After the downfall

XXIV

When Hasso started working with gunpowder and catapults, Lord Zgomot changed his mind and suggested that he move away from Falticeni for a while. Hasso didn't say no. The Lord of Bucovin had two excellent reasons on his side. One was not showing everybody in a good-sized city what Bucovin was up to. The other was not unnerving everybody in a good-sized city with strange booms and blasts.

The place where Hasso ensconced himself was more than a farm and less than an estate. Maybe it was as close as the Bucovinans could come to a Lenello-style estate. It had a big, fancy house — but one with a thatched roof. Several peasant families who worked the fields and tended stock in the meadows lived in cottages not far from the big house. The house and land belonged to Zgomot himself. The place was more than thirty kilometers away from Falticeni — far enough to let Hasso and his men make as much noise as they needed to.

Rautat and Drepteaza went with him. The underofficer translated for him with carpenters and catapult makers when his Bucovinan ran dry. The priestess did some of that, too. She also taught him more of the natives' language. And she seemed intent on learning all the dirty fighting he knew how to teach.

'"Sudden death on two legs,'" she quoted. "That's what I want."

"You're on your way," Hasso said. She wasn't as strong as he was, and she didn't have his reach. But she was a long way from a weakling, and she was fast as a striking snake. She could hurt him, and she had, more than once. He'd knocked her about, too; once you started practicing anywhere close to full speed, that was bound to happen. Thumping down on thick grass in a meadow hurt less than the rammed-earth floor of the fencing room had.

The more-or-less estate didn't stink the way Falticeni did — another advantage of moving to the country. Sure, it had a dungheap and some odorous privies. But it didn't have tens of thousands of people crapping and pissing and not worrying much about how to dispose of the filth. Bucovinans bathed more than Lenelli, but their notions of sanitation were just as rudimentary as those of the blonds.

Once Hasso got the carpenters to understand what he wanted, they had no trouble mounting catapults on wheeled carts. Horses — or even donkeys — could pull them. "Field artillery," he said happily. Back in the world he'd left behind, you couldn't live without it… not very long, anyway. The Wehrmacht always used as much as it could. The Red Army had guns in carload lots.

Yes, the field artillery was easy. The ammo wasn't. Hasso rapidly found earthenware pots wouldn't do. He couldn't fuse them precisely enough. If a pot hit the ground before a spark hit the gunpowder, it smashed like a broken plate. That wasted far too much precious gunpowder to work.

"Have to be metal," he said. "Bronze or iron."

"Expensive!" Rautat said in dismay. He wasn't kidding, either. Part of Hasso still took an industrial economy for granted. Where everybody did everything by hand… You didn't get anywhere near so much, and what you did get cost a lot more.

But he answered, "Not as expensive as losing to the Lenelli, eh?"

"Lord Zgomot will have to say," Rautat told him. "I can't order smiths to start making these things, not by myself I can't."

"Send to him," Hasso said. "We find out. If he says no, we go back to Falticeni."

Zgomot must have said yes, because several bronzesmiths and ironsmiths came out to the estate to find out what Hasso wanted. He explained. One of the smiths tapped his forehead, as if to say this foreigner was out of his mind. Hasso let the short, wide-shouldered men watch an ordinary clay pot full of gunpowder blow up. One of them pissed himself in surprise and fear. After that, they didn't think he was crazy any more.

"Hollow balls," one of them said. "Can we make halves and solder them together? That would be a lot faster."

Hasso shook his head. "Not strong enough, I'm afraid."

"Can we rivet halves together?" another smith asked. "That should hold them till your magic works."

"It isn't magic," Hasso said wearily. "But yes, try riveting." It wouldn't be as fast as soldering, but he could see that it would be a lot faster than making hollow spheres from scratch. The bronzesmiths looked especially pleased. They could cast their hemispheres instead of beating them out. The Bucovinans knew how to make and work wrought iron, but they couldn't cast it.

Yet another smith asked, "How many do you need, and how soon do you need them?" — the basic questions of war.

As many as you can make and a hundred more besides, and I need them all yesterday. That was any field officer's automatic answer. Here, though, caution looked like a good idea. "How many do you think you can make? How fast?" he asked in return.

They had to put their heads together before they gave him an answer. Some of them were scratching their heads, too — they weren't used to thinking in terms of numbers. When they did speak up, he was pleasantly surprised. Even cutting their claims in half, he'd have enough shells to fight a battle soon enough to give the Lenelli a proper greeting.

