst painting, but he didn't care. If it was a figment of his dying imagination, his brains were working overtime. He was less and less inclined to believe that, though. Everything was too vividly detailed, from the grittiness of the hard — packed dirt to the sweaty heat of Velona's flesh to the way her breath stirred the hair above his left ear.

He rapidly discovered that under her curves she had muscles to rival an Olympic athlete's. Well, the way she ran had already told him that much. He was broader through the shoulders, and probably outweighed her by twenty kilos, but he wasn't sure which of them was the stronger.

Then she kissed him, and he stopped caring. Had he run all that way, he thought his mouth would have been dry as dust. Hers was warm and moist and sweet. His hand slid between her legs. She was warm and moist there, too. She made a small sound of pleasure, down deep in her throat. Her hand closed on him. He made the same sound, only an octave deeper.

He was disappointed when she broke off the kiss, but only for a moment. Limber as an eel, she bent to take him in her mouth. He wasn't sure he'd ever had a woman do that before without being asked. He also wasn't sure how much he could stand without exploding.

The thought had hardly crossed his mind before she pushed him down and over onto his back and impaled herself on him. She rode him like a racehorse. She made that pleased noise again when his hands closed on her breasts. She teased his nipples, too. He hadn't thought they were especially sensitive, but they were, they were.

As his pleasure rose toward the crest that said he would have to come soon, he decided he would rather drive things himself. When he rolled the two of them over, Velona let out a startled yip and then laughed. So did he. He poised himself above her and thrust home again and again.

Her breath came faster than it had when she was running. Her face went slack with pleasure. She gasped. "Pemsel! Hasso Pemsel!" she cried in a high, shrill voice. Her nails scored his back. A wordless groan escaped him at the same time. He drove deep one last time, and tried to stay at the peak forever.

Whether he wanted it to or not, the world returned, the way it always does. Velona said something to him. He couldn't understand it, of course. But he understood when she mimed pushing him off her. He had to be squashing her, and that ragged shift wasn't much to protect her from the ground. He went back onto his knees.

She got to her feet and brushed as much of the dirt off her behind as she could before she put the shift back on. Hasso also stood, and did the same thing. His clothes were more complicated than hers; he took a little longer to dress. By the time he finished, she was walking back toward the men he'd killed.

She didn't let lovemaking distract her long. Her gesture could mean only one thing: pitch them in the swamp. Two of them wore rawhide boots. He pointed to those, and then to her feet. Did she want them if they fit?

Velona shook her head and looked revolted. "Grenye," she said, pointing to the corpses. "Grenye." To her, the word must have explained everything.

It didn't explain one damn thing to Hasso, but he wasn't inclined to be critical. And Velona wasn't fussy about grabbing Grenye boots, whatever those were, only about wearing them. Into the water and muck went the bodies and the knife and pitchfork. The bodies would come back up soon enough; Hasso knew that all too well. If Velona also did, she didn't care. She nodded, as at a job well done.

"Where now?" Hasso asked her, as if she understood.

And maybe she did, for she linked arms with him and started west down the road — the same direction she'd been going before, but not the same killed pace. As the sun kissed the western horizon, Hasso slipped his arm around her waist. She smiled and swayed close and rested her head on his shoulder for a moment. He had no idea what he'd just volunteered for, but she made one hell of a recruiter.

Castle Svarag struck Hasso as… well, medieval. What else would a castle be? It had no running water, though there was a well. It was a long drop from the seat in the garderobe to where the stuff landed, but that was as close as the place came to sophisticated plumbing. Fires and torches and candles and oil lamps gave light after sundown. Food was either very fresh or else smoked or salted or dried; none of Velona's people knew anything about canning or refrigeration.

Had Hasso fallen into this world in 1938, he would have thought it too primitive to bear. Coming here in 1945, he'd done without running water and flush toilets and electricity and refrigeration for five and a half years of war. He missed them much less than he would have back in the days when he took them for granted.

And there were compensations he'd never had in Poland or France or North Africa or on the Eastern Front. Velona kept coming to his bed. She started teaching him the local language. And she vouched for him with the castle's commander, a dour noble — Hasso thought — named Mertois. Hasso wouldn't have wanted Mertois angry at him, as the commandant was close to a head taller than he was and proportionately broad through the shoulders.

Average men among the Lenelli — Velona's people — stood close to two meters tall, and some, like Mertois, were considerably bigger than that. They had yellow hair, blue or green or gray eyes, granite cheekbones, and chins like cliffs. Back in the Reich, Hasso had been a big man. Here, he was decidedly short. The Lenelli had never heard the name of Aryan, but they exemplified the ideal. To all of them but Velona, the first impression seemed to be that he barely measured up.

