After the Downfall by Harry Turtledove Page B

a peculiar one,” Scanno said. “You belong with me, not with this tight-arsed twit.”
    “No.” Hasso let it go there. He didn’t want to tell the renegade that he’d killed Grenye. He didn’t want to tell him he was sleeping with the goddess on earth, either. If Scanno asked around, he could hear it for himself. Hasso got to his feet. “Come on. We go.”
    The tapman gave him a polite nod as he left. He nodded back, which seemed to surprise the Grenye again.
    Out on the street, Aderno lost his temper. “What do you think you’re doing, taking that lout’s side? Are you crazy? Are you a traitor, too?”
    “Shut up,” Hasso said in Lenello, an officer’s snap in his voice. He went on in German, knowing the wizard would understand and the Grenye all around wouldn’t: “Let him think I’m on his side, or I might be. Let him think that, and who knows how much we may learn from him? Get rough now, and we end up with nothing.”
    Aderno gaped. “Maybe you’re playing your own game. Maybe you think all of us are children.”
    “You act like it sometimes.” Hasso said that in Lenello. Aderno flushed, for he used the second-person singular, not plural.
    A Grenye with a pheasant feather stuck in his cap said something about his nice, clean sister and pointed to the brothel across the street. Hasso shook his head. The Grenye didn’t want to take no for an answer. He reached out to tug at Hasso’s arm. Aderno said something too fast for the Wehrmacht officer to follow. The Grenye got it, though. He disappeared in a hurry.
    “If our magic fails against the Grenye, how are we supposed to conquer Bucovin?” Aderno said.
    “Maybe you do it one bite at a time,” Hasso answered. “Maybe you go on to Falticeni and take it away from their king.”
    “Their chief, you mean,” the Lenello said scornfully.
    “Whatever he is.” It didn’t matter to Hasso. “Or maybe you decide it’s too much trouble and you leave them alone. We had a big neighbor who we thought would be a pushover, too. That’s why I was fighting in what was left of my own capital.” If the Führer had gone after England instead of trying to knock out Russia ... Well, things could hardly have turned out worse.
    “This whole land is ours. It is our destiny. If the savages don’t bend the knee to us, we’ll push them aside like the dirt they are.” Aderno didn’t care who was listening to him. Sometimes disasters followed talk like that. Hasso had seen as much at first hand. But sometimes they didn’t. The Americans hadn’t worried about Indian raids for a lifetime. The aborigines in Australia had even less left to them than the redskins in the New World. Europeans ruled India and Africa. Conquest could work.
    “Come on,” Hasso said. “Let’s get back to the castle.”
    Aderno went off to commune with a fellow wizard and try to figure out why his magic failed. Hasso thought about telling King Bottero what he’d done, but decided not to. This kingdom was tiny by the standards of the Reich, but not so tiny that the man at the top would want to hear every little detail. Chances were he’d listen politely - once. Hasso didn’t care to burn up his credit like that. He asked one of the guards where Velona was. The fellow shrugged, which made his mailshirt clink ever so slightly. “Don’t know,” he answered. Maybe he really didn’t. Or maybe he didn’t care for a jumped-up foreigner. His tone wasn’t rude enough to be insubordinate. Hasso asked the same thing of a Grenye maidservant carrying a heroic amount of laundry wrapped in a sheet. “She is in the chapel, my lord,” the woman answered. Her Lenello was fluent, but flavored with an accent that said she’d be more at home in one of the swarthy natives’ languages.
    “Thank you very much,” Hasso said. The maidservant looked as startled as the tapman at Negustor’s had. Lenelli didn’t waste much politeness on their social and political inferiors. The chapel wasn’t so