"You really think you can do that?" he asked.

"We do. By Lavtrig, we do," answered the man who spoke for them. He had impressive dignity — and scarred, gnarled hands that were even more convincing.

All the same, Hasso pressed: "Lord Zgomot is not happy if you promise one thing and give something else."

"We will not disappoint the Lord of Bucovin," said the senior smith, whose name was Unaril.

"Go, then. Do it," Hasso said. And maybe they would, and maybe they wouldn't. If they didn't, Bucovin would fight the Lenelli the same old way, and chances were she'd take it on the chin.

But the big blond bastards would have a harder time if Zgomot's men got back with the dragon bones. As soon as that went through Hasso's mind, he wondered, Did I just think of the Lenelli as big blond bastards? He didn't wonder long. Damned if I didn't. Maybe he really had switched sides after all, even inside himself.

And wouldn't that be weird? he thought.

A double handful of bronze shells came to the estate. Field Marshal Manstein would have laughed his ass off as soon as he took one look at them. Hell, so would Frederick the Great, for that matter. When you measured them by the standards of an art that had had some time to grow, they were somewhere between funny and pathetic.

When you measured them against nothing at all, though, they suddenly didn't seem half bad.

He didn't load them with gunpowder right away. He had the catapult crews practice flinging them while they were empty. They went somewhere close to 400 meters. He had to hope that would be good enough. He thought it would, for one battle, anyway. The Lenelli would be looking for buried pots of gunpowder — and he intended to use those, too. Artillery would take them by surprise… unless they had better spies than he thought.

Some of the shells dented a little when they came down. A few rivets popped. A smith who'd stayed behind repaired them — and sneered at the workmanship. Hasso only grinned at him. The Wehrmacht officer hadn't imagined everything would go perfectly. The Bucovinans were doing things they'd never tried before. He was pleased they'd done as well as they had.

He filled a shell with gunpowder and lead balls — the Bucovinans had no trouble making those, because they used slingers as well as archers. He jammed down the stopper: a wooden plug with a hole drilled through for the length of fuse. And then he assembled everybody by the catapult to watch as the shell went downrange on the meadow he'd been bombarding.

"As soon as I light the fuse, you shoot," he told the catapult crew. "I light, I yell 'Now!' and you shoot. No waiting, not even a little. You understand?"

"What happens if we're slow?" a Bucovinan asked.

"You get a lead ball in the face, that's what. Or in the nuts." And so do I, Hasso thought. He wished for an 81mm mortar and a trained crew. Since wishing — surprise! — failed to produce them, he got back to business. "You ready?" The Bucovinans solemnly nodded. Hasso waved a stick of punk to heat up the coal. Then he brought it down on the fuse, which sizzled to life. "Now!" he shouted. He didn't throw himself flat, not because he trusted the catapult crew but because the natives didn't know enough to do the same. If something went wrong, the survivors would think he took unfair advantage.

Swoosh! The catapult arm shot forward, hurling the shell far across the meadow — but not so far as a lighter, emptier one. It was just about to hit the ground when fire touched the main charge.

Boom! Hasso whooped. If he could do it that well all the time, he'd make one hell of a gunner. Then he stopped whooping, because a catapult man yelped and grabbed his leg. Blood ran out between his fingers. One of the lead balls had flown all the way back here. Hasso hadn't dreamt that could happen.

"Lie down," he said. "Let me see it."

"Hurts," the catapult man said as he obeyed.

"I bet it does." When the German got a good look at the wound, he breathed easier. It was a gash, not a puncture — the ball must have grazed the Bucovinan going by. If he bled freely, chances were he wouldn't get lockjaw. If he did, neither Hasso nor anybody else in this world could do anything for him.

One of the other catapult men handed Hasso a rag for a bandage. It looked pretty clean. He put it on. One of these days, he would have to talk about boiling bandages. No time now, and he didn't figure it would matter here.

"Can you walk?" he asked the wounded Bucovinan.

"I… think so." The fellow got to his feet. He limped, but he managed. "Yeah, it's not too bad. Thanks, foreigner. You tied it up good."

"Sure." Hasso always would be a foreigner. That didn't mean he enjoyed getting reminded of it.