Then one — a bruiser called Sholseth, who was almost Mertois' size — picked a fight with him. Hasso got the idea it was as much to see what he would do as for any real reason except maybe boredom. Out of what passed for fair play with the Lenelli, Sholseth made sure Hasso understood they were fighting before he uncorked a haymaker that would have knocked Max Schmeling's head off.

It would have, had it landed. But it didn't. Unlike Max Schmeling, Hasso wasn't in the ring. He didn't have to box with Sholseth. Wehrmacht combat instructors taught all sorts of dirty but highly effective techniques. Action on the Russian front was a whole separate education.

Hasso grabbed Sholseth's arm just behind the wrist. Half a second later, Sholseth flew through the air with the greatest of ease. The big Lenello had time to begin a startled grunt, but it cut off abruptly when he slammed down on the rammed — earth floor of Castle Svarag's great hall.

Hasso had hoped that would put him out of action, but he started to get up. The Wehrmacht officer kicked him in the ribs — and had to skip back in a hurry, for a long arm snaked out and almost tripped him up. He didn't want to get locked in a grapple with Sholseth, not even a little bit.

The boot to the ribcage made the Lenello flatten out again. Hasso darted in and kicked him once more, this time in the side of the head, not too hard. Hard enough, though. Sholseth groaned and went limp.

A pitcher sat on a table a few meters away. Hasso walked past half a dozen staring Lenello warriors, picked it up, and poured two liters of not very good beer over Sholseth's head. The big man groaned and spluttered. His eyes opened. He made a horrible face and clutched at his temples. The Wehrmacht officer nodded to himself. Concussion, sure as hell. Sholseth wouldn't be worth the paper he was printed on for the next few days.

Another Lenello said something to Hasso. It was probably, How the devil did you do that, you shrimp? With an inward sigh, Hasso made a gesture inviting him to find out for himself. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, one of these big apes would cream him. But how many he smashed up first would go a long way toward showing where he fit in the pecking order.

He flattened four and had a fifth on the ropes before the fellow landed a blow to his solar plexus that folded him up like an accordion. He couldn't do a thing about it, either. The Lenello was groggy, but not too groggy to fall on him like a landslide and thump him while he couldn't fight back. Hasso got paid back for some of what he did to the soldier's friends. He'd known that would happen, too, which didn't make it any more enjoyable while it was going on.

When he could, he got up and washed the dirt and blood off his face. The Lenelli pounded his back, which hurt almost as much as getting beaten up had. They pressed mug after mug of that indifferent beer into his hand. He drank everything they gave him. Maybe it would numb him a little. Any which way, it was less likely to give him the runs than the local water.

Sholseth asked him something. The battered would — be tough guy was drinking beer, too. His head had to be killing him. Hasso didn't understand the question, but it was bound to be something like, Where did you learn all that stuff?

Another Lenello made cut — and — thrust motions and shook his head as he asked his own question. That had to be, So how come you can't use a sword worth a damn? Hasso shrugged. Nobody'd ever bothered teaching him a weapon like that. He had no trouble with a spear. If you could fight with a bayoneted rifle and an entrenching tool, spear drill was a piece of cake.

He could use a crossbow, too, once he figured out how to crank it up to reload. Its bolts flew flat and straight, like bullets. The Lenelli even had sights to aim along. A hunting bow, on the other hand… To call him hopeless gave him the benefit of the doubt.

Someone in the watchtower winded a horn. One long, flat note — the warriors relaxed. That meant more Lenelli on the road approaching Castle Svarag. A series of shorter blasts would have been trouble: the Grenye sneaking around again.

Hasso wasn't sure how things worked around here. He hadn't seen enough of this world yet. He hadn't seen any of it, in fact, except for the swamp and the stretch of road between where he'd rescued Velona and this castle. But the Lenelli seemed to have Untermenschen problems like the Reich's in Russia.

Here on the frontier — and this was the frontier, plainly — the big blond warriors controlled towns, castles, and, when they traveled in force, the roads between them. The countryside belonged to the local barbarians.

Shouts came from outside the castle. Who was who around here was pretty obvious. Even so, the newcomers and guards went through the rigmarole of sign and countersign. That made Hasso chuckle, which hurt his sore stomach and bruised ribs. He might be in another world, but a lot of army rituals stayed the same. What worked one place worked in another. People remained people.

Chains rattled and clanked as Grenye servants — or maybe they were slaves — lowered the drawbridge. Horses' hooves thudded on the thick oak timbers — faced with iron on the outside, to ward against fire — as the new arrivals rode in.

As one man, the Lenelli in the great hall went out to see what was what. They were as eager for news and gossip as any garrison at an isolated post — and they didn't have radios.

Everybody turned out to see what was what, in fact: everybody who was tall and fair, anyhow. Mertois tramped out half a minute or so behind the warriors in the great hall. More soldiers came out of the stables. Velona and other women took places between and in front of the men.

