Harry Turtledove - After the downfall

The alleged music woke Velona up, too. Seeing her smile at him from a few centimeters away went a long way toward reconciling him to being awake. "Big day today!" she said, the way anyone back home might have on a holiday morning.

"Yes." Hasso knew he sounded grumpy — hell, he sounded downright dismal — but he couldn't help it.

Velona laughed and poked him. "I do know what's bothering you," she said, and then she made damn sure it wouldn't bother him for a while. Afterwards, she kissed him and asked, "There — is it better now?"

"Yes." This time, he sounded happier about things. Velona kissed him again before she got out of bed. Even so, the real answer was yes and no.

He had that whole long day to brood about her going off to Bottero's bedchamber.

But it turned out to be even worse. Grenye servants set up a bed in the middle of the courtyard. They aren't going to — ? Hasso thought, scandalized.

But they were. As sunset neared, an enormous crowd gathered around the bed, eating and drinking and talking and waiting expectantly. Bottero came out of the castle and pushed his way through. He was naked as the day he was born, but much bigger. "Goddess!" he boomed, standing by the bed. "I summon you, goddess!"

Velona came out, too. The crowd cleared by itself for her. Her golden nakedness might well have been divine; it seemed to draw all the fading light to itself. "I come, your Majesty!" she answered. "I come!"

They lay down on the bed together, right there in front of everybody. They did, and then she did, loudly. Hasso got very drunk.

Hasso woke the next morning with a colossal hangover and an inferiority complex the headache did nothing to dispel. He'd figured Bottero would be big — large men usually were large all over. But that big? The king had to have a horse lurking somewhere not too far down his family tree. No wonder Velona didn't want to miss their date.

She wasn't in bed with him. All things considered, that might have been just as well. He got out of bed, pulled the chamber pot out from under it, and took an enormous leak. Then he put on his clothes and went to the buttery for something to eat — and for something to drink, to dull the pounding between his ears.

He wasn't the only one badly the worse for wear that morning. Passed — out Lenelli and Grenye sprawled together in the courtyard. The overlords and their subjects didn't show that kind of camaraderie when they were conscious. Men who were up and about moved slowly and carefully, as if afraid their heads would fall off if they hurried. Hasso knew just how they felt — he felt that way himself.

A cook standing behind a bubbling pot of porridge was taking pulls at a mug of beer. Hasso pointed at the pot. "Give me some of that," he said. Then he pointed to the mug. "And give me some of that!"

"Barrel's over there. Help yourself." The cook gestured with the ladle before filling a cheap earthenware bowl and plopping a horn spoon into it. "Here you go. Say, you're the foreigner who sleeps with the goddess most of the time, aren't you?"

"That's right. What about it?" If this guy was going to tease him about sharing her with the king, Hasso aimed to clean his clock. He was feeling just rotten enough to welcome a fight.

But the cook only grinned at him. "You're a lucky dog, you are. His Majesty gets your sloppy seconds."

He'd been worrying about getting Bottero's. He hadn't even thought it worked the other way around, too. Not knowing what to say, he didn't say anything. He just went over to the beer barrel and dipped out a mug.

The hair of the dog that bit him took the edge off his headache. The porridge — he thought it was barley, but it might have been oats — had bits of greasy, salty sausage in it. It helped coat his stomach and put some ballast in there. He got up and went back for a refill. He started feeling human again, but still wished he had some aspirin. Wish for the moon, too, he thought.

He was almost done with the second bowl when King Bottero walked in. Along with everybody else sitting on the benches, Hasso jumped to his feet. He didn't hurl himself at the king's throat. Maybe the remains of a hangover had their uses after all.

Bottero waved the warriors back to their seats. "As you were, men. As you were." He seemed careful not to talk too loud. Maybe he was feeling it from the night before, too.

Feeling it or not, the first thing Bottero did was dip himself out a mug of beer and drain it. He filled it again before he went up to the cook for some porridge. Then he ambled over and sat down by Hasso.

"Your Majesty," Hasso said unwillingly.

"Morning," Bottero said. "Quite a night last night, eh? Do they have holidays like that in the land you come from?"

"Well… no." Try as he would, the German couldn't imagine the Fuhrer playing the starring role in a fertility rite. Goring, on the other hand… Hasso swigged from his mug. The Reichsmarschall was too damn fat to do it as well as King Bottero had.

The king's eyes were tracked with red, but shrewd all the same. "Didn't think so," he said. "Velona tells me you aren't too happy about the rite. I didn't do it to spite you. I don't go around stealing my men's women. But the rite… We need the rite. Enjoying it is part of the rite."

"I understand, your Majesty." Hasso tried not to sound too stiff. The king was going out of his way to be decent. He could have just ordered this foreigner with the funny ideas knocked over the head. Hasso didn't think his skill at unarmed combat was keeping him breathing. Maybe the Schmeisser had something to do with it. More likely, Velona really was fond of him, and Bottero was stretching a point for her sake.

"Hope so," the king said. "I don't want that kind of trouble. I don't need it." He drained the mug again. "What I need is another beer. Can I get you one?"

Hasso started to tell him no thanks. Then he realized Bottero was honoring him by asking. You didn't turn your sovereign down, not if he needed to borrow your woman (who just happened to be his goddess) for a ritual, and not if he offered to dip you out a beer with his own big, meaty hand. "Thank you, your Majesty."

That was the right answer. King Bottero heaved his bulk up off the bench and went over to the beer barrel. Everybody watched him when he moved. Some men had that ability to draw eyes. Hitler had far more of it than Bottero, but the king was a long way from going without. And everybody watched him fill two mugs and bring them both back with him. He set one in front of Hasso and raised the other. "Piss in the river," he said.

"Piss in the river," Hasso echoed, and he also drank. Americans said, Mud in your eye. This was the same thing.

People buzzed in the background. Hasso couldn't make out much of what they were saying, but he didn't need to understand them. They'd be talking about how Bottero was going out of his way to show the weird foreigner favor, and about what that might mean. Courts were courts, whether they revolved around a general, a petty king, or a Fuhrer with a continent at his feet (or, not much later, at his throat).

"Is it all right, then?" Bottero asked.

In his mind's eye, Hasso saw the king piercing Velona, saw her face slack with pleasure in the fading twilight. It didn't make him happy, but it didn't make him want to murder the king, either. And in another three months, Bottero would be doing it again.

Of course, in another three months Velona might have decided she was sick of the weird foreigner herself. In that case… Hasso supposed he would get drunk anyway, watching the king lay her and thinking he used to do the same.

And a different question occurred to him: "What does the queen say?"

Bottero blinked. His queen was a Valkyrie with a wrestler's build. Her name was Pola, and she was the daughter of the king whose realm lay just north of Bottero's. They didn't get on badly, but they sure hadn't married for love. She couldn't hold a candle to Velona — not even close.