The catapult man hadn't meant any offense. "You've got a demon of a weapon there. I never figured it could bite from so far off. You weren't kidding when you said close would be worse."

"No, I wasn't kidding," Hasso agreed. Why had the other man wondered if he was? Because he'd never seen anything like this, that was why. Hasso understood as much. Well, now the native hadn't just seen it — he'd felt it. And he was a believer.

Everybody except the wounded man walked out into the meadow to see what was left of the shell. What was left was about what Hasso had expected: some sharp, twisted shards of bronze casing, and not much more.

"Lavtrig! Every time you throw one of these metal balls, you waste it." The smith who'd stayed behind at the estate sounded appalled.

"Not waste." Hasso shook his head. "We hurt the enemy with it."

"But you can't use it again," the smith said. "The metal flies once, and it's gone.

Gone for good. Metal isn't cheap, you know."

"Neither is losing a war," Hasso pointed out once more. "You want your smithy burned? You want to get killed? You want your daughter raped and killed? You want another Muresh?"

"Of course not," the Bucovinan answered. "But I don't want to go bankrupt, either. We could win the war and throw all our metal away. Then where would we be? Does Lord Zgomot really know this is how things are?"

"Yes," Hasso said, a one-word reply that made the smith blink.

"Hasso is right. We have to do this. Lord Zgomot says so, and I think he is right, too," Drepteaza said. "The other choice is giving up more land and more people to the Lenelli. Do you want that?"

"No, priestess," the smith answered. He would argue with Hasso. The German was just… a foreigner. But he wouldn't argue with Drepteaza. He assumed she knew what she was talking about because she was a priestess.

Well, Drepteaza commonly did know what she was talking about. But that was because she was Drepteaza, not because she was a priestess. Hasso understood as much. He thought Drepteaza did, too, which was a measure of her good sense. The smith, by contrast, had not a clue.

"Shall we send off another one?" Rautat asked.

"Maybe not right now," Hasso said. "First we make sure our wounded can do what they need to do."

"I'm all right," the injured catapult man said.

"It can wait. It should wait," Hasso said. "One thing at a time."

"Suits me — and not because of my leg," the catapult man said, wrinkling his nose. "Smells like demon farts around here."

"How do you know what demon farts smell like?" That wasn't Hasso, even if he had the thought. It was Drepteaza.

"Well, I don't, not really," the native soldier admitted. "But it smells like what I think demon farts ought to smell like."

"Does it smell that way to you, too, Hasso?" Drepteaza asked.

He shook his head. "It reminds me of fireworks." The key word came out in German. He had to explain what fireworks were, starting just about from scratch — the Bucovinans had no idea. "They can light up the sky with flames of different colors," he finished. "Best at night, of course."

"How do you make flames different colors?" Rautat asked. "Flames are flames, right?"

Hasso didn't know how pyrotechnic engineers did what they did. But Drepteaza said, "Haven't you seen how salt makes a flame yellower?"

"Bits of copper or copper ore can turn flames green," the smith added.

"You should know that, Rautat," Hasso said. "You were a smith."

"An ironsmith, not a coppersmith or bronzesmith," Rautat said. "That's why I went to learn Lenello tricks. Iron is the coming thing. I wanted to see what the blond bastards knew that we don't."

The coming thing. Hasso hid his smile. Rautat wasn't wrong, not for the way things were in Bucovin. And if iron had come to Germany a couple of thousand years earlier… well, so what? Hasso damn well wasn't in Germany any more, and he never would be again. A damn good thing, too. He was better off here. There he would have got killed. Or, if he was very lucky — or maybe very unlucky — he would have ended up a Russian POW.

He supposed he was still a Bucovinan POW. But the Ivans wouldn't have hurt any V-2 engineers they caught. They needed what those fellows knew. The Bucovinans needed what Hasso knew. If good treatment was the price of getting it, they were willing to pay. The Reds were probably doing the same for their German engineers. Come to that, the Amis were bound to be acting the same way.

Love got stale or flamed out. No one knew that better than Hasso these days. Common interests, on the other hand, could last. They'd better, the Wehrmacht officer thought. If they didn't, he was dead.

Without the least bit of warning, flat-footed, Drepteaza tried to kick Hasso in the crotch. He sprang back out of danger — one of the rules when they trained together was that you had to be alert every second. She'd never actually got him in the balls. Bruises on his hip and thigh where he'd had to twist away instead of jumping back said she'd come close more than once.