Velona started to smile at Hasso, but the expression froze when she saw he'd been knocked around. He nodded, as if to tell her it was all right. You should see the other bums, he thought.

Haifa dozen men had come in. Five were knights in slightly rusty chainmail. They were all stamped from the same mold as the soldiers in the garrison. The sixth was… something else.

He rode a unicorn. Hasso blinked and rubbed his eyes. Unicorns were the stuff of myth and legend — except this one wasn't. Its horn was silvered. So were its hooves. They all shone even brighter in the sun than the unicorn's pure white coat and mane and tale. Its lines made the big, heavy horses around it look as if they were carved by a sculptor who was earnest, well — intentioned, and more than a bit of a blockhead.

The rider made the knights seem the same way. He wore polished jackboots that would have gladdened the heart of an SS man on parade, tight suede breeches, and a clinging shirt of shimmering bright green silk that should have looked effeminate but somehow didn't. Like the unicorn's horns and hooves, his conical helm was silvered, and flashed in the sunlight. Only his sword, a businesslike cross — hilted weapon in a battered leather sheath, said he wasn't a refugee from the set of a bad movie.

Graceful as a cat, he slid down from the unicorn. Hasso expected him to march up to Mertois and start giving orders; his harsh, handsome features were those of a man used to being obeyed, and at once. But the stranger strode over to Hasso himself. He didn't hold out both hands to clasp, as the Lenelli usually did in greeting. Instead, he sketched a star in the air between them. It glowed with gold fire for a moment before fading.

Hasso's eyes widened, even more than they had when he saw the unicorn. Unicorns were merely legendary. This was flat-out impossible — but it happened anyway.

"You saw?" the stranger demanded… in Lenello. Yes, he spoke his own language, but Hasso understood as readily as if it were German. That was impossible, too, but as true as the glowing golden star, as true as the unicorn's switching tail.

"I saw, all right. How the devil did you do that?" Hasso Pemsel answered in German, and the man in boots and breeches and silk also understood him.

"Magic," the fellow said matter-of-factly. Hasso started to get angry before realizing the newcomer wasn't kidding. "I'm Aderno, third-rank wizard in King Bottero's service. You will be the outlander Velona spoke of when she summoned me."

"Velona… summoned you? Not Mertois?" Hasso wondered whether he'd figured out anything at all about what was going on here. He didn't even understand the chain of command.

"Yes, Velona, of course." Aderno took it for granted, whether Hasso did or not. "Now tell me — what color did the star seem to you?"

"Gold," Hasso answered automatically.

"Gold? Something, yes, but gold?" That was enough to shake Aderno out of his air of snooty superiority. He stared down his long, straight nose at the German. "Are you certain?"

"Why would I lie? And what difference does it make, anyhow?" At last, somebody who could understand Hasso when he said something — and the cocksure son of a bitch didn't want to believe him. Hasso wondered if he could do unto Aderno as he'd done unto Sholseth. Maybe he could knock sense into that long, arrogant head if he couldn't insert it any other way.

"You don't even know." That wasn't a question. Aderno turned away and spoke to Velona. When he did, his words were only gibberish to Hasso. His magic seemed as sensitive, and as adjustable, as a radio tuner. Hasso couldn't follow Velona's reply, either. He sighed and shrugged. She was the one he really wanted to be able to talk to, and he still couldn't. Life seemed to work that way. Aderno gave his attention back to him. "Tell me how you came here." That seemed clear enough.

Hasso did. He couldn't see any reason why he shouldn't. And talking about it — at last being able to talk about it — was a release, and a relief.

When he finished, Aderno sketched another sign in the air. This one glowed the color of the wizard's shirt. "The truth," he said, sounding faintly surprised.

"Why would I lie?" Hasso asked again.

For the first time, Aderno looked at him as if he'd said something stupid. "Outlander, man from another world, there are as many reasons as there are fish in the sea, as many reasons as there are leaves on the trees. You could have been part of some new wicked plot the Grenye have hatched — "

"No!" Velona broke in: one word of Lenello Hasso could follow.

"No," the wizard agreed. "But it could have been so, which is why I applied the truth test. Or you could have been one of our evildoers on the run, looking to cover your tracks with a tale too wild to be disbelieved. Or you could have been a disgraced man looking to start over somewhere far from where you were born, and using a strange story likewise. Not too hard to pretend not to understand or speak. But no. You are not pretending. And if you saw gold in the air…"

"You still haven't said what that means," Hasso reminded him.

"It means your life, and mine, and everyone else's, get more complicated than any of us might wish," Aderno said. Hasso wanted to hit him for talking in circles. Decking a genuine wizard, though, didn't strike him as smart. Aderno went on, "And it means you can't stay in this miserable backwater post." Mertois grunted at that. Aderno ignored him. "I shall take you to Drammen." Seeing Hasso look blank, he condescended to explain: "To the capital."