Harry Turtledove - After the downfall

The king frowned. "You tell me that now. I see it makes sense, but why didn't you suggest it before?"

"I don't know this castle is here then," Hasso answered with a shrug. "Why don't you tell me about it?"

"Everyone must have thought you did know," Bottero said. "Anybody who knows anything about the border would." He stopped and sighed. "But you don't know anything much about the border, do you?"

"Only what I hear," Hasso said. "I don't hear about watchtowers — I'm sorry. But this is the first time I am here, your Majesty. I am stranger here. This place can still surprise me. It still does surprise me every day."

"Well, you surprise us, too — mostly in good ways," King Bottero said. "Except when you show you don't belong here, we think you do."

"Thank you," Hasso said, even if the king meant, You don't seem too barbarous most of the time. He pointed toward Castle Galats. "Do we take that place, or do we just mask it?"

"Mask it," Bottero said at once. "The men from Castle Pedio can do that. Neither place has a big garrison."

"However you like," Hasso said. "I just don't want any nasty surprises when we go by. I don't like getting nasty surprises. Giving is better." He pointed toward the beacon fire in the Grenye tower. "We don't give any for a while now."

"Sooner or later, we will." As usual, the king sounded confident. "When the Grenye try to face us, we'll make them pay. Your striking column will help, by the goddess."

"I hope so." Hasso had all kinds of reasons for saying that. He wanted to make Marshal Lugo look like the stick-in-the-mud, the French general in Lenello's clothing, that he was. He wanted to make his own stock rise. And he wanted to beat Bucovin, which would help him reach both those other goals.

The Grenye in Castle Galats jeered at the Lenelli as the invaders went by. Bottero's men stayed out of arrow range of the watchtower, so Hasso couldn't get a close look at the barbarians' equipment. Some of the Grenye seemed to be wearing iron, while others made do with bronze.

"They know iron when Lenelli come here?" Hasso asked Aderno.

"Yes, but they were just learning to use it." The wizard looked as if he'd just bitten down on a particularly sour pickle. "They've learned a lot more since — from us. They buy as much as they make themselves — from us."

"Why sell to them?"

"Some people care more about money than anything else, and don't care how they get it," Aderno replied. "Is it not the same in your world?"

Since it was, Hasso nodded and let it go. He looked around. "So we are inside Bucovin now?"

"Oh, yes." Aderno nodded, too. "Can't you see how shabby everything looks?"

To Hasso's eyes, the land on this side of the border seemed no different from the land on the other side. The peasants in Bottero's kingdom were also Grenye. The thatch-roofed cottages here looked the same as the ones farther east — to the Wehrmacht officer, anyway. "How do you mean?" he asked.

Aderno made an exasperated noise. "Anyone with eyes to see would know… Well, maybe you don't have eyes to see. All right, then." He started ticking points off on his fingers. "A lot of their crops here are native weeds. They don't grow the fine vegetables and good grains we brought with us from across the sea. You can live on millet and sorghum and squashes, but why would you want to?" He made a face.

Were the Grenye slobs, or was Aderno a snob? Some of both, probably, Hasso judged. He and his buddies had sneered at the Ivans for eating kasha and sunflower seeds… till they gradually realized that sneering at the Ivans wasn't such a good idea any which way. "I see," he said slowly.

"Do you? I hope so," Aderno said. "I was just getting started, though. Their livestock is inferior, too. They had no chickens before we came, only ducks — miserable things, too — and half-tame quail and partridges. Their pigs are only a short step up from wild boars. The sheep and cattle they breed, they stole from us. Their native horses are barely even ponies. And they have no unicorns at all. They can't ride them, and unicorns also come from across the sea." He laid a hand on the side of his mount's white neck.

Europeans would have said the same kinds of things about Red Indians. But how much of what the Grenye had was really that much worse than its Lenello equivalents, and how much just seemed unfamiliar to Aderno and his folk? Hasso didn't know the answer. He did know Aderno didn't even see the question.

"Are you sure the Grenye can't ride unicorns?" he asked. An edge came into his voice as he added, "Remember, not long ago you say that about me."

This time, Aderno might have been sucking on the mother of all lemons. "I was wrong about you, and it cost me. I am not wrong about the Grenye, by the goddess." He paused thoughtfully. "Maybe I was wrong when I said they had no unicorns. They've stolen a few from us, the way they steal big horses to improve their herds, and it's possible that they've bred the unicorns, too. But no one has ever seen a Grenye on unicornback, not in all the years since Lenelli crossed the sea."

He sounded positive. Hasso, who'd been here a matter of months, was in no position to contradict him. "I see," the German said again — let Aderno make whatever he wanted of that.

Before long, Hasso saw something else, too: the first armed Grenye he'd spotted in the field. They weren't an army, only scouts — a handful of men on horseback who kept their eye on King Bottero's army but stayed as far away from it as they could while still doing their job. Every so often, one of them would ride off; no doubt to report to their superiors, while another took his place.

"We should catch some of them," Hasso said. "We should find out what they know. We should find out what they think."

"We should find out if they think," Aderno said scornfully. "Besides, they'll just scurry off into the woods if we chase them. You see how close to the trees they stay?"

"Yes." Hasso had noticed that. "Can't you bring them in by magic, though?"

He'd rarely seen any Lenello at a loss. He did now with Aderno. "By the goddess, I don't know," the wizard said. "It would be child's play on the other side of the border. Here? Well, I can find out."

Back in his own world, Hasso might have asked a radio technician to find the direction from which a Soviet signal was coming. Aderno set to work with that same kind of unflustered competence. He rummaged first in his belt pouches and then in his saddlebags for what he needed. He found a chunk of amber, a small stone that showed different colors depending on how the sun struck it — an opal, Hasso realized — and a smooth, rounded pebble that looked thoroughly ordinary.

"What is that?" Hasso asked, pointing at it.

"A capon's gizzard stone. A five-year-old capon's gizzard stone," Aderno answered with relentless precision. "It aids in gaining one's desire from any man. The other two, taken together, will make you victorious against your adversaries."

Oh, yeah? Hasso thought. Back home, he wouldn't have believed it, though he knew plenty of high-ranking Nazis were gaga for the occult and the supernatural. Much good that had done them, or the Reich. The way Germany was collapsing seemed to him the best argument in the world — in that world — against sorcery.

But things were different here. On the back of his unicorn, Aderno started juggling the three stones. Hasso Pemsel thought that was the funniest thing he'd ever seen, especially when the wizard thrust out his right index finger at a Grenye rider while all three stones were in the air at the same time.

It might have looked ridiculous. Hell, it did look ridiculous. That didn't mean it didn't work. The Grenye from Bucovin — the wild Grenye, the Lenelli would have called him — didn't want to ride up to King Bottero's army. He didn't want to approach the wizard on the unicorn. Hasso could see that more and more plainly as the fellow rode closer and closer. No matter how unwilling he was, he did what Aderno required of him, not what he wanted to do.