She looked disappointed that she hadn't made him sing soprano this time. "What did I do wrong?" she asked.

"Nothing," Hasso said. "But I know you are dangerous, so I watch you all the time. When you move, I move, too."

"You're fast," she said. "I didn't think anybody that big could be that quick. I'm sure you're faster than most of the Lenelli who live in Bucovin."

She didn't say than most of the other Lenelli. Hasso couldn't remember when she'd last said that. It had been a while, anyhow. He shrugged. "They can do things I can't. I am never going to be anything much with a sword. They learn when they're little. I learn now. They have too much head start. But this? This I know how to do."

"You must," she said. "You — " She tried to kick him again. Again, she gave nothing away beforehand. If he hadn't suspected she might try to give him a double shot, she might have done what she aimed to do — leave him writhing in the tall grass clutching at himself.

Instead of leaping away or twisting, he grabbed her right foot and yanked it up farther than she'd intended it to go. She let out a startled squawk as she lost her balance and went over on her back.

He sprang on her and pinned her to the ground. She tried to knee him when he did — he really had trained her well — but he didn't let her do that, either. "Got you this time," he said, his face a few centimeters above hers.

She nodded. "Yes, you did. Now will you let me up? You're squashing me flat."

"Sorry." He shifted so he took more of his weight on his knees and elbows. But then he said, "I let you up in a little bit," and leaned down and kissed her.

If she'd wanted to nail him then, she could have done it. He realized as much just after his lips met hers, which was exactly too late. If she'd twisted away and screamed… Well, nobody was anywhere close by, but someone likely would have heard her. People would have come running. And then he wouldn't have got hurt — he would have died: chances were, a millimeter at a time.

She didn't do either of those things. For a couple of seconds, she didn't do anything at all. He feared it would be a hopeless botch like the one in the garden back in Falticeni. But then she kissed him back — after a fashion. It was the most… experimental kiss he'd had since he was a kid and learning how himself.

The way she did it convinced him he'd better not push anything too hard. He drew back instead, and asked, "Well?"

Drepteaza stared up at him. "Not… so bad," she said, sounding honestly surprised. "I didn't used to think I would ever want a big blond to touch me in any way. But with you teaching me to fight… You had to touch me for that. And it was what it was, and after a while I didn't worry about it anymore. And this, what you just did, what we just did, wasn't so bad after all."

Hasso bent toward her again. "How about this?" he asked softly.

This time, the kiss got down to business. She knew how, all right. She hadn't been sure she wanted to. Now she seemed to be. Quite a while later, when their lips parted, she murmured, "That was pretty good."

"Ja," Hasso said, and she smiled. So did he, no doubt like an idiot. He went on, "I want to do this for a very long time."

"You haven't known me for a very long time." Drepteaza was relentlessly precise. "What else have you wanted to do?"

He did his best to show her. He hadn't thought he would be her first, and he wasn't. He did hope he pleased her. He wasn't sure, because she didn't show what she felt as extravagantly as Velona. That he should think of Velona now, even for an instant… only showed he really had it bad. Well, he did, dammit.

Afterwards, he had no idea what to say. Before he could come up with anything, Drepteaza beat him to the punch: "There. Are you happier now?"

He started to laugh. That was as blunt as usual. "Yes," he answered. "Are you?"

She frowned, thinking it over the way she so often did. If she said no, he thought he would sink down into the ground. But, thoughtful still, she nodded. "Yes, I am. I don't know whether I will be if I bear a wizard's child three seasons from now, but that is in the hands of the gods."

Could a halfbreed work magic? Hasso thought so, but he wasn't sure. He also wasn't sure a German-Grenye halfbreed would be the same as a Lenello-Grenye halfbreed. Since he couldn't do anything about that, or about whether Drepteaza would catch, he asked her, "Was it all right for you?"

If you have to ask, you won't like the answer. That was a rule as ancient as women. Drepteaza, though, was out of the ordinary. She kept so much of herself to herself.

She nodded now — slowly, but she nodded. "You were… sweeter than I thought you would be," she said. "You really meant it."

"I said so," Hasso replied. "What I say, I mean."

"It would seem so," Drepteaza admitted. "But I told you before — I know a lot of men will say anything to get a woman to go to bed with them."

"Not in bed," Hasso said with dignity — and with precision of his own. "On the grass."

"So we are," Drepteaza said. "We ought to get dressed, too, before someone comes over to find out why we're not trying to ruin each other."

"Wait," Hasso said, and kissed her again. The kiss took on a life of its own, but not quite enough to start a second round. I'm getting old, dammit, the German thought. Even if he was still this side of forty, two in a row were only a memory.

She shook her head as she put on her breeches and tunic. "You are a very strange man, Hasso Pemsel."

He shrugged. He couldn't very well tell her she was wrong, not here, even if he would have been ordinary enough in the Reich. "I come from another world. What do you expect?"

As she had a habit of doing, she answered what he'd meant for a rhetorical question: "I expected you to act the way you look. I expected you to act like a Lenello. If I'd doubted you were one, I'd be sure you weren't now."

How did she mean that? Did she know how Lenello men made love? Did she know from experience? Do I want to find out? Hasso wondered, and decided he didn't.

He pulled on his own trousers. "A good thing I see — uh, saw — those kicks coming," he said. "Otherwise, we never do this now. If both those kicks get home, maybe we never do this forever."

"I just have to practice more," Drepteaza said sweetly. And how the hell did she mean that7. Once more, Hasso decided he didn't want to find out.

Even if no one came out on the meadow and caught them in flagrante, the rest of the Bucovinans didn't need long to figure out that Hasso and Drepteaza had become lovers. Rautat spoke for them: "You make her unhappy, you big blond prick, and I'll cut you off at the knees so we're the same size. Then I'll really give you the whipping you deserve."

"I don't want to make her unhappy," Hasso protested.

"You'd better not," the underofficer growled. "She's special, and not just 'cause she's a priestess, either."

"You think I don't think so, too?" Hasso said.

Rautat snorted. "Who knows what you think? Who knows if you think?"

"I love you, too," Hasso said.

"Fat chance," Rautat said with another snort. "Are we just about finished here? Can we go back to Falticeni pretty soon? We've done all the fooling around we need. We have to fight pretty soon — or don't you think Bottero will come after us again as quick as he can?"

"Of course he will," Hasso answered. "You know that as well as I do."

"Well, no." Rautat shook his head. "You've met the man. You know him. I haven't. I don't. Being on the same battlefield with him doesn't count."

Hasso hadn't just met Bottero — he liked him. That had nothing to do with anything, not any more. Hasso thought Bottero's enmity was only professional, not personal like Velona's. When it came to wanting him dead, that might matter a pfennig's worth. Or it might not. He stuck to business, saying, "We can go back to Falticeni. You're right — we've done what we came here to do."

"What about the dragon bones? Have you heard anything?" Rautat asked.

"Not a word," Hasso said. "You?"

"Nothing," the underofficer answered. "I wonder which of us they'd tell. I wonder if they'd tell either one of us."

"They'd better. We need to know," Hasso said. "And the people going after the dragon bones better get out before King Bottero's army marches. If they come after, it's too late."

"Good point. They can make amulets for themselves and be safe from Lenello magic, not that that does us any good," Rautat said.

"They can't even do that," Hasso said. "They don't know what the dragon bones are for. They only know Lord Zgomot wants them."

"You're right. That's your fault. We never would have worried about stuff like that by ourselves," Rautat said.

"One more reason the Lenelli keep beating you," Hasso said. "Their security isn't very good. If yours is worse…" He rolled his eyes, but then he brightened. "The dragon bones should ward Zgomot's men whether they know why or not, come to think of it."

"Hmm. Yeah, I suppose so." The Bucovinan paused, eyeing Hasso. "You know something? You're starting to speak our language pretty well. Not like you grew up in Falticeni or anything, but pretty well. I think it's better than your Lenello by now."

"Maybe," Hasso said. "If it is, I have to thank you and Drepteaza."

Rautat leered at him. "Well, if you tried sweet-talking the priestess in Lenello, she'd make you sorry, and we both know it."

Hasso thought about that. Drepteaza angry wouldn't be an erupting volcano like Velona. She'd make him think a glacier had crushed him instead. Fire or ice? Better not to provoke either. The German said, "I know you think I'm stupid. I'm not that stupid. Hope not, anyhow."

"I used to think you were stupid," Rautat said. "Part of it was because you didn't talk very well, not in any language I know. I've found out different since. Stupid you're not, but you are bloody strange."

"Everybody says that. You'd be bloody strange in my world, too," Hasso answered. Landing in his world, Rautat wouldn't know the customs or speak the language. He'd end up in trouble before he could learn. How could he help it?

"I'd be strange anywhere," the underofficer said, not without pride. He wasn't wrong, either. Hasso laughed and clapped him on the back.

The German knew how to deal with Rautat. He'd handled plenty of Feldwebels in his Wehrmacht days. The language here changed. So did a few of the details. The art as a whole? No.

Dealing with Drepteaza as a lover… That he had to learn one step at a time. It wasn't simple, either. There were moments when he felt like a man trying to defuse a booby-trapped bomb. The priestess was more private and much more complicated than Velona had been. When Drepteaza was unhappy, she'd retreat into herself. She would stay polite all the time. If you weren't paying attention, you wouldn't notice anything was wrong. Then you would lose more points for not noticing.

Hasso complained only once. She laughed at him. "This is what you spent so long mooning over and chasing. Now you have it, and you find out it isn't exactly what you expected? What am I supposed to do about that? I am what I am. I can't be anything different, not for you or anyone else."

He shut up after that. She was telling the truth. And she had to put up with him, too. Well, no — in fact, she didn't. She could dump him any time she pleased.

But she didn't do that. It was as if she'd decided that, as long as they were going to be lovers, she would see just where that led. "Your world must be a funny place," she said once, as they lay side by side in a cot that wasn't really big enough for both of them.

"Why?" he asked.

"You are a fighting man. Rautat says you are one of the most dangerous fighting men he ever saw. From everything I've seen, he's right. But you are the gentlest lover any woman here would ever have known."

He grunted. Velona never accused him of every such thing. Everybody, he supposed, was different with a different partner.

"Why is that?" Drepteaza persisted.

"Partly, it's you." He pursued his own thought. Drepteaza made a small, dubious noise. "It is," Hasso insisted. "And partly, men and women in my world are closer to equals than they are here."

"Oh?" That intrigued her in a new way, as he hoped it might. "How? Why?"

Later, he wondered whether Bucovinan — and maybe even Lenello — men would have reason to swear at him. As best he could, he explained how women's rights had flowered in his world over the past hundred years.

Drepteaza reacted the way he knew she would: "That sounds wonderful! Why isn't it like that here?"

"I don't know," Hasso answered.

"You say it wasn't always like that where you come from? It used to be more the way it is here?" Drepteaza waited for him to nod, then went on, "How are things in your kingdom different now from the way they used to be?"

"Machines," Hasso said automatically. "We have machines to do the things magic can do here. But the machines do it better. They do it for everybody, not just for a few rich people. And with lots of machines, it doesn't matter so much if men are bigger than women. It doesn't matter so much if men are stronger. What you know, what you can do — that matters."

"Women are still the ones who have babies, though," Drepteaza said.

"Ja" Hasso nodded."That is one reason there are still differences. But women have babies more when they want in my world." He explained about rubbers.

"How do you make them?" Drepteaza demanded. "They would be marvelous!" The Bucovinans — and the Lenelli — used pulling out in time for contraception, when they bothered to pull out in time. They also used blowjobs and buggery, which were more fun for men than for women. Women here had lots of children. Lots of kids died here, but lots were born.

Hasso spread his hands. "No idea." He hadn't seen anything like rubber here. And had the locals had it, he didn't know how to make it thin enough for condoms. There were the ones they called skins, though… "Sheep gut might do."

"Like a sausage casing." Drepteaza giggled and reached for him. "Just like a sausage casing." Even if he didn't usually manage two rounds close together, he surprised himself and did that night. Afterwards, he slept like a log.

The next morning, as they got ready to go back to Falticeni, Drepteaza kept going on about equality for women, and about condoms. She didn't seem to be able to think or talk about anything else. Hasso knew he'd changed things here with his knowledge of war. He hadn't thought what he knew about other things in his lost world might change them here, too.

Listening to Drepteaza talk, he could tell he'd been naive. She was bubbling with excitement, as if she wanted to pack a hundred years into a day. Hasso wasn't the only one listening to her, either. Rautat sidled up to him and asked, "Why is the priestess all loopy? What kind of bullshit have you been feeding her?"

"I tell her how things are in my world," Hasso answered uneasily.

